Interesting, Mike, but you are a little over my head. But, I have often
wondered how birds and butterflies navigated above the Gulf of Mexico.
Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA
On 6/9/2016 7:05 PM, Mike Gordon via olympus wrote:
Well not for sure, but looking likely that this is the case. Very curious
paper published today shedding light on how birds and some insects navigate
using magnetic fields.
The use of magnetic fields in navigation by animals has been known for decades but the
mode of signal transduction has remained a deep mystery. About 1978 Klaus Schulten is
a German American computational biophysicist proposed that quantum entanglement of a
radical-pair system could underlie a biochemical compass-- an editor is Science thought a
less bold scientist would have "designed this piece of work for the waste
basket."
The paper was indeed NOT published in Science.
It looks increasingly likely that this may indeed underlie how the signal
from the avian cryptochromes are produced.
So in brief light can create entangled electron pairs within the crypotchrome
though radical pairs can also be generated by the light-independent dark
reoxidation of the flavin cofactor by molecular oxygen through the formation of
a spin-correlated FADH-superoxide radical pairs.
The ambient magnetic field interacts differentially with the entangled electron pairs
depending on their spin which in turn affects the lifetime of the activated
cryptochrome--and then influences the visual signals. Thus the bird actually
"sees" the magnetic fields.
This seemed very bizarre at least in part as entangled electron pairs can be
created the lab but the T1/2 of them is exquisitely short except near absolute
zero. The paper today suggests these effects within the protein environment
are indeed quite long enough to influence photochemical reactions.
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/18/6/063007?fromSearchPage=true
Oh, here is something easier to read:
http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/action/pia-entanglement.cfm
So the bird outside you window may be navigating using "spooky action through a
distance." You can't make this stuff up.
Wish I had this ability to navigate the one-way cow paths of Boston, Mike
--
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