Earth’s Magnetic Field Could Be Controlling Your Mind, Scientists Say—and Ultimately Your Decision-Making

6 min readHere’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:Scientists think evolution could have left humans with a faint ability to sense the Earth’s magnetic field.The geomagnetic field could impact how humans make decisions. Over the past few years, several studies have probed that possibility.The idea of human magnetoreception is a “young and hotly debated” field.Why do we make the choices we do? Human behavior has long puzzled scientists, who have generally explained it as the product of an explosive cocktail of genes, upbringing, culture, personal experiences, and a dash of chance. But provocative new research suggests the recipe may be even more complex. We may be overlooking an unlikely new ingredient: Earth’s magnetic field, the same invisible force that allows compasses to point north and helps millions of migratory birds navigate epic journeys across oceans, deserts, and entire continents. According to the new findings, this magnetic field may also impact how humans make decisions—albeit unconsciously.In a 2025 study published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, researchers at Kyungpook National University in South Korea challenged the idea. They recruited 108 healthy volunteers—55 men and 53 women—for a deceptively simple task borrowed from Go, the ancient Asian strategy game. In Go, one player uses black stones and the other white stones. Because the player with the black stones moves first, players traditionally perform a ritual before each match to determine who receives them. Because neither player can know the hidden number of white stones involved in the ritual, neither has any control over the outcome, which is essentially random.To test whether Earth’s magnetic field influenced the outcome, the researchers recreated the ritual inside a shielded room surrounded by large electromagnetic coils. They alternated between leaving Earth’s natural magnetic field intact and almost completely canceling it by generating an opposing field. They eliminated visual and auditory cues, never told participants what was being manipulated, and kept the data analyst blind to the experimental condition.When the team suppressed the magnetic field, participants received the black stones significantly less often than chance would predict. But the effect appeared only in volunteers who had fasted beforehand, bringing their blood sugar into a relatively narrow range. Crucially, the shift traced to the hidden handful of white stones—a step players cannot consciously control—rather than to the deliberate choice of placing one or two black stones. The researchers designed the laboratory task itself after analyzing more than 21,000 professional Go matches, which showed that higher-ranked players received the advantageous black stones more often than chance alone would predict.“This suggests that the field primarily influenced an intentionally uncontrollable, largely subconscious component of the decision process,” says Kwon-Seok Chae, MD, PhD, a professor in the Department of Biology Education and a member of the Brain Science and Engineering Institute at Kyungpook National University in South Korea, as well as the study’s senior author. Consistent with that interpretation, nearly 98 percent of participants reported neither perceiving the geomagnetic field nor experiencing anything unusual during the experiment. The most conservative interpretation, Chae says, is that at least some humans can register information from an Earth-strength magnetic field—even if that information never becomes a conscious sensation. In other words, if humans do possess a magnetic sense, it appears to operate below the threshold of conscious awareness.The researchers then asked what biological mechanism might explain the effect. To investigate, they performed a second experiment without altering Earth’s magnetic field. Instead, they introduced an extremely weak radio-frequency signal tuned to 1.26 megahertz—a frequency predicted to interfere with cryptochromes, light-sensitive proteins found in the retinas of both birds and humans. In birds, these proteins help detect Earth’s magnetic field and guide migration, and researchers suspect they may play a similar role in humans. The signal reproduced the behavioral effect, whereas a nearby frequency of 1.89 megahertz did not. For Chae, this frequency-specific response lends support to the cryptochrome hypothesis.But cryptochromes aren’t the only possibility. Chae points to a second leading hypothesis involving magnetite, a naturally occurring magnetic mineral. Tiny magnetite crystals exist in the human brain and could, in theory, act as microscopic magnetic sensors. Chae himself notes that other researchers have interpreted findings from electroencephalography (EEG)—a technique that measures the brain’s electrical activity using electrodes placed on the scalp—as supporting magnetite instead. For now, however, he says, the mechanism in humans remains unresolved despite evidence from his own experiments that favors cryptochromes. He extends the same caution to the study as a whole, describing it as “strong, physically constrained evidence” that calls for independent replication rather than final proof. That’s perhaps unsurprising, given that human magnetoreception, or the ability to detect the planet’s magnetic field, remains a “young and hotly debated” field.Scientists have known about magnetoreception in animals for decades. Migratory birds, sea turtles, salmon, and even insects rely on the unseen magnetic field surrounding our blue orb as a kind of biological GPS, allowing them to find their way across vast distances. The real mystery, though, is whether evolution left humans with even a faint ability to sense the same geomagnetic field.Over the past few years, several studies have probed that possibility. In 2019, researchers at Caltech reported that rotating an Earth-strength magnetic field produced repeatable changes in volunteers’ brain activity, even though participants reported feeling nothing. A year later, Chae’s own team found evidence suggesting humans may detect the field under specific conditions involving blue light.None of these studies proves that we possess magnetoreception. But together they have helped transform the idea from a scientific curiosity into a testable question: Is it possible that we carry an unconscious sensory ability we don’t even know we have?It wouldn’t be the first time scientists have discovered that the brain monitors information without our awareness. Right now, your brain is constantly tracking everything from your blood pressure and body temperature to your posture and breathing—all without you consciously noticing. Some neuroscientists, including Antonio Damasio, PhD, argue that these “homeostatic signals” form the very foundation of consciousness. Could the geomagnetic field be another? And what would that entail? Should you move closer to the equator? Would living in Finland subtly change how you think? Could solar storms influence your mood? Or cloudy weather sway your decisions?Not so fast. Chae says the current evidence doesn’t support any of those conclusions (or any need for drastic lifestyle changes, for that matter…) The magnetic fields in these experiments were carefully controlled, and the strongest evidence in humans currently concerns changes in brain activity measured with EEG and decision-making under tightly controlled laboratory conditions. Whether the much smaller natural fluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field meaningfully influence everyday life is a whole different mystery.“I would not want readers to conclude that humans generally feel geomagnetic changes, or that a firm causal link to mood or sleep has been demonstrated—it has not,” Chae says.That’s precisely why outside experts such as Robert Alexander, PhD, a neuroscientist who directs the Human Factors and Neuroscience Lab at the New York Institute of Technology, describe the findings as “provocative but not established.”“A subtle change in a decision pattern is not the same thing as demonstrating a sensory system,” Alexander says. Even if the effect proves real, he continues, it appears highly dependent on specific laboratory conditions rather than representing a robust human ability.“This is fascinating and intriguing, but a weak laboratory effect does not mean that humans can use magnetic information in a meaningful way.”For now, the 2025 study should “be regarded primarily as fundamental sensory neuroscience,” says Chae. If there is one scientifically warranted conclusion to draw—he continues—it is that living systems may be reading far more of their physical environment than we once thought, and doing at least some of it without conscious awareness.Just as birds navigate across oceans by sensing an invisible force, humans may also harbor a vestigial ability to detect Earth’s magnetic field. How far that ability extends—and whether it reaches beyond the laboratory into our quotidian lives—remains one of neuroscience’s most intriguing open questions.Stav Dimitropoulos is a Gold and Community Anthem Award–winning journalist, and writes about consciousness, science, and culture for Popular Mechanics, Nature, and the BBC. Her work often explores mind-stretching angles where science meets philosophy. Her debut nonfiction book, Slow, Lazy, Gluttons (Greystone Books, 2026) asks: What if the traits society shames — laziness, darkness, nostalgia, and more — are actually survival superpowers?