Eshan Maitra
The Sixth Sense myth has always been a topic of wonder. Now, Geophysicist Joe Kirschvink from the California Institute of Technology, US finally claiming that he found some legit evidence of humanity’s sixth sense. The ability to detect Earth’s magnetic field, in some subconscious way.
This mysterious ability already has been confirmed in birds, insects, and some mammals such as bats. They use the sense of Earth’s magnetic field to navigate their paths to home or to migrate. After all, the Earth is like a giant magnet consisting of North & South Poles, and the magnetic flux lines are all around us. Their axis wise placement and disturbance can be detected by the sixth magnetic sense. Though, it was never confirmed that the human brain could have such hidden power too.
In the interview to Science magazine after presenting his findings at the 2016 meeting of the Royal Institute of Navigation in the UK, Kirschvink told Eric Hand that, he nailed his presentation! He also confirmed that Humans have functioning Magnetoreceptors. Kirschvink hooked his participants with EEG monitors to map their brain activity while applying rotating magnetic field similar in strength to Earth’s. Then observed any sign of the brain indications of picking up any changes. These are thin, aluminum box that can screen out electromagnetic background noise using wire coils, called Faraday cage. To eliminate any other brain activity, participants were put in pitch black rooms with no interference, but only exposed to a pure magnetic field. Kirschvink claimed to get repeated and verified results in these experiments. After the presentation, he received US$900,000 funding to continue his work with labs in Japan and New Zealand.
Many believes this can be a real deal. Physical Chemist Peter Hore from the University of Oxford, a leader in the Magnetoreception cheered his discovery and told Hand, “Joe’s a very smart man and a very careful experimenter. He wouldn’t have talked about this at [this meeting] if he wasn’t pretty convinced he was right. And you can’t say that about every scientist in this area.”
The past two hypothesis about Magnetoreceptorssuggest that, either Earth’s magnetic fields could trigger quantum reactions in proteins called Cryptochromes or there are receptor cells with tiny bio-compasses within the brain. So why the waiting? Start honing your new found ability!