Shadowing Practice: Something is jamming GPS over Europe. Here's what we found - Learn English Speaking with Video

In November 2024, Professor Todd Humphries, a GPS expert at the University of Texas at Austin, got a mysterious tip -off.

Look at two specific days at exact times in a data set collected years earlier by a network of GPS monitoring stations.

These stations continuously record signals from satellite navigation systems measuring how strong they are relative to background noise.

It didn't seem promising.

The data was from 2021 and it was publicly available online.

So surely if something unusual was in there, someone would have already found it.

But Professor Humphreys and his student Zach Clements looked into the data at the two specific times suggested

and they discovered something surprising.

At one precise moment, receivers across the network all reported the same thing, a sudden drop in signal to noise ratio.

In effect, In fact, the navigation signals had been overwhelmed.

The measured signal to noise dropped by roughly a factor of 10.

But when they started looking back through the data, they found 75 days since 2019 where these strong disruptions had taken place.

And again and again, the pattern was the same.

All these receivers recorded the same drop at the same time.

This effect was being felt all the way across Europe, all the way to the north, to Svalbard, to the south to Spain, all the way to Canada in the west,

as far east as eastern Poland.

And in fact it had a distinct pattern across Europe to where it looked like the blast center

was in Poland or Kaliningrad in that area.

So they wondered what could cause this?

At first they thought perhaps it's interference, something on the ground broadcasting a much stronger signal, drowning out the ones coming from the satellites,

which made Kaliningrad an interesting candidate it's a heavily militarized russian exclave on the baltic sea wedged between poland

and lithuania and in recent years it's become a hot spot for this kind of electronic warfare

so maybe that was it a side effect of the conflict in the region

but they realized that explanation didn't work even the highest tower in clean ground only affects aviation as far as say Denmark.

So we had ourselves a mystery on our hands.

We were experienced with interference that you could call local.

Something on a tower, something on a plane, that might cover hundreds of kilometers.

But this was different.

This was continental scale.

The researchers mapped out all the stations that were affected and asked a simple question.

What kind of source could have affected all of them at once.

A source on the ground just wouldn't work.

The curvature of the Earth would block the signal over these distances.

The only way to affect such a wide area simultaneously is from high above the Earth.

And even using the most conservative assumptions, that the source only has to just clear the horizon from the perspective of every station,

the geometry shows it had to be at least 1 ,200 kilometers up.

That's way higher than the International Space Station.

So what was causing this?

Well, there is one known source of radio interference from space, which is the sun.

In November 2025, a major solar storm disrupted GPS positioning globally for several hours.

So could these interference events be caused by the sun?

There were certainly question marks.

Solar interference typically builds up and fades over tens to hundreds of seconds, but these events were abrupt, short bursts of only 3 to 5 seconds.

Another important clue was the frequencies that were disrupted.

Solar interference typically spans a wide range of radio frequencies, whereas this interference was confined to a very narrow slice,

just 5 MHz wide, centered at 1 ,577 .5 MHz.

That's right in the part of the spectrum used by GPS.

And the final nail in the coffin is that solar radio bursts affect the entire sunlit side of the Earth.

But what the researchers were seeing here was much more concentrated, consistently centered over Europe.

So Todd and Zach realized the only thing that could be causing this was a satellite, which left them with just one question.

Is it intentional or is it accidental?

Both my student and I looked at this and said, unprecedented.

We've never seen this before.

The world has never seen this before.

This satellite seemed to be targeting GPS.

Or rather, what most of us call GPS, that is just a shorthand.

GPS is the American system, but there are others, including a Russian one, a European one, and a Chinese one.

And your phone is actually using a mix of these satellites to try and tell you where you are.

These systems are known as Global Navigation Satellite Systems, or GNSS.

And when the US military first.. developed the system in the 1970s, they wanted to prove how well it really worked.

So the GPS program office set itself an ambitious goal to

use GPS to drop five bombs in a row into the same hole from a moving plane.

They set up a chair next to the site that the bombs are going to be going into.

Wait, what?

If anyone doubts that we can drop the bombs in the same hole, you're welcome to go and stand right there and watch it happen.

