Quantum gyroscope

A quantum gyroscope is a very sensitive device to measure angular rotation based on quantum mechanical principles. The first of these has been built by Richard Packard and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley. The extreme sensitivity means that theoretically a larger version could detect effects like minute changes in the rotational rate of the Earth.

Principle

In 1962, Cambridge University physicist Brian Josephson hypothesized that an electric current could travel between two superconducting materials even when they were separated by a thin insulating layer. The term Josephson effect has come to refer generically to the different behaviors that occur in any two weakly connected macroscopic quantum systems—systems composed of molecules that all possess identical wavelike properties. Among other things, the Josephson effect means that when two superfluids (zero friction fluids) are connected using a weak link and pressure is applied to the superfluid on one side of a weak link, the fluid will oscillate from one side of the weak link to the other.