If anything you're talking about the working of the GPS system and even in that case, the effects of gravity are below the error of the device. (clock drifts dealt with via regular ground synch)
The only appreciable effect is the ephemeris calculation which uses relativistic doppler calculations. Unfortunately the difference between normal doppler and relativistic doppler is minuscule at these speeds and are also within error ranges... So ultimately even the GPS argument doesn't hold water..
So... like, go with Jonas Salk who gave away the fortune that was the Polio vaccine. That's a real hero.
I don't know the science well enough to figure it out myself, but I can't find any trustworthy source that contradicts this idea.
Do you have a link from any of those prestigious places that says GR is actually necessary for making GPS work?
Some additional GR related shifts are corrected in the receivers however GR isn't the only thing that can affect the accuracy of GPS and since it's constant (although cumulative) it could be potentially corrected by other means if GR was not known at the time.
And there are of course other issues that cause errors in GPS many of them were discovered post launch and the system was fine tuned to correct for them mainly on the receiver side.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_Global_...
"GPS satellites revolve around the earth with a velocity of 3.874 km/s at an altitude of 20,184 km. Thus on account of the its velocity, a satellite clock appears to run slow by 7 microseconds per day when compared to a clock on the earth’s surface. But on account of the difference in gravitational potential, the satellite clock appears to run fast by 45 microseconds per day. The net effect is that the clock appears to run fast by 38 microseconds per day. This is an enormous rate difference for an atomic clock with a precision of a few nanoseconds. Thus to compensate for this large secular rate, the clocks are given a rate offset prior to satellite launch of - 4.465 parts in 1010 from their nominal frequency of 10.23 MHz so that on average they appear to run at the same rate as a clock on the ground. The actual frequency of the satellite clocks before launch is thus 10.22999999543 MHz.
Although the GPS satellite orbits are nominally circular, there is always some residual eccentricity. The eccentricity causes the orbit to be slightly elliptical, and the velocity and altitude vary over one revolution. Thus, although the principal velocity and gravitational effects have been compensated by a rate offset, there remains a slight residual variation that is proportional to the eccentricity. For example, with an orbital eccentricity of 0.02 there is a relativistic sinusoidal variation in the apparent clock time having an amplitude of 46 nanoseconds. This correction must be calculated and taken into account in the GPS receiver."
I've had a chance to speak with a few engineers from Motorola that worked on GPS and a very interesting fellow that worked on GLONASS all of them said that they had a tuned atomic clock and everything was done on the receiving end and for the most part the clocks on the satellites could not be even corrected after they were initialized.
One thing I'm not disputing is that the clocks run at a different rate. What I guess I haven't made clear is that any rational extension of classical physics would presume the clock rates would be different. Bear in mind that Lorentz's Aether theory was ultimately classical in nature because even though he had the Lorentz transform and all the time effects, light speed constancy was modeled as an illusion within a preferred frame.
IE from a purely newtonian perspective, there is a "catching up" that light would have to play in a moving apparatus such as an atomic clock. This naturally lends itself to time dilation from motion. Furthermore Newtonian mechanics also predicted deviation of starlight and therefore gravitational time dilation of exactly one half that predicted by Relativity. Einstein mentions it in his book "Relativity".
So what I'm talking about is a little more nuanced than it seems. I'm simply talking about the actual difference between Einstein's theories and what classical theory would have come up with is insignificantly small.
I'm not saying that the whole time effect is insignificantly small.
Let's presume that we're both right but I've misinterpreted where the corrections are kept. Then I could totally see how the clocks could have drifted many minutes over their lifetimes but the actual "time" number sent is an abstraction and some central corrective facility keeps up with the correction for each clock.
So then the daily drift updates are on the ground and done to the central system and it's corrective notation.
It's effectively the same but technically different. I'll have to look into this possibility. I'm not sure how individual devices would then access this central repository of corrections.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#De...
Ohio State - http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps....
University of Colorado (hosted by LSU for some reason) - http://www.phys.lsu.edu/mog/mog9/node9.html
US Naval Observatory - http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ptti/1996papers/Vol%2028_16.pdf
That's a paper from 1996, which is actually discussing relativistic effects in GPS receivers, which you might encounter in high speed aircraft, or satellites communicating with each other.