So, how does GPS work?

Well, think about what your phone is actually trying to do to tell you where you are.

It's listening to signals from satellites.

And those signals can tell it two things.

First, the position of the satellite in space.

And second, the exact time the signal was sent.

And then the receiver can compare that to when the signal arrives, and you can use that time difference, multiply it by the speed of light, and you get the distance.

So if it took the signal 0 .07 seconds, that must mean you're around 21 ,000 kilometers away from the satellite.

If you're only using a single satellite, that puts you somewhere on a huge sphere around it.

Now, you can add a second one, and that will narrow your position down to the circle where the two spheres intersect.

If you add a third, you will narrow it down to only two possible points, and only one of these is actually on Earth's surface.

So you might think three satellites is all you need.

We have three equations, one for each satellite, and three unknowns that are my position, X, Y, and Z.

So, on the left side, I have the geometric distance between me and each of the three satellites.

And on the right side, I have the measured signal time, all multiplied by the speed of light.

Now, satellites have atomic clocks, so their timing drifts by only three seconds every million years.

But my phone does not contain an atomic clock, so its clock can drift by that much in just a couple of days.

And a timing error of just 100 nanoseconds throws off your position by 30 meters.

So in reality, each distance is slightly wrong, which means the position you calculate is slightly off too.

So now, instead of just solving for position, I also have to solve for the clock error.

So let's call that B.

But now I have three equations and four unknowns, which is unsolvable, so I can fix that by adding a fourth equation or a fourth satellite.

Four equations, four unknowns, that makes the system solvable.

Okay, but we've made one key assumption that when I'm calculating my position, I know where the satellite is.

And sure, it can tell me where it is, but its position around the Earth and its speed are constantly changing.

So how does the satellite actually know where it is in the first place?

The GPS satellites need to be told where they are

and they're told where they are with ground stations that monitor them

and the ground stations have to know where they are to tell the satellites where they are.

But the earth itself is constantly shifting as the continents move.

So how do we work out where the ground stations are?

You work out using quasars where the ground stations are.

Because they're billions of light years away, quasars appear almost perfectly fixed in the night sky, which means we can use them as reference points,

much like early explorers navigating by the stars.

100

A small fraction of quasars are extremely bright radio sources.

101

When those radio waves reach Earth, telescopes around the world detect them at slightly different times.

102

From those tiny differences in arrival time, you can precisely determine the relative position of the telescopes, and by making lots of those measurements over time,

103

you can build a precise map of how the Earth itself moves, continents included.

104

GPS ground stations are tied into that same map.

105

The ground stations tell the satellites where they are, and then that's how you work out where you are.

106

You just blew my mind.

107

So we're always navigating by the stars, just via GPS.

108

And in reality, your phone isn't connected to just four satellites.

109

It's usually far more than that but mine right now is using, it's like over 20 satellites.

110

That's because the system is doing much more than just solving for four equations.

111

Say you're on this little street in Paris and you open maps and you try to figure out where you are.

112

Turns out, there are a lot of things that can throw this off.

113

There's the relatively simple ones, like taking into account special and general relativity.

114

If you didn't correct for that, your position would drift about 11 kilometers per day, and you could be anywhere within this entire area.

115

So, the satellites are constantly being monitored and updated, and they send down timing corrections that your phone applies in real time.

116

Now, on top of that, in the fraction of a second that it takes for the signal to reach you, the Earth has actually rotated slightly.

117

So, when your phone figures out where you are, it also has to account for the fact where Paris was when the signal was sent, not where it is now.

118

If you don't correct for that, that adds about 20 meters of error, enough that you're not even on the same block.

119

And of course, the signal has to pass through Earth's atmosphere.

120

Now, the ionosphere will add between 5 and 15 meters of error to your position, and the lower levels of the atmosphere, with weather and pressure and humidity,

121

will add another meter or two.

122

So if you don't account for that, you'll still be on the wrong side of the street.

123

And that's where the extra satellites come in handy.

124

They give your phone extra measurements to separate out the errors and give you a better fix of your position.

125

So ultimately, it can be accurate down to 3 to 5 meters, which is pretty incredible if you think about what it takes to solve this.

