Can Humans Actually Sense the Earth's Magnetic Field?
Reuters
Close your eyes and quietly repeat after me: "Om mani padme hum, om mani padme hum…" Feel anything unusual? You know, like a magnetic chill down your spine?
No? Don't feel bad. I'm just teasing. That's actually a popular Tibetan Buddhist mantra. And don't be silly, you can't really "feel" the Earth's magnetic field, though according to a new study by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, you might be able to see it.
(PHOTOS: The Hubble Telescope's Greatest Hits)
How? With a light-sensitive protein that helps regulate our daily body rhythms known as cryptochrome, capable of detecting magnetic fields and actually acting like a compass when present in the eyes of Drosophila, the species commonly known as "fruit flies."
It turns out we not only might at one point have been capable of "seeing" magnetic fields, as nonhuman migratory animals such as birds do, but that we may still retain some semblance of a visual ability to orient ourselves using the Earth's magnetic field.
"May" being the operative word. The debate over whether humans can perceive direction, altitude or location based on the Earth's magnetic field has been ongoing and somewhat contentious for decades. Research by Robin Baker at the University of Manchester during the 1970s and 1980s made claims that human-based magnetoception exists, but no one's been able to reproduce his results, placing them somewhere in the scientific domain of "not science yet."
Enter neurobiologist Steven Reppert and others at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, who've been fiddling with monarch butterflies and fruit flies, coming up with methods to determine cryptochrome's efficacy at detecting magnetic fields. In a Nature study published last year, Reppert and colleagues showed how fruit flies without the innate ability to detect magnetic fields recovered it when induced to produce cryptochrome. And in a Nature study published just yesterday, Reppert and colleagues obtained similar results observing monarch butterflies with two inbuilt cryptochrome genes. The conclusion? Since a similar version of cryptochrome is actively found in the human eye, Reppert suspects humans may be able to "see" magnetic fields when the gene interacts with our retinas.
"I would be very surprised if we don't have this sense," Reppert told the BBC. "[It's] used in a variety of other animals. I think that the issue is to figure out how we use it."
And the New York Times raises a tantalizing possibility: You know the stories about ancient Polynesian navigators making thousands of miles sea voyages without compasses and only intermittently starry skies? It's a long shot, but yep, this could possibly explain that, too.
MORE: NASA: Supermassive Black Holes Are at the Hearts of Galaxies
No? Don't feel bad. I'm just teasing. That's actually a popular Tibetan Buddhist mantra. And don't be silly, you can't really "feel" the Earth's magnetic field, though according to a new study by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, you might be able to see it.
(PHOTOS: The Hubble Telescope's Greatest Hits)
How? With a light-sensitive protein that helps regulate our daily body rhythms known as cryptochrome, capable of detecting magnetic fields and actually acting like a compass when present in the eyes of Drosophila, the species commonly known as "fruit flies."
It turns out we not only might at one point have been capable of "seeing" magnetic fields, as nonhuman migratory animals such as birds do, but that we may still retain some semblance of a visual ability to orient ourselves using the Earth's magnetic field.
"May" being the operative word. The debate over whether humans can perceive direction, altitude or location based on the Earth's magnetic field has been ongoing and somewhat contentious for decades. Research by Robin Baker at the University of Manchester during the 1970s and 1980s made claims that human-based magnetoception exists, but no one's been able to reproduce his results, placing them somewhere in the scientific domain of "not science yet."
Enter neurobiologist Steven Reppert and others at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, who've been fiddling with monarch butterflies and fruit flies, coming up with methods to determine cryptochrome's efficacy at detecting magnetic fields. In a Nature study published last year, Reppert and colleagues showed how fruit flies without the innate ability to detect magnetic fields recovered it when induced to produce cryptochrome. And in a Nature study published just yesterday, Reppert and colleagues obtained similar results observing monarch butterflies with two inbuilt cryptochrome genes. The conclusion? Since a similar version of cryptochrome is actively found in the human eye, Reppert suspects humans may be able to "see" magnetic fields when the gene interacts with our retinas.
"I would be very surprised if we don't have this sense," Reppert told the BBC. "[It's] used in a variety of other animals. I think that the issue is to figure out how we use it."
And the New York Times raises a tantalizing possibility: You know the stories about ancient Polynesian navigators making thousands of miles sea voyages without compasses and only intermittently starry skies? It's a long shot, but yep, this could possibly explain that, too.
MORE: NASA: Supermassive Black Holes Are at the Hearts of Galaxies
Read more: http://techland.time.com/2011/06/22/can-humans-actually-sense-the-earths-magnetic-field/#ixzz1QmoLW1xk end quote.
So Can you Sense Earth's Magnetic Field? I guess each of us has to answer that ourselves. For me, the answer likely is "Yes". It is one of the many reasons that I have been concerned about the magnetosphere surrounding Earth. It appears that even though the sun appears to empower our magnetosphere through its plasma streams somehow, that it also is generated by the Sun like magma inside of Earth as well as the crust of the earth that we all live upon on the very outside of earth and to some degree the oceans. So, I guess my concern as someone who can actually sense the magnetic field or fields of earth, it looks to me like the sun is sort of magnetizing Earth which is magnetizing everything else here on earth including all life forms. And that all life forms have what appears to me to be a lot like an egg shaped personal magnetosphere around each of them (especially humans). So, for me by looking at the health of these personal magnetospheres or (Auras) I can usually tell the health both mental and physical and spiritual of any being I observe in this way as well as their psychological states at that moment. However, I don't do this all the time unless I find it useful in some way to my health or others. For example, in 1998 at thanksgiving I noticed there was something not quite right about my mother in laws aura or personal magnetosphere, so I looked more deeply and realized she was dying. Unfortunately, I told my wife and she couldn't handle it and just got hysterical at the time. So, I backed off and within 3 months doctors told my wife's mother that she had terminal lung cancer. So, if you can see auras and know what they mean when they look certain ways you can diagnose potential deaths or potential psychotic breaks or whatever if you know what different things look like in an Aura or (personal magnetosphere).
Also, in regard to earth it appears that our magnetosphere is changing into something else that might not allow life as we know it to live upon it. It doesn't mean that we all are going to die necessarily, it just means that our descendents won't be like us if they want to survive here. Or it will mean that we as a human race decide to terraform earth to remain as it now is or was during the 20th and 19th centuries. Because for now at least the 20th and 19th centuries are long gone in regard to what life is doing on earth now.
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