Abstract
IN their “flying clock” experiment1 Hafele and Keating observed an on-Earth directional dependence of the relativistic time dilation. I have argued2 that such a dependence is contrary to special relativity theory; the effect, however, is essentially one involving accelerated motion3 and my neglect of this fact invalidated my argument. None the less, locally the time effects on moving clocks may be regarded as special-relativistic (neglecting the altitude effect, which is not relevant for the present discussion); and the derivation of the effects was made by Hafele with the customary (1 − v2/c2)½ time-rate change factor4,5. A seeming inconsistency then still arises in considering the clocks from the Earth reference frame: if two similar clocks are moving on equatorial paths with equal speeds relative to the Earth, one westward and one eastward, they should have equal time rates and equal kinetic energies in the Earth system. Evidently, they do have equal energies, but not equal time rates. But if the Sagnac effect is taken into account in the synchronization of clocks in the Earth frame the contradiction disappears; one finds, rather, a further exemplar of consistency in the theory of relativity
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SCHLEGEL, R. Phsyical Sciences: Flying Clocks and the Sagnac Effect. Nature 242, 180 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1038/242180a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/242180a0
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