Sunday, September 19, 2010

Magnetoception


I'm sure everyone has felt extremely lost before. What if you were stranded in the middle of nowhere with no compass, maps, or any sort of navigational tool? Would you know how to get home? The new sense I've developed is played off of some other animal senses that Humans either haven't fully developed or can not use for a specific purpose basically, the test results are inconclusive. The new sense for humans I have thought of is a sense of direction. Yeah I know, it doesn't sound all that great, especially since it doesn't apply to everyday life. There is gonna be that day that you never think could happen, that you're stranded in the middle of nowhere, no electronics, no cell phone, no gps, nothing. You have no light so your eyes do you no good and its dead quiet, you have no idea where the north star is but you need to find your way home. The sense I'm talking about refers to Magnetoception, which is the ability to detect a magnetic field to perceive direction, altitude, or location. This sense is what animals like birds use for their navigational abilities during migration. The way birds use it is they have a heavily innervated region of the upper beak containing biological magnetite, which is believed to be involved in Magnetoception. The way I have humans detecting the earths magnetic fields through magnetoception has to do with the nose. The human nose contains a bone called the ethmoid bone that contains magnetic deposits of ferric iron. The deposits are not enough I believe to be able to detect the magnetic field so I have proposed a magnetically charged nose ring that will help those deposits of iron reach their full potential and give humans the ability to navigate and detect their locations through magnetic fields.

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