Letters : Way out

Published 28 September 1996

From Robert Shilston


In response to your concerns during the summer about computers crashing as
the year changes to 2000 (Letters, 13 July etc.), surely the more worrying thing
is the global positioning satellite.

According to Electronics And Beyond (Maplin, 1996), the atomic
clocks in GPS satellites are accurate to 1 second in 70 000 years, and a
discrepancy of 1/1000th of a second means a location some 300 kilometres

I dread to think what would happen if the clocks became 20 years out.

According to my calculations, that would be 11 730 000 000 000 miles out.