NavList:

   

Reply

Bill,

> For the longest time I thought we were beating a dead horse.

This I don't understand. Who is beating and who is a "dead horse".

> you have catapulted the discussion into the realm of sadism
> and bestiality.

This I understand even less. I am just trying to understand the
cause of the 10' systematic error. Two explanations were offered,
and I think I made a balanced and unbiased summary of this discussion.
The question remains unsolved.

I don't understand what this purely
scientific discussion has to do with "beating, sadism, bestiality,
blame"
and other such things.

> Lest we forget, the bulk of the observation are yours using your sextant
> and my sextant (the one with the allegedly huge side error).

So what? The bulk is mine, but the best series is yours.
The error is approx. the same everywhere, so this is not likely
to be a "personal error" or a sextant error. So it is nor really
relevant how many observations are yours and how many mine.

> Therefore I have some vested
> interest in why my observations were 10' off.

My only interest is WHY this error occured. I am discussing
a scientific question, not personal question, so I am not using
such words as "blame", "integrity" etc. (From my point of view,
there is no personal questions here, and in any case I am not interested
in the subject of human relations in this discussion).

> Scientific objectivity mandates that I pursue your theory with the same
> vigor

Scientific objectivity mandates that one pursues the search of truth.
(Words line "blame", etc. have no use in science).

> If a hiccup occurs it is almost certainly going to be during an
> attempted signal reception.

Yes. And the question discussed was whether such event could occur or not
during our observation. Of course I agree that this is extremely unlikely,
and that probably we would have noticed if it occured.
But with the date we have we probably can never decide with 100%
certainty.

> I repeatedly caused it to look for a signal.  No signal,
> but still no time jump.

New twist: could refraction distort the radio signal, as it dostorted
the light ray? :-)
When you search Google on "anomalous refraction" most of the sites
that pop up are on distortion of radio signals.
Of course I am aware that they are talking about very short wave
range, and the time signals are broadcasted on the longest wave range.
So this was a joke.

> You suggested off list I should ask the list about the GPS vs. RCC time.

Did I really suggest this??

> You seem to be unfamiliar with the Great Lakes.

Correct. Never sailed there. because you never invited me when you
sailed:-)

> You can't embrace extraordinary conditions.

This is not correct. It was proven (by well-verifi9ed references) that
such conditions CAN exist. I agree with this.

My point is different. My point is mainly based on the second reduction.
That adjusting the watch by EXACTLY 1 min gives very reasonable UNBIASED
result. It looks very unlikely from the point of view of probability
and statistics, that abnormal refraction for 4 hours had EXACTLY the
same effect as 1 min watch correction.

THIS is the main point which worries me.
I believe now that conditions on lake Mich could distort the observations
by that much. But that the distortion almost EXACTLY coincided
with the distortion caused by 1 min difference, is very suspicious.


Alex.

   

Reply