GPS technology is so ubiquitous now that it can be hard to remember a day when you couldn’t just take out your phone and find out exactly where you are in the world. However, that’s actually a very recent development and one that could be denied to us in the future. GPS relies on a network of satellites that could be damaged, blocked, or destroyed. You also can’t get a good GPS lock when you’re underground or around tall buildings. There may be an alternative, though. Imperial College London and engineering firm M Squared have developed a new “quantum accelerometer” that can provide precise locations without any external system.
The quantum accelerometer from Imperial College London could solve that problem because it’s stupendously accurate. While the device is nominally portable, it’s not exactly compact or simple to use. Quantum mechanics tells us that all matter has a wave property, but that’s very difficult to observe in daily life. Ultra-cool atoms display their wave properties more prominently, and that’s the key to the quantum accelerometer. S0, the accelerometer knows when it moves with a high degree of accuracy, and it, therefore, knows where it is at all times based on where it started. Currently, the system measures movement on a single axis, but it should be possible to scale the design up to measure all three axes and three rotational directions for full navigation.
Credits:
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/280443-quantum-accelerometer-tracks-location-without-gps
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