"A short-haul aircraft in the United Kingdom recently became the first airborne platform to test delicate quantum technologies that could usher in a post-GPS world--in which satellite-based navigation (be it GPS, BeiDou, Galileo, or others) cedes its singular place as a trusted navigational tool."
"At the core of Infleqtion's technology is a state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), which can be made to be extremely sensitive to acceleration."
That's... crazy.
"The best inertial systems in the world, based on ring laser gyroscopes, or fiber-optic gyroscopes, can...maintain a nautical mile of precision over about two weeks of mission."
"Max Perez, vice president for strategic initiatives at the Boulder, CO-based company Infleqtion, expects Infleqtion to be able to either maintain the same nautical-mile precision over a month or more mission time -- or, conversely, increase the sensitivity over a week's mission to something like one-tenth of a nautical mile."
That's nothing compared with GPS. And making Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is super hard. So, I think this is not the future. But it's an amazing idea. Maybe it can be used in the future for spacecraft? Anything traveling beyond Earth's orbit won't be able to use GPS anyway.
Quantum navigational tech takes flight in new trial
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