Home▸Medicine & Biophysics▸Radical-Pair Magnetoreception Simulator

🧭 Radical-Pair Magnetoreception Simulator

Fire a photon into a cryptochrome protein, watch the resulting radical-pair electron spins precess, and see how the angle between Earth's magnetic field and the molecular axis shifts the singlet-versus-triplet product yield that gives migratory birds a quantum compass.

Medicine & Biophysics3DAdvanced60 FPS🔥 Fire 🌍 Earth ⚡ Plasma

Details

CategoryMedicine & Biophysics

RenderingThree.js · WebGL

DifficultyAdvanced

Target FPS60

ControlsDrag to orbit the 3D scene, scroll to zoom, drag the field-angle slider or the 360-degree compass dial to set the angle between Earth's magnetic field and the molecular axis, click Absorb Photon to trigger a stochastic radical-pair event, adjust the precession-speed slider, pause/play the animation

quantum biologyradical pair mechanismcryptochromeavian magnetoreceptionspin chemistrysinglet triplet yieldbird compassmedicine

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Fire a photon into a cryptochrome protein, watch the two resulting radical-pair electron spins precess, and see how the angle between Earth's magnetic field and the molecule's fixed axis shifts the singlet-versus-triplet product yield — the quantum signal a migratory bird reads as a compass.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

A cryptochrome molecule absorbs a photon and forms a spin-correlated radical pair. The two electron spins precess at slightly different rates depending on the magnetic field's angle relative to the molecular axis, so the odds of the pair ending up in a singlet or triplet chemical state — visualized as live yield bars — swing with that angle.

🎮 How to Use

Drag the field-angle slider or the 360° compass dial to rotate a simulated bird's heading; click "Absorb Photon" to trigger one stochastic radical-pair event sampled from the current singlet/triplet odds; use the speed slider to slow or accelerate the precession animation.

💡 Did You Know?

This is believed to be a real sensing mechanism, not just a model: European robins lose their magnetic compass under weak radio-frequency noise that should only disturb a quantum spin process, not a classical iron-particle compass.

⚙ Under the hood

quantum biologyradical pair mechanismcryptochromeavian magnetoreceptionspin chemistrysinglet triplet yieldbird compassmedicine

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install