But there’s a problem. While it’s a simple matter to build mirrors and beam splitters for photons, it’s extremely difficult to do that for matter waves. As a result, matter-wave interferometers are ...

Gyroscope designs used in inertial navigation systems (INS) fall into three basic groups: the classic spinning-rotor mechanical gyro (still in use in specialized situations due to its superior ...

Circular thinking: light a ring laser has been used to measure the Earth’s rotation. (Courtesy: iStock/amtitus) A gyroscope sensitive enough to detect Earth’s rotation has been created using a ...

Entomologists and mechanical engineers ordinarily have little to do with one another. The first study bugs; the second design machinery. But last week the Sperry Gyroscope Co., designers of highbrow ...

A gyroscope is any rotating body that exhibits two properties: gyroscopic inertia or rigidity in space and precession or the tilting of the axis at right angles to any force tending to alter the plane ...

There are two kinds of gyroscopes in widespread use for navigation and control: optical ones, which are extremely sensitive but also expensive, and microelectromechanical (MEMS) ones, which are ...

Some days really are longer than others. And now scientists know by precisely how much. Using a laser gyroscope, scientists have measured variations in Earth’s rotation rate smaller than a millionth ...

After 30 years of painstaking development, researchers in Germany and New Zealand have unveiled a laser gyroscope that can track fluctuations in Earth’s rotation in near real time and accurate to ...