Successful GPS Operations Contradict the Two Principles of Special Relativity and Imply a New Way for Inertial Navigation - Measuring Speed Directly

Successful GPS operations are based on a basic equation: the range measurement equation, |rr(tr) – rs(ts)| = c(tr –ts), in an earth-centered inertial (ECI) frame, corrected for range biases. The calculations utilizing this equation show that (1) the speed of light is independent of the source’s translational motion relative to the ECI frame if the receiver is stationary; (2) the speed of light is dependent on the receiver’s tranlational motion relative to the ECI frame if the source is stationary; (3) for reference frames which are uniformly moving relative to the ECI frame, although the distances between the sources and the receivers are the same, their ranges in the ECI frame are different, so the propagation times are different and the speeds of light are different. Therefore, the ECI frame is a preferred frame near the earth. To verify this experimentally, a practical and crucial experiment in which no clock synchronization is required (although simultaneity is the key of GPS operations and the relativity of simultaneity of Special Relativity disagrees with the basic operational principle of GPS) has been designed to check whether or not the propagation time changes in different frames. It can be predicted that the crucial experiment will give a result contradicting the two principles of Special Relativity. The crucial experiment can be further simplified by using GPS, and it can be simulated easily with GPS simulators. Furthermore, the falsification of the two principles of Special Relativity and the calculations based on the GPS equation illustrate a new way for inertial navigation – measuring speed directly. A prototype of the new speedometer based on the crucial experiment is given.