Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Galactic GPS Put Through Its Paces - Technology Review

Galactic GPS Put Through Its Paces - Technology Review: "Soon after pulsars were discovered, astronomers and science fiction writers began to speculate about the possibility of using pulsars as celestial navigation beacons allowing interstellar travellers to find their way home, rather like the GPS system we have now.

That's a simple idea but it belies some technical difficulty. At the speeds that most astronomical objects are travelling, relativity becomes important and that significantly increases the complexity of the calculations."

No comments:

Post a Comment