Birds Can See Earth's Magnetic Fields, and Now We Know How That's Possible

sciencealert.com

56 points·vinnyglennon··12 comments

For historical purposes, the last conversation on this fascinating article =

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16823201

> There's also been evidence in recent years that, in birds, the cryptochromes in their eyes are responsible for their ability to orient themselves by detecting magnetic fields, a sense called magnetoreception.

How soon until someone in the body-mod community tries implanting these into their own eyeballs?

With words like ‘cryptochromes’ and ‘magnetoreception’, I’m sure it’s going to have some misunderstood appeal.

Maybe they'll find a way to store private keys in their eyes too.

Let's call it wifi-o-vision. Much more useful to see using the surrounding microwaves. (via backscatter)

Compared to that, magnetic field sensing requires really strong fields.

No need for implants once we're all wearing AR glasses/lenses.

Yeah, it's kind of a natural HUD. However even though it could definitely be mimicked with electronics, a biological self-hack would have the advantages of not worrying about battery life, software updates, security, etc.

If you were in a future Mad-Max dystopia, you'd definitely want a bio-hack to guide you around instead of a fragile piece of plastic and silicon.

In such a dystopia, a clear blue sky might not be visible from the ground on a regular basis.

I would love to see a simulation of what this type of vision looks like. I think that would be very interesting.

Like describing "blue" to a blind person I'd imagine.

No imagination required, there is such a visualisation in the article.

There is such a simulation in article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com