126

And with the most advanced GNSS tech, you can push this even further to a few centimeters,

127

but at this point you actually have to start accounting for stuff like how gravity bends spacetime and delays the signal.

128

But all of this only works if you're actually able to hear those signals.

129

When the signal arrives from space, it's traveled 20 ,000 kilometers to get here, and it was only transmitted with about 50 watts of power.

130

So it's like an old -school light bulb and two earth diameters away.

131

And because that power spreads out over such a vast distance, the received GPS signal at your phone is only about a tenth of a quadrillionth of a watt,

132

or 10 to the negative 16 watts.

133

It's insanely quiet.

134

Which means it doesn't take much to drown it out.

135

If you broadcast enough noise at the same frequency, you can overwhelm the signal until it becomes indistinguishable from the background.

136

This is called jamming, and a lot of these navigation systems use the same slice of the radio spectrum,

137

roughly between 1 .1 and 1 .6 gigahertz.

138

Lower frequencies travel well through the atmosphere, but they require much larger antennas.

139

Higher frequencies allow for smaller antennas, but the signals are much more easily absorbed and scattered, especially in bad weather.

140

So this band is a kind of sweet spot that navigation systems rely on, which means if something interferes with it, it can affect multiple systems at once.

141

That's why this part of a spectrum is tightly protected.

142

Nothing else is supposed to be transmitting here, and deliberately interfering with these signals is illegal in most countries.

143

But something was, something powerful enough to overwhelm satellite navigation across an entire continent, Which brings us back to the question facing Professor Todd Humphreys.

144

Was this accidental or was someone flooding this band on purpose?

145

It's, you know, a mystery novel here where you're trying to figure out whether it was the butler in the kitchen with the crowbar, right?

146

And we have to put all of the clues together.

147

If it had been random, occurring because of some failure in a satellite, maybe some amplifier gets too hot and misbehaves,

148

then you'd expect it to happen equally likely on a Monday and a Friday, right?

149

But when they went back through the data, something strange emerged.

150

The interference events were happening mostly on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, during business hours in Europe.

151

So tell me what amplifier tends to fail during business hours in Europe on Wednesdays.

152

So now we know this probably isn't random.

153

There's likely human input.

154

But that doesn't necessarily mean it's intentional or malicious.

155

So the hunt was on to track down the actual source.

156

But that turned out to be harder than you might think.

157

Because there were still so many unknowns.

158

In situations like this, uncertainty can quickly turn into competing narratives.

159

We've seen it before, when the EU chief's plane was allegedly hit by GPS interference last year, over 150 news outlets reported on it.

160

But depending on where you saw the story, your perception could be completely different.

161

If you saw Le Monde first, you might have come away thinking it might be Russia's fault.

162

If you saw Newsweek first, you would definitely think it was Russia.

163

And if you saw this headline, well, you might question the veracity of the story altogether.

164

Three headlines, three entirely different conclusions.

165

That's why we use today's sponsor Ground News.

166

They're a website and app designed to make reading the news easier and more data -driven.

167

Every day they pull in thousands of stories from around the world and each story comes with visual breakdowns of political leaning, factuality rating, and ownership.

168

This is all backed by ratings from three independent media monitoring organizations.

169

Let's go back to that story to see it in action.

170

Right away, you can see that over 150 news outlets reported on the story.

171

Below that, you can see that coverage was split relatively evenly across the political spectrum.

172

And below that, you can check the overall factuality and ownership.

173

Even see who broke the news.

174

They even have a biased comparison feature that highlights specific differences in the contents of the articles.

175

One of my favorite things is their blind spot feed, which shows you stories that are underreported by one side of the political spectrum or the other.

176

Staying informed with accurate information has become a full -time job, but that's what makes Ground News so valuable.

177

Their data -driven approach helps make information accessible and digestible for.. everyone in minutes rather than hours.

178

So if you, like us, care about getting to the truth, go to ground .news slash ve or scan this QR code.

179

Our link gets you 40 % off their vantage plan.

180

So I want to thank Ground News for sponsoring this part of the video.

181

And now back to the hunt for the source.

182

To do this, we have to set up a kind of elaborate estimation problem, but there are many unknowns.

183

A jammer works by broadcasting a stronger signal in the same frequency band.

184

It's kind of like yelling over someone whispering.

185

So if this were a jammer on the ground, you could track it down by looking at signal strength.

186

The closer you are, the stronger the signal will get.

187

But once you're dealing with something in space, that intuition breaks down.

188

To work backwards from signal strength, you'd need to know how much power the satellite was transmitting

189

and the exact shape and direction of its beam even how each receiver's antenna responds to signals arriving from different angles.

190

And at 1 ,200 kilometers above the Earth, very different satellite positions can produce almost identical patterns on the ground.

191

So instead of trying to pinpoint the transmitter directly, the researchers used a simpler filter.

192

If a satellite caused interference at all these stations at the same time, then it had to be above the horizon for all of them at once.

193

Right now, there are over 15 ,000 active satellites in orbit, but that one constraint lets you eliminate over 98 % of them.

194

That still leaves around 200 possibilities.

195

What's left are satellites in very high orbits, many of them in or near the geostationary belt, where they move at the same rate as the Earth rotates,

196

so they stay fixed over one point.

197

From about 36 ,000 kilometers up, a single one can see a huge portion of the Earth at once.

198

However, if the same satellite caused multiple events on different days then it has to satisfy

199

that condition every single time which narrows it down to just 14 possible suspects

200

so what kind of satellites

201

and countries were in these 14 well there were there were

202

several interesting candidates one was a satellite operated by algeria

203

and it even had on public documentation a transmitter in the same frequency band we were seeing interference on.

204

So they took a closer look and on paper it fit.

205

It was visible to all of the reference stations and it could transmit in exactly the band they were seeing.

206

This looked like it could be the answer, but they had a nagging doubt that some of the most distant stations in Svalbard and Western Greenland,

207

this satellite was barely above the horizon, which meant if it was the source the signal would have to be skimming across the earth

208

and just barely glancing into the antenna of these receivers.

209

Now that's not impossible.

210

Low angle signals can be picked up

211

but the more researchers looked the less certain they became that this satellite was actually the source.

212

So they examined data from GNSS receivers that were tracking this satellite during the interference events.

213

It looked just like all of the other ordinary GPS signals

214

that were getting hammered by this interference

215

so the ratio of the signal power to the background noise also dropped

216

and dropped in the same proportion

217

that the other dps signals were dropping at the same time

218

this was not the attacker this was just another legitimate signal in the l -band

219

that had been interfered with the algerian satellite wasn't the source it was another victim but what about the other 13.

220

Any one of them could have been visible to all the stations at once.

221

So geometrically, they could all be the culprit.

222

But that's where the trail started to go cold.

223

I mean, none of them had clear public documentation showing they could transmit and jam the right frequencies.

224

And some of them had barely any public information at all.

225

We couldn't narrow it down further because of all of these things we didn't know about about the signals they were broadcasting,

226

how intense they were, what their pattern was.

227

So there we were stuck for about four months.

228

And there was an even more fundamental problem.

229

Everything they'd done so far relied on one idea, that all of these interference events were coming from a single satellite.

230

It was under a really controversial assumption.

231

Controversial in that my student and I just couldn't come to fully embrace this assumption.

232

If we broke our assumption, then that would relieve the focus on geostationary satellites.

233

Then we could open up the focus on many other satellites.

234

But now instead of 13 remaining on our list, it would expand to, you know, maybe 100 or more satellites.

235

And suddenly, instead of closing in on an answer, it felt like they were back at square one.

236

So they needed a completely different approach.

237

All the data they had was from GNSS receivers that process everything internally.

238

They lock onto satellites, track signal strength, and then output a clean, simplified measurement how strong that signal is compared to the background noise.

239

And they do that just once per second.

240

But these interference bursts only lasted three to five seconds, which means each event is captured in just a handful of samples.

241

You can see that the signal dropped, but not precisely when it dropped.

242

Not with enough timing resolution to compare one receiver to another, to see which one was hit first, or how the interference moved across the network.

243

What they needed was the raw radio signal itself.

244

So they started designing specialized receivers that could capture the data in much higher temporal resolution.

245

The plan was to deploy them all across Europe, but building them, installing them and waiting for new events to happen would take months, maybe years.

246

So in September, 2025, they took their investigation public at the Institute of Navigation conference in Baltimore.

247

And the response was immediate.

248

The room was packed.

249

Everyone wanted to know the same thing.

250

What was this satellite and who was responsible?

251

Honestly, it was one of the most fun meetings I've been part of.

252

It was almost like we had been brought together for a big brainstorming session to see

253

if we could crack this problem as a community that my student and I had not been able to crack by ourselves.

254

The question of a mystery satellite propagated throughout the research community.

255

The German Aerospace Center came up with an ambitious plan to take a large tracking dish, point it at candidate satellites, and try to catch the interference in real time.

256

But remember, we're trying to catch a needle in a haystack

257

that only shows up over a short interval and only happens once, maybe once or twice a month.

258

They tracked satellite after satellite and nothing.

259

No signal, no anomaly, no breakthrough.

260

Yet again, the trail went cold.

261

Weeks passed, then months, until an email arrived.

262

I looked at the email and then I had to reread it

263

because it was almost like it had come right out of

264

my dreams you know this this can't possibly be true he

265

had beautiful raw data from two different stations at last they

266

had what they'd been missing the raw radio signal itself samples

267

of the raw voltage off the antenna capturing the actual digitized

268

radio waves millions of times per second from two stations one in amsterdam in the netherlands

269

and one in trondheim in northern norway they captured these interference events on February 11th, 2026.

270

And now rather than asking how strong is the signal, they could ask when did it arrive?

271

With this raw data, they isolated a 2 .3 second window where both stations recorded the same event.

272

And because they were sampling at tens of megahertz, they could align the two data sets to pinpoint the exact moment the jamming signal arrived at both stations.

273

This meant they could measure the tiny difference in when the signal reached each station.

274

Imagine the signal reaches Trondheim roughly 139 microseconds before it reaches Amsterdam.

275

Well, that tells you that the source must be slightly closer to Trondheim than it is to Amsterdam.

276

And that constraint gives you a shape, a curve in space of all the possible locations of the source where that exact timing difference would be observed.

277

In three dimensions, that becomes a kind of warped surface, a hyperboloid.

278

Whatever transmitted the signal had to lie somewhere on that surface

279

and because the raw data was

280

so incredibly high resolution the margin of error the thickness of

281

that shape stretching tens of thousands of kilometers into space was only about five meters

282

and because we were so interested in avoiding errors we just determined

283

that we were not going to talk to each other for

284

a week we would do our separate thing for a week

285

and then we would come back together compare notes

286

and we would hopefully have not made the same mistakes

287

and I presented my findings to Zach and he presented his to me

288

and they were not the same and I have to admit

289

that because I'm the professor I was pretty much insistent that

290

that my finding was correct

291

but then he pointed out a couple of other things other checks

292

that he'd run and then I realized

293

that uh I had an error in my code and once I fixed that error

294

I ended up getting exactly the same time difference of arrival that he did.

295

And now they had a way to test every possible satellite, not just the 14 from their earlier predictions.

296

For each satellite, they took its known orbit and asked, if the signal came from here, what timing difference would we expect between Amsterdam and Trondheim?

297

Then they compared that prediction to the real data.

298

If it didn't match, the satellite was ruled out.

299

And since they had a continuous two and a half second recording, they could take this a step further.

300

As the satellite moved, that hyperboloid would shift slightly through space.

301

So the real source had to stay aligned with it the entire time, which made this test incredibly strict.

302

And only one satellite was anywhere near this time difference of arrival measurement.

303

And in fact, it wasn't just near, it was dead on.

304

The only possible culprit was a Russian satellite, Cosmos 2546.

305

It remained perfectly on the hyperboloid, aligning with their data to within 200 meters, which is well within the uncertainty of the satellite's publicly available orbital data.

306

Now it's worth saying here, this work is still new and it hasn't undergone peer review, but independent teams in Europe have verified aspects of these findings.

307

There was only one slight issue.

308

Cosmos -2546 was launched on the 22nd of May 2020.

309

So it couldn't explain events going back to 2019.

310

But then they discovered that Cosmos -2546 is part of a constellation of six satellites.

311

This constellation is part of Russia's early missile warning system.

312

It's basically part of their golden dome.

313

If you've heard of the US golden dome, This is part of the sensory apparatus for the Russian missile detection system.

314

They sit in what's called a Molnia orbit, a highly elliptical path that carries them high over the northern hemisphere where they can slow down and linger.

315

It's the way that high -latitude countries like Russia can get the benefits of something like geostationary orbit across multiple satellites.

316

But this also means this constellation covers large parts of the globe, So they have the capability to jam GNSS across a far wider region than we've seen,

317

including over the United States.

318

The pattern already told us this wasn't random.

319

The frequency told us it wasn't natural.

320

And now we know it's coming from a military system in orbit.

321

But in tension?

322

Well, that's harder to prove.

323

What is already being broadcast is enormously powerful.

324

It's like hundreds of times more powerful than the GPS signals themselves.

325

But it's slightly offset from the GPS frequency, which seems odd.

326

Because surely, if you want to jam GPS properly, you would put your jamming signal directly on top of it.

327

Well, Todd actually has a theory about this.

328

If you're going to test this capability, then you test it in the neighborhood of the signal you intend to jam, but not right on that signal.

329

And you test it only briefly, just to make sure everything's still working and then in the eventual future where there is a hot conflict,

330

they go ahead and tune their transmitter down to the GPS band, but it's much more damaging now that it lies right on that band.

331

So one possibility is this.

332

What we've been seeing are tests, a system being exercised without fully revealing what it can do.

333

And while just a theory at this point, there is another hint this might be the case.

334

The raw data also revealed a second interference burst, aimed at a lower frequency,

335

1558 .5 MHz, which overlaps with signals from the Chinese Beidou navigation system.

336

I'll say it in the most conservative way possible.

337

I can no longer say this is accidental with confidence.

338

I'm leaning toward this being a periodic test of a capability that would be very damaging if it was deployed in anger.

339

But when we spoke to a team that had independently traced the signals back to satellites in Russia's missile warning system, they had another idea.

340

So that'd be very odd behavior to be continually testing something.

341

So our alternative theory is that those might actually be very short, very brief, very specific comms messages coming from those satellites.

342

And if that were true, transmitting messages on these frequencies would provide a layer of protection,

343

because the enemy wouldn't want to jam them and risk disrupting their own navigation systems.

344

I'm not saying it's not the jamming.

345

That's still a very strong possibility.

346

I think the point is there are some odd things about that and there is clearly here an alternative explanation.

347

But whether these signals were covert messages or tests of a space -based jamming system, the events themselves were incredibly brief.

348

And that might explain something else, why this went unnoticed for years.

349

But if this system were ever fully switched on, the impact could be enormous.

350

When we see maps of massive GPS interference today, you are almost entirely looking at reports from commercial aircraft affected by ground -based jammers.

351

Typical airliners cruise at altitudes between 30 ,000 and 42 ,000 feet, which is high enough to remain in direct line of sight of jamming signals across vast distances.

352

But at ground level, buildings and terrain shield much of our infrastructure from that interference.

353

But everything is line of sight from space, yeah.

354

It's an invisible utility that supports virtually every technology,

355

and it's essential to the way we live every day.

356

The United States made GPS its gift to the world, and clever engineers took this free thing that works really well and very precise and incorporated into all kinds of

357

of systems it's one of those wicked problems you really don't know what all the dependencies are

358

and where all the interconnections are

359

because it's just proliferated throughout the world global satellite navigation systems underpin aviation

360

and global shipping it synchronizes financial systems keeps cell towers on

361

time it is crucial for logistics networks ride -hailing apps delivery

362

systems even dating apps a disruption of these systems across an

363

area as large as what these satellites are capable of could affect hundreds of millions of people.

364

It would send shockwaves of fear through the world,

365

not just through Europe, because an entirely new weapon from space would have been revealed

366

and people would know that at any time of their choosing,

367

Russia could deploy this over their country or over their continent.

368

I do think that this is a massive escalation in the electronic warfare background conflict that's going on right now.

369

Now, this sounds scary, but the truth is we should have been worried about this fragile system already.

370

The threat has always been there.

371

Severe solar events could ionize the atmosphere and keep all kinds of signals from space from coming in, or it could destroy satellites.

372

We could have a version of the Kessler effect in medium Earth orbit and satellites be destroyed by debris.

373

So everybody should have already been concerned, they should continue to be concerned, and this is just another example of why.

374

But the good news is, we already know exactly how to fix the problem.

375

It involves building a future system that doesn't rely entirely on weak satellite signals.

376

We suggest that a resilient national P &T architecture would be signals from space,

377

terrestrial broadcast, and fiber because those are three completely different phenomenologies and a vector that would impact one would not impact the other two.

378

Some countries are already doing this.

379

Places like South Korea, China, and the UK are building out backup networks that don't rely on signals from space.

380

They're using fiber optic cables to securely share time from atomic clocks here on Earth.

381

And for navigation, they're turning to systems like ELORAN, huge high -powered radio towers that are much harder to overwhelm.

382

Other solutions are even being developed using magnetic and quantum systems

383

that use subtle variations in the Earth's magnetic field to work out position, so you don't need any external But despite all of this,

384

most countries, including the United States, still remain highly dependent on GPS and other satellite navigation systems.

385

In this video, we've been talking about jamming, but there's another kind of GNSS interference, one that swaps your real signal for a fake one,

386

quietly feeding you a location that looks completely real, so if you trust it, it can guide you somewhere else entirely.

387

This is known as GPS spoofing.

388

It's affecting over 1 ,500 flights per day.

389

And at sea, we're seeing the same thing.

390

Ships are jumping implausible distances, briefly disappearing or reappearing in impossible locations, even on land.

391

It's a systematic, geographically clustered distortion of reality, both in the air and at sea.

392

If you wanna know more about that, let us know in the comments.

393

This story was based on research by Professor Todd Humphries and his student, Zach Clements, at the University of Texas at Austin.

394

There's a link to their work down in the description.

395

I want to thank them for all their help and for sharing their findings with us.

396

And of course, I want to thank you for watching.

📺 Same Channel

✨ Recommend Video

15 sentences

Let’s Cause a Country-Wide Blackout!

IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students

74 sentences

JD Vance Asked Point Blank: 'Why Are You Rewarding Putin And Punishing Your Best Ally In Europe?'

IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students

341 sentences

Why is this one spot not warming?

IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students

39 sentences

Why Walls STOP Light Waves But Not Radio Waves?

IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students

65 sentences

Is War Over? — A Paradox Explained

IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students

47 sentences

We Found Galaxies Too Old for the Universe

IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students

37 sentences

The Megatsunami That Struck the Entire Planet

IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students

133 sentences

Has quantum mechanics proved that reality does not exist?

IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students

211 sentences

Another War is Starting in the Middle East

IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students

207 sentences

Gaza: ‘Clean it out then bring in something good’ | Along the Green Line: episode 3

IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students

139 sentences

Believers, is this a prophecy unfolding?

IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Something is jamming GPS over Europe. Here's what we found”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: satellite, signal, Gps. This video has 396 sentences and 5678 words to shadow. The speech runs for 34:04. The speaker talks at a natural 167 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
interference noun	/ˌɪntəɹˈfɪɹɪns/	The act of interfering with something, or something that interferes.
navigation noun	/nævɪˈɡeɪʃən/	The theory, practice and technology of charting a course for a road vehicle, ship, aircraft, or spaceship.
receiver noun	/ɹəˈsi.vɚ/	A person who receives something in a general sense; a recipient.
transmit verb	/tɹænsˈmɪt/	To send or convey from one person, place or thing to another.
orbit noun	/ˈɔɹ.bɪt/	An elliptical movement of an object about a celestial object or Lagrange point, especially a periodic elliptical revolution.
meter noun	/ˈmitəɹ/	A device that measures things.
antenna noun	/ænˈtɛn.ə/	An appendage used for sensing on the head of an insect, crab, or other animal.
researcher noun	/ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/	One who researches.
equation noun	/ɪˈkweɪ.ʒən/	The act or process of equating two or more things, or the state of those things being equal (that is, identical).
measurement noun	/ˈmɛʒ.ə.mənt/	The act of measuring.
continent noun	/ˈkɑntɪnənt/	One of the main contiguous landmasses, separated by water or geological features, on the surface of a planet, sometimes including its continental shelves and…
assumption noun	/əˈsʌm(p).ʃ(ə)n/	The act of assuming, or taking to or upon oneself; the act of taking up or adopting.
constellation noun	/ˌkɑn.stəˈleɪ.ʃən/	An arbitrary formation of stars perceived as a figure (especially one from mythology) or pattern, or a division of the sky including it, especially one…
geostationary adjective		At a fixed distance in three dimensions relative to a particular point on the Earth's surface; generally only possible with orbital satellites.
hyperboloid noun		A particular surface in three-dimensional Euclidean space, the graph of a quadratic with all three variables squared and their coefficients not all of the same…

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
work out verb	/ˌwɝk ˈaʊt/	To calculate.
figure out verb		To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
go back to verb		To stem from; to originate in.
set up verb	/ˌsɛt ˈʌp/	To make ready for use.
break down verb		To stop functioning.
build out verb		To develop or expand (a system, structure, project, etc.).
build up verb		To erect; to construct.
close in on verb		To enclose around; to tighten or shrink; to collapse.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

We've never seen this before.
The pattern already told us this wasn't random.
The frequency told us it wasn't natural.
I'll say it in the most conservative way possible.
I'm not saying it's not the jamming.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	If you add a third, you will narrow · if you don't account for that, you'll still · If you saw Newsweek first, you would definitely
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	we've been seeing · we've been talking
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	We've never seen · has never seen · we've made
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	had been overwhelmed · being felt · were experienced

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 64 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, we've, didn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: navigation /nævɪˈɡeɪʃən/, equation /ɪˈkweɪ.ʒən/, measurement /ˈmɛʒ.ə.mənt/, assumption /əˈsʌm(p).ʃ(ə)n/, constellation /ˌkɑn.stəˈleɪ.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: interference /ˌɪntəɹˈfɪɹɪns/, navigation /nævɪˈɡeɪʃən/, constellation /ˌkɑn.stəˈleɪ.ʃən/, capability /ˌkeɪ.pəˈbɪl.ɪ.ti/, amplifier /ˈæm.plə.faɪ.ə/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like interference, navigation, receiver.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Something is jamming GPS over Europe. Here's what we found - Learn English Speaking with Video

Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED

You've (Likely) Been Playing The Game Of Life Wrong

We're trying something new...

How does light 'know' the shortest path?

The CIA's new tech doesn't make sense

Why does every mammal get 1 billion heartbeats in their life?

Why Cold Drinks Were Deadly Before 1914

Exposing The Flaw In Our Phone System

Our Greatest Delusion

The Most Controversial Problem in Philosophy

Why Boredom is Good For You

Why Are 96,000,000 Black Balls on This Reservoir?

We've Been Using The Wrong Science In Court For 50 years

Explaining Pi With Pizza

5 Fun Physics Phenomena

The Most Misunderstood Concept in Physics

Falling ladders - why does this happen?

How a slinky falls in slow motion #shorts

We're 99.9% sure this pattern is true, but no one can prove it

The Science of Thinking

Let’s Cause a Country-Wide Blackout!

JD Vance Asked Point Blank: 'Why Are You Rewarding Putin And Punishing Your Best Ally In Europe?'

Why is this one spot not warming?

Why Walls STOP Light Waves But Not Radio Waves?

Is War Over? — A Paradox Explained

We Found Galaxies Too Old for the Universe

The Megatsunami That Struck the Entire Planet

Has quantum mechanics proved that reality does not exist?

Another War is Starting in the Middle East

Gaza: ‘Clean it out then bring in something good’ | Along the Green Line: episode 3

Believers, is this a prophecy unfolding?

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?