Revolutionary navigation system operates without GPS.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a new navigation system called the muometric positioning system (muPS) that tracks subatomic particles called muons, which are created by collisions between cosmic rays and particles in Earth’s atmosphere. Unlike GPS, muPS works underground, indoors, and underwater. The system requires a receiver and multiple reference detectors positioned above it to triangulate the location of the receiver. The team demonstrated a wireless version of the tech, but the current accuracy is between 2 meters and 25 meters, with a range of up to 100 meters, which is still far from practical. Incorporating chip-scale atomic clocks (CSAC) into muPS could enable real-time measurements at one-meter accuracy.