Vaccum-chamber quantum sensor device could allow GPS-free navigation

But sometimes they haven't thought of "it".

These forums have an interesting kind of collective intelligence. People commenting here rarely (if ever) have full knowledge of the specifics of the particular instance of the topic at hand, but often have very deep knowledge of the associated theory.

In my experience, if you take any 10 people and form a team or company to make some product, they won't have anywhere near the breath or depth of knowledge that people here could bring to bear. What they have is time and persistence, but I guarantee you that they're "flailing about" and wasting time on many wrong or suboptimal solutions. In most cases, someone here could set them on the right track within minutes.

It's so strange to me that the Internet enables this, but we use this superpower for essentially nothing more than casual chit-chat. We show off our knowledge, where we happen to have a particularly impactful trick up our sleeve, win some meaningless points, and feel smug about ourselves for an afternoon. I do this all the time. It's fun.

But what would happen if we did this properly? Like Uber? Made it into an app where startups, research teams, and software developer houses could use the collective knowledge and advice of hundreds of thousands of people instead of just the dozens on their staff? Just click here to get expert advice on your question, $55 guaranteed price? Would you click?

Maybe it is time that we all plugged into the group consciousness and started contributing to the collective... /s

We're talking about quantum mechanics and vacuum chambers. If you can spec such a system... congratulations, you're an expert. Kathy down the street doesn't even know this technology exists.

On patents...if you're in a sufficiently unexplored space, simple ideas become eminently patentable. So -- given the context -- yeah, pretty much any thought made that is aware of these systems is likely patentable.

Profitable to patent? That's a different question.

I think engineers tend to have a borderline-compulsive need to understand why the simple/obvious solution didn’t work. Sure sometimes the comments are along the lines “duh, just do X” but I think they’re usually “why not do X?” asked earnestly. It’s hard to tell on the internet but I think most engineers ask questions like that not to second-guess decisions but to get a better understanding of complicated systems.

I don't know about that. At least for myself, when I say that I've read a paper I mean that I've read it thoroughly from end-to-end and thought deeply about it, not unlike what I do when I'm doing a peer review. (I.e., "grokking" the paper.)

There are way too many papers to do that for every one that comes out in my field, though, so I've gotten pretty good at skimming a paper quickly and making a snap assessment. I might say I'm aware of or acquainted with said paper, but I'd never say I'd really _read_ it.

So charitably speaking, I'd interpret the top-level commenter (avsteele) as meaning that they've only skimmed the paper and these are off-the-cuff comments, rather than that they haven't looked at the paper at all.

I am an expert. I have a PhD in experimental atomic physics. My work thesis work was on laser cooled atoms and ions. I have multiple publications in this topic area^. I started and run a company that is making the first commercial instruments that rely on laser-cooled atoms.^^

There is nothing wrong with making few conversational comments without being aware of the details in a particular paper. This is how scientists talk to each other BTW. If I was at a conference with the authors I'd say something similar to the OP above, then they'd agree or disagree.

^https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mBN1xwcAAAAJ&hl=en

^^https://www.zerok.com

I think CRTs were mostly manufactured using conventional high-vacuum pumps with moving parts or liquids, not sorption pumps. They didn't normally include a pump in the cathode-ray tube itself; the pump stayed at the factory. And I think you're mistaken that the CRTs ever included any zeolite. Perhaps you're confusing zeolites with getters, which react irreversibly with any stray molecules that manage to get into the vacuum?

True, but what you describe is related to the measurement and sampling accuracy. Until such sensors hit the Heisenberg uncertainty levels of precision on the readout/sensing, such uncertainties may be decreased further, there is no physical constrain on that (more sensors may help with that also). While it is in principle physically impossible to even identify the fact of movement linearly with constant speed without introducing external information (radar, GPS, wheels rotation, airspeed, magnetic and gravitational field change, Doppler shift in radio waves, etc). This is the relativity principle in action, which says that all the inertial frames of reference are equivalent.

That's great for radios, but I wasn't aware GPS satellites employed this technology in their transmitted beacons.

I'm literally experiencing GPS jamming when I'm driving my car near president palace. Like one second I'm moving on road and next second I'm jumping to random places few hundred meters away until I passed long enough. Navigator sometimes goes crazy because of that. So at least civilian GPS is possible to jam.

"The whole spectrum" for GPS FHSS being a relatively tiny frequency range. So still trivial to jam.

There are physical restrictions on transmitter aerials which make really wide FHSS impossibly difficult. Especially from a satellite. So GPS still transmits on the same standard 5 frequencies, with some special codings.

The antijamming features work a little differently. If you know a random code sequence you can use various digital noise reduction techniques to improve the SNR and help punch a signal through noise.

But if you blanket blast the transmitter frequencies and their associated components with noise, you're still going to have an effective jammer. It will just have a smaller effective range.

Miraculous vaporware hype until proven otherwise. Something working in a lab is vastly different from manufacturable.

Does that work during day time?

I recon that’s what said about solid state gyros and accelerometers, vibrating structure gyros were initially developed for the military now they are like a $1 a pop…

If this works I can’t see a reason why in 10-15 year you won’t be able to fit it on a single chip.

If you're anything to do with military, I bet you _really_ badly want this over GPS. GPS can be spoofed or blocked over an area. So every drone, every group of soldiers, every truck, every boat really needs one.

Even just as a person, having a nav system that doesn't need to sync before it can be used would be nice, and no possible issues with buildings, trees, hills, etc.

There's a fairly obvious application in pretty much any military theatre. GPS is vulnerable to spoofing, having a second source of truth lets you know you're even being attacked. Comparing an IDS to a GPS at least gives you a canary.

Sounds like AIRS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Inertial_Reference_...

Basically floating gyros, pretty common design for IMUs.