by Jon NapolitanoThis image, created by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,
by Jon NapolitanoThis image, created by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, shows what the sky looks like to some species of migratory bird.It happens because a chemical event that the bird’s eye uses to help detect blue light changes in efficiency depending on which direction the protein is facing relative to a magnetic field, so the sky looks brighter in some directions than others. This little trick is all they need to migrate thousands of miles in some cases.In the past few years, scientists have started to learn how this might happen, and it’s turning out to break new ground in quantum chemistry. That kind of unexpected discovery is one of the things that makes science really exciting to us.The source of this, a more technical writeup, is here: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/cryptochrome -- source link
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