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The World's Tiniest Optical Gyroscope is Now Smaller Than a Grain of Rice
[Microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS)] are limited in their sensitivity, so engineers have also developed superior optical gyroscopes that perform with better accuracy and with the omission of moving parts. To do this these devices rely on a phenomenon referred to as the Sagnac effect.
Named after French physicist Georges Sagnac, this optical effect rooted in Einstein's theory of general relativity works by seeing the optical gyroscope split a beam of light into two and then rotate to manipulate the arrival of the now separate beams at its detector.
[...] Although very useful, so far even the best high-performance optical gyroscopes have been bigger than a golf ball and therefore incompatible with most of today's portable electronics. Previous attempts to build smaller versions of these high-precision devices, unfortunately, have always resulted in a reduced Sagnac effect signal and therefore reduced reliability and accuracy.
Now, a team of Caltech engineers led by Ali Hajimiri, Bren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Medical Engineering in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, have found a way to shrink these devices while at the same time improving their accuracy. The discovery is bound to forever change the use of optical gyroscopes, likely making them even more popular and ever-present than MEMS. Caltech's novel optical gyroscope is 500 times smaller than the best devices currently available, making it smaller than a grain of rice, yet it can detect phase shifts 30 times smaller than even the most precise models out there. To do this, the tiny device uses something called "reciprocal sensitivity enhancement."
Also at Caltech.
Nanophotonic optical gyroscope with reciprocal sensitivity enhancement (DOI: 10.1038/s41566-018-0266-5) (DX) (correction)
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday October 30 2018, @09:14PM (3 children)
Oh yes...size of the opening will determine the wavelengths per radian.
(I am posting from a phone at DelTaco, as I no longer have internet at my house... My posts have to be far fewer and brief, and often incomplete ).
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @12:38PM (2 children)
> I no longer have internet at my house
Is this by choice, or did someone/something take away your home access? I like your long posts about "appropriate tech" (like the older diesel van), hope they return.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @04:53AM (1 child)
I was getting internet access through my employer, but he got really fed up with California, packed up and moved the whole shebang to Colorado.
I cannot see me paying the kind of fees the companies ask. Especially mandating bundling with things I flat do not want.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday November 01 2018, @05:12AM
It's amazing how some ISPs will charge you the same or more for plain Internet service as they will for a bundle including that same Internet service, cable TV, and phone service.
Starlink [arstechnica.com] can't come fast enough.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]