I would like this to be confirmed by someone. If you don’t want to submit a comment, please write me at BrightMysteries@verizon.net

And I knew that should cause it to slow down by SR. But I also knew from the data that it ran faster, explained by GR – the weaker gravity. So, I figured, the GR effect must be greater than the SR effect. And sure enough, the numbers you give clear up how large the two effects are, and why GR “wins.”

Thanks again.

Boyd,
You may like this article. The first of two paragraphs am cutting and pasting has the GPS clock offset numbers. I do not like the description of how they do the offset much but thats just me. In the second paragraph, he talks about accumulated difference between GPS and ground clocks. This, I think, at best (if he is correct on the point) is only theoretical because the GPS clocks are corrected daily by ground controllers.

Russ

“For GPS satellites, GR predicts that the atomic clocks at GPS orbital altitudes will tick faster by about 45,900 ns/day because they are in a weaker gravitational field than atomic clocks on Earth’s surface. Special Relativity (SR) predicts that atomic clocks moving at GPS orbital speeds will tick slower by about 7,200 ns/day than stationary ground clocks. Rather than have clocks with such large rate differences, the satellite clocks are reset in rate before launch to compensate for these predicted effects. In practice, simply changing the international definition of the number of atomic transitions that constitute a one-second interval accomplishes this goal. Therefore, we observe the clocks running at their offset rates before launch. Then we observe the clocks running after launch and compare their rates with the predictions of relativity, both GR and SR combined. If the predictions are right, we should see the clocks run again at nearly the same rates as ground clocks, despite using an offset definition for the length of one second.

We note that this post-launch rate comparison is independent of frame or observer considerations. Since the ground tracks repeat day after day, the distance from satellite to ground remains essentially unchanged. Yet, any rate difference between satellite and ground clocks continues to build a larger and larger time reading difference as the days go by. Therefore, no confusion can arise due to the satellite clock being located some distance away from the ground clock when we compare their time readings. One only needs to wait long enough and the time difference due to a rate discrepancy will eventually exceed any imaginable error source or ambiguity in such comparisons.”

http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/gps-relativity.asp

I throw out this question to those who know more about general relativity than I do.