9 ms·
It's called "Global Positioning System" not "Global Time System". Granted, it's a pretty accurate time system in the sense that it needs to know the time to an
by m3047 4y ago
It's called "Global Positioning System" not "Global Time System".
Granted, it's a pretty accurate time system in the sense that it needs to know the time to an accuracy determined by the speed of light crossing the globe: that's how it knows where you are, that's its job.
Day, weeks, months, years... feh! In 7 minutes the Earth transits its own [edit] diameter; in 4 hours, the distance to the moon; in a year it's (roughly) back where it started.
Great hack, but maybe you ought to know what year it is if it matters to you. No way to figure that out? No clock available which is accurate enough?
- maxbond 4y agoGPS is widely used as a cheap way to get a timestamp from an atomic clock. Most datacenters will have a GPS receiver to seed their NTP services, for instance. At the massive scale of GPS, all observable behavior of the system are features that someone is relying on.