Atomic beams shoot straighter via cascading silicon peashooters

Atomic beams conjure fantasies of gigantic Space Force canons. But there are real tiny atomic beams that shoot out of newly engineered collimators, a kind of tiny silicon peashooter, that could land in handheld devices. The beams streaming out of them create precise inertia much better than a gyroscope's that could help spacecraft navigate the solar system. The atomic beams from the new collimators could also let physicist cheaply and easily produce exotic quantum mechanical states.

from Engineering News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2IX4GVk