remember reading the terms and conditions of a new sat nav when i was a kid. and it said someting like "the gps system remains property of us navy, signals may be turned off or scrambled during times of war"
Navy? Gps doesn't work out at sea, the navy use a different system all together. Gps works from triangulation of 3 cell towers and your position is determined by the strength of signal between those 3 towers. GPS is for use on land only. How would a satellite or satellites be able to determine our position? One more thing.. sky tv doesn't come from satellites either but that's what we was all told. Signals come from masts on land, that's why your sky dish doesn't face the sky but rather the direction where the broadcasting mast is positioned. You got me thinking about the gps system the navy use now.. I got a mate on a navy ship atm, I'll ask him but know there's only so much information about those ships they can share with the public. There's secrets amongst the ranks too so there's a big chance he believes gps is the system they use as he's only a petty officer. ✌
@@DaVeHiLl200 You need to rewatch the video. He goes over how GPS works. Yes, it's really satellite based. Also, take any old globe, basketball, whatever spherical item you have available. Draw a line dividing the ball in as close to equal halves as possible, if it doesn't already have a line you can use for reference. This will be the equator. Take a string, stretch it out to about two times the width of the ball, then stretch the string from your area of the globe to a point hanging in the air about over that equatorial line. You'll see that it's at a pretty severe angle to the surface of the ball where it's touching.
@@SECONDQUEST Light in air is 1.0003 times slower than light in a vacuum, which slows it all the way down from 299,792,458 meters per second to 299,702,547 meters per second. Hardly a wild variation, certainly not three orders of magnitude. (Source: Google "speed of light in air vs vacuum")
Indeed. It is surprising how rarely sponsors specifically seek out videos with a topics correlation rather than just the target group, considering how well things can flow together.
I remember how happy we were when they finally turned off selective availability. It saved so much post-processing hassle not having to do differential correction after a day in the field collecting GPS locations. Thanks for doing your sponsor promotions non-intrusively & without the stupid hype other channels do, Paul. The watches look nice.
Reminded me of a scene in Red Planet (2000) where Val Kilmer's character knows how to navigate thanks to his grandfather "in case GPS satellites fall out of the sky"
Your videos always make my day Curious Droid. The standards of quality and meticulous research has never dropped, I can't wait for what you have in store for us in 2020.
Sailors today of shipping vessels and aviators, still have to learn how to use them. So if all navigation system is broken, they can still navigate, but only with good sky. Some old airliners has them, as there was no GPS available in those day. Apart from using compass and radio guided navigation, when out of range, they need to use sextants.
No slide rule required. Unless perhaps you are wanting to do it "from first principles". It is after all, just spherical trigonometry. No reason however NOT to use the calculated tables however... and to reduce a star, planet or sun sight (to produce a position line) only requires addition and subtraction....
This is one of the best videos produced on this channel! So eye opening. While i knew comparably much about GPS i never knew so many aspects of our daily lives were so much dependent on its time services.
Thanks for the content. Would you consider a deep dive on the different signals used for communications and the power they consume. To me it's amazing that voyager can still send signals while being so far away.
Michael Pell and only 20 Watts signal power. He has done a video talking about how all of the dishes on earth combine to pick up the Voyager signals. By the time they reach her Voyager 1 signals are about a millionth of their original strength. That's 0.0000002 watts. Yes, amazing!
@@RB747domme Yeah I seen that one too. I guess there are all radio signals. I like this channel cause it covers historical events as well but some of the finer engineering and achiements melt my brain. I love it.
Cool stuff! I was fortunate to have worked on the GPS back in 1989-1990 when it was primitive and we were just starting to position dynamically. Always interested to see what is new there, so thanks for the show!
Set your Synchrophasors to STUN! Great video so much information and new ways of looking at the problems. Gotta love the harmony in the sponsor spot as well.
I think this channel is underrated in terms of sub count. It's easily on par with channels that have a 3-million-plus subscriber count. Those shirts must be scaring everyone away
I'm an outdoors man, a cycle tourer (over 50 countries across 4 continents) a hiker and ski tourer...and I have never used a GPS in my life, not once (I got no satnav and no smart phone). They are useful to those that don't read maps but they are absolutely not necessary in my experience...in fact they take the fun out of the adventure by letting you know what is in front of you at all times, like some fool telling you the end of every movie as you start watching it. No thank you. Awesome work, as per usual sir.
I absolutely GET what the video is about, BUT some of you don't get what some of us are saying either. Myself and many others may be inconvenienced by loss of GPS, but we also lived a fair portion of our lives with NO GPS. And no computers, and this would be bad, it certainly won't be the end either.
@@kellypenrod2979 Your banking would go to shit. And that's just for starters. We get what you're saying. But we understand your comment comes from ignorance. You apparently have absolutely no clue how many things you use, especially when the net is involved, do use GPS. Whether you use it directly, or just benefit from it being in the background of the things you do use, you still use it, and will be just as screwed as the rest of us. No one here means just using GPS directly when they say "use GPS", except you. Everyone else also includes all the things you do that has GPS in the background. And even for you, that's a fair amount of GPS use.
This is a great topic Paul. I'd like to see deeper dives into GPS, space weather, eloran, alternative navigation systems, and a dive into maps, cartography and if modern schools are even bothering with teaching map reading as a basic requisite. Thanks for the captivating video and content. Cheers from Michigan!
Paul's delivery is always top notch. It's such a joy to watch this channel, right? [If you're reading this, Paul, you have a great thing going.] Happy New Year, everyone!
All the comments: "Just use a map" Me: commenting on headlines is the bane of the internet. Also: BTW yall, those maps in your garage are mostly useless due to changes in road design, changing route names, and increasingly poor signage. The companies making these maps also havnt been bothering to update their physical maps because there isn't any money in it, so even a brand new map will likely be a decade or more out of date. Check that copyright notice. Good luck.
