is the effect of gravity faster than the speed of light?

Question

if it takes about 8 minutes for the sun light to reach earth due to the sun distance to our planet, that means, if suddenly the sun ceased to shine, planet earth would only fall into darkness after precisely 8 minutes, which is the time delay expected if suddenly there is no light coming from the sun, however in the very unlikey event that the sun suddenly just vanished, then planet earth and all the other planets would instantaneously come out of their original orbits as there would be no sun's gravitational field anymore. hence the geodesics that planets follow around the sun would cease to exist instantaneously. so that means if the force of gravity its caused by this particles called gravitons, surely it appears that at least there is something which has an effect faster then the speed of light. am i right, or wrong, you decide.

Answer 1

GR predicts that gravity travels at the speed of light, and there's experimental evidence to back it up. Not everyone agrees that the experiment was valid though.

Answer 2

i'm no physicist, so i can only give you a lay man's view from what i read over the years.

Fact: It has long been known that gravitational forces apparently act instantaneously over the entire universe.

it takes approx 8 minutes for the light from the sun to reach earth yet we feel the gravitational effect almost instantly, hence it seems the speed of gravity is far greater than the speed of light. in fact it's been suggested that the speed of gravity and light were the same at the start of the big bang but the speed of light is slowing down since. this theory if true it will change the way we view physics:
1/ for starters c is not constant as einstein led us to believe.
2/ perhaps using this knowledge we could produce a propulsion system based on gravitational principles and travel the universe at warp speeds many times that of c.
3/ in the distant future if light is slowing down this universe is going to be a very dark place.

as for the planets losing there orbit because the sun instantly vanishing i wonder would they start orbiting jupiter or our alledge binary brown dwarf star. or would there be a residue effect from the gravitons particles?

taking in account that these are very good theories (but theories never the less) it would seem that you are correct

check the site below for more details.

Answer 3

The Speed of Light is thought to be a universal constant (c) of 3e^8 m/s. It only slows when introduced to different mediums like atmosphere or water. Gravity is relative to the mass producing it, the mass it's acting upon, and the distance from the center of the mass producing it. On Earth gravity is only 9.98m/s^2 however gravity on Jupiter is about 24m/s^2 Since a Black Hole is enormously more massive than Jupiter, but it's all condensed into a small physical area. Remembering that Gravity is related to the mass of the object vs the distance from the center of the object, vs the mass of the object being pulled the gravity expelled by a Black Hole is insanely high relative to other celestial bodies, even Neutron Stars (which bend light). Black Holes have the same mass as stars, but are about the size of just a few kilometers. If our Sun were to become a black hole, it would only be 3km. (at least that would be it's "event horizon" which is the epicenter of the gravity where light can not pass through). However, does this suggest that Light is not pure "energy" but does infact have mass or do I need to learn more about Quantum Mechanics?

Answer 4

Yes, you are correct. The link below raises this exact question and does provide an answer of sorts. The speed is believed to be 2x10^10 c, in other words, 2 E10 x 3E8 m/s = 6E18 m/s.
As I understand it, there are two important pieces of research which confirm SOG is faster than c (SOL). The first is the US Navy and the Jet Propulsion Lab have tracked the earths orbit with Pulsars and found it is centered on the center of the Sun, even though it (and we) are moving through space, and not centered on the Sun as it was 8.3 minutes ago.
The second is by a careful analysis of the change of gravity during an eclipse showed the surprising result the gravity peak caused by the alignment of the Sun and Moon occurred quicker than the visible eclipse, I think the time frame was 38 seconds, which is the time taken for light to travel from the moon to earth.
While this is all contrary to Einsteins theory of relativity, it isn't contrary to the lesser well known Lorentzian theory of relativity, which was actually published in 1904 (Einstein was published in 1905).
From what the website below claims, nearly every Einstein Relativity proof experiment has also proved Lorentz's version of Relativity (LR), and in some cases Lorentz's version has shown to be closer to the actual experimental result.
For example, "LR is fully compatible with the Michelson-Morley experiment".
The question as I now see it is this: If the speed of gravity is 6E18 m/s, why is c so much slower, and was it faster in the past?

