Human Magnetism (Submitted by Alex Schmack)

In the X-Men comic books, Magneto fights by controlling magnetic fields; now a new study suggests that perhaps non-villains can sense magnetic fields too. Fruit flies can use a protein abundant in people’s retinas to sense magnetic fields, scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester report June 21 in Nature Communications. Researchers swapped a human light-sensing molecule called cryptochrome with the flies’ own magnetic field-sensing protein. The human protein allowed the flies to distinguish between high and normal magnetic fields. The results revive a controversial debate over whether humans can detect magnetic fields, the authors write. —Laura Sanders