NON-EQUIVALENCE FOR BEAN SEEDS OF CLOCKWISE AND COUNTERCLOCKWISE MAGNETIC MOTION: A NOVEL TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATION?

1. Three experiments on water-uptake in pinto beans, Phaseolus vulgaris, during their first four hours in water have all indicated that clockwise and counterclockwise rotating magnetic fields have statistically significantly different effects upon the rate of the process. 2. The results suggest that this difference is independent of time and place. Critically performed experiments at Evanston, Illinois and Woods Hole, Massachusetts, over more than a two-year span, all gave essentially the same results. 3. A clockwise rotating magnetic field abolished, for the beans, a correlation with concurrent control beans without magnet, while a counterclockwise rotating magnet failed to do so. 4. In a concurrent series involving rotating beans (1 rpm, clockwise and counterclockwise) and beans in fields of a weak rotating magnet (1 rpm, clockwise and counterclockwise), the effects of counterclockwise magnet and counterclockwise table rotations were of opposite character and highly significantly different from one another. Effects of clockwise magnet and clockwise table rotations differed significantly, in turn, from their opposite directions of rotations. 5. The results uniformly support the hypothesis that the different effects reported between clockwise and counterclockwise rotation of organisms result from their systematic, directional motions relative to the geomagnetic field. 6. It is postulated that this non-equivalence for organisms of clockwise and counterclockwise rotations of such extremely weak magnetic fields reflects a novel and fundamental adaptation of organisms to their rotating and sun-orbiting environments.