Perhaps one of the most exciting discovery in biophysics in the past decade or so is that some creatures use quantum effects to sense the Earth’s magnetic field. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, Alex Jones of the UK’s National Physical Laboratory explains how this quantum navigation system is inspiring the development of new metrology technologies for the biosciences.

Also this week, the nuclear physicist Prajwal Mohan Murthy of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory is in conversation with the Physics World student contributor Shi En Kim . They chat about Murthy’s quest to measure two very small quantities – the mass of the neutrino and the electric dipole moment of nuclei and particles – and why making very precise measurements of these values could provide a glimpse of physics beyond the Standard Model.