Computer clocks and Relativity

[Richard Barth]

At 07:15 PM 2/27/2010, andre kesteloot wrote:
>Gang,
>
>An acquaintance of mine owns a laptop running Windows XP.
>He lives in Maryland, hence within same time-zone as mine in Virginia.
>The little icon located at bottom right of his screen indicates the 
>actual real current time.
>
>If he sends out an e-mail message, however, the msg will be dated differently.
>
>A msg that I send him at 1600H is marked, when he receives it, as 
>being dated earlier in time, i.e., at 15:34H, about 1/2 hour earlier 
>than real time
>If he writes to me at 16:00H, it will be marked on my computer as 
>having been sent at 16:37H, or about 1/2 later than real time
>
>Is this a   --so far unexplained--  effect of special relativity ?
>

No, it means that Maryland is at least a half hour ahead of Virginia.  :-)



Richard Barth *** W3HWN(at)ARRL.NET *** Silver Spring, MD