That's not really true. First, the data is all digitized these days; it is the manner of distribution that is different. Second, the maps are not useless as they, just like GPS, will provide a guide. It is up to the user to maintain situational awareness and confirm that whey they are seeing matches the map/GPS. There are two big differences between maps and a GPS map. First, updates are more easily and quickly distributed. Second, those who use GPS assume it is infallible and thus are more likely to lose situational awareness and have more serious navigational errors. Translation, people get lazy and stupid because they assume the GPS maps are infallible. GPS maps are a guide but it is still up to the user to verify that the data is correct.
@@PanzerDave I'm taking it you havn't actually attempted navigating via physical maps in the last 5 years. I have, and I'm telling you, the major companies publishing paper maps in the US are not updating them, and havn't in around a decade. The last 3 times I bought physical maps, they were all indentical and contained the same route issues that were already a problem with the first one. It's not like Google or Apple or even Garmin are publishing these physical maps. And road signage has gotten awful. Physical maps are out of date in one direction, and Google is notorious for using the "future" names for roads that the signage doesn't reflect yet. So navigating without that computer lady telling you when to turn has gotten really bad.
Yes cuz I'm old enough to remember before GPSand my dad taught me how to read a map and I'm sure I can relearn a compass if I need to, and for any of you California I sure miss the Thomas Brothers guide map books
Paul, I think you need to check your maths. One nanosecond at the speed of light is about a foot, so an error of one microsecond is about 1000 feet, or around 300 metres, not hundreds of kilometres.
The special relativity drift due to relative velocity is minus 7 microseconds per day. The general relativity drift due to being at different depths in Earth's gravity well is plus 45 microseconds per day. Net 38 us/day. So the error gets out of hand quite quickly. On the order of about 10 km/day But, yeah. He's off by 3 orders of magnitude or so with his example. That's probably because he's using 300,000,000 km/sec instead of meters/second as the speed of light. edit missing "i"
I have no idea how he calculated that, but he's not necessarily wrong. We are dealing with 3D geometry, and if you only have signal from satellites that are separated by 60 degrees on the sky, that leads to errors that are much larger than the ranging error of one satellite. We are interested in horizontal error, after all.
@@MushookieMan When you are doing this sort of triangulation, you get a pretty good solution by having one more data point than you have dimensions. But more data (satellite signals) is better and modern GPS/GNSS receivers can work with as many satellites as are visible. My phone combines Navstar GPS with GLONASS, and can receive Galileo, Beidou and Japan's QZSS, if I were in the regions served by those constellations. Navstar GPS also has WAAS, the wide area augmentation system which are a set of geosynchronous GPS satellites combined with known-location ground stations and supercomputers. The known locations are all over the US, Mexico and Canada, including Hawaii and Alaska. A few dozen, last I looked. The known locations take the timing signals from the satellites in view and send them off to two locations with the supercomputers, which then use that combined timing information to calculate the specific shape of the ionosphere over discrete regions all over North America and the Pacific. From this, they upload through a few ground stations to the WAAS satellites, timing corrections that GPS receivers should apply. The WAAS satellites then put these timing corrections out with their own GPS timing data. This can increase the accuracy of the position solution to less than a meter in good circumstances. In addition, the FAA is still looking at a LAAS (local area augmentation system) where you have ground stations in a metro area that act as GPS satellites in known positions on the ground to improve accuracy for aircraft (and other vehicles) navigating in a metropolitan area near an airport. This would massively help drone delivery services where a drone could place a package in your backyard/garden instead of a driver dropping it on your front porch where a random passerby can see and steal it.
@@Markle2k I have worked with RTK GPS that gets accuracy of better than 10 cm. The equipment costs $20 k, but is affordable for a small company, much more so an airport. Makes you wonder why it hasn't been adopted.
I must say the most surprising part of this video, is the sponsorship. I absolutely love the watch. I have their website open in another windows. I'm in love with the 22 jewel, automatic, skeleton series watches.
So did humans for tens of thousands of years, but we live in a world were a lot of systems rely on it and thus a sudden cessation of such services could cause havoc. Not end of the world havoc, but there would be lots of issues
I had no idea GPS had become so important and essential. Always a pleasure Curious Droid these videos. Thank you. Now to check out the watches. Happy new year everybody.
Yeah, but you're only here because it hasn't gone out....... I learned about a time that had no farms or domesticated animals, and they lived for well over 100,000 years just fine. Doesn't change the fact that if we lost all our farms and domesticated animals now, about 7 billion people would starve.
I worked at an electronics firm that build both master and slave clocks used on the London underground. Each station has a master clock that drives all the other station clocks. The master clocks are all hand built and fit a standard rack. I built about 10 of them and installed most of them, they all link to a GPS aerial on the roof of the station.
Could we live without GPS? Yes. Could we go about our ordinary lives without major disruption if GPS suddenly collapsed? No. Could a failure or sabotage of GPS potentially kill people? Yes. There you go. You obviously didn't bother watching the video or listening to its lessons, so I thought I'd summarise it for you.
so what if there's changes since then to the geology? :) what then? Earth shifts over time, mudslides happen, volcanoes explode. How would you know of any changes to you good trusty map collection? Fires happen in the forest... how would u know with maps?
Ah yes lets ignore that its not about individual survival and navigation with GPS these days. Your maps cant really put food on your table or the device you used to make your comment in your hand without GPS. You are part of a global society that relies heavily on technology like GPS to function properly.
I wrote the firmware for a ripple injection controller some years ago. We used GPS to synchronize a ~300hz carrier across multiple sites, which replaces pilot wires and saved a lot of copper. All done with a pokey 8 bit micro controller as well
@@Membrane556 Yes you are absolutely right, but the title specifically says GPS and not "Could we live without navigation systems". Of course for many people GPS and navigation system is the same thing. I also have to say I didn't watch the video because the title is so dumb that I feel dumb myself if I would watch it. We were all living fine before navigation systems were there and nobody died. A better title would be "How does/do GPS/navigation systems impact our life" or something like that.
Thank you for the video. I watched it already some time ago, but YT proposed it again and I watched it again. I'm a mechanical watch lover, so I watched the ad, too. Nice mechanic solutions for the watches in the ad. Thanks,
That statment glances over a lot of nuances. Could we "survive" without it .. of course we could. Would we as a society take a major hit if it were to disappear right this moment: 100%. Lives would be lost, chaos would ensue and there is a significant chance major conflict would follow.
