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Is It Really GPS If It Doesn't Use Satellites?
cartechboy writes: "GPS was originally developed by the military, but today it's in your smartphones, and soon, possibly your watches. Now the British military is developing something called quantum compass. The concept is a GPS-style navigation for submarines that doesn't use satellites. The quantum compass uses the movements of super-cooled subatomic particles to pinpoint a vessel's location. These particles, stored in a vacuum, react to the Earth's magnetic field. The movements caused by this interaction can be used for location positioning. At the moment, the Ministry of Defense's prototype resembles a '1-meter long shoe box,' so the next step is to miniaturize it. It could then be used by individual soldiers, as well as huge ships and submarines. Not only is it useful, but it's secure too—the technology is apparently interference-proof. Is this the future of navigation systems, or the reinvention of the compass? Possibly both."
Nope.
Sounds like more like an inertial navigation system, but one that uses the Earth's magnetic field instead of just being shaken around.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
GPS specifically refers to the system created by the US military for tracking your position using a bunch of satellites they put up there. Just because the acronym expands out to something rather generic doesn't mean it doesn't mean a specific implementation. FTP expands out to File Transfer Protocol. That doesn't mean that bittorrent is FTP because it's also a protocol for transferring files. There are other systems like GLONASS that help you determine you position, and also use satellites. But it would be confusing to call them both GPS, because GPS refers to a specific implementation. If you're going to call things that aren't GPS as GPS, then you might as well call navigating by the stars GPS.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The supercooling is apparently done using lasers, so something that is man-portable is maybe realistic
The DSTL's team was inspired by the Nobel-prize winning discovery that revealed that lasers can trap and cool a cloud of atoms placed in a vacuum to less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero
No. In Russia, GLONASS uses you!
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
This is only true because before the array of satellites deployed by the US military, there was no other system for finding your global position.
Not true. From the Wikipedia entry on the SR-71"Nortronics, Northrop's electronics development division, had developed an astro-inertial navigation system (ANS), which could correct navigation errors with celestial observations, for the SM-62 Snark missile, and a separate system for the ill-fated AGM-48 Skybolt missile, the latter of which was adapted for the SR-71.[50][citation needed]
Before each takeoff, a primary alignment brought the ANS's inertial components to a high degree of accuracy. Once in flight, the ANS, which sat behind the Reconnaissance Systems Officer (RSO)'s position, tracked stars through a circular window of quartz glass set in the upper fuselage.[37] Its "blue light" source star tracker, which could see stars during both day and night, would continuously track a variety of stars as the aircraft's changing position brought them into view. The system's digital computer ephemeris contained data on 56 (later 61) stars.[51] The ANS could supply altitude and position to flight controls and other systems, including the Mission Data Recorder, Auto-Nav steering to preset destination points, automatic pointing and control of cameras and sensors, and optical or SLR sighting of fix points loaded into the ANS before takeoff.[52] Former pilot Richard Graham told an interviewer at the Frontiers of Flight Museum that the navigation system was good enough to limit drift to 1,000 feet off the direction of travel at Mach 3."
I knew a guy who worked on this system. He told me about a time when they pulled one out of a plane for routine maintenance and they thought it was malfunctioning as it locked onto a star while in the hanger. After they couldn't find the fault they put a guy on a lift and turned all of the lights off in the hanger. Sure enough they found a pin hole in the roof that could only be seen close up in the dark. After they patched the hole, everything checked out fine.