If the Sun was suddenly gone, would it take it 8 minuets for Earth to start to leave it's orbit?

Question

In other words, is gravity faster than the speed of light?

Theoretically speaking of coarse!

Answer 1

No (information carrying) signal travels faster than light. So when the sun vanishes (just pretend), a gravitational wave ripples out at the speed of light. No one on Earth sees the sun vanish for 8 minutes, and the Earth doesn't feel the sun's gravity disappear for 8 minutes. Then the Earth continues in whatever direction it was heading at its orbital speed (not counting the tiny gravitational effects of the other planets.)

Answer 2

Einstein's theory contradicts Newton's. Newton says that if the sun suddenly vanished, the planets would instantly leave its orbit but Einstein says that it would take 8 min. for the Sun's rays to travel to the Earth and for the Earth to leave its orbit. He shows that nothing, not even gravity could be faster than light

Answer 3

According to Einstein it would move out of orbit immediately.
Since it took 8 min. for the sun to disappear the earth would already be moving out of orbit.

Answer 4

This is an undecided question in physics. For a clear discussion see http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/grav_speed.html
An new attempt to measure the speed is reported at http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3232
but the interpretation of the results are controversial.

Answer 5

light is that fast, but gravity would be faster i think, beacuseit would be gone instantly...its hard to say because that much matter couldnt just disappear

Answer 6

No.