Scientists Discover Humans Can Detect Buried Objects Without Touching Them — Study Shows “Remote Touch”

People Can Detect Buried Objects Without Touching Them - New Study Unveils a Hidden Sense. 

people may possess a secret sense that we never actually knew we had?

A new study indicates that sometimes people can feel the objects buried under such material as sand—without touching them. This surprising finding was presented at the IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and demonstrates that humans have a basic "remote touch"-something that normally would be associated with certain shorebirds.

What is Remote Touch?

This is the ability of some birds, such as sandpipers and plovers, to detect prey hiding under the sand by sensing minute vibrations. Up until now, this was believed to be an ability peculiar to animals possessing specialized beaks.

In fact, researchers found that using just their hands, humans can do something similar.

How the Study Worked

Elisabetta Versace, with colleagues at the Queen Mary University of London, asked 12 volunteers to participate in a simple test:

Participants moved their fingers slowly through a tray of sand.

 Inside, a small cube was buried.
 The objective was to find it without touching it directly.

Astonishingly enough, it was found that subjects were able to detect this buried cube about 70% of the time, simply through their ability to feel minute changes in the sand surrounding it. This means our hands are far more sensitive than we ever thought they were.

How Could This Be Useful?

Alone, this skill doesn't mean we will suddenly begin finding treasures on the beach.
But the discovery may inspire new technologies including:

✔ Devices that enable the blind or visually impaired to "feel" their environment

✔ Robots that find fragile archaeological artifacts without destroying them

✔ Machines capable of safely exploring Martian soil or ocean floors 

✔ Devices for search-and-rescue in hazardous or hidden environments "This may constitute a starting point for smarter, safer, touch-based systems to explore places where humans can't," say the researchers.

Final Thoughts

This study points out some amazing things:

Even without realizing it, humans have the innate ability to sense the world in deeper ways than we thought. It's a reminder that our bodies still have secrets-and science is just beginning to unravel them.