Proposal For Direct Test of General Relativity
In a 1955 paper Winterberg proposed a test of General Relativity using accurate atomic clocks placed in orbit in artificial satellites. At that time atomic clocks were not yet of the required accuracy and artificial satellites did not exist. Werner Heisenberg wrote a letter to Winterberg in 1957 in which he said the idea sounded "very interesting". This idea was later experimentally verified by Hafele and Keating in 1971 by flying atomic clocks on commercial jets. The theoretical approach was the same as that used by Winterberg. Today atomic clocks and relativistic corrections are used in GPS and it is said GPS could not function without them.
Read more about this topic: Friedwardt Winterberg
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