Circa 1997
Berkeley — An ultrasensitive, superfluid gyroscope developed by physicists at UC Berkeley has the potential to surpass today’s most sensitive devices for measuring absolute rotation or spin.
In a paper in this week’s issue of Nature, physics professor Richard Packard and his colleagues, graduate students Keith Schwab and Niels Bruckner, report a proof-of-principle demonstration of the new device.
Their prototype superfluid gyroscope already is quite sensitive and they believe its sensitivity will eventually surpass that of the ring laser gyroscope, a highly sensitive device used in advanced commercial aircraft inertial guidance systems. Packard’s immediate goal is to create a version with a sensitivity 10,000 times greater than the team has achieved to date.
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