PartisanGamer I answered the question. As a species we can and have survived without gps. If the question was, what would the ramifications be if gps stopped existing. I would’ve answered that question.
G'day Paul, I had no idea GPS was so integrated into multiple facets of our lives. Thanks for another great video and I reckon the choice of a watch maker as a sponsor for this topic was absolutely timelly! Cheers, BH
It is more complicated than that. GPS doesn't rely only on timing from a single satellite. Modern receivers use 12 or more satellite signals, even across multiple satellite systems to calculate a solution. If one satellite of the 4 needed drifted off by a microsecond, and there were only those 4 available, the receiver wouldn't be able to converge on a solution at all. If the receiver is tracking 12 satellites and one drifts off, it will get excluded and the others will be used for a solution.
@@stargazer7644 I love it when know-it-alls get spanked in public. Nice reply. I doubt Paul utters many erroneous facts as his topics are obviously well researched but it seems there are always those with a first semester level of physics education who want to find fault in Paul's presentations. Glad there are those who actually understand the topic who can clarify any confusion that arises. Hope you have a wonderful New Year celebration.
Thank you Sturling and Curious Droid. The video is very interesting. ZA power went a couple a few times the last 10yrs off. But that Africa. I still have a Grandfather's(1896-199) watch. I has no GPS.. And still have my maps too.
Wow, check out all the people BRAGGING about being out of step with current affairs, technology, or media. Are y'all big fans of Insane Clown Posse too? Drink a lot of Faygo do ya? Stand proud!
@@ariesmars29 You're not missing anything. Twitter is nothing more than a mass text message. People use it to post meaningless tripe about everything. Given that is has a limited number of characters (which is now up to 280 I believe) you are unlikely to get any meaningful discourse on it. It does have limited use however. It is perfect for putting out notifications to alert a customer base about updates. For example, if you are a food truck and you have 600 followers, you could instantly notify them that you will be at a certain location. A concert venue could notify customers that a band's tickets are now available. Alas, it is far more often used for meaningless tripe as I said. Politicians, activists, celebrities, etc. post useless garbage and often get into arguments over idiotic things.
@@drewthompson7457, our RTK GNSS dishes are +/-10mm in position, a little more in level (using any combination of GPS, GLONASS, BEIDOU & Galileo satellites that are available). If you log RINEX data over a work shift and post-process in the office, you can get below +/-5mm.
@@simeon136 : Thanks Simeon. That's a bit better than I'm used to. Before you think I'm primitive, I used feet because my boat is still in knots and nautical miles. A couple of years ago we had a long distance race that used a government buoy, with the lat/ long listed. We arrived at the spot, no buoy around, except for one, the only visible one, about 1/4 mile away. We used that, and continued. I don't know who made the error, I doubt the buoy had drifted, but I know my GPS is better than that.
@@Mynipplesmychoice blyat I'm living in Russia Dibil There is no gps There is no easy live Stupid American! (there don't know whats to be life) There is hard life blyat
@@wassili7210 No, I get it, trust me - my internet sucks too. And no, I don't need GPS. I got along just fine without for the first 30 years of my life and could certainly do so again. The point was that if you have internet, you almost certainly have access to information that uses GPS -- whether you're aware of it or not.
I first heard about this system and handheld equipment using by the US paratroopers in 1987 and I knew from the beginning it's a world changer tool. Later in 1995 was my first time to use the GPS (Magellan handheld) . On those days, they're more catered for marine navigation so not a land navigational friendly. Now every newborn use the GPS but for me it's useful but not much affect in my life, only for outdoor activities. You're more calm in the wild with GPS than a map and compass. I don't know the system beyond 3G but as far as I remember the system below 3G has no GPS ant. install at base station (NMT,GSM).
3:18 "...for special relativity, because changes in the Earth's gravity ..." NOOOOOO! It's not special relativity, which deals with gravity, but general relativity. Special relativity only cares about speed.
TheUglyGnome he was talking about the way that satellites speed up and slow down depending on the the strength of gravity directly beneath the satellite where it's passing over the Earth. If gravity changes, i.e. get stronger or weaker, the satellite speeds up or slows down accordingly because the rotational orbit around the Earth is dependent on a constant gravity map. So special relativity deals with speed as you correctly said, but speed is affected directly by the orbital velocity and that can be affected by the strength of gravity. The reason is, because of how fast the satellite needs to travel to stay in orbit if the gravity is stronger so it naturally speeds up, creating an ellipsoid orbit. This gravity Matt is taken into consideration by satellite companies that launch them and build special timing into to the circuitry in order to deal with this gravity map difference in the constancy off the reflection timing of the signal bouncing. I was reading about this just about two or three months ago in a book which talks about how special relativity changes the satellite Orbital ellipsoid patterns depending on the strength of the Earth's gravity. It's very interesting.
YEEEEESSSSSSSS It is both. GPS satellites have to correct their timing for two different relativity effects. The clocks run 7 microseconds per day slow due to their high orbital speed. Special relativity explains this. The clocks run 45 microseconds per day fast due to the lower gravity experienced 12,000 miles farther from the center of the Earth. General relativity explains this. Therefore, GPS has to correct its clocks by 45-7=38 microseconds per day due to relativity.
You just finished your first semester class in physics didn't you? I remember when I was a freshman and thought I now held the secrets of the universe. My end of semester grades proved that to be a false impression lol
(a minor correction) The trading bots (HFT) are not so sensitive to clock precision. They are event driven - they react on incoming data which reflects the activity of other traders and bots including its own. What matters for them is to be the first when they decide to send an action because if some event X makes bot A confident enough, it's likely that the same event will trigger the same decision for bot B. It's true that sometimes a sub-nanosecond makes the difference, but this is not because of the clock. The exchange processes them according to order of arrival
Thanks and good job as usual. It's amazing that we in the USA, GB, and Europe haven't had any social upheavals due to a failure in the communication technology that we are so dependent on.
I only actually use my gps on the rare occasion I go somewhere I’ve not been before, but I do use it on my regular daily drives but only for my arrival time.
