Monday, January 14, 2019

Cancelling special & general relativistic effects


We know that for a GPS we need to make a correction for both general and special relativity: general relativity predicts that clocks go slower in a higher gravitational field (the clock aboard a GPS satellite moves faster than a clock down on Earth), while special Relativity predicts that a moving clock is slower than the stationary one (slow the clock compared to the one down on Earth).



My question is this: is it possible, in theory, to set up an orbit so that these two effects cancel each other out, allowing a clock on board a GPS satellite to tick as if it were on Earth? Is there a distance at which the special and general effects cancel?


Sorry if this is a stupid question - I'm still not entirely confident with the theory of general relativity.




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