| Fun house mirrors are curved and distort your reflection. Some fun house mirrors are flexible so they can get pushed or pulled which will make you look taller or shorter or fatter or skinnier than you know you are. By observing the difference between how you appear compared with how you are;
you can learn something about how the flexible mirror is being curved. How this works in the fun house is there is you the mirror and LIGHT. Both you and the light are well known and easy to predict; light will travel straight(ish) and you will not suddenly become very very short, so the thing that is changing your appearance is the flexible mirror. In the GPS rocket case,
the GPS satellites are the illuminating source corresponding to the light in the room sending out radio (electromagnetic radiation same as light just at longer wavelengths) The ground station GPS receivers correspond to your eyes (they know what they *should* see). The earth's ionosphere corresponds to the flexible fun house mirror. taken together, the same way you could tell if something we can't see behind the mirror flexed it, the author of the post showed they can tell if, when and where
an unannounced rocket goes through the ionosphere. |