Pulsar based GPS: Galactic Positioning System

If the gravity as such that they bend light, dilate time... What if the source being used from them isn't radio energy, but something else? Like the distortion of the fabric of time around them? Let's use Hawking's method of visualizing the space around a black hole- you have a rubber sheet, and drop a bowling ball on it. The bowling ball distorts the rubber sheet (space). What if pulsars are like a little kid jumping up and down on the selfsame rubber sheet- the ripples in space/time can be measured and used more effectively than just the radio waves? Or there some exotic type of wave coming off it that we haven't discovered yet...


Maybe it's gravitational quantum particles or something. *listens to heads exploding*

[edit on 3-3-2009 by wylekat]

reply to post by wylekat


Hey, you smart!

Detecting elusive gravitational waves from a rapidly spinning neutron star 6,500 light years away involves narrow fine-tuning here on Earth -- not much different, conceptually anyway, from tuning in a faint radio station.

Waves

adsabs.harvard.edu...

[edit on 3/3/2009 by Phage]

Now why would DARPA develop such technology since we have not yet even explored the solar system by manned craft? It really appeals to logic to say that someone is not telling us the whole story.

reply to post by s0laris

The DARPA XNAV Program

Since the initial navigation concept demonstrations with the USA Experiment, interest in the possibility of X-ray source-based navigation has greatly increased from within both DoD and NASA. In particular, DARPA has initiated a program it calls XNAV. DARPA is funding two teams, one led by our group at NRL, to perform an 18-month Phase I study of the XNAV concept. Our DARPA-funded work at NRL consists of two task areas:
• a detailed study of the most promising pulsar sources for this application, and
• development of laboratory prototype X-ray detectors well matched to the XNAV tasks.

Not everything has to be a conspiracy and innuendo often conceals the lack of evidence...I'm beginning to wonder if the innuendo is a form of conspiracy

The High Energy Space Environments Branch at NRL continues to explore the possibility of using X-ray pulsars as natural navigation beacons to provide time, position, and attitude information for spacecraft under a variety of operational concepts. Our plans for the future include detailed development of the algorithms required for the onboard processing of the raw pulse times-of-arrival and an advanced flight test of the detector system. We are also pursuing additional applications for the X-ray detectors such as a potential future large-area X-ray timing mission with ten times the collecting area of NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. This could probe the behavior of matter in the
strong gravity around neutron stars and black holes in
a way never before possible.

reply to post by Phage


Thank you. I have my moments...

They they get fewer and farther between, but I do have 'em.

Originally posted by wookiee
reply to post by Phage

 

If you land up going through a wormhole that takes you to the other side of the galaxy, I don't think that you'd be able to line up any known stars. Pulsars, on the other hand, you'd be able to locate by their frequencies and thus triangulate where you are and how many generations it will take you to return, if you can't re-open the wormhole.

That and also simply as a substitute for the atomic clocks that all GPS satellites cary. All a GPS sat does is pulse out a time along with the sats ID, then I think using calculations to compare that time pulsed from a number of sats and comparing with the GPS unit own internal time (which is updated by ground based atomic clocks) the unit works out distances from known points (the sats) and there you go, your location on earth.

In space you could employ the same method - but the pulsars positions can also be your fixed points (so long as you know enough to predict their position in space). Then presumably as you travel at high speed you can constantly monitor known pulsars - presumably using Doppler shift calculations to can judge the slight changes in frequency of the pulsating light (of course the pulsating light is constant... So as you move away from your point of view the pulses would slow down the faster you went - and as you move toward a pulsar the pulses would seem to increase in frequency. -- when you are stationary in relation to a pulsar it would go back to its natural frequency) .

Einstein@Home is one of those mass computing projects - simular to seti@home (usises the same BOINC these projects are great, use your computers down time to help map these massive problems - makes your computer part of a super computer! Einstein@Home studys pulsars - that data would be used for this subject.

[edit on 4/3/2009 by Now_Then]

Originally posted by MikeboydUS

Wouldn't it be absolutely bonkers to think this whole time the scientists were right when they discovered the first pulsars? Meaning they were right about thinking the emissions are of extraterrestrial origin.

A galactic network of asteroid sized objects composed of a neutronium based computronium wouldn't just be fancy galactic satellites or galactic internet nodes. The processing and memory power they would have would be far beyond any human mind or hypercomputer we could build on earth.

The craziest part of all of this is the fact that even if the pulsars are just bizarre natural objects, we, the human race, will one day use them in the manner described above.





edited to add info about the lecture.


[edit on 28/2/09 by MikeboydUS]

For all that we know Pulsars could very well be the heart of the transportation hyper dimension corridor system some people believe the UFOs utilize between worlds even like our own.

A processing core of perfect timing visible and readable from any world in this galaxy. The fun thing is, we don't have to make such a think in the future. It is already there!!!

I really wonder if Pulsars have some special abilities which a hypothetical vehicle with advanced detection systems immersed in a hyper dimension could read Pulsar timing and position even if that vehicle would be traveling in brief out of our own reality.

Example: -Read Pulsar positions, triangulate vehicle possition,
-Enter hyperspace, scan for same Pulsars hyper dimension emissions, triangulate.
-Move to relevant point (calculate probability course) from Pulsar hyper dimensional signal triangulations.
-Exit hyper dimension, scan Pulsar signals, find relevant Pulsars, triangulate, identify vehicle position in new place after emergence from hyperspace.

What kind of other types of emissions were detected from Pulsars if they were detected, or what has been hypothesized?

[edit on 6-3-2009 by spacebot]

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
WOW! I have often wondered how we would navigate our travels when intersteller travel is achieved. The mind boggles when one considers the billions of stars and near infinite points of view i.e. extremely complex maps but this is so simple, at least in principle. As for quantum computation on a planetary scale, where do I start? I mean that literally. This is something I never would have dreamed of dreaming. Will we ever really need to process THAT much information or have I read this wrong?

Sure we would.

www.youtube.com...

Imagine we want to move stars this size for some reasons without affecting the involved ecosystems.