20 years ago, the author writes: "There is a very good reason for the omission: the effects of relativity, where they are different from the effects predicted by classical mechanics and electromagnetic theory, are too small to matter - less than one centimeter, for users on or near the earth. However, a new class of users, who employ satellites that obtain time and position in space from GPS, cannot be satisfied with the approximations in the current OCS."
That paper is interesting mostly because it's the basis of the Conservapedia article on why the theory of relativity is wrong: http://www.conservapedia.com/Theory_of_relativity#Lack_of_ev...
And there are non-academic sources that I tend to trust:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_Global_...
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/1061/why-does-gps...
http://www.wired.com/2011/06/st_equation_gps/
https://www.quora.com/How-is-the-theory-of-relativity-used-i...
It was certainly included. The question of necessity, however, is another matter.
Once again, I must repeat that there are components of relativistic theory that are nearly indistinguishable from classical at such low proportions of C.
For instance, the entire relativistic doppler effect is often cited as a relatvistic effect. However, the portion of that whole large effect that is purely and uniquely relativity is miniscule because the difference between classical and relativistic are negligible at such low speeds (Super-sonic jets are dead snails covered in cold molasses compared to C)
Bear in mind that all the hyper-precise navigation we do within our solar system, from landing on mars to landing on a comet is PURELY NEWTONIAN.
(You should gasp with surprise here... I know I did when I learned that)
But when it comes to GPS, I guess I just have a hard time taking your word for it. If there were no info either way on the internet, I would probably believe you, but why is there no source that can back you up? It's "tens of thousands of regurgitations" vs one guy saying "trust me, I've talked to some engineers". I have to believe the regurgitations, especially when their explanations and math makes sense.
>It was certainly included. The question of necessity, however, is another matter.
So you're saying GPS satellites do take relativity into account, but the engineers you've talked to said "I guess we could take it out and it would still probably work"? That sounds a little tenuous.
As for them saying "We don't need it" Actually it's so complex that they've never said something so broad and sweeping. It's almost like asking a molecular biologist to comment on the collective function we call the "mind". Sometimes it's easier to comment on trees than the whole forest.
I am however, looking to in to asking someone in particular to make those generalizations because I think he can, I just haven't been able to reach him directly yet.
The author of this paper: https://www.ion.org/publications/abstract.cfm?articleID=1604
The use of ECI vs ECEF puts things in a different light that would take a while to explain. This whole question has so many moving parts that you really need an expert authority to generalize. (I'm trying to get that)
It relates to questions of theory that have only been resolved in the past ten years as well. For instance, it was widely held, until the past decade, that the Sagnac effect could only be described in terms of general relativity because of the way it seems to controvert Special relativity. After the experiments of Ruyong Wang, however, the consensus explanation has been to simply explain its workings in a very classical fashion without any regard to the seeming violation of light speed constancy that it was designed to show.
It doesn't help that all weapons guidance systems rely upon these principles so research brings you into DoD territory and information on working principles for RLGs iFOGs etc (which prove the workings of the sagnac effect), becomes slim or inaccessible... I got someone at Honeywell in pretty big trouble once just for asking the wrong questions and him giving me too much information.
Really all you can do personally is try to understand the workings of all these system, but sometimes you just have to accept believing in folk-knowledge because consensus is just more reliable if you can't personally do the footwork.
You can find the specs here: http://www.gps.gov/
Best of luck!
PS: Let me reiterate that I'm not saying the time rate difference created by clocks orbital motion and placement in a gravitational field are insignificant. I'm saying that the difference between newtonian expectation and relativistic is insignificant.
(newtonian effect for gravity is half, and for motion effects is arguably gamma^2)
When combining the time dilation and gravitational frequency shift, the discrepancy is about 38 microseconds per day, a difference of 4.465 parts in 10^10. Without correction, errors in the initial pseudorange of roughly 10 km/day would accumulate.
To compensate for the discrepancy, the frequency standard on board each satellite is given a rate offset prior to launch, making it run slightly slower than the desired frequency on Earth; specifically, at 10.22999999543 MHz instead of 10.23 MHz. Since the atomic clocks on board the GPS satellites are precisely tuned, it makes the system a practical engineering application of the scientific theory of relativity in a real-world environment. Placing atomic clocks on artificial satellites to test Einstein's general theory was proposed by Friedwardt Winterberg in 1955."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_Global_...
