OK, I am going to show my ignorance now. Being in my 70th year, I forgot an awful lot of what I learned in school.
Anyway, regarding time and gravity, I certainly believe the mathematics of Einstein and others, however, I have a hard time believing that man-made instruments to measure the effects of gravity on time is valid. For example in a Cesium clock, time is a function of the transition time between two hyperfine lines of Cesium atoms. So, does gravity affect this transition time within the Cesium atoms? It may very well, but, I am not smart enough to know that. Maybe someone can help. Also, when someone mentioned moving a very sensitive scale up in elevation and noting the difference due to gravitational effects, also seems odd to me. Seems like even in the most sensitive scales, weight is measured as the difference between the weighing platform and the body of the instrument. Here again, moving the whole assembly up in elevation it would seem to me that gravity would affect both the platform and the body, and the relative weight indicated should remain the same. What am I missing besides gray matter? Thanks - Mike Mike B. Feher, EOZ Inc. 89 Arnold Blvd. Howell, NJ, 07731 732-886-5960 office 908-902-3831 cell -----Original Message----- From: time-nuts [mailto:time-nuts-boun...@febo.com] On Behalf Of Tom Van Baak Sent: Monday, November 03, 2014 3:55 PM To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement Subject: Re: [time-nuts] NPR Story I heard this morning > Yes, A story about time and frequency standards. They actually used > numbers like 10E16 in the story. Apparently at that level your clock > can measure a change in elevation of a few centimeters because of the > relativistic effects of the reduced gravity field in just a few cm. Hi Chris, That's correct. When it comes to frequency standards the official SI second is defined only for sea level. We know time and frequency are "bent" by speed or gravity; time is the integral of frequency; and frequency is a function of height (h) by approximately gh/c². It's that simple. But it's a very tiny effect. Planet gravity fields decrease quadratically over large distances (1/R²) but approximately linearly near the surface. So here on Earth, with g = ~9.8 m/s² and c = ~300,000 km/s, frequency increases by about 1e-18/cm, or 1e-16/m, or 1e-13/km. This is called gravitational time dilation, or blueshift. Now, for amateurs like us who just make things at home or buy and repair atomic clocks on eBay, numbers like 1e-18 and 1e-16 are completely out of range: that's what government labs are for. But the 1e-13 number is interesting, and approachable -- especially if you live near a tall mountain. If you take a 1e-14 stable cesium clock up 1 km, it will run fast by about 1e-13 (in frequency) and thus it will gain about 10 ± 1 ns per day (in time, or phase) compared to a clock left down at home. These days, time differences at the nanosecond level are easily measurable -- so that's what I did with http://leapsecond.com/great2005/ Of course, NIST & USNO always have much better clocks than we do, so they can measure the effect of smaller elevation changes, over smaller time scales. Just amazing. Maybe we'll be able to buy an optical clock on eBay 20 years from now. Note that their clocks are not (yet) portable and consequently you can make a more accurate gravitational time dilation / general relativity measurement at home by taking vintage hp 5071A cesium beam microwave clocks up a tall mountain than they can with record-setting strontium optical clocks inside a NIST building. Essentially, if you take a clock to high altitude for a weekend you create a super-duper blueshift "microscope". Instead of unimaginably small numbers like 1e-18, I went up about 1340 meters (instead of just 1 cm) and I stayed up there about 42 hours (instead of one second). Thus my cm-second "magnification factor" was 1340 * 100 * 42 * 3600 = 20 billion! That reduces a crazy tiny number like 1e-18 to a real, tangible, measurable, fun-with-family, DIY time dilation number like 2e-8, or 20 ns. /tvb _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
