Is there an easily visible consequence of special relativity that you can see without specialized equipment?
A working GPS receiver.
I only believe that depends on special relativity because I was told so; if I’m so skeptical I suspect that scientist lied to me about special relativity, then I should be equally suspectful of engineers telling me GPSes have to take special relativity into account to work right.
If you are at all mathematical, you can verify that relativity affects GPS signals by calculating what difference both special relativity (satellite clock moving faster than clock on Earth, hence slower) and general relativity (satellite clock higher up the gravitational field than clock on Earth) would make to timekeeping and hence accuracy of location. The effects work against each other, but one is larger than the other.
You can verify accuracy of location of a GPS yourself. IME this is almost always considerably less accurate than published estimates by the device manufacturer, but still impressive. However, you need to be careful—most smartphones use multiple technologies to determine their location, not just GPS, so will be more accurate than the GPS signal can possibly be.
But 1) even if I measure a GPS’s accuracy, I can’t distinguish errors caused by relativity from other instrument errors, and 2) GPS devices and satellites already try to correct for relativity, so the error I’ll be observing is the error in correction.
I only believe that depends on special relativity because I was told so; if I’m so skeptical I suspect that scientist lied to me about special relativity, then I should be equally suspectful of engineers telling me GPSes have to take special relativity into account to work right.
If you are at all mathematical, you can verify that relativity affects GPS signals by calculating what difference both special relativity (satellite clock moving faster than clock on Earth, hence slower) and general relativity (satellite clock higher up the gravitational field than clock on Earth) would make to timekeeping and hence accuracy of location. The effects work against each other, but one is larger than the other.
You can verify accuracy of location of a GPS yourself. IME this is almost always considerably less accurate than published estimates by the device manufacturer, but still impressive. However, you need to be careful—most smartphones use multiple technologies to determine their location, not just GPS, so will be more accurate than the GPS signal can possibly be.
But 1) even if I measure a GPS’s accuracy, I can’t distinguish errors caused by relativity from other instrument errors, and 2) GPS devices and satellites already try to correct for relativity, so the error I’ll be observing is the error in correction.