Gravity

[cliffie47]

If the sun was magically removed in a split second it would be five minutes before it got dark on earth. When would we feel the effect of gravity, imediately or in a few minutes?

[Skids]

I would say instantly, but that's a stab in the dark.

[thekraut]

the speed of light is not only the maximum speed for matter but also for information of any kind. so i think the effects of the sun no longer being there will also kick in after 5 minutes.

[bernardo]

Yes - most physicists accept that gravity travels at the speed of light.  A while ago someone else asked a question about this, and I think that someone gave a link which talked about a load of technical stuff which showed from experiments that gravity travels at bewteen 80% and 105% of the sped of light - but the margin of error was quite large, so it is reasonable to think that it's the same speed.  I can't remember what any of the tchnical stuff was specifically.

[Peter Pedant]

I stick my oar into all sorts of c*ap and i think I contributed to this one.

I think it is an Einstein gedanken experiment - E only did thought experiments and is meant to illustrate that (speed of transmission of) info cannot exceed the speed of light. If anyoneknows the site B is referring to, please tell.

[Cloned]

I saw a program on this about greatest scientist on channel 5 i think, some time ago. Newton thought it would happen straight away. But Einstien argued that it would be the speed of light, which it is. They did a experiment not to long ago when they went pass Jupiter, because of it's large gravity, to measure the speed, and they found it was roughly right. 

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg17723790.800

yeah about 2003, u used to be able to read the whole article.

[landie]

The suns gravity keeps Earth's orbit stable. If it wer to dis appear it would be akin to swinging a corded weight around your body and cutting the cord. If we owed our gravity to the sun the objects and people on the sunny side of Earth would be sucked into space while those on the dark side were safe until the Earth rotated.

The gravity which keeps our feet on the ground is Earths own gravitational pull and affects us all pretty much evenly.

[Dacetine]

The force of gravity is transmitted by massless particles called gravitons that travel at the speed of light. So the suns gravity would stop at the same time as the lights go out.

[Blackshuck]

Pedantic point: it would be 8.3 minutes before it went dark.