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Sandia National Laboratories’ four-channel, silicon photonic single-sideband modulator chip, measuring 8 millimeters on each side and marked with a green Sandia thunderbird logo, sits inside packaging that incorporates optical fibers, wire bonds, and ceramic pins. Credit: Craig Fritz, Sandia National Laboratories ==================================================================== A milestone in quantum sensing is drawing closer, promising exquisitely accurate, GPS-free navigation. Peel apart a smartphone, fitness tracker or virtual reality headset, and inside you’ll find a tiny motion sensor tracking its position and movement. Bigger, more expensive versions of the same technology, about the size of a grapefruit and a thousand times more accurate, help navigate...

Members of Cornell's Global Positioning System (GPS) Laboratory have cracked the so-called pseudo random number (PRN) codes of Europe's first global navigation satellite, despite efforts to keep the codes secret. That means free access for consumers who use navigation devices -- including handheld receivers and systems installed in vehicles -- that need PRNs to listen to satellites. The codes and the methods used to extract them were published in the June issue of GPS World. The navigational satellite, GIOVE-A (Galileo In-Orbit Validation Element-A), is a prototype for 30 satellites that by 2010 will compose Galileo, a $4 billion joint venture...

More signs of Syria turn up in Iraq The Iraqi ambassador to Syria tells the Monitor that photos of high-ranking Syrian officials were found in Fallujah. By Nicholas Blanford | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor DAMASCUS, SYRIA - When US troops stormed the rebel-held city of Fallujah last month, they uncovered photos of senior Syrian officials that have further strained the already tense relations between Syria and Iraq, according to the Iraqi ambassador to Syria.Several captured insurgents were found in possession of the photographs, confirmation, according to Iraqi officials, that some elements in the Syrian regime - perhaps...

President Bush has ordered plans for temporarily disabling the U.S. network of global positioning satellites during a national crisis to prevent terrorists from using the navigational technology, the White House said Wednesday. Any shutdown of the network inside the United States would come under only the most remarkable circumstances, said a Bush administration official who spoke to a small group of reporters at the White House on condition of anonymity. The GPS system is vital to commercial aviation and marine shipping. The president also instructed the Defense Department to develop plans to disable, in certain areas, an enemy's access to...

GPS data at issue in Peterson caseScott Peterson is charged with killing his pregnant wife, Laci, and their unborn son. GPS data at issue in Peterson case Judge to hear defense request to sequester jury Tuesday, February 17, 2004 Posted: 0544 GMT ( 1:44 PM HKT) REDWOOD CITY, California (CNN) -- Prosecutors and defense attorneys in Scott Peterson's murder trial are due in court again Tuesday to argue whether information gathered from tracking Peterson's vehicles by satellite after his wife disappeared should be admitted as evidence. Peterson, 31, is charged with killing his pregnant wife, Laci, and their unborn son....

<p>Stanford University's Bradford Parkinson, a pioneer of the navigation technology that now guides everything from military missiles to misguided motorists, was honored Tuesday with the Charles Stark Draper Prize, the engineering equivalent of the Nobel Prize.</p> <p>Parkinson, a 68-year-old Stanford emeritus professor of aeronautics and astronautics, was instrumental in creating the Global Positioning System, which harnesses the power of 24 orbiting satellites to pinpoint the longitude and latitude of virtually any spot on earth.</p>