Good evening Paul, as always excellent video. For me working in London many years ago all we had was A-Z or atlas. Today of course sat navs and I love them but if there was no gps I personally would not have a problem finding my way. However have little doubt that that the younger generation would be simply lost. Ps I did wish you and your family a merry Christmas and happy new year on your last video upload before this one. So now Christmas has past. Happy new year to you and your family. Kind regards Danny 🙂
Wow! Great job of explaining all of that to me. I was wondering why and how such a complicated system has gotten better. In regard to the electrical grid.
You didn't mention the land based differential GPS transmitters or the geosynchronous WAAS satellites. DGPS was initially installed along navigable waterways to improve accuracy before selective availability was turned off. Selective availability became pointless when civilian GPS receivers became able to lock onto up to 12 satellites and do their own error correcting to get as precise of positioning as a military unit locking 4 satellites with full signal accuracy. Only 3 satellites are needed to get your position and velocity. A 4th satellite enables getting altitude. More basic GPS receivers used to use the geoid, a perfect sphere rather than having an internal database of close to the actual shape of the Earth. Using the geoid, even with a 4 satellite lock, the altitude could be miscalculated to be below or above the actual altitude. Not a good thing for low flying aircraft.
remember reading the terms and conditions of a new sat nav when i was a kid. and it said someting like "the gps system remains property of us navy, signals may be turned off or scrambled during times of war"
That was one big reason to start GLONASS, Galileo etc programs
@Carl Klinkenborg "weapons"
Navy? Gps doesn't work out at sea, the navy use a different system all together.
Gps works from triangulation of 3 cell towers and your position is determined by the strength of signal between those 3 towers. GPS is for use on land only.
How would a satellite or satellites be able to determine our position?
One more thing.. sky tv doesn't come from satellites either but that's what we was all told. Signals come from masts on land, that's why your sky dish doesn't face the sky but rather the direction where the broadcasting mast is positioned.
You got me thinking about the gps system the navy use now.. I got a mate on a navy ship atm, I'll ask him but know there's only so much information about those ships they can share with the public. There's secrets amongst the ranks too so there's a big chance he believes gps is the system they use as he's only a petty officer. ✌
@@DaVeHiLl200 are you a flatard?
@@DaVeHiLl200 You need to rewatch the video. He goes over how GPS works. Yes, it's really satellite based. Also, take any old globe, basketball, whatever spherical item you have available. Draw a line dividing the ball in as close to equal halves as possible, if it doesn't already have a line you can use for reference. This will be the equator. Take a string, stretch it out to about two times the width of the ball, then stretch the string from your area of the globe to a point hanging in the air about over that equatorial line. You'll see that it's at a pretty severe angle to the surface of the ball where it's touching.
If the timing error is on the order of of 1 microsecond, then the position error would be around 300 meters, not kilometers. 3:33
Correct. Speed of light (and radio waves) is 300 million metres/sec, hence 300m in one microsecond.
@@John_L that's the speed in a vacuum. The speed of light through fluids like the atmosphere is different and varies wildly.
I thought about this too
@@SECONDQUEST Light in air is 1.0003 times slower than light in a vacuum, which slows it all the way down from 299,792,458 meters per second to 299,702,547 meters per second. Hardly a wild variation, certainly not three orders of magnitude. (Source: Google "speed of light in air vs vacuum")
@Mr T Not by a factor of 1000 - at least not in any case where it would matter to GPS...
I come here to update myself on the lastest fashion in shirt patterns
He is way too much ahead of us🤷♂️!
I came for the comments
You either come for the knowledge and stay for the shirts, or you come for the shirts and stay for the knowledge.
I got lost and ended up here. GPS told me to take the wrong turn.
I wonder where he gets his shirts. At 36 I would wear the shit out of those shirts
Listening to Curious Droid is such a pleasure that I even enjoyed the ad for Stührling watches at the end.
Indeed. It is surprising how rarely sponsors specifically seek out videos with a topics correlation rather than just the target group, considering how well things can flow together.
I remember how happy we were when they finally turned off selective availability. It saved so much post-processing hassle not having to do differential correction after a day in the field collecting GPS locations.
Thanks for doing your sponsor promotions non-intrusively & without the stupid hype other channels do, Paul. The watches look nice.
Best Christmas gift: *Curious Droid uploads*
If high frequency automated trading dies, nothing of value will be lost.
I'd call it a win ;-)
Yeah that would be great. Nobody needs high frequency automated trading except rich people who try to become even richer and let the world pay for it.
Agreed. Greedy bastards, the lot of 'em. Trading what exactly, its nothing thats matters. Its not physical goods.
Except for your retirement.
Agreed… would be nice to have them gone.
This is one of the best channels on RUclips! Educational & relaxing at the same time. Wonderful!
I really have to say the topics you choose for your videos always catch me. Every single video is so well researched and cutted!
When you’re genuinely lost and have to pull out the atlas
Huh? Oh, nvm.
@@AtlasReburdened Award for "Most Niche Name" goes to
just hoot out to a sasquatch, they'll take you home. For Lunch! :P
Reminded me of a scene in Red Planet (2000) where Val Kilmer's character knows how to navigate thanks to his grandfather "in case GPS satellites fall out of the sky"
Ok...what what does "state" mean?
Your videos always make my day Curious Droid. The standards of quality and meticulous research has never dropped, I can't wait for what you have in store for us in 2020.
I agree... I learned how to use a map and even a compass... but my wife and kids could not get around without it!
Great watch!
In the event you have to ditch your wife, you know she won't be able to find you.
@@oldmanfromscenetwentyfour8164 I can only imagine he would do everything in his power to get to his kids.
Old Man from Scene Twenty Four 😂😂👍💯
@@oldmanfromscenetwentyfour8164 😂🤣👍
Without GPS I would not be able to navigate to the fridge at night.
Where you live? Inland Australia??
The year 2020 is a point of no return on GPS.
who doesnt know where the fridge is???
what i want to know is the ice ready or not.
ruclips.net/video/VMoqttrEmxM/видео.html
I believe that
moo
I’m pretty sure he was joking too
Those old guys who still carry sextants and slide-rules would become kings.
