Scientists have discovered that humans possess a hidden sensory ability, which many are calling a ‘seventh sense’, which allows us to feel objects before we physically touch them.

A joint study from Queen Mary University and University College London has proven that our fingertips can read pressure changes traveling through granular materials such as sand, detecting the presence of a solid object up to 2.7 centimeters before direct contact.

This phenomenon, which was inspired by the way shorebirds hunt their prey under the sand without seeing it, challenges our traditional concept that touch only begins the moment skin meets the surface.

During detailed experiments with volunteers aged 18 to 26 years, researchers instructed participants to move their index finger through dry sand in a closed box, without any visual cues. The results were surprising: People were able to correctly identify hidden objects over 70 percent of the time, showing a sensitivity that goes beyond mere chance or luck.

Scientists explain that this is because sand has a kind of mechanical “memory”; when the fingers push the grains, pressure waves propagate forward and strike the buried object, sending back a signal that our nerves are able to interpret as an impending obstacle.

To test the limits of this ability, the team also built a robotic finger equipped with high-tech sensors and artificial intelligence.

The robot proved to be even more accurate than humans, achieving an accuracy of 91 percent, although humans displayed a kind of “natural skepticism” that helped them avoid false alarms better than the machine. This connection between human psychology, robotics and materials physics opens new windows for practical applications that once seemed like science fiction.

This discovery has the potential to revolutionize several fields, from archaeology, where robots can locate delicate artifacts without damaging them, to disaster search and rescue operations where sight is impossible. Also, this technology could be vital for exploring planets like Mars, where dust and low visibility are constant challenges. Beyond technology, the study reminds us that the human body still carries undiscovered secrets and that our perception of the world is much broader and more interconnected than we had imagined until today.

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Source: prizrenpost