Practical Uses
The Sagnac effect is employed in current technology. One use is in inertial guidance systems. Ring laser gyroscopes are extremely sensitive to rotations, which need to be accounted for if an inertial guidance system is to return accurate results. The ring laser also can detect the sidereal day, which can also be termed "mode 1". Global navigation systems, such as GPS, GLONASS, COMPASS or Galileo, need to take the rotation of the Earth into account in the procedures of using radio signals to synchronize clocks.
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