Sailors today of shipping vessels and aviators, still have to learn how to use them. So if all navigation system is broken, they can still navigate, but only with good sky.
Some old airliners has them, as there was no GPS available in those day. Apart from using compass and radio guided navigation, when out of range, they need to use sextants.
No slide rule required. Unless perhaps you are wanting to do it "from first principles". It is after all, just spherical trigonometry. No reason however NOT to use the calculated tables however... and to reduce a star, planet or sun sight (to produce a position line) only requires addition and subtraction....
Uploaded 2 minutes ago - Clicking immediately is curious!
This is one of the best videos produced on this channel! So eye opening. While i knew comparably much about GPS i never knew so many aspects of our daily lives were so much dependent on its time services.
I am blessed by more CD content :)
GPS: **exists**
flat earthers: "why do I hear boss music?"
Have a happy new year folks :D
Thanks for the content. Would you consider a deep dive on the different signals used for communications and the power they consume. To me it's amazing that voyager can still send signals while being so far away.
Michael Pell and only 20 Watts signal power. He has done a video talking about how all of the dishes on earth combine to pick up the Voyager signals. By the time they reach her Voyager 1 signals are about a millionth of their original strength. That's 0.0000002 watts.
Yes, amazing!
@@RB747domme Yeah I seen that one too. I guess there are all radio signals. I like this channel cause it covers historical events as well but some of the finer engineering and achiements melt my brain. I love it.
Honestly this is an engineering marvel. Good content Sir!
GPS is like a lot off other 'background' technologies: you don't know just how dependent you are on them until you lose them.
Cool stuff! I was fortunate to have worked on the GPS back in 1989-1990 when it was primitive and we were just starting to position dynamically. Always interested to see what is new there, so thanks for the show!
absolutely stunning shirt you are wearing today! definately 10/10 content all over
Looks like the galaxy.
another great vid Paul thanks.. i never realized how complicated and how we r so dependent we r on gps..peace out
The real question should be if we could live without Curious Droid
Set your Synchrophasors to STUN! Great video so much information and new ways of looking at the problems. Gotta love the harmony in the sponsor spot as well.
I still have a paper map in my 4 wheel drive.
Thanks, Paul. Another great video. And one hell of a shirt again this time.
I think this channel is underrated in terms of sub count. It's easily on par with channels that have a 3-million-plus subscriber count.
Those shirts must be scaring everyone away
I'm an outdoors man, a cycle tourer (over 50 countries across 4 continents) a hiker and ski tourer...and I have never used a GPS in my life, not once (I got no satnav and no smart phone). They are useful to those that don't read maps but they are absolutely not necessary in my experience...in fact they take the fun out of the adventure by letting you know what is in front of you at all times, like some fool telling you the end of every movie as you start watching it. No thank you.
Awesome work, as per usual sir.
"THIS VIDEO IS SPONSORED BY STUHRLING"
Is that a new watch I see Paul?
Thank you,Paul for this and all of the rest of your videos. Have a happy new year and may 2020 be your best yet!
I just realized he looks like Jim Sterling
Also please do a video on torch ships
At least CD is informative and interesting. JS, eh.....
Amazing video. Your channel continues to investigate interesting, far-reaching topics. Happy New Year
A lot of people here either not watching the video before commenting or absolutely failing to grasp the point of this video.
RUclips should require you to watch the whole video in order to leave a comment
@@WanJae42 And take notes
Or, the third option, which is probably pretty common, they didn't watch before commenting and they failed to grasp the point.
I absolutely GET what the video is about,
BUT some of you don't get what some of us are saying either.
Myself and many others may be inconvenienced by loss of GPS, but we also lived a fair portion of our lives with NO GPS.
And no computers, and this would be bad, it certainly won't be the end either.
@@kellypenrod2979
Your banking would go to shit. And that's just for starters.
We get what you're saying. But we understand your comment comes from ignorance.
You apparently have absolutely no clue how many things you use, especially when the net is involved, do use GPS.
Whether you use it directly, or just benefit from it being in the background of the things you do use, you still use it, and will be just as screwed as the rest of us.
No one here means just using GPS directly when they say "use GPS", except you.
Everyone else also includes all the things you do that has GPS in the background. And even for you, that's a fair amount of GPS use.
This is a great topic Paul. I'd like to see deeper dives into GPS, space weather, eloran, alternative navigation systems, and a dive into maps, cartography and if modern schools are even bothering with teaching map reading as a basic requisite.
Thanks for the captivating video and content. Cheers from Michigan!
What if GPS stopped working?
We'd all use GLONASS! :D
Yep, it's all gnss.
Your videos are always so interesting, informative and easy to understand. You explain things very well.
The background music really paints the despair of a "no g.p.s" life...
Excellent video as always! I am a long-time Patreon, but good to see you had a sponsor for this video!
I guess it's back to mapquest when the apocalypse happens.
A fond 90s memory
@@RCAvhstape people used to email me mapquest directions then I would print it out haha
@@BeardofBeesPool Yep. I'm still pretty handy with a map and a compass, always have been.
Great topic to learn something aboub, loved it. Happy New Year from the Netherlands.
Stuhrling video Curious Droid
Paul's delivery is always top notch. It's such a joy to watch this channel, right?
[If you're reading this, Paul, you have a great thing going.]
Happy New Year, everyone!
All the comments: "Just use a map"
Me: commenting on headlines is the bane of the internet.
Also: BTW yall, those maps in your garage are mostly useless due to changes in road design, changing route names, and increasingly poor signage. The companies making these maps also havnt been bothering to update their physical maps because there isn't any money in it, so even a brand new map will likely be a decade or more out of date. Check that copyright notice. Good luck.
That's not really true. First, the data is all digitized these days; it is the manner of distribution that is different. Second, the maps are not useless as they, just like GPS, will provide a guide. It is up to the user to maintain situational awareness and confirm that whey they are seeing matches the map/GPS.
