Breathing with the Earth
255
folds on. Otherwise they start rationalizing the process, trying to deduce
the right way from too little evidence and becoming confused. He sur-
mises that the magnetic sense serves its purpose best by unconsciously
giving a continuous sense of direction without its owner's having to be
aware of it all the time, and thus freeing attention for the search for
food, a mate, shelter, and so on.
In 1983, using magnetic measurements in selective-shielding experi-
ments, Baker and his co-workers reported locating magnetic deposits
close to the pineal and pituitary glands in the sinuses of the human
ethmoid bone, the spongy bone in the center of the head behind the
nose and between the eyes. It's interesting to note that selective-shield-
ing studies done in the early 1970s, by Czech emigre biophysicist Zaboj
Harvalik, an adviser to the U.S. Army Advanced Material Concepts
Agency, pointed to this same spot as one of two areas—the other was
the adrenal glands—where the dowsing ability resided.
In 1984 a group headed by zoologist Michael Walker of the Univer-
sity of Hawaii in Honolulu isolated single-domain magnetite crystals
from a sinus of the same bone in the yellowfin tuna and Chinook
salmon. The crystals were of a shape normally shown only by magnetite
synthesized by living things rather than geological processes. Abundant
nerve endings entered the magnetic tissue, and the crystals were orga-
nized in chains much like those in magnetotactic bacteria. Each crystal
was apparently fixed in place but free to rotate slightly in response to
external magnetic forces. Calculations showed that such chains would be
able to sense the earth's magnetic field with an accuracy of a few seconds
of arc, or a few hundred feet of surface position. This result correlated
perfectly with earlier homing studies on live tuna by the same group.
This detailed work, along with related earlier research, strongly suggests
that all vertebrates have a similar magnetic organ in the ethmoid sinus
area, and I suspect that this organ also transmits the biocycle timing
cues from the earth field's micropulsations to the pineal gland.
The Face of the Deep
DNA pioneer Erwin Chargaff has called the origin of life "a subject for
the scientist who has everything," but that hasn't stopped many of us (or
even him, for that matter) from speculating about it. There are numer-
ous detailed pictures of that primal scene in print today, but most are
variations
on
one
theory
-
"warm
soup
and
lightning."
Life on earth began some 4 billion years ago, or roughly l or 2 billion