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The gps receivers they are using are NOT $200 off the shelf components. I am pretty sure that when you buy such equipment you will have long discussions with th
by alphaBetaGamma 15y ago
The gps receivers they are using are NOT $200 off the shelf components. I am pretty sure that when you buy such equipment you will have long discussions with the GPS engineers from the firm.
The GPS receivers they used are form Septentrio, and this guys know their shit. I can't find a reference right now, but if I remember correctly one of their claims to fame is detecting an error in GLONASS, the Russian gps system.
- CamperBob 15y agoNote also that a $100 Trimble Thunderbolt available on eBay can get you reliable timing results to within about +/- 20 nanoseconds, given a good GPS antenna. Compensating for special relativity in the timing calculations was a job that had to be done, and done perfectly, long before the first GPS satellite was launched. My guess is that the bug will indeed turn out to be a relativity issue, but a consequence of GR rather than SR, arising from the fact that the detector cavern is under 1400 meters of rock.
- kmm 15y agoI'm afraid that unless the Monolith is somewhere under Gran Sasso, those effects are completely negligible. The time scales of the experiment are very short indeed (1e-9 seconds), but the influence of General Relativity is even smaller (1e-15 seconds). The point to remember that there are so many possible factors that could mess up their results, that the error estimates that were published by the OPERA team were way too low.