When GPS was invented for army use, the designers could scarcely have imagined a few of the purposes civilians would eventually give you for the expertise. The worldwide Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite tv for pc-primarily based navigation system, a network of two dozen orbital spacecraft that was put in place between the late 1970s and the mid-nineteen nineties by the U.S. However the Pentagon quickly allowed civilians to benefit from the system’s means to pinpoint precise locations. Today, GPS-geared up gadgets -- from these cheery speaking maps mounted on our dashboards to chips in our smartphones that help us to seek out close by eating places -- have grow to be a part of our on a regular basis lives. The true transformational power of GPS is evidenced by the myriad offbeat makes use of that folks have dreamed up for it. Here are 10 of the extra unconventional makes use of for GPS technology. But hopefully it should ease their minds to know that almost 50 massive sharks have been tagged with GPS units, so that a corporation referred to as OCEARCH can pinpoint each of their locations at any given second.

When the sharks get close to shore, an alarm is shipped to lifeguards, who then tell folks to get out of the water. However the tagging is also yielding new information concerning the mysterious species’ movements and habits. As an illustration, researchers have realized that sharks do not solely stay in chilly water, as anticipated