“Quantum sensors can sense the tiniest of changes in the gravity or magnetic field and use a previously prepared map of these properties to determine their location. Since a quantum sensor does not need to receive or send a signal to an external device, it cannot be hacked or be spoofed by a fake incoming signal either. “ Very cool!
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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*Cant be Non-magnetically hacked
Cue magnetic mines, but where are you getting the gravitic mines from?
If it works off tiny changes in gravity, a really big rock would work.
Our mission is to sneak this Ayers rock under the boat without being detected. In and out. 45 minutes tops.
I was going to say something about the scale of gravity changes needed, but your take is way better. Cheers.
Most people probably don’t know but we call it Uluru these days as that’s what the local Aboriginal people named it. Ayers Rock is the old coloniser name, and pretty out of fashion.
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Well, to be fair, a big rock would also work on a GPS device, if applied directly to it.
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Ah time to make use of my massive tungsten cube
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Don't these fields fluctuate in some currently not understood way?
Yes, constantly. The prepared map becomes less accurate over time.
So you constantly need updated maps. Reminds me of celestial navigation where you always need an up-to-date almanac.
Hhhmmmm, sounds perfect for the subscription model......
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Two issues I have with the presentation:
A magnetic field is an external signal - the Earth's magnetic field is actually incredibly weak...
10x better performance than GNSS ... positioning accuracy of 1 nautical mile. Cheap old school handheld GPS out in the woods was accurate better than 10 feet most of the time, so what in this performance is 10x better? 10x more resistant to jamming? Seems like it should be completely impervious to jamming. 1 nm accuracy is useful, but hardly better performance.
For those confused:
nm means Nautical mile here, not nano meter
Its better performance than existing non-gps systems - not better than GPS. For ships , being within 1nm after thousands of miles of travel is really well performing. Obvious the real play here is weaponry though, since GPS isnt reliable in warfare and on-board sensors can do the detail work of target identification once in an area, the hard part is a way for them to self navigate accurately over long distances without GPS.
The realer play is submarines. You don't get any satellite signal at all underwater. Before this it was only INS or dead reckoning.
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So, like terrain-matching, but gravity field. Cool!
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The team achieved 10 times better performance than GNSS systems, with a one nautical mile of positioning accuracy.
Variation up to a full nautical mile doesn't seem very accurate?
this article is better written:
it maintained bounded position accuracy within 1 nautical mile over an 83-kilometer trajectory. This performance, achieved without access to satellite navigation, represents a more than tenfold improvement over standard navigation-grade inertial backup systems under similar conditions.
It also doesn't pretend the page failed to load when it detects an ad blocker.
Here is the real article without the compounding editorial errors.
Inertial navigation (INSS) and GNSS (Sat nav)is two completely different concepts. Too bad the article misses this. Perhaps AI hallucinations?
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That's comparable to what a skilled navigator can do with a sextant and chronometer. That's more than enough accuracy to cross the ocean and get close enough to the port that you can see it.
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Maybe GNSS stands for maGNetic compaSs and Sextant?
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Here is the paper
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.25563
And here is the easier to read press release from Q-CTRL with less errors and ad block black screens.
Navigation with a suitcase sized device that doesn't rely on hundreds of thousands of satellites? Honestly this sounds great.
Wait until you hear about compasses and maps!
In the middle of the ocean? Wouldn't that require a sextant, night time, and a lot of expertise?
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Not even thousands
Not even hundreds
Try 31
You're literally off by a factor of 3225
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The trouble with Quantum Navigation is you might end up where you were trying to go, but at a random point in the past where you have to change history to put right something that once went wrong.
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Using quantum sensors, the company achieved ten times the accuracy of conventional satellite-based navigation systems, while maintaining the one nautical mile positioning accuracy.
Don't we use GPS accurate to within centimeters for construction?
High-end dual-frequency receivers ($$$) can do this, yes. But the earth's magnetic field is not controlled by any government or military entities. This is pretty big
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The only significant word here is "quantum". This stuff is too expensive to be useful for anyone other than the military right now. Gravity maps are controlled information as well. Used for ballistic submarine missiles. The maps created by the military will never be made public. (It would look like a highway of where every vessel is or will be)The accuracy of satellite measurements is 3km, with physical topographic (sea/land) resolution at 1.2km. The long-term plan is to have these sensors traverse areas, record data, and then share it with a database. Even those maps are realistically only 300m~ in resolution. Compare that to GPS, which has a nominal resolution of 3m with 15 satellites, or about a foot, with a correction from ground relays. (I remember using a handheld device that would tell you how many you were connected to, and it stopped working once you were near a tree.) Gravimeters have been used by submarines since the 1980s.
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Quantum nav... awww man, for a second I thought The Orville was back!
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