Hunting Submarines Via Gravity Is A Tough Errand

Among so many other technological advances, the Cold War saw the advent of the ballistic missile submarine. The concept was simple—pack enough nuclear warheads to destroy a small civilization into a compact metal tube, and then hide it underwater. The oceans would act as a cloak for your fleet of world-enders, and keep your enemies forever on their toes. A terrifying machine that could both start and end a war with the push of a button.

Most nation states are populated by humans with the will to live. Thus, there has been a great incentive to find ways to keep tabs on these sunken doombringers. Great efforts have gone into improving sonar and magnetic detection methods over the decades, which are the bread and butter of sub hunting to this day. However, military researchers have also explored the prospect of whether submarines could be detected via their effect on the gravitational field alone.

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Small And Inexpensive MEMS Gravimeter

A gravimeter, as the name suggests, measures gravity. These specialized accelerometers can find underground resources and measure volcanic activity. Unfortunately, traditional instruments are relatively large and expensive (nearly 20 pounds and $100,000). Of course, MEMS accelerometers are old hat, but none of them have been stable enough to be called gravimeters. Until now.

In a recent edition of Nature (pdf), researchers at the University of Glasgow have built a MEMS device that has the stability to work as a gravimeter. To demonstrate this, they used it to measure the tides over six days.

The device functions as a relative gravimeter. Essentially a tiny weight hangs from a tiny spring, and the device measures the pull of gravity on the spring. The design of the Glasgow device has a low resonate frequency (2.3 Hz).

Small and inexpensive devices could monitor volcanoes or fly on drones to find tunnels or buried oil and gas (a job currently done by low altitude aircraft). We’ve covered MEMS accelerometers before, although not at this stability level.  We’ve even seen an explanation from the Engineer Guy.