Scientists studying pulsars as potential GPS backup | Aviation International News

Scientists studying pulsars as potential GPS backup

Operators in the future will possibly be able to use X-rays from pulsating stars–or pulsars– light years away from earth to navigate with the same accuracy

By John Sheridan

September 23, 2008

Operators in the future will possibly be able to use X-rays from pulsating stars–or pulsars– light years away from earth to navigate with the same accuracy as GPS.

At a recent Position, Location and Navigation System (Plans) convention in Monterey, Calif., researchers explained that pulsars are like space lighthouses, sweeping powerful beams of energy through our solar system as they spin rapidly in outer space. Those sequential sweeps are timed as precisely as the atomic clocks used in GPS. That is why, after pulsars were discovered in 1967, military scientists saw them as a potential–and invulnerable–backup to GPS in a jamming environment.

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