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JasonDJ t1_jb30ffx wrote

So, wait a tick…

If you’ve got two watches in perfect sync on earth, and one leaves at a low rate of speed (well below speed of light), where is “out” of our gravity well that they are significantly losing sync, and would that still hold true with atomic clocks?

Assuming we had some sort of hypothetical instantaneous radio communication, would the communications be distorted once one side were in a different gravity well?

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Anonymous_Otters t1_jb313dn wrote

Atomic clocks are routinely used to measure the time difference between things on the surface of earth and things in orbit. The difference of the flow of time needs to be calibrated or else things like GPS wouldn't work right.

If communication were instant, how it would work would I guess depend on what you were using, since that isn't supposed to be possible.

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Hapankaali t1_jb70cm0 wrote

Instantaneous communication leads to quite a few problems of the "grandfather paradox" type. For example, the relativity of simultaneity means that according to some observers, the response to a query will be given before the query itself.

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