Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Just out of curiosity, how will the GPS co-ordinates
differ in the
Galileo system from the existing system? I assume that the two can be
easily converted back and forth, or that the numbers are the same for
both?
If the numbers differ, we should accept both, so the markup should
have the ability to distinguish. It'd be a shame if I took my GPS
receiver (which uses the existing system) to get a location, but could
not enter it. It would be equally a shame if someone took a Galileo
system out in a few years and could not easily enter that as well.
--Jimbo
Both Galileo and the GPS use the International Terrestrial Reference
System as their reference frame, and TAI as their reference timescale.
They then derive their own realizations of these idealized systems using
their own infrastructure.
Although the Galileo and GPS realizations of the ITRS and TAI will be
independent, they should match to within a resolution of a few
centimeters or nanoseconds respectively, and so should be effectively
interchangeable for most low-resolution use.
See
http://www.galileosworld.com/galileosworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=756…
and
http://www.iers.org/iers/earth/itrs/itrs.html for more details.
-- Neil