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London Underground Hosts Tests For 'Quantum Compass' That Could Replace GPS
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Dr Joseph Cotter takes some unusual pieces of luggage on his trips on the London underground. They include a stainless steel vacuum chamber, a few billion atoms of rubidium and an array of lasers that are used to cool his equipment to a temperat...
While not the average kit you would expect to find being dragged into carriages on the District Line, this is the gear that Cotter -- who works at Imperial College London's Centre for Cold Matter -- uses on his underground travels. In the devices -- which have been carried on board London underground track-testing trains and not on commuter services -- rubidium is inserted into the vacuum chamber that lies at the machine's heart. The system has been found to work well in a stable laboratory but needs to be tested in more extreme conditions if it is to be turned into a transportable, standalone device that can be used in remote or complex locations, added Cotter.
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