Magnetic Monopoles Detected?

It is a quasi particle that results from the collective state of electrons in solid matter. It is not really a monopole, since it is necessarily connected by a flux tube (no Back to the Future jokes, please) to an opposite pole. If you integrate the flux over a closed sphere, you still get a total flux of zero. Only if you leave a small hole where the flux tube leaves the sphere around your "pole" you get something that looks like a monopole, with things like the inverse distance behaviour you see for electric and gravitational fields.

This is similar to the field you see near the ends of strong long and thin conventional magnets (where the matter of the magnet plays the role of the flux tube).

So this is a very interesting discovery in the field of solid state physics, but any connections to elementary particle physics you might think of when you hear about the discovery of a magnetic monopole are wrong.

One interesting use, I thought, of magnetic monopoles (whether they are fundamental particles or not), would be in the construction of a perpetual motion machine. If it is possible to manufacture these monopoles in a controlled manner, it could be possible to create a turbine that accelerates forever (thus generating free energy)... or am I missing something?