'Eye bath' to thank for quantum vision in birds

Bird's eye view (Image: Design Pics Inc/Rex Features)

The bath of cells in avian eyes could prolong a delicate quantum state that helps to explain how some birds navigate using Earth's magnetic field.

It is thought that light reacts with receptors in the birds' eyes to produce two molecules with unpaired electrons, whose spins are linked by a special state called quantum entanglement.

If the relative alignment of the spins is affected by Earth's magnetic field, the electron pair can cause chemical changes that the bird can sense.

In 2009, researchers at the University of Oxford calculated that such entanglement must last for at least 100 microseconds for the internal compass to work. But how the sensitive state of quantum entanglement could survive that long in the eye was a mystery.

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 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22199-eye-bath-to-thank-for-quantum-vision-in-birds.html

http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.2558v1