2023-06-21 02:16:17
A new system that uses subatomic particles produced in Earth’s atmosphere might provide information regarding volcanoes and help locate people trapped under the rubble. Here, scientists harnessed the by-products of cosmic rays to create the world’s first practical underground GPS system — one that might be used to monitor volcanoes and aid in future search-and-rescue missions. The space report says the new GPS system, called the Muometric Wireless Navigation System (MuWNS), is looking for ghostly, ultrafast particles called muons to triangulate the position of a receiver buried underground. What’s more, the researchers say the technology can be miniaturized to fit devices like smartphones, and they published their findings June 15 in the journal iScience. Indoor navigation systems can serve many practical purposes, including navigational guidance systems for human transportation, locating a missing person for emergency rescue and robot automation in factories, as well as navigation through underground mines and facilities,” first author Hiroyuki Tanaka, professor of geophysics at The University of Tokyo told Live Science, “However, GPS is not available in these environments. GPS signals are weak and easily blocked by a small obstruction.” And when cosmic rays — high-energy particles produced by the Sun, stellar explosions called supernovae and mysterious sources outside our own galaxy, the Milky Way — hit Earth’s upper atmosphere, they explode in showers of particles that eventually disintegrate into muons similar in structure to electrons. , but it is 207 times heavier, and nearly a million muons pass harmlessly through our bodies at nearly the speed of light each night. Unlike GPS, which is weaker at higher altitudes and moves underground, only some muons are blocked by solid bodies – which absorb more of them as they get harder. This allowed scientists to take advantage of the continuous cosmic rain to map the interiors of otherwise inaccessible places, such as pyramids, volcanoes, and the fiery cores of nuclear reactors. An earlier version of MuWNS, called the Muometric Positioning System (muPS), was created by researchers to detect changes in the sea floor caused by tectonic or volcanic activity. Like a Global Positioning System (GPS) with satellites in the sky, muPS consists of muons passing from four reference stations at surface level before arriving at a receiving station on the ocean floor. To calculate the travel time of the muons between the reference stations and the receiver, the researchers connected the five detectors so that they might plug in the time difference between them. To get away from pesky wires, the researchers created a new time-delay solution by using highly accurate quartz clocks, synchronizing the receiver’s reference stations with GPS before moving them underground.
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