Julius Plenz – Blog

GPS-Zeit und Relativistische Effekte

Irgendwie habe ich nie wirklich darüber nachgedacht – aber natürlich unterliegen die Atomuhren in den GPS-Satelliten relativistischen Effekten, die man kompensieren muss:

For GPS satellites, GR [General Relativity Theory] predicts that the atomic clocks at GPS orbital altitudes will tick faster by about 45,900 ns/day because they are in a weaker gravitational field than atomic clocks on Earth's surface. Special Relativity (SR) predicts that atomic clocks moving at GPS orbital speeds will tick slower by about 7,200 ns/day than stationary ground clocks. Rather than have clocks with such large rate differences, the satellite clocks are reset in rate before launch to compensate for these predicted effects. In practice, simply changing the international definition of the number of atomic transitions that constitute a one-second interval accomplishes this goal. Therefore, we observe the clocks running at their offset rates before launch. Then we observe the clocks running after launch and compare their rates with the predictions of relativity, both GR and SR combined. If the predictions are right, we should see the clocks run again at nearly the same rates as ground clocks, despite using an offset definition for the length of one second.

(Quelle, via.)

posted 2013-01-19 tagged gps