There are two big differences between maps and a GPS map. First, updates are more easily and quickly distributed. Second, those who use GPS assume it is infallible and thus are more likely to lose situational awareness and have more serious navigational errors. Translation, people get lazy and stupid because they assume the GPS maps are infallible. GPS maps are a guide but it is still up to the user to verify that the data is correct.
@@PanzerDave I'm taking it you havn't actually attempted navigating via physical maps in the last 5 years. I have, and I'm telling you, the major companies publishing paper maps in the US are not updating them, and havn't in around a decade. The last 3 times I bought physical maps, they were all indentical and contained the same route issues that were already a problem with the first one. It's not like Google or Apple or even Garmin are publishing these physical maps. And road signage has gotten awful. Physical maps are out of date in one direction, and Google is notorious for using the "future" names for roads that the signage doesn't reflect yet. So navigating without that computer lady telling you when to turn has gotten really bad.
...and there was me just downloading up to date digital map data and printing it.
@@simeon136 thats probably the only way to get anywhere near an accurate physical map.
No, not really Patreeko. And I give that answer as a Land Surveyor.
Love your videos, thanks for the great content! Happy new year! Cheers.
Yes cuz I'm old enough to remember before GPSand my dad taught me how to read a map and I'm sure I can relearn a compass if I need to, and for any of you California I sure miss the Thomas Brothers guide map books
Interesting and informative as per usual. Happy 2020! Cheers...
Paul, I think you need to check your maths. One nanosecond at the speed of light is about a foot, so an error of one microsecond is about 1000 feet, or around 300 metres, not hundreds of kilometres.
The special relativity drift due to relative velocity is minus 7 microseconds per day. The general relativity drift due to being at different depths in Earth's gravity well is plus 45 microseconds per day. Net 38 us/day. So the error gets out of hand quite quickly. On the order of about 10 km/day
But, yeah. He's off by 3 orders of magnitude or so with his example. That's probably because he's using 300,000,000 km/sec instead of meters/second as the speed of light.
edit missing "i"
I have no idea how he calculated that, but he's not necessarily wrong. We are dealing with 3D geometry, and if you only have signal from satellites that are separated by 60 degrees on the sky, that leads to errors that are much larger than the ranging error of one satellite. We are interested in horizontal error, after all.
@@MushookieMan When you are doing this sort of triangulation, you get a pretty good solution by having one more data point than you have dimensions. But more data (satellite signals) is better and modern GPS/GNSS receivers can work with as many satellites as are visible. My phone combines Navstar GPS with GLONASS, and can receive Galileo, Beidou and Japan's QZSS, if I were in the regions served by those constellations.
Navstar GPS also has WAAS, the wide area augmentation system which are a set of geosynchronous GPS satellites combined with known-location ground stations and supercomputers. The known locations are all over the US, Mexico and Canada, including Hawaii and Alaska. A few dozen, last I looked.
The known locations take the timing signals from the satellites in view and send them off to two locations with the supercomputers, which then use that combined timing information to calculate the specific shape of the ionosphere over discrete regions all over North America and the Pacific. From this, they upload through a few ground stations to the WAAS satellites, timing corrections that GPS receivers should apply. The WAAS satellites then put these timing corrections out with their own GPS timing data. This can increase the accuracy of the position solution to less than a meter in good circumstances.
In addition, the FAA is still looking at a LAAS (local area augmentation system) where you have ground stations in a metro area that act as GPS satellites in known positions on the ground to improve accuracy for aircraft (and other vehicles) navigating in a metropolitan area near an airport. This would massively help drone delivery services where a drone could place a package in your backyard/garden instead of a driver dropping it on your front porch where a random passerby can see and steal it.
@@Markle2k I have worked with RTK GPS that gets accuracy of better than 10 cm. The equipment costs $20 k, but is affordable for a small company, much more so an airport. Makes you wonder why it hasn't been adopted.
@@MushookieMan, you can now do RTK for a few $100. Check out Emlid or Ardusimple.
I must say the most surprising part of this video, is the sponsorship. I absolutely love the watch. I have their website open in another windows. I'm in love with the 22 jewel, automatic, skeleton series watches.
I lived fine before GPS!
same here
So did humans for tens of thousands of years, but we live in a world were a lot of systems rely on it and thus a sudden cessation of such services could cause havoc. Not end of the world havoc, but there would be lots of issues
@@jasonciola1783
Good, I was worried we were going to have problems glad it will only be issues.
As did I. I can even navigate without it.
Ok boomer!
I had no idea GPS had become so important and essential. Always a pleasure Curious Droid these videos. Thank you. Now to check out the watches. Happy new year everybody.
11:15 Do video on this subject.
Happy new year and best wishes for 12020, Paul and company! :)
I remember when there was no gps and I'm still here 🙂👍
Ok boomer
@@originalmin OK, boomer. 🙄
Yeah, but you're only here because it hasn't gone out.......
I learned about a time that had no farms or domesticated animals, and they lived for well over 100,000 years just fine.
Doesn't change the fact that if we lost all our farms and domesticated animals now, about 7 billion people would starve.
William Adderholdt ok booker
I also remember being able to walk to the shop with out being captured on about 100 hundred cameras that fascist crap just makes me want to puke 😒
I worked at an electronics firm that build both master and slave clocks used on the London underground. Each station has a master clock that drives all the other station clocks. The master clocks are all hand built and fit a standard rack. I built about 10 of them and installed most of them, they all link to a GPS aerial on the roof of the station.
Curious droid: Can we live without GPS
Me: Takes out my compass.
Sadly it is too unreliable in too many places. Magnetic field inconsistencies are really bad.
@@StrangerHappened Stars, wind, river flow, vegetation, topography, they all can be used.
amazing! ive been wondering lately how much we rely on GPS. have a happy new year Curious Droid !!
3:36 No, one microsecond would give you a 300 meter error. Speed of light, remember...
Happy New Year Droid!
"Could we live without GPS?" In a word, yes.
But it really makes traveling easier
Could we live without GPS? Yes. Could we go about our ordinary lives without major disruption if GPS suddenly collapsed? No. Could a failure or sabotage of GPS potentially kill people? Yes.
