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Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

thequantuminsider.com

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Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#181
post #164
post #103

Hobby and business wise: is it difficult to build this thing? Someone could explain what a startup need to do something similar?

> Is it difficult to build this thing? Yes. > What would a startup need to make this work as a business? Extensive contacts in the submarine navigation ecosystem and several decades of deep knowledge of highly complex, highly classified, related navigation systems that this product would need to interoperate with. This tech is not a magic locator machine on its own, it's a component that improves one small but import…

Thank you, two more questions: do we expect that other governments in the world will build a similar system soon? and/or how many years of advantage does the Royal Navy have?

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#183
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating. Q for you since you are so clued in. I am a ham radio operator and was thinking about novel forms of signal propagation. I landed on the idea of gravitons. Could gravitonic signal propagation be done somehow? While researching, I keep coming across familiar terms I know from radio land. Just curious if the fields here could be harnessed for communication. Thanks.

The detectors are such precision instruments it took over 10 years of calibration until they even had the first detection. Maybe some far off comms network could use them, but I doubt anytime soon. I wonder if you could use erasure codes with them too :)

Accelerating star-like masses to 99% speed of light in a few seconds also seems somewhat less efficient than your typical FM transceiver.

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#184
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's use a magnetometer as an example. Inertial navigation system (INS) is just using the magnetometer as a compass, so errors in bearing accumulate over time. Instead, if you built a map of magnetic field strength, the slight spatial variation of field strength would let you precisely localize on the map. In robotics parlance, this is the difference between dead reckoning versus SLAM (simultaneous localization and…

Then it looks like underwater landslides, volcanoes and earthquakes could throw things off from time to time.

Doesn't matter just take into account what didn't move. you don't have to recalibrate at each instant.

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's use a magnetometer as an example. Inertial navigation system (INS) is just using the magnetometer as a compass, so errors in bearing accumulate over time. Instead, if you built a map of magnetic field strength, the slight spatial variation of field strength would let you precisely localize on the map. In robotics parlance, this is the difference between dead reckoning versus SLAM (simultaneous localization and…

The earths magnetic field is not constant. I don't know how much it changes, but I know magnetic north drifts a bit every year. And every once in a while the field reverses (IIRC we are like 10k years overdue for a reversal if we read the history of them right - a lot of guesses go into that of cousre)

There’s nothing saying that you can’t do a re-localization or remapping path with basically infinite frequency, or any frequency that we know that there is variance around. At a minimum then, it becomes a better standard for which other things can bear on.

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#186
post #25

I'm surprised we don't see more military research for SAT-NAV alternatives. In any big conflict SAT-NAV is trivial to turn off. If you can still position yourself and your enemy can't, that is an enormous advantage in targeting, logistics, coordination, and situational awareness. Seems like a no-brainer.

The US military is working on a device that can use stars to determine location even during the day.

> The US military is working on a device that can use stars to determine location even during the day.

They already developed a device that could do that in the 60s, but it was quite large:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#Astro...

https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/multimedia-asset/nortronics...

Do you have a source for the one you say they're working on? Is more portable or hand-held?

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#187

The Imperial College researcher who builds these things describes his research here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/centre-for-cold-matter/research/q... The page claims that this device attempts to measure acceleration accurately enough that position can be determined (by integrating over time, twice).

I couldn’t tell from the abstract but does the device measure the atom drift in 3 dimensions or do we need a sensor fusion of three atoms to get 3D translation?

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#188
post #180

This is the most obvious practical application of my PhD topic. A Bose Einstein Condensate is an extremely sensitive detector of gravity- a nuclear submarine could use it to make an ultra-accurate map of the world based on variations in the gravitational constant g. This would remove one of the primary reasons subs need to surface , in order to GPS lock. It’s a naval chart that would not require surfacing. A French p…

> This would remove one of the primary reasons subs need to surface , in order to GPS lock. Huh? Wouldn't it be enough to send some small thing connected by thin wires or wirelessly to the submarine (lasers, ultrasound, whatever) that could aquire location and communicate it? Given military budgets it could probably even be disposable. Leaving beacons in areas of interest also seems like a good idea. With good encryp…

Both these things are probably already being done to some extent. Submarine broadcast stations for navigation were definitely talked about a lot. Note that military submarines is a secretive field, so you ever know only so much.

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#189

This is the most obvious practical application of my PhD topic. A Bose Einstein Condensate is an extremely sensitive detector of gravity- a nuclear submarine could use it to make an ultra-accurate map of the world based on variations in the gravitational constant g. This would remove one of the primary reasons subs need to surface , in order to GPS lock. It’s a naval chart that would not require surfacing. A French p…

It'd be interesting to see if they're sensitive enough to do the opposite detect the gravity anomaly that is the sub. There's a couple near future submarine warfare books where that's one of the devices used to attempt to find subs.

Re: Royal Navy says quantum navigation test a success

#190
post #173

This is the most obvious practical application of my PhD topic. A Bose Einstein Condensate is an extremely sensitive detector of gravity- a nuclear submarine could use it to make an ultra-accurate map of the world based on variations in the gravitational constant g. This would remove one of the primary reasons subs need to surface , in order to GPS lock. It’s a naval chart that would not require surfacing. A French p…

Doesn't magnetic pole shift due to fluid dynamics in Earth core? Wouldn't that also affect gravity field?

Yes it does but we also have satellites mapping those shifts so it could be accounted for. The big question is are those fine grained enough to resolve the errors in modern INSs.
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