Humans May Have A Sixth Sense

Maverick Scientist Thinks He Has Discovered a Magnetic Sixth Sense in Humans

Eric Hand | June 23, 2016

Birds do it. Bees do it. But the human subject, standing here in a hoodie—can he do it? Joe Kirschvink is determined to find out. For decades, he has shown how critters across the animal kingdom navigate using magnetoreception, or a sense of Earth’s magnetic field. Now, the geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena is testing humans to see if they too have this subconscious sixth sense. Kirschvink is pretty sure they do. But he has to prove it.
He takes out his iPhone and waves it over Keisuke Matsuda, a neuroengineering graduate student from the University of Tokyo. On this day in October, he is Kirschvink’s guinea pig. A magnetometer app on the phone would detect magnetic dust on Matsuda—or any hidden magnets that might foil the experiment. “I want to make sure we don’t have a cheater,” Kirschvink jokes.

"Researchers are testing humans for a subconscious magnetic sense by putting them in a dark metal box and applying magnetic fields." Source; http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/maverick-scientist-thinks-he-has-discovered-magnetic-sixth-sense-humans

<more at http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/maverick-scientist-thinks-he-has-discovered-magnetic-sixth-sense-humans; related articles and links: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160408-can-we-sense-invisible-magnetic-fields (Can we sense invisible magnetic fields? Animals are known to be able to navigate by taking advantage of the Earth’s magnetic fields. But do humans possess the same ability? And do we do so without even knowing? April 8, 2016) and http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6293/1508.full (Joe Kirschvink thinks he has found a magnetic sixth sense in humans. June 24, 2016)>