Guide to GPS, Relativity and Black Holes

March break assignment

Syeed Hasan

3/19/2012

Guide to GPS, Relativity and Black holes

GPS & Relativity
Many of you may have already heard of, used or seen someone using a GPS device in cars. For those of you who dont know what it is, GPS stands for Global Position System. These devices with the self-explanatory names are used to find a persons position wherever they may be in the world. If you were to visit Santa clause, you would most definitely need one of these. How on earth a voice guided automotive navigation system would direct you to the North Pole? Well, voice guided navigation systems are just one type of GPS. Different forms of GPS are used for different purposes. There are handheld GPS, smartphone GPS, laptop GPS, sports GPS and aviation GPS. Figure 1 shows the different forms of GPS units. Laptop GPS are not necessarily widely used, but they are there for industries that need to know where their devices are. Aviation GPS is probably the most complicated one. On the contrary, the handheld GPS has the most limited functionality, whereas smartphone GPS and Automotive GPS have just about the same

Figure 1, different GPS devices

functionalities which help with navigation on the road. As for how they work, its a lot more complicated than actually using it. In order for all these GPS devices to work, they need to communicate with at least 4 of the 24 (plus spares) GPS satellites that orbit the Earth at a height of around 20,000 Km from the ground. They travel at speeds of 14, 000 km/h which means they orbit the earth once nearly every 12 hours. The satellites are positioned in a way to make sure that at any given point on Earth, at least 4 satellites can be connected with at any time. In order for the GPS device to triangulate its position, it needs to receive the signal sent out by at least four of the satellites. The signal contains information about each satellite, like its location and current time. All the satellites are synchronised in a way to make sure they all transmit the information at the same time. Once the GPS tracker receives these signals which are moving at the speed of light it can triangulate its position by calculating the distance to these satellites with accuracy around 5 m. Crazy thing about it is, if Einsteins theory of relativity was not applied to these satellites, our position on earth would be constantly changing. Suppose you are in front of your house using your smartphone GPS. It manages to calculate your position and tells you that you are in front of your house. Now if Einsteins theory of relativity was not applied, the next day your GPS would tell you that you are around 10km away from your house even though you are measuring it from the same place you did previously. What on earth is Einsteins theory of relativity? Well the concept of relativity is quite simple, but to apply it every day use (like these GPS satellites), the timing sequence at which the satellites give off the signal, has to be accurate to a few billionths of a second so that the distance calculation can be accurate to around 5m. Going back to his theory, relativity is defined as.well there is no exact definition only examples. So let me give you an example. Suppose you are in a car which is travelling at a constant velocity on a straight highway. You would be, (along with everything with you and inside the car) relative to the

car. You would feel stationary. Try pouring water from a bottle to a glass and it will be very easy, but if you were to do the same thing while the car is accelerating like a Bugatti Veyron, lets just say you would need to clean up a mess. Consider the following. Suppose you are standing on a tractor trailer which is travelling at a constant speed of 100km/h (figure 2). All of a sudden you decide to throw a ball at the driver, and this ball travels at 100 km/h. An observer on the trailer would see the ball going at 100 km/h, whereas another observer on the side of the road would measure the same ball going at 200 km/h. That my friend is Einsteins theory of relativity. Heres a crazy fact. We are currently travelling at around 108,000 km/h relative to space around the sun. Isnt that crazy?

Figure 2, example of relativity

Black Holes
A black hole is literally a hole which is black. However, in terms of space and universe, a black hole is a region is space whose gravitational force is so strong that not even light can escape it (figure 3). So if you think about it, light gets sucked into this region if it gets close enough. In fact, if you were to get close enough to one, you would likely be stretched like crazy. In accordance to relativity, if a person is observing another person going towards a black hole, the observer would

just see the person slowing down as it gets closer. Eventually, the observer would see the person stop moving and then slowly fade away. Now, how does a black hole form? Scientifically, anything can become a black hole provided that it has been squeezed so much that its density is infinite. This means your phone needs to be the size of an atom in order for it to become a black hole. Unfortunately, it is impossible for any object on earth to do such thing. However in space, its a different story. Black holes can only be formed by a star a star that is many times larger than our own sun. When it runs out of hydrogen to react with, the star starts to expand becoming what is called a red supergiant. This giant would then explode creating a supernova, leaving behind a Neutron Star. If this star has enough density, it will eventually become a black hole. Fun fact, there is a black hole in the middle of our Milky Way galaxy.

Figure 3, a black hole!

Works Cited
"FearOfPhysics.com: Albert Einstein`s Theory of Relativity." FearOfPhysics.com: See Physics in Action, Get Physics Homework Help. Web. 15 Mar. 2012. <http://www.fearofphysics.com/Relativity/relativity.html>. "Global Positioning System." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Mar. 2012. Web. 15 Mar. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System>. Lero15. "How Satellites Work." YouTube. YouTube, 02 June 2007. Web. 15 Mar. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4gGalZV8TM>. "Real-World Relativity: The GPS Navigation System." Department of Astronomy. 27 Apr. 2009. Web. 15 Mar. 2012. <http://www.astronomy.ohiostate.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html>.