Bose Einstein Condensate

The Genius Behind the Quantum Navigation Breakthrough
Dr Ben Miles

This thing is just nuts. Besides the subject matter, I don't think he actually names the genius behind this breakthrough. If he did, I missed it. I grew up hearing about inertial navigation and how these devices were big, complicated and expensive. Sometime between now and then, ring lasers came along, which was an improvement, but still comprehensible. Then came smartphones and MEMs and they just blew me away. I had been working in computers for a while, and all I had seen was bigger, faster machines doing gaudier and gaudier things. Then smartphone inertial navigation appeared and I was, let me just say this again, blown away.

Check out some these other posts on the subject.

Zip-a-dee-do-dah

Mobile Mapping Indoors and Outdoors with Zebedee
It looks like they have combined several bits of technology:

• laser range finder
• inertial navigation using MEMS strain gauges
• GPS

plus a bit of the hand-waving robot from Lost In Space. Via The Guardian and Posthip Scott. For comparison, here is one of the first inertial navigation systems:

Litton Industries LN-3 Inertial Navigation System. Used in the F-104 Starfighter in the 1960's. It is roughly a thousand times bigger and a thousand times less accurate than a modern cell phone.

Helium, the iPhone Killer

MEMs oscillator sensitivity to helium (helium kills iPhones) Applied Science
Helium diffuses into the microscopic silicon tuning forks and causes them to lose their minds, but hydrogen doesn't. Odd. Presumably, hyrdrogen will also diffuse into silicon, I mean it diffuses into steel, but perhaps the molecular structure of the silicon isn't affected by hydrogen, but it is by helium. There isn't much difference between hydrogen and helium, both atoms are very small, but there isn't much difference between carbon 12 and carbon 13, but corn can tell the difference, so maybe that small difference is enough to bring Apple to its knees.

This is the second time I've posted a video from Applied Science.

Moscow Rules

Startup of a Russian "type 458" gyro block of a MiG-21 fighter after almost 40 years of storage
barjan82
YouTube Description:

The "type 458" gyro block (Russian: 458МКС-15-32) in combination with the AGD-1 1122A/B (Russian: АГД-1) type attitude indicator/artificial horizon is a part of the inertial navigation system used in the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 supersonic jet fighter aircraft. The same gyro block is also used on a big variety of other Russian aircraft still flying today. The shown gyro block was kept in storage for almost 40years after being rejected, this is the third startup after the storage. The current setup yet lacks the matching AGD-1 1122A/B type HSI instrument, instead the pitch indicator block (syncro resolver and AC servomotor with servo amp) of a AGB-3K type attitude indicator is wired up for operation. Power requirement of the system is 27V DC and 3x36V 400Hz AC. Steady state total power consumption of the system is around 60W off the 27V bus (with a solid state 3phase 400Hz sine-wave inverter with 80% efficiency). Video quality is rather poor as usual :)

Just the coolest thing I've seen today. The way it jerks into position and the way it takes forever to get to full speed are just very cool. Evidently they are still in use, though I think new designs all use MEMS and can fit inside your smartphone. Previous inertial navigation post here.