{"id":243621,"date":"2026-09-04T01:39:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T06:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/quantum-control-algorithm-looks-to-explain-how-birds-migrate"},"modified":"2026-09-04T01:39:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T06:39:11","slug":"quantum-control-algorithm-looks-to-explain-how-birds-migrate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/quantum-control-algorithm-looks-to-explain-how-birds-migrate","title":{"rendered":"Quantum control algorithm looks to explain how birds migrate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/quantum-control-algorithm-looks-to-explain-how-birds-migrate2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The hidden world of quantum mechanics exists at scales many orders of magnitude smaller than living organisms, yet scientists have long theorized that quantum effects play an important role in biology. Birds\u2019 ability to sense magnetic fields during migration is one of the best-known mysteries in this field, with leading theories suggesting that this sensing could be achieved by exploiting quantum entanglement.<\/p>\n<p>By proving a mathematical principle about how best to control quantum systems, researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have taken what could be the penultimate step toward finally putting this avian hypothesis to the test, while also unlocking new biological platforms for quantum computing. Their results are <a href=\"https:\/\/quantum-journal.org\/papers\/q-2026-05-06-2096\/\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Quantum.<\/p>\n<p>Ugur Abdulla, head of the Analysis and Partial Differential Equations Unit at OIST, explains, \u201cMany researchers have studied quantum effects and their role in biology, though it isn\u2019t always easy to translate an idea or hypothesis into a laboratory experiment. We hope that by laying the mathematical foundation for controlling quantum phenomena, we can bring some of these ideas from quantum biology out of the theoretical realm and into the lab.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The hidden world of quantum mechanics exists at scales many orders of magnitude smaller than living organisms, yet scientists have long theorized that quantum effects play an important role in biology. Birds\u2019 ability to sense magnetic fields during migration is one of the best-known mysteries in this field, with leading theories suggesting that this sensing [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1523,41,2229,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-computing","category-information-science","category-mathematics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}