If I understand this correctly, all of the consumer “atomic clocks” just pick up the time that’s broadcast based on some official atomic clock.
So let’s say I’m wearing 2 watches - Atomic Watch (AW), and Standard Watch (SW). Let’s also assume that the AW works on the radio broadcast thing. Also assume that my travel location keeps me constantly in-range of the time transmitter.
If I’m traveling at 80% of the speed of light would my AW stay synchronized with Earth Time and my SW be synchronized with My Time?
The atomic watch I used to have didn’t constantly synchronize, it was programmed to receive the signal from the atomic clock in Colorado at about 5am local time every day, and synch if necessary. In that case, you’d have to wait 24 hours (earth time) to see the difference between your 2 watches.
If you happen to bring along your own ‘atomic’ clock (by which I mean an actual cesium or rubidium standard), you could see a difference fairly soon, without even traveling that fast.
The famous experiment yielding empirical evidence for time dilation involved simply traveling in a commercial jet airplane (on the order of 0.000001 c). Hafele-Keating experiment
Since they were flying, it also tested the clock difference due to being farther from the Earth. If your travel includes flying, you’d have that adjustment as well.
No, you wouldn’t. Any time measuring device is subject to time dilation at relativistic speeds. Your quartz Casio watch and your cesium standard would match each other, but would both be behind when compared to a clock that you left behind.
You’d also have to contend with the fact that the radio waves arriving at your watch would be quite Doppler-shifted (even if you’re just moving perpendicular to the transmitter.) I doubt that your usual atomic-synchronized watch would be built to receive a signal at such a frequency.
I don’t get what you’re saying. I’m talking about the difference between your local time and the radio broadcast time. However, now that I think about, I’m pretty sure the timecode broadcasts (at least in the US) are only second-precision, so if you’re at low speed and considering only the broadcast clock, the experiment would be tougher to carry out.
Also consider that you’ll have to deal with the difference in location from where you started out as well. Probably best to move in a circle around the transmitter.
You can get much better accuracy than a second, especially if you use WWVB, the VLF station. Variable propagation delays are the major source of error with radio clocks. If that isn’t good enough, GPS timing receivers and CDMA receivers are very high quality time sources.
Time dilation through movement is reciprocal, i.e. from your point of view, it’s the clock you left behind that’s ticking slower, due to the fact that motion is relative, so that you can’t really call either of the two clocks stationary; it’s only acceleration that breaks this symmetry and leads to things like the twin paradox. Of course, you’d have to undergo acceleration to end up in the same reference frame with the clock you left behind, which then leads to a measurable difference in elapsed time between the two, but it’s important to note that, in two relatively moving reference frames, you can’t point to one and say that time runs slower in that one. So, measuring time dilation by having your clock synchronise itself with a clock that’s ‘left behind’ won’t work, since both reference frames are equivalent – in fact, your radio watch will show the same time the standard watch does.
No, they will be different: Your radio watch will be running faster than the nuclear clock you’re carrying with you. However, if someone stays behind at the transmitter for your radio watch, and they’re wearing a watch synchronized to your nuclear clock, they’ll also see their radio watch running faster. Whichever clock isn’t in your reference frame will run fast, no matter what your reference frame is.
You might even do so while on vacation with the family, as this guy did.
In summary, he hauled three cesium clocks along on his family vacation to Mt. Ranier. Theory predicted that the reduction in gravity due to spending a couple of days at high altitude would cause them to gain 22 nanoseconds; the observed gain was 23 nanoseconds. He calls it “perhaps the first ‘kitchen science’ relativity experiment.”
