by For example, if you consider a salmon or a pigeon, your first thought is probably not “wow, I bet that guy is great in quantum mechanics” – and yet, that is exactly what the evidence suggests: that these animals, among other things, under Others exploit some of the most advanced science that is currently understood by people in their daily lives – and according to a new paper they do this in ways that push the boundaries of quantum physics.
“A large number of magnetic sensors, such as super -conducting quantum interference devices, optical pumps and nitrogen vacancy maget teeth, were found to promote the limit of energy resolution,” the authors, physici Iannis Kominis and Efthimis Garkinakis from Crete, explains in their paper. “This limit implies a fundamental limitation about what can be achieved in magnetic detection.”
In short, the performance of a magnetic sensor depends on three things: the volume, sensitivity and the measurement time. The smaller the result, the more sensitive the magnet.
Sounds simple? Maybe – but nowadays we can become quite small. Go too far to scale and things start to be a bit known – or, as physicists prefer to call it Kwantum. It is both a blessing and a curse in magnetometry: the tiny scale cuts a lot of the dimensional noise, and that is able to make enormous jumps in how sensitive our sensors can be in recent years – but at the same time it brings it to with an intrinsic vulnerability. Famous, famous, quantum states can finally be destroyed by simply viewing them in the wrong way.
Even in the fuzzy, probabilistic world of quantum physics, however, there is a limit on how small you can go. Both theoretical and recently, experimental, the limit for magnetic sensitivity is set to the constant of Planck – an infinitely small value at 6,62607015 × 10-34 Joule seconds, and generally labeled ℏ.
“On qualitative level, the closer the energy resolution is to ℏ, the more ‘quantum’ the sensor is,” the researchers write.
So what does this all have to do with animal sentences? Well, biologists have known for a long time that many animals have the ability to feel magnetic fields it is how birds find their way home, how foxes find success in hunting and how dogs know how to go doo-doo. They are also good at a level that scientists have almost found astonishing – the magnetic field of the earth is extremely weak, all taken together, and yet these critters can use it with a creepy level of accuracy.
That means that they have to operate some levels of magnetoreception in the neighborhood alone How Near to date, a mystery has remained. To be honest, we still don’t even know for sure how the animals are doing: there are a few competing and probably non-mutual exclusive theories that are there, and even they are light on details.
“In the past six decades, scientists have considered various biophysical mechanisms that explain biological magnetor reception,” explains a statement from the University of Crete, but they are not yet fully understood, and the relevant physical parameters [are] Not exactly known. ”
Kominis and Gkoudinakis, however, decided to work back on the answers. “Because organic magnetometers adhere to the laws of nature and therefore also expected to [energy resolution] Bound, the bound is used to limit those biophysical parameters, “says the explanation.
The result? Some proposed mechanisms for biological magnetor reception are not only feasible, but they would also – at least, at least – work on that quantum limit. It would be if watching a TV with pixels from Planck-length-in principle impossible to get a higher resolution. And it has been to fruit flies all the time.
Yet we don’t have to feel so bad about the second place of an insect. Now we have discovered how they do it, we can perhaps improve our own lab-based magnetic sensors, the researchers believe.
“If [scientists] If you want to do the most sensitive measurements, we have to go Kwantum, “Kominis told Physics Magazine. “Magiculating organic magnetor receptors can guide such a quantum technique.”
The paper is published in the Journal PRX Life.
