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Time dilation is the difference in elapsed time as measured by two clocks, either because of a relative velocity between them (special relativity), or a difference in gravitational potential between their locations (general relativity). When unspecified, "time dilation" usually refers to the effect due to velocity.
Time dilation is of practical importance. For instance, the clocks in GPS satellites experience this effect due to the reduced gravity they experience (making their clocks appear to run more quickly than those on Earth) and must therefore incorporate relativistically corrected calculations when reporting locations to users.
The emergence of the muons is caused by the collision of cosmic rays with the upper atmosphere, after which the muons reach Earth. The probability that muons can reach the Earth depends on their half-life, which itself is modified by the relativistic corrections of two quantities: a) the mean lifetime of muons and b) the length between the upper and lower atmosphere (at Earth's surface).
Gravitational time dilation is a form of time dilation, an actual difference of elapsed time between two events, as measured by observers situated at varying distances from a gravitating mass. The lower the gravitational potential (the closer the clock is to the source of gravitation), the slower time passes, speeding up as the gravitational ...
However, one can often account for most of the discrepancy by the introduction of gravitational time dilation, the slowing down of time near gravitating bodies. In case of the GPS, the receivers are closer to Earth than the satellites, causing the clocks at the altitude of the satellite to be faster by a factor of 5×10 −10 , or about +45.8 ...
This combines the effects of time dilation due to motion (by factor α = 0.6, five years on Earth are 3 years on ship) and the effect of increasing light-time-delay (which grows from 0 to 4 years). Of course, the observed frequency of the transmission is also 1 ⁄ 3 the frequency of the transmitter (a reduction in frequency; "red-shifted").
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The transverse Doppler effect and consequently time dilation was directly observed for the first time in the Ives–Stilwell experiment (1938). In modern Ives-Stilwell experiments in heavy ion storage rings using saturated spectroscopy , the maximum measured deviation of time dilation from the relativistic prediction has been limited to ≤ 10 ...