There you go. You obviously didn't bother watching the video or listening to its lessons, so I thought I'd summarise it for you.
Your internet and communications would suck. Every major node in communications has a GPS clock to sync signals.
I so appreciate what you do on this channel. I love learning about these kinds of things. Thanks for putting in all the time and effort that you do.
Yeah, we could live with Galileo and GLONASS.
Great video! Also an amazing sponsor!! Good job never heard of them, but now I have to check them out. The watches look so cool!
Um yeah, it's called paper maps and atlas books. My parents still have a bunch of them in the garage.
All years out of date
so what if there's changes since then to the geology? :) what then? Earth shifts over time, mudslides happen, volcanoes explode. How would you know of any changes to you good trusty map collection? Fires happen in the forest... how would u know with maps?
Ah yes lets ignore that its not about individual survival and navigation with GPS these days. Your maps cant really put food on your table or the device you used to make your comment in your hand without GPS. You are part of a global society that relies heavily on technology like GPS to function properly.
I wrote the firmware for a ripple injection controller some years ago. We used GPS to synchronize a ~300hz carrier across multiple sites, which replaces pilot wires and saved a lot of copper. All done with a pokey 8 bit micro controller as well
Answer to title: Yes we still have Galileo and GLONASS.
A natural event such as a solar storm would take those out as well.
@@Membrane556 Yes you are absolutely right, but the title specifically says GPS and not "Could we live without navigation systems". Of course for many people GPS and navigation system is the same thing. I also have to say I didn't watch the video because the title is so dumb that I feel dumb myself if I would watch it. We were all living fine before navigation systems were there and nobody died. A better title would be "How does/do GPS/navigation systems impact our life" or something like that.
Thank you for the video. I watched it already some time ago, but YT proposed it again and I watched it again.
I'm a mechanical watch lover, so I watched the ad, too. Nice mechanic solutions for the watches in the ad.
Thanks,
Yes we can live without GPS.
Yep. Life would suck a little more though.
Excellent, great info. HAPPY NEW YEAR 2020.
Yes, as a matter of fact up until about 46 years ago everybody did.
That statment glances over a lot of nuances. Could we "survive" without it .. of course we could. Would we as a society take a major hit if it were to disappear right this moment: 100%. Lives would be lost, chaos would ensue and there is a significant chance major conflict would follow.
PartisanGamer I answered the question. As a species we can and have survived without gps. If the question was, what would the ramifications be if gps stopped existing. I would’ve answered that question.
G'day Paul, I had no idea GPS was so integrated into multiple facets of our lives. Thanks for another great video and I reckon the choice of a watch maker as a sponsor for this topic was absolutely timelly! Cheers, BH
maps sold at the gas station: am i a joke to u?"
As a matter of fact, yes you are a joke.
am i a joke to you meme: Am I a joke to you?
@@Pau_Pau9 Why is the comments section on every RUclips video infested with the exact same unfunny jokes? (See also: Hold my beer)
@@jmckendry84
Am I a joke to you meme: "Am I a joke to you?"
Hold my beer meme: "Hold my beer"
An excellent summary of GPS and very informative to this engineer. Well Done!
3:37 Your calculation is wrong. A one microsecond timing error would result in a 300m difference.
You are right, the speed of light is 300 m per microsecond.
It is more complicated than that. GPS doesn't rely only on timing from a single satellite. Modern receivers use 12 or more satellite signals, even across multiple satellite systems to calculate a solution. If one satellite of the 4 needed drifted off by a microsecond, and there were only those 4 available, the receiver wouldn't be able to converge on a solution at all. If the receiver is tracking 12 satellites and one drifts off, it will get excluded and the others will be used for a solution.
@@stargazer7644 I love it when know-it-alls get spanked in public. Nice reply. I doubt Paul utters many erroneous facts as his topics are obviously well researched but it seems there are always those with a first semester level of physics education who want to find fault in Paul's presentations. Glad there are those who actually understand the topic who can clarify any confusion that arises. Hope you have a wonderful New Year celebration.
Thank you Sturling and Curious Droid. The video is very interesting. ZA power went a couple a few times the last 10yrs off. But that Africa. I still have a Grandfather's(1896-199) watch. I has no GPS.. And still have my maps too.
If it means there is no more Twitter, then I am all for the loss of GPS! Remember, the root word of Twitter is Twit!
And the past tense of twit is twat
What is twitter? Never used it, never will!
Wow, check out all the people BRAGGING about being out of step with current affairs, technology, or media. Are y'all big fans of Insane Clown Posse too? Drink a lot of Faygo do ya? Stand proud!
Right, we couldn't possibly have Twitter without GPS. @_@
@@ariesmars29 You're not missing anything. Twitter is nothing more than a mass text message. People use it to post meaningless tripe about everything. Given that is has a limited number of characters (which is now up to 280 I believe) you are unlikely to get any meaningful discourse on it. It does have limited use however. It is perfect for putting out notifications to alert a customer base about updates. For example, if you are a food truck and you have 600 followers, you could instantly notify them that you will be at a certain location. A concert venue could notify customers that a band's tickets are now available.
Alas, it is far more often used for meaningless tripe as I said. Politicians, activists, celebrities, etc. post useless garbage and often get into arguments over idiotic things.
For Aviation, The Inertial Navigation System, based on Ring Laser Gyroscopes still serves. Airport gates have their exact location posted.
I remember what life was like before civilian GPS.
A nightmare driving anywhere unfamiliar.
Maybe your most important video ever... thanks for all your research and great explanations!
Wrong! 1us error caus just 300 m inaccuracy. (3:37)
Attila Gergely : Yes. Speed of light is 300,000 km/s, or 300,000,000 m/s. 300,000,000/100,000 equals 300 metres.
Excellent subject for a video - something I've always thought about.
I do surveying, and GPS made my job a million times easier. I could still do it without it but my god would I be charging more, haha.
I'd hate to have to go back to using OS benchmarks and Trig points in the UK, instead of GNSS.
I haven't look up surveying with GPS. The best I've seen in my boat has an accuracy of about 15 ft. How do surveying GPSs differ?
