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global positioning system

A system of satellites and mobile receivers that makes it possible to determine each receiver’s position with high accuracy. Used by pilots, truckers, car drivers and by many smartphone users world-wide, it is an industrial application of Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity: Without taking into account the effects predicted by these theories for moving clocks in a gravitational field, there would be errors of roughly 10 kilometres per day of operation in the determination of positions on earth.

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gravitational field

The totality of all gravitational influences that one or more massive objects can exert on bodies in their vicinity.

More precisely: At every location in space, the gravitational field is defined as the acceleration that a small test particle present at that location would feel due to the gravitational forces of the masses around it.

field

A field describes how a physical quantity is distributed in space and time. For instance, the area where electric forces act on a test particle is subject to an electric field. Or the gravitational forces which act on the mass of a test body define a gravitational field. In general a field contains energy, occupies space and can change over time.

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global positioning system

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