9 Things To Say About Quantum Physics That Will Make You Sound Clever At Parties

So, entanglement is weird, but it definitely gets weirder. If that's possible.

It is thought that migrating birds could be using quantum entanglement as a means of navigating around the world.

It has long been thought that birds use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate, but until  the weirdness of entanglement was a thing, we didn't really know how.

The theory goes that when a particle of light enters the eye of a bird, it hits a part of the eye cells known as cryptochrome. This cryptochrome gives one of the entangled pairs of electrons a boost, separating it from its partner. We know that the cryptochrome is in the eye because when we cover up one of the bird's eyes, the ability to navigate by magnetic field is lost and the poor little bird becomes all discombobulated.

At its new location, the electron's spin is affected differently by the Earth's magnetic field, so it spins differently, causing the spin of its entangled partner to also change. It is thought that the birds can use this information to build up a picture of the Earth's magnetic field in the same way that we process light waves.

Don't ask us how, we've only just got that far.

It is worth noting that the birds aren't actually super geniuses that have figured out how to manipulate matter on a quantum level, it's just a quirk of their evolution. To birds, it's just another sense, in the same way that you don't consciously process the different wavelengths of light hitting your retina, you just see.