@@drewthompson7457, our RTK GNSS dishes are +/-10mm in position, a little more in level (using any combination of GPS, GLONASS, BEIDOU & Galileo satellites that are available). If you log RINEX data over a work shift and post-process in the office, you can get below +/-5mm.
@@simeon136 : Thanks Simeon. That's a bit better than I'm used to. Before you think I'm primitive, I used feet because my boat is still in knots and nautical miles. A couple of years ago we had a long distance race that used a government buoy, with the lat/ long listed. We arrived at the spot, no buoy around, except for one, the only visible one, about 1/4 mile away. We used that, and continued. I don't know who made the error, I doubt the buoy had drifted, but I know my GPS is better than that.
@@drewthompson7457, that accuracy comes at a price...£20k+
Amazing presentation as always. Thank you Curious Droid!
I'm living with out gps
In Russia you have map
So yes I can
Ha! You're poor!
@@Mynipplesmychoice blyat I'm living in Russia
Dibil
There is no gps
There is no easy live
Stupid American!
(there don't know whats to be life)
There is hard life blyat
@@wassili7210 But yet you clearly have a smart phone or computer and internet connection, with access to RUclips no less. ... ok.
@@verumillic1424 I have internet
But no gps
And it's a joke
But u don't need a gps
@@wassili7210 No, I get it, trust me - my internet sucks too. And no, I don't need GPS. I got along just fine without for the first 30 years of my life and could certainly do so again. The point was that if you have internet, you almost certainly have access to information that uses GPS -- whether you're aware of it or not.
I love the shirt/watch combo.
Earth Is flat.
We don’t need fancy color shirt and GPS.
Ahahahahahahaha
And you probably use GPS at least once a week.
E. Rose once a month!
I first heard about this system and handheld equipment using by the US paratroopers in 1987 and I knew from the beginning it's a world changer tool.
Later in 1995 was my first time to use the GPS (Magellan handheld) . On those days, they're more catered for marine navigation so not a land navigational friendly. Now every newborn use the GPS but for me it's useful but not much affect in my life, only for outdoor activities. You're more calm in the wild with GPS than a map and compass.
I don't know the system beyond 3G but as far as I remember the system below 3G has no GPS ant. install at base station (NMT,GSM).
3:18
"...for special relativity, because changes in the Earth's gravity ..."
NOOOOOO! It's not special relativity, which deals with gravity, but general relativity. Special relativity only cares about speed.
TheUglyGnome he was talking about the way that satellites speed up and slow down depending on the the strength of gravity directly beneath the satellite where it's passing over the Earth.
If gravity changes, i.e. get stronger or weaker, the satellite speeds up or slows down accordingly because the rotational orbit around the Earth is dependent on a constant gravity map.
So special relativity deals with speed as you correctly said, but speed is affected directly by the orbital velocity and that can be affected by the strength of gravity.
The reason is, because of how fast the satellite needs to travel to stay in orbit if the gravity is stronger so it naturally speeds up, creating an ellipsoid orbit. This gravity Matt is taken into consideration by satellite companies that launch them and build special timing into to the circuitry in order to deal with this gravity map difference in the constancy off the reflection timing of the signal bouncing.
I was reading about this just about two or three months ago in a book which talks about how special relativity changes the satellite Orbital ellipsoid patterns depending on the strength of the Earth's gravity.
It's very interesting.
YEEEEESSSSSSSS It is both. GPS satellites have to correct their timing for two different relativity effects. The clocks run 7 microseconds per day slow due to their high orbital speed. Special relativity explains this. The clocks run 45 microseconds per day fast due to the lower gravity experienced 12,000 miles farther from the center of the Earth. General relativity explains this. Therefore, GPS has to correct its clocks by 45-7=38 microseconds per day due to relativity.
You just finished your first semester class in physics didn't you? I remember when I was a freshman and thought I now held the secrets of the universe. My end of semester grades proved that to be a false impression lol
(a minor correction) The trading bots (HFT) are not so sensitive to clock precision. They are event driven - they react on incoming data which reflects the activity of other traders and bots including its own. What matters for them is to be the first when they decide to send an action because if some event X makes bot A confident enough, it's likely that the same event will trigger the same decision for bot B. It's true that sometimes a sub-nanosecond makes the difference, but this is not because of the clock. The exchange processes them according to order of arrival
MY MOM SAYS IM SPECIAL
Thanks and good job as usual. It's amazing that we in the USA, GB, and Europe haven't had any social upheavals due to a failure in the communication technology that we are so dependent on.
Wasn't ready for all that, but it was awesome. Thanks. Oh and nice watch.
I only actually use my gps on the rare occasion I go somewhere I’ve not been before, but I do use it on my regular daily drives but only for my arrival time.
This is one of the most informative and educational episodes! Well done!
Good evening Paul, as always excellent video. For me working in London many years ago all we had was A-Z or atlas. Today of course sat navs and I love them but if there was no gps I personally would not have a problem finding my way. However have little doubt that that the younger generation would be simply lost.
Ps I did wish you and your family a merry Christmas and happy new year on your last video upload before this one.
So now Christmas has past. Happy new year to you and your family. Kind regards
Danny 🙂
Another fabulously informative video, thank you @CuriousDroid
Wow! Great job of explaining all of that to me. I was wondering why and how such a complicated system has gotten better. In regard to the electrical grid.
You didn't mention the land based differential GPS transmitters or the geosynchronous WAAS satellites. DGPS was initially installed along navigable waterways to improve accuracy before selective availability was turned off. Selective availability became pointless when civilian GPS receivers became able to lock onto up to 12 satellites and do their own error correcting to get as precise of positioning as a military unit locking 4 satellites with full signal accuracy. Only 3 satellites are needed to get your position and velocity. A 4th satellite enables getting altitude. More basic GPS receivers used to use the geoid, a perfect sphere rather than having an internal database of close to the actual shape of the Earth. Using the geoid, even with a 4 satellite lock, the altitude could be miscalculated to be below or above the actual altitude. Not a good thing for low flying aircraft.
Man you are fantastic ! Great videos always 🙌👍👍