Proteins, magnets and the spooky mystery of science

Remember last week when I said that magnetic north and south could just up and swap ends and that birds’ ability to migrate properly could be disrupted by that or by the mad scientists in France who are planning on firing up a magnet that’s 280,000 times more powerful than Earth’s magnetic field? Fun times.

I’ll bet that more people than just the two who said it to my face were thinking, “Oh, Pam. You and your brain hopped up on google-y things are willing to write all manner of fantastical ideas just for a laugh. What a maroon! Hahahar.”

Well guess what, naysayers and yaysayers, too, I’ve got more science to throw at you, so hang on, we’re headed back down a research-lined rabbit hole, where scientists have proven that birds see magnetic fields using the power of eyeball proteins.

That sounds a lot grosser than it really is.

Back in 2018 two groups of scientists published separate research findings on how a type of a protein, called cryptochromes, found in the eye, work. Apparently evidence had been piling up that these proteins play a dual role in the eyeball cells in birds — as photoreceptors detecting blue light, and magnetoreceptors that, surprise, detect magnetic fields.

After looking at one of the research papers, I can tell you with absolute certainty that I truly do not understand what they are saying. At all.

Of course, I recognized the common words, but they were just like thin bits of thread tied to these long, thick strands of scientific blah blah blah.

Fortunately, a Sept. 1, 2018 article at ScienceAlert.com simplified everything enough I could slog my way through to figure out that the research teams looked at three types of cryptochromes — Cry1, Cry2 and Cry4 — from two types of migratory birds to see what the proteins did all day long.

Sitting there watching proteins all day doesn’t seem like much of an experiment, but it was actually pretty clever because if the cells were photoreceptors that meant they were tuned in to day and night and their reception would fluctuate during the day.

In fact, photoreceptors are part of the whole body clock system that regulates why we wake up in the morning, get sleepy at night, have a sense of what time it is during the day and get jet lag when we travel, and probably influences why we want bacon rather than pot roast for breakfast.

Sure enough, Cry1 and Cry2 fluctuated during the day. But Cry4 stayed pretty constant and therefore was determined to be the one tuned in to the magnetic field.

Researchers also determined that the reason why birds can only see the magnetic field during the day is because the Cry4 are located within a hotbed of Cry1 and Cry2, so they’re all linked together.

With their work complete, the two research teams submitted their research, popped open some champagne and enjoyed their 15 minutes of nerd fame.

Some scientists in Tokyo, though, with a lot of COVID lock-down time on their hands got to wondering how they could more clearly prove or disprove that Cry4 is a magnetoreceptor and not just too lazy to get up and move around during the day. And they thought, hey, maybe we can also explain how it works.

An Oct. 6 article from Science Alert says the scientists gathered up some human cells that were flush with cryptochromes, flooded them with blue light so they lit up like Las Vegas Christmas trees then ran some magnetic fields past them — each time they did so the light dimmed.

Ta daaaaah! Point proven.

And how do they say it works? It has some blah blah blah to do with the spin of electrons and electromagnetic attraction of free ranging electrons.

So, yeah, it’s magic, of course.

OK, sure, science is involved, but it’s quantum physics and this is the point where we have reached the vast chasm at the end of my intelligence — the great void into which all things beyond my reckoning live.

And quantum everything is the ruler of this dark domain.

But let’s be honest, even scientists are just learning to crawl in the study of quantum stuff. It’s a process, I respect that, but right now, their basic description of the mystery of quantum physics is that it’s the physics that explains how everything works because it deals with atoms, which are the essence of everything in the known universe.

And even though this sounds slightly like the little guy behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz franchise, we’ll forgive them for a few decades.

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Even Albert Einstein, man genius, called that spinning electron-pairing quantum whatever “spooky action at a distance,” and that’s the closest you’ll get to the scientific equivalent of “it’s magic” at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .