Anders Lindman
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2010
- Messages
- 13,833
Because making the math involved in GPS even more difficult is FUN!
No, it actually is a trick to make the alleged relativity effects easy to handle in the GPS receivers:
"Altogether, the clocks of the satellites seem to run a little faster. The shift of time to the observer on earth would be about 38 milliseconds per day and would make up for an total error of approximately 10 km per day. In order that those error do not have to be corrected constantly, the clocks of the satellites were set to 10.229999995453 Mhz instead of 10.23 Mhz but they are operated as if they had 10.23 MHz. By this trick the relativistic effects are compensated once and for all." -- http://www.kowoma.de/en/gps/errors.htm