"The clock and ephemeris corrections are uploaded generally about once per day (but some times more often if needed to maintain precision). The rubidium clock’s natural drift is large and might be of the order of 10^-13 per day" (quote from an engineer that works on the system)
Part of the considerations sometimes labeled "relativistic" are also those which compensate for the sagnac effect, this effect however, behaves no differently than classical expectation and was originally an experiment created by Sagnac to falsify special relativity. From an ECI frame, some changes to clock rates would be considered under a classical regime just like under the relativistic one. The sagnac effect is perfectly classical. (though without Sagnac trying to show Einstein wrong would we have the Sagnac effect understood well?)
It's a personal interest of mine so I've directly contacted numerous engineers at the FAA who manage the GPS satellite system and even gotten a little info from Raymond DiEsposti.
What it boils down to is that there is a negligible difference between relativity and classical in this context when you understand the system and all that would need to be considered under a classical treatment.
Here's an entertaining quote (not perfectly explicative, but indicative of the larger issue):
http://www.gps.gov/technical/icwg/IS-GPS-200H.pdf 20.3.3.5.2.3 page 123
Since the periodic relativistic effect is less than 25 meters, it need not be included in the time scale used for almanac evaluation. Over the span of applicability, it is expected that the almanac time parameters will provide a statistical URE component of less than 135 meters, one sigma. This is partially due to the fact that the error caused by the truncation of af0 and af1 may be as large as 150 meters plus 50 meters/day relative to the toa reference time. During extended operations (short-term and long-term) the almanac time parameter may not provide the specified time accuracy or URE component. Additionally, occasional CS actions to manage clock offsets may also inhibit the ability to provide specified almanac time parameter accuracies
The most influential players in capitalism, not in theory, but as it is practiced in the real world today, are measured by their performance during financial quarters, or political terms. Such an incentive structure is not going to encourage long-term optimization.
Hell, that even happens in non-basic science. How do we expect basic science to be any better?
And I'm having a hard time understanding why inflation eating at your savings is harmful... When you are a person who has no savings.
Edit: You are quite right in that pensions, entitlements, and the minimal wage needs to keep pace with inflation.
Check your rich person privilege. This should be obvious. If inflation didn't hurt the poor, then why do we have to keep raising the minimum wage?
Minimum wage is by definition not a market rate, therefore when wages and prices inflate, minimum wage and other fixed benefits are left behind. This is not so much inflation hurting the poor but rather the government choosing to help them less, in a nicely passive "don't blame me" sort of way.
Government takes an active role in creating inflation for several social engineering reasons. The fiscal reason is to pay for government spending above what it takes in in income taxes. The monetary reasons are to lower the strength of the dollar and create competitiveness in international trade and to modulate employment, and the investment reason you state (basically that's a writ large transfer of wealth to the rich). There's also a third reason in that if it doesn't, the current system of fractional reserve lending will collapse catastrophically (but that's complicated)
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hig...
"It’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis."
Parse that really carefully and read between the lines. The policy reason for inflation is to cheat wage earners and laborers out of the real value of their earning (out the gate, not as saved in a bank) in order to bolster employment numbers.
Peer review of research proposals. It's seriously one of the most broken 'established procedure' out there. There is not a single scientist out there that doesn't whine about the capriciousness of the grandfunding process, there's even a coined term "grantsmanship" which refers to one's skill in essentially scamming the government into funding what you want to work on by shoehorning it into their call for proposal.
Personally, I think you've got it completely backwards. I'm confident that we can leave the commercializable science to those wanting to make a buck. Public funding for basic science is the only workable way.
Sure, nonprofits help in certain areas, but those are also usually "earmarked" for specific fields or tasks. I don't think society's avenues of exploration should be decided by a few rich people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Mitchell
> I don't think society's avenues of exploration should be decided by a few rich people.
And having it decided by popular people (politicians), spending other people's money, is any better?
Moreover, just because science is privately funded doesn't mean that it's coming from rich people.
With the exclusion of the government propaganda around the time of the gutting of the CSIRO, I've never heard anyone (domestic or foreign) speak of the CSIRO with anything but respect. Accusations of fat-cat scientists feathering their nests doesn't fit.