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Nintendo DS Wireless in Freefall

Posted by timothy on from the that's-pretty-normal dept.

Nicholas Roussos writes "Wired reports about four skydivers who decided to give the Nintendo DS wireless capabilities a try while they were freefalling. 'The four sky divers proved that an ad hoc network set up using the wireless functions of a Nintendo DS works perfectly at distances of nearly 400 feet while falling 120 miles an hour,' states the article."

2 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Galileo would be pleased.. by rufusdufus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The skydivers experience is consistent with Galilean relativity, Einstein's special relativity wouldnt have much of an effect in this situation.

  2. Re:What about different speeds? by Grond · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So I looked up the relativistic Doppler effect and plugged in some numbers.

    For a relative velocity of 400mph you get an observed frequency of 2.39999856GHz.

    Now, looking at the 802.11b spec available at the 802 working group site I see that it operates in the 2.4 - 2.4835GHz range.

    So the Doppler effect at 400mph introduces a difference in frequency equal to .0017% of the total frequency range. Unfortunately, I don't know what the tolerances for 802.11b are, but I have difficulty believing that .0017% would cause much trouble.

    Now, backfiguring for a more common 5% tolerance, we get something like 500,000m/s or 1.1 million mph. So, yes, 802.11b probably won't work between passing spaceships. Aside from that, we're probably safe.