Smartphone technology adapted into super-sensitive gravity detector

4 Apr 2016 02:30 PM

Scientists from Glasgow University, co-funded by STFC, have adapted a system often found in smartphones to create a super-sensitive detector capable of measuring minute changes in gravity.

These affordable, portable gravimeters could have a wide range of applications, including volcano monitoring, environmental surveying, and oil exploration.

Gravimeters measure the gravitational field of the Earth. Although these devices have been available commercially for decades, and are often used in the oil and gas industry to discover fossil fuel deposits, widespread uptake has been limited due to their expense and large physical size.

The Glasgow team’s new device, which they have named ‘Wee-g’, uses the same cheap, mass-producible micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) which are used in smartphones’ internal accelerometers. While the MEMS technology in phones uses relatively stiff and insensitive springs to maintain the orientation of the screen relative to the Earth, Wee-g employs a silicon spring ten times thinner than a human hair. This allows Wee-g’s 12mm-square sensor to detect very small changes in gravity and is so sensitive it can measure how the moon and the sun also exert a subtle effect on the Earth’s crust, an effect known as the ‘Earth tides’. The pull of the sun and the moon displace the crust, creating a very slight expansion and contraction of the planet of around 40cm.

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More information

Lucy Stone STFC Deputy Media Manager

Or Ross Barker in the University of Glasgow Communications and Public Affairs Office.