Answer 5

It seems to me that the basis of your though is like a ball tied to a piece of string, swing by your hand.

The string being gravities pull, the ball being earth and your hand being the sun.

In this case, when the string is let go, it instantly reacts and moves away. This will never be able to be measured mind you, because you cannot simply stop something existing and time the reaction. So we can but speculate.
One idea, I suppose, is that it would react in the way light reacts and would take time to respond.

However, Gravity is not light.
It doesn't act like light.
It doesn't move like light.
Gravity doesn't give off or contain light, but light does have gravity.

Gravity therefore is to do with the concentration of energy within something, as it was calculated by a particular brainy man how much energy a photon of light would need before it created a blackhole by itself.

For planets and everthing smaller or bigger, this is all about mass and density. For the denser an object is, whatever the size, has a higher gravity. Mass, is really a necessity, but not actually all important for gravity.
A Nebula for instance have massive mass, but low gravity, because of its low density.

A Neutron Star may have a much smaller mass, but infinitly higher gravity due to its huge density.

As I said before, its impossible to do anything but speculate about it. But I would suggest that simply because Gravity is a weak force, does not mean it is slow in reacting.
This is a force that actually knows no bounds.
It may grow smaller with distance, but only ever smaller. Never reacing zero, regardless of how far reaching it has to be.

Perhaps gravity is the only instantaneous force.
How else could a force have an effect over infinite space?

Answer 6

The speed of gravity is the same as the speed of light. If the sun suddenly vanished, it would take 8 minutes for us to be in darkness and 8 minutes for the lack of the sun's gravity to affect us.
There is an effect that is faster than the speed of light. It is the effect a pair of spin particles have on each other. It is instantaneous.

Answer 7

Your question is a little convoluted. First gravitational pull is quite different that the energy of a photon. Light has a constant speed. A black hole has a gravitational field which creates an escape speed greater than that of light. Ergo, gravity wins. But your question is full of false assumptions and concepts. First if the sun were to "wink out' it's mass would remain the same, and no planet would go spinning off. Mass the same, gravity the same. Gravitons?, hand me one. The existence of gravitons is still hotly debated in science and by no means proven. No, nothing known is faster than light, and gravity has no "speed".

Answer 8

I would say that the effects of the gravity change would be quicker than light. So we would feel the loss of the sun before we see it.

An example. What if we had an solid iron bar 100,000 miles long. If we were to move that bar 1 foot forward would we see the movement at our end at the same time, after or before the other end.
I would think it would be nearly instantanous for the bar to physically move at either end and a minute later you would see the bar move at the other end.

The 4th dimension is similar to that solid bar but instead of behaving like a solid it would behave similar to water, fluid dynamics,ect.

Answer 9

Although not experimentally proven, the theory says that change of gravity (gravity waves) travel at exactly the speed of light. In theory interaction between masses is conveyed by exchange of virtual gravitons that do not have mass, so they can't travel at any other speed than the speed of light. Gravitational waves have not been directly observed, but the observed behaviour of pairs of pulsars is exactly as if they lose energy by emiting gravitational waves, which supports the theory. The planets would continue along their orbits until the crest of the wave of space warp reaches them, then continue straight on (well, they have been moving straight anyway in the space warped by Sun, so they will carry on still straight in a space warped differently)

Answer 10

According to general relativity, mass warps spacetime, and gravity is merely the demonstrated effect of bodies taking the shortest path in the curved spacetime. In a black hole, where spacetime is infinitely curved, a light beam has no path by which it can travel to exit the black hole.

Thus it seems to me on the one hand that gravity is not a force at all, but a warping of the fabric of spacetime, much like a bowling ball warps the surface of a mattress. On the other hand, if you dropped a bowling ball on a mattress, it would appear that the distortion of the surface is not instantaneous, but takes an appreciable time. Tricky.