[This SMBC comic](http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3668) asks what happens if you make a gas of magnetic particles:

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gNNL0.jpg)

I was wondering whether anyone has run into actual examples of this or something like it. A classical example similar to this would be a gas comprised of electrically charged particles (possibly in a magnetic field), if the temperature is high then this is essentially plasma physics (which, if memory serves, by it's nature does not include dipole - dipole interactions).

So, are there practical practical, real life situations that can be modelled by a gas of point like dipoles? How do these systems behave?

My own thoughts on this would be

* This gas would effectively behave like a ferromagnet and you would get domains of similarly oriented dipoles.
* The dipole - dipole interaction within those domains is attractive and the domains would collapse forming a larger single dipole.
* In effect this would look very much like the gravitational evolution of a neutral gas except that "gravity" would obey the inverse cube law of dipole - dipole interaction.