It was April 1949, when Einstein met Karl von Frisch during a lecture at Princeton University, USA. Von Frisch was visiting Princeton to present his new research on how honeybees navigate more effectively using the polarisation patterns of light scattered from the sky. He used this information to help translate bees’ now-famous dance language, for which he eventually received his Nobel Prize. After Einstein attended von Frisch’s lecture the two researchers shared a private meeting although this meeting wasn’t formally documented, a recently found letter is now flashing some new light on that event.
The letter was addressed to Mr. Glyn Davys and was written by Einstein dated October 18, 1949, discussing the idea of Karl von Frisch and Einstein's take on that matter. 72 years later his wife Judith Davys – a retiree living in the United Kingdom shared that letter to the researchers studying that topic and that's how we came to know about the existence of such a letter.
Einstein was right
Now, more than 70 years since Einstein sent his letter, research is indeed revealing the secrets of how migratory birds navigate while flying thousands of kilometers to arrive at a precise destination. In 2008, research on thrushes fitted with radio transmitters showed, for the first time, that these birds use a form of a magnetic compass as their primary orientation guide during flight. One theory for the origin of magnetic sense in birds is the use of quantum randomness and entanglement. Both of these physics concepts were first proposed by Einstein. But although Einstein was one of the founders of quantum physics, he was uncomfortable with its implications. “God does not play with dice”, he famously stated, to express his opposition to the randomness which lay at the heart of quantum mechanics. In an influential 1935 paper, Einstein and co-authors Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen introduced the concept of quantum entanglement. Interestingly, it was introduced as a conceptual failure of quantum mechanics, rather than one of its defining centerpieces, as we now understand it. Perhaps ironically, one of the leading theories for the origin of magnetic sense in birds is the use of quantum randomness and entanglement. This theory suggests radical-pair chemical reactions in cryptochromes – signaling proteins found in certain plants and animals – are affected by the Earth’s magnetic field, and thus form the basis of a bird’s biological magnetic compass. Although Einstein disagreed with entanglement, his willingness to speculate on how we might learn new things from animal sensory perception suggests he would have been delighted by how new research on bird migration is pushing the boundaries of our understanding of physics. Indeed, Einstein’s letter to Davys is a testament to how open he was to new possibilities for the field of physics being observed in nature. It illustrates, once again, how mindful he was of what one might discover when taking a different view of the world.
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