From the article: In October, 1971, American physicists took four super-accurate atomic clocks, kept two on the ground and put two on commercial jets flying at 1000 kmh in opposite directions around Earth.
When the planes landed, the scientists found what they were hoping for: The clocks on the high-speed journeys were ticking a few billionths of a second behind their stationary friends.
I know this sounds like I'm being ridiculous but I'm pretty sure one of the clocks was a little ahead. I remember reading this in a modern physics textbook in college. Unfortunately, I can't immediately find any reference on the web, so verifying this will be left as an excercise to the reader.
The fact that they were both behind is a common misconception. Around the time that I read this, a professor who was visiting and who was well known to the department gave a talk showing how Enstein's relativity is incomplete, etc., etc. and used the clocks on the airplanes as an example. Unfortunately, this kind of blatant ignoring of phenomena happens all the time in science. In other words, if the dominant theory doesn't provide an adequate explanation, it must not exist.
I could go on a rant about how this happens even in medicine with doctors ignoring any condition for which there is not a pill but I'll just stop there. Anyway, I believe we'll see more holes being poked in relativity in the coming years.
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From the article:
In October, 1971, American physicists took four super-accurate atomic clocks, kept two on the ground and put two on commercial jets flying at 1000 kmh in opposite directions around Earth. When the planes landed, the scientists found what they were hoping for: The clocks on the high-speed journeys were ticking a few billionths of a second behind their stationary friends.
I know this sounds like I'm being ridiculous but I'm pretty sure one of the clocks was a little ahead. I remember reading this in a modern physics textbook in college. Unfortunately, I can't immediately find any reference on the web, so verifying this will be left as an excercise to the reader.
The fact that they were both behind is a common misconception. Around the time that I read this, a professor who was visiting and who was well known to the department gave a talk showing how Enstein's relativity is incomplete, etc., etc. and used the clocks on the airplanes as an example. Unfortunately, this kind of blatant ignoring of phenomena happens all the time in science. In other words, if the dominant theory doesn't provide an adequate explanation, it must not exist.
I could go on a rant about how this happens even in medicine with doctors ignoring any condition for which there is not a pill but I'll just stop there. Anyway, I believe we'll see more holes being poked in relativity in the coming years.