A. Marshall Stoneham, Erik M Gauger, Kyriakos Porfyrakis, Simon C. Benjamin, Brendon W. Lovett
Certain migratory birds can sense the earth's magnetic field. The nature of this process is not yet properly understood. Here we offer a simple explanation according to which birds literally `see' the local magnetic field: Our model relates the well-established radical pair hypothesis to the phenomenon of Haidinger's brush, a capacity to see the polarisation of light. This new picture explains recent surprising experimental data indicating long lifetimes for the radical pair. Moreover there is a clear evolutionary path toward this field sensing mechanism: it is an enhancement of a weak effect that may be present in many species.
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http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.2628
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