Earth’s continental plate movement can cause problems for GPS (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Earth’s continental plate movement can cause problems for GPS (2016)

news.nationalgeographic.com

40 pointsfurcyd13 comments

Seems GPS is a great way to confirm the usefulness of theories that were once controversial. You need an understanding of relativity to make it work and now continental drift also plays a role.

Previous discussion from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12188144 (53 comments)

I wonder how fast a continent would have to move before you could practically extract power from its motion?

Probably a lot faster...

In a panel that discussed ideas on how to store energy there was a peculiar idea: Cap a large mountain and elevate its top by pumping liquid into it. If you need the energy again, just extract the fluid an generate the needed energy.

It was probably not feasible because we are lacking efficient and low-maintenance pumps, but it convinced me. Hope to have my own battery mountain one day...

But a similar fluid/pressure approach might indeed allow us to extract energy from continental drift.

Lifting blocks. Filling reservoirs. Moving loaded train cars uphill.

These all store energy be resisting gravity until recovering the energy by allowing gravity to do its work. Some are more practical than other. I'd have to say this mountain capping plan is the least practical I've ever seen.

At that huge scale and tiny speed the structural material being compressed would prevent any useful power transfer. It seems like there are lots of ideas like this from engineers who partially understand other disciplines, a little nugget of a good idea but with knowledge gap issues that prevent feasibility. I still think they’re a good thing because eventually someone will float an idea with potential. There’s no harm in throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks!

Wouldn't be fun without a challenge.

It's pretty crazy, but we're all just riding ships of bedrock that float on oceans of magma

This article is from 2016. Edit: They fixed the title.

Should really be (20.5cm) though?

so much nonsense/editorializing in the article & headline.

how does this float to page 1? (pardon the pun)

Are you in the right thread? I don't see any editorializing in this article.

> "Australia Is Drifting So Fast GPS Can't Keep Up"

it's not GPS that can't keep up, it's people who who decided that this data was more immutable than it actually was, and now they're stuck with firmware that's difficult to update.

> A significant correction must be made by the end of the year for navigation technology to keep working smoothly.

4.9 ft is not significant for navtech to work smoothly. there are still people involved. because GPS is not something that is accessible everywhere at all times. 5ft is a correction that a human can reasonably make. although if you wanted to snipe an individual from orbit without human involvement, then 5ft is a big problem.

> The last adjustment there, in 1994, was about 656 feet.

now, that was significant.

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