When our sun belches out a hot stream of charged particles in Earth’s general direction, it doesn’t just mess up communications satellites. It might also be scrambling the navigational sense of California gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus), causing them to strand on land, according to a Duke University graduate student.
Many animals can sense the Earth’s magnetic field and use it like a GPS to navigate during their long migrations. However, solar storms could be disrupting that signal, said Duke graduate student Jesse Granger, who studies biophysics in the lab of biology professor Sönke Johnsen.
Earlier research has found a correlation between solar activity like sunspots and flares and stranded sperm whales, but Granger’s analysis tried to get to the bottom of what the relationship might be.
Gray whales were an ideal species to test this idea because they migrate 10,000 miles a year from Baja California to Alaska and back and they stay relatively close to the shore, where small navigational errors could lead to disaster, Granger said.
Read more at Duke University
Image: California gray whales like these mothers and calves are 4.3 times more likely to strand themselves during a burst of cosmic radio static from a solar flare, further evidence that they navigate by Earth's magnetic field. (Credit: Nicholas Metheny NOAA)