La cohérence quantique serait impliquée dans l’orientation magnétique des oiseaux

Researchers have investigated the mechanism which enables birds to detect the Earth’s magnetic field to help them navigate over vast distances. This ability, known as magnetoreception, has been linked to chemical reactions inside birds’ eyes.
Now a team from Oxford University and Singapore believe that this ‘compass’ is making use of something called quantum coherence. In a forthcoming article in Physical Review Letters the team report how they analysed data from an experiment by Oxford and Frankfurt scientists on robins. The experiment showed that the magnetic compass used by robins could be disrupted by extremely small levels of magnetic ‘noise’.
When this noise, a tiny oscillating magnetic field, was introduced, it completely disabled the Robins’ compass sense which then returned to normal once the noise was removed. In their analysis now, the Oxford/Singapore team show that only a system with components operating at a quantum level would be this sensitive to such a small amount of noise.