NavList:

I started my first presentation in Mystic last weekend by mentioning that all you need to be a celestial navigator is the right DNA -- some birds navigate by celestial cues. Turning that on its head, the technology is now available to track even small songbirds using geolocation tags which are fundamentally celestial navigation devices. Read more here: http://www.birdtracker.co.uk/

Several years ago, I first posted about fish tags which work this way. They record sunrise and sunset and thus determine with reasonable accuracy not only the longitude, based on the times of sunrise/set relative to UT, but also the latitude, based on the length of the day (when not near the solstices and the equator). Back when I first posted, these things were only appropriate for large fish like tuna. The devices described above reflect the expected technological improvements and can record daylight data for several years and they do this with a mass around one gram, about the same as a paperclip. At this rate of miniaturization, how long before they manage to pack that ability into a strand of DNA?? ;-)

-FER

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