 The particle was tentatively identified as a magnetic monopole in 1975 by Price and some colleagues.That conclusion was withdrawn in 1978 after further analysis led the Price group to conclude that the particle did not have the appropriate charge to be a monopole, though leaving open the possibility that a supermassive magnetic monopole might have caused the track.However, Luis W. Alvarez proposed that this track can be explained with an Platinum atom decaying into Osmium and later into Tantalum.