Navigation takes quantum leap

SCIENTISTS have come up with an alternative technology to the ordinary GPS which is immune to signal black spots.

MANY drivers will have experienced the panic caused by losing GPS signal at a crucial moment of a journey. Now scientists have come up with an alternative technology — the quantum compass — which is immune to signal black spots and gives position information that is 1000 times more accurate than navigation systems.

Scientists at the British Ministry of Defence say the first application for the technology is likely to be in nuclear submarines, which operate beyond the range of ordinary GPS satellites in space. They will test a prototype on land next year.

Submarines use accelerometers to register every twist and turn of a vessel after it submerges, but after a day without calibrating its position using GPS a vessel can have drifted off course by about a kilometre. The quantum version, which harnesses a cloud of rubidium atoms, promises to reduce this inaccuracy to just a metre, scientists say.

The prototype resembles a 1m-long shoebox.