Let’s go to the heart of the matter. A study by scientists from the School of Medicine, University of Massachusetts on a protein found in the human retina, suggesting that this protein has the ability to function as a detector of magnetic fields. At least that happened when implanted in fruit flies.

However, scientists have looked very much to link the results of their research with the fact that humans use in this sense. As they say, this point is unknown.

In the words of Steven Reppert, a neurobiologist and researcher at the medical team that conducted the study: “It is believed that this protein is important in animal migrations. Perhaps this protein also plays a significant magneto-sensitive humans.”

Previous research suggests that in addition to helping some animals such as sea turtles and migratory birds can navigate, the ability to detect magnetic fields could also help in visual spatial perception. Maybe these animals possess a kind of coordinate system superimposed magnetic field of the objects they see.

Reppert said: “It may be that this will help the animals perceive objects in space-time in a way we had not thought before.”

The magnetic sense of animals is supposedly based on some special proteins called cryptochromes have also been found in the retina of humans. Although the results of previous research hinted that humans can not feel these magnetic fields, there is evidence that the geomagnetism affect lighting system in our eyes.

To test whether humans had this other sense, Reppert and his colleagues took wild fruit flies (with cryptochromes intact) and compared with other laboratory which had replaced their original cryptochromes by the human version of the protein.

Then placed the flies in a T-shaped maze and equipped each of the three ends with a coil that surrounded it, so that when current is applied one of the three coils are magnetized. Scientists were alternating magnetization of the three coils, and power also varied. In some cases the magnetic field exceeded eight times that of Earth.

The flies that lacked the human cryptochromes showed sensitivity to magnetic fields avoiding the magnetized tip, as do naturally when they are not acclimated to magnetism, and later, when they were trained by rewarding them with sugar if you came to the magnetic field , coming to the end of the coil electrified.

Interestingly, the researchers found that the human protein only worked in the blue light range.