What Time Is It

Thursday September 29, 2011

The PC Windows Synchronous Time is 12:25 am
The Blackberry Pearl Cell Phone Time is 12:25 am (Updated to AT&T Network Time on Sunday)
The IWC Porto Fino Wristwatch Time is 12:25 (Synchronized on Sunday)
The Late Model MB with 'RealTime' GPS NavSystem Time is 12:25 am (Verified with its Network Time on Sunday)
The AT&T Network Time for the Blackberry Pearl is 12:24 am (Seems someone forgot to tell the atomic clock on one of the satellites)

According to Special Relativity on-board atomic clocks on satellites should fall behind clocks on the ground by about 7 microseconds per day because of the slower ticking rate due to the time dilation effect from their relative motion.

And General Relativity predicts that clocks closer to a massive object will seem to tick more slowly than those located further away on board satellites orbitting high above the Earth where the curvature of spacetime due to the Earth's mass is less than at the Earth's surface. That means, when viewed from the surface of the Earth, clocks on the satellites will appear to be ticking faster than identical clocks on the ground, something on the order of 45 microseconds ahead of the ground-based clocks.

The net result of these two relativitic effects means that clocks on board an earth-orbiting satellite should tick faster than identical clocks on the ground by about 38 microseconds per day (45-7=38)!

This effect is compensated by deliberately slowing down the clocks ticking on board satellites prior to deployment to sync with ground-based clocks, or by installing a microprocessor to compensate for the relativistic effects.

But it seems someOne forgot to tell the atomic clock on one of the AT&T networked satellites.

That roughly translates into Time for You to Give Up!PS Okay, I'll spell it out for ewes guys--clocks on board orbitting satellites are expected to be ahead of/faster than or indicate the same time as ground-based clocks--the expectation is that they should never lag behind their Earthly counterparts.

PSSshhhhh Who--tell me, Who-- voices aloud to a coffeehouse full of patrons, ' I know because I slept with her last night'?! Oh, and some other Starbucks patron asks me to help him spell 'oops' and tells me that he came by his 'Brooklyn accent' from having heard one too many mortar rounds during his tour in the middle east because he is really from Seattle. But these anomolies are no where near as disturbing as the conversation 2 other patrons were having about, what sounded to me to be, a kind, beautiful, genuinely caring person who loves her family and works hard and is funny and practically a borderline--I was thinking they were going to say personality disorder, but they said--genius, and that they knew some guy was going to cripple her. Really, the one guy says to the other, 'But why does he have to cripple her?' And then, get this, the other guy justifies it by saying 'Well, you know, Jacob and Peter...' at which point they thankfully lowered the volume on that conversation(?), but I think the justification was something like 'there is nothing better on television..' or some other inane excuse for inexcusible behaviour. I made sure to look over at their table to see if they were rehearsing a scene or working on a screenplay, but there was no indication of that, so I say ,"Whatever, Just Don't Do It!" And that's how I know I seem to have run out of Starbucks to frequent--they used to be tranquil bastions in the urban land-escape wherein to enjoy a cup of coffee and read yesterdays news, but now what, am I to think?


Past the Post Script
And if I see one of these the next day (a Chinook?) I am not supposed to wave at it, but miraculously the AT&T system time jibes with all the others mentioned above.