Simon Willison’s Weblog

11th January 2010

GPS and Relativity (via) GPS satellite clock ticks need an accuracy of 20-30 nanoseconds. The satellites move fast enough that their clocks fall behind by 7 microseconds a day due to time dilation, but orbit high enough that the curvature of spacetime due to the Earth’s mass puts them forward by another 45 microseconds. GPS receivers have to perform relativistic calculations to determine their location!