so it takes the light from sol about eight minutes to get here. so if our sun somehow vanished we'd stil have eight minutes of sunlight after the event. how bout the gravitational pull? would we continue to experience that for a certain amount of time?
2007-07-27 13:35:44 · 15 answers · asked by play_doh_dude 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Other - Science
as far as i remember from my physics A-level gravitrons/gravitons were a supposed/teorised force/particle any update on this, been several years.
2007-07-27 13:46:29 · update #1
as far as i remember from my physics A-level gravitrons/gravitons were a supposed/theorised force/particle any update on this, been several years.
2007-07-27 13:46:49 · update #2
Your question is really about the propagation speed of gravity. It's still debated among scientists. The 1993 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to a team who reached this conclusion (that gravity propagates at the speed of light) based on astronomical observations. Watch for results from the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) and LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) projects, and the work of Joseph Taylor and Russel Hulse at Princeton.
Gravitation is an extremely weak force, very hard to measure. It's hard to set up an experiment with changing gravitational fields. I wouldn't call it conclusive yet, but I think most physicists would place their bets that gravitation propagates at the speed of light.
So, to answer your question, I would place my bet that both phenomena would be experienced simultaneously.
2007-07-27 16:43:41 · answer #1 · answered by Frank N 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Wow. I think we would have eight minutes of normalcy before we noticed two things. At the end of those eight minutes, we would suddenly realize that it was darker than anything we had ever experienced. At the same fleeting moment we would realize that we had just frozen to death.
However, this scenario doesn't appear to me to have anything to do with gravity. I can't imagine any reason why the disappearance of the sun would stop our planet from revolving on its axis, in spite of the fact that now it would be shooting in a relatively straight line through space, tangent to the arc of our former path around the sun. Our gravity ought to be unchanged, but I believe that in an extremely short time we would all be frozen statues covered in a blanket of snow. The really interesting question, is what would the atmosphere do to the surface of the planet before the water in it froze.
Of course I am assuming that your phrase "gravitational pull" refers to the pull the earth has for everything on it, and not the pull the sun has toward the earth-and-everything-on-it unit.
2007-07-27 13:49:42 · answer #2 · answered by trogwolf 3 · 1⤊ 1⤋
mojo is correct ... the effect of gravity is also limited by the speed of light. (I'm amazed at the number of people who think it would be instant ... that would mean that information (in the form of a gravity pulse, would travel out to the furthest reaches of the solar system ... way past the orbit of Pluto ... into the deepest regions of the Oort clouds ... and beyond ... *instantly*. Einstein was not joking around when he said that *nothing* that carries information can travels faster than light.)
Also, the earth would not freeze instantly. The drop in temperature we experience at nighttime (10-20 degrees in the course of a few hours) would be about the rate of temperature loss from the oceans, the land and the atmosphere. We might survive for several days.
2007-07-27 14:42:06 · answer #3 · answered by secretsauce 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
If the sun instantly vanished (which there is no way of it doing), then the gravitational pull would instantly disappear as well.
Gravitons are hypothetical, and gravitational waves are something different from the gravitation pull between bodies, as I understand it.
Someone is bound to quote Einstein, the man who said all the quantum physicists had got it wrong. What a plonker I say.
The truth is we don't know and never will. This stands to reason as the vanishing of the sun presupposes something happening in physics beyond our current knowledge. If someone can describe an experiment where matter spontaneously anihilates itself without producing any energy then I'm a bozon.
2007-07-27 13:46:46 · answer #4 · answered by bouncer bobtail 7 · 0⤊ 2⤋
no, gravity is not instant, or else it would defy the speed of light. einstein shows us some weird things, and one of them is the effect of space time warping caused by gravity. according to einstein, the earth doesnt travel in a circle, but rather in a straight line. the thing about it is that the space-time around the sun is warped by the effect of gravity so as to cause the earth to appear to circle around the sun. think of it like a ball rolling on a trampoline. if i push down on a spot on that trampoline, i warp the 2 dimensional space of that trampoline into something of a 3 dimensional space. the ball on the tramp could get caught in a circle around that warping if it were to travel in a line directly parallel to the curvature caused by the depression.
thats kinda besides the point though. gravitons are the theoretical particle that causes gravity, and they dont travel faster than light. gravity is not very well understood though, just experienced.
check out this nova special, its based on a book by the physicist brian greene called "the elegant universe"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html
2007-07-27 13:47:48 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 2⤋
It's an interesting question, and one for which the answer isn't known for sure. Does the earth revolve around the position of the sun where it is at this instant, or where it was eight minutes ago? It appears, incredibly enough, to revolve around where the sun is this instant; variation would lead to observable effects.
2007-07-27 13:41:56 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
Yes,
the point is that the assumption (if our sun somehow vanished) also supposes other scenarios like "If our sun stops shining" or if our sun suddenly blasts. And as to gravity, it is caused by existing of masses which causes the curviness of space, and mass can not suddenly "somehow vanish". Even in mass turns into light, it also spreads with the velocity of light.
2007-07-27 14:09:49 · answer #7 · answered by Oakes 2 · 0⤊ 2⤋
I haven't studied physics in a while, but I think that the gravitation pull would alter instantly. Something about the fabric of space, I don't know. You'd have to ask someone physics-savvy to know for sure.
2007-07-27 13:41:58 · answer #8 · answered by slogan909 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Gravity is also subject to the speed of light.
We'd still have the eight minutes of blissful ignorance.
2007-07-27 15:42:17 · answer #9 · answered by Irv S 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
without gravity surely we'd all levitate to a rarified atmosphere and die of asphyxiation, that is until the solar shockwave hits the earth and fries it... or as already movieated, the sun goes out and we all die in a year or two anyway...
could we generate enough sunlight/power to susatain a community, a country...a world... im sure we could, but would we?
2007-07-27 13:45:19 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