Magnetic implant
In 2006, an American surgeon named Steve Haywards cut Queen Norton's ring finger and placed a small rare earth magnet in it, then stitched up the wound. According to Norton, when she brought her finger to the telephone wire or swiped it over the laptop, she began to feel a slight pointing.
According to the woman, she felt a particularly noticeable tingling sensation from the telephone cord. Although these cords are not high voltage, they are not particularly shielded, so she could actually feel them.
Norton had no goal of gaining some kind of superhero ability to move objects. The idea was that the implanted magnet could allow her to detect the presence of magnetic fields.
How it works?
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Our fingertips have sensory receptors on nerve endings that inform the brain that a person is touching something. When exposed to a magnetic field, the implanted magnet can move or vibrate strong enough to activate these nerve endings.
All of us, of course, are constantly surrounded by magnetic fields created by various objects: from the Earth and the Sun to our refrigerators, light bulbs, smartphones and TV remotes. Since electricity and magnetism are inextricably linked, an object that conducts an electric current can create a magnetic field, and vice versa.
Norton's experiment 10 years ago was not designed to sense all of these magnetic fields. As she herself explained in one of the radio interviews, she needed to make physical contact with the object in order to detect the magnetic field emanating from it.
Magnetoreception in animals
But with animals, everything is much simpler. Since the late 1960s, scientists have known that some birds swim using Earth's magnetic fields. They are able to do this through biology and evolution, not surgery. A robin bird, for example, has cryptochromic molecules in its eyes that, when stimulated by magnetic fields, can superimpose this information on its visual perception. In practice, this means that some parts of the bird's field of view become brighter and others darker.
And these birds are not the only ones of their kind. Pigeons, for example, have neurons that are sensitive to magnetic fields, and loggerheads use these fields during migration. There is an assumption that foxes are able to use small magnetic fields during hunting, as they transmit information about the presence of hidden game. Herds of cows and deer are oriented around the lines of force of the Earth's magnetic field.
Manchester experiments
Given how widespread magnetoreception (the ability to sense magnetic fields) is in the animal kingdom, it makes sense to ask if humans have similar skills. Of course, we would know if the fridge magnets were sticking to our skin, but there is at least the possibility that magnetic fields affect us on a more subtle level, perhaps even beyond our consciousness.
In 1980, British zoologist Robin Baker published what became known as the "Manchester Experiments." According to him, many animals were able to find their home when they were released in arbitrary territories. When similar experiments were carried out with people who were blindfolded, a similar ability was also manifested. The zoologist was sure that this ability in humans could not be associated with the creation of a so-called mental map or something else. Therefore, Baker came to the conclusion that humans are able to perceive the earth's magnetic fields.
Students from the University of Manchester participated in his experiments. They were divided into groups of 5-11 people. Participants were blindfolded, put into cars and driven to a distance of up to 52 kilometers from the starting point. Each of the students was taken out of the car, and only then they untied their eyes. They should have indicated the direction to the campus from their current location by saying something like "north" or "southeast". Baker repeated this experiment 10 times with different groups of students. Indeed, most often they indicated the right direction, or close to it, compared to the wrong one.
Of course, the Manchester experiments are controversial to this day, as they do not fully prove that humans can sense magnetic fields. However, they stimulate researchers to work on this problem.