Scientist might have found how the 'bird compass' works

Birds might just have some "magical eyes" like no other creature in this world.

 

But no, their eyes are not enchanted like that. In fact, their eyes have a built-in compass used to navigate the Earth whenever they migrate by sensing Earth's magnetic field.

 

"One of the big questions about the chemical compass was how you could ever be sensitive enough to get useful information, and I think this paper explains that," said Zachary Walters of Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, Germany in an email interview with GMA News Online.

 

Walters added, "One of the very interesting features of the avian compass is that the Earth's magnetic field is so weak—there are so many random forces in a cell, you would normally expect that any information you could gather from the field would be swamped." 

 

Based on Walter's calculations, the interactions within the cells in a bird's eye allow the pairs of electrons to stay in "quantum entanglement" for a longer time. However, Walters was not able to show a definite time.

 

Quantum entanglement, in Albert Einstein's words is "spooky action at a distance." It happens when two particles separated at a distance still move in relation with each other.

 

"My paper considers a chemical process which is believed to occur in bird's eyes. When this (unknown) chemical absorbs a photon, it promotes one electron to an excited state and creates a pair of electron spins which can evolve in a magnetic field," said Walters.

 

Like in other previous studies, light reacts with receptors in a bird's eyes to produce two molecules with unpaired electrons. These electrons spin (or move) relative to each other. 

 

In his paper, Walters said that the mechanism on how these birds eyes "interact" needs to be studied further so to predict exactly how long the entanglement is sustained.

 

"What my paper does is look more carefully at the interaction with the surroundings. It shows that only some information is destroyed rapidly, while other information actually takes longer to decay when the interaction with the surroundings is very strong. When you look at the chemical compass this way, it turns out it's actually easier to tell which way is North than it was in the original model," Walters said.

 

In 2009, University of Oxford researchers calculated that the entanglement must last for at least 100 microseconds—there are one million microseconds in a second—for the "avian compass" to work. 

 

But Walters said that his model could probably account for the 100 microseconds.

 

Walters also said in his email that it would be interesting to look at the other senses—sight, hearing, touch—and use a similar approach to increase their sensitivity. –KG, GMA News