Light traveling from the Sun to Earth takes 8 minutes. If the Sun were to (hypothetically) suddenly cease to exist, it would take the Earth 8 minutes to notice, before everything went dark.

In the same situation, how long would it take for the Earth to notice that the gravitationally pull from the Sun has suddenly ceased?

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flaming balloons

Depending on what cosmology you believe in this will have different words but somethings are the same in all cosmologies.

1. Quantum gravity states that a graviton cannot travell faster than light.
2. In Quantum gravity DYNAMICS, the gravity wave/particle duality travels all possible roads between point A and B in such a fascion that the meantime of all the ways are equal to C when computed over a Feynman-Higgs path-integral solution.
3. In relativity, gravity is an "event" and events cannot travell faster than the speed of light. So the dissapearance of gravity has not happened before you observe the dissapearance of gravity.
4. In stringtheory the gravity-dimension in the eleven dimensional supersymmetrical roomlets cannot travel faster than the speed of light since it is attached to the two dimensional BRAN.
5. In simulation theory the "information" of what we percieve as "gravity" cannot compute at a faster than the maximum bit speed in six-phasic time. Ie, the discrete information of the simulated suns ending of it's simulation will not reach the simulation of "you" in a faster time than the Universal Computer (the universe) can calculate, which coincidentally is analogous to C.

You see, it is really simple! For those physically inclined there are of course formulations that are a lot clearer.
Carl

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Simplest answer:
8 minutes
Carl

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... If the Sun were to (hypothetically) suddenly cease to exist, it would take the Earth 8 minutes to notice, before everything went dark.

In the same situation, how long would it take for the Earth to notice that the gravitationally pull from the Sun has suddenly ceased?

That would certainly give LIGO, GEO, VIRGO and Einstein@home quite a jolt!

Hope the Vogons stay well clear until we can deal with them...

Keep searchin',
Martin

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[...]
5. In simulation theory the "information" of what we percieve as "gravity" cannot compute at a faster than the maximum bit speed in six-phasic time. Ie, the discrete information of the simulated suns ending of it's simulation will not reach the simulation of "you" in a faster time than the Universal Computer (the universe) can calculate, which coincidentally is analogous to C.

Is that for the "Return of The Matrix"?

;-)

Cheers,
Martin

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... If the Sun were to (hypothetically) suddenly cease to exist, it would take the Earth 8 minutes to notice, before everything went dark.

In the same situation, how long would it take for the Earth to notice that the gravitationally pull from the Sun has suddenly ceased?

That would certainly give LIGO, GEO, VIRGO and Einstein@home quite a jolt!

Hope the Vogons stay well clear until we can deal with them...

Keep searchin',
Martin

Since one of the tell-tale signs of Vogons where that they had a misplaced liver for brains and a generally bad temper and tolerance for others I would guess that they are already here:-)
Carl

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Simplest answer:
8 minutes

Cat: “So what is it?”
Kryten: “I believe this is known as a white hole. Black holes suck time out of space, white hole put it back in.”
Cat: “So what is it?”
Kryten: “I believe we’ve encountered this time stream before.”
Cat: “So what is it?…
…

(For any Red Dwarf fans out there :-) )

Cheers,
Martin

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Since one of the tell-tale signs of Vogons where that they had a misplaced liver for brains and a generally bad temper and tolerance for others I would guess that they are already here :-)

I've not had that much beer!

(It's too early in the day yet!...)

Cheers,
Martin

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Since one of the tell-tale signs of Vogons where that they had a misplaced liver for brains and a generally bad temper and tolerance for others I would guess that they are already here :-)

I've not had that much beer!

(It's too early in the day yet!...)

Cheers,
Martin

We're on a national holliday so I am just sobering up...

Cheers!
Carl

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8 minutes
Carl

I don't believe it. Not that I have no reason not to, but conveniently you say that nothing travels faster than light, so conveniently everything you don't understand or cannot measure, such as gravity, is as fast as light.

I think we must take out the Sun to test your theory.

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flaming balloons

Simplest answer:
8 minutes
Carl

I don't believe it. Not that I have no reason not to, but conveniently you say that nothing travels faster than light, so conveniently everything you don't understand or cannot measure, such as gravity, is as fast as light.

I think we must take out the Sun to test your theory.

Actually this is a well tested concept. The relativistic principle behind it is the most tested scientific concept known to man.

Actually, I think I have a pretty good understanding of gravity.

The classical problem of gravity is that we do not know how it propagates through universe, but we do know it's effects and it's speed. The two quantum gravitational theories theoreticized that there is either a graviton or a wave/particle duality carrying the effects of gravity on it's shoulders so to speak. During the transition from the relativistic gravity cosmology to the quantum gravimetric cosmology we even got a refinement on the way to compute the effects.
In Digital Mechanics we do not see a problem with gravitons or wave/particle dualities. Instead we see the entire universe as a discrete simulation running on a RUCA (the universe). And the gravity in that theory is carried with what we can for simplicity sake call a bit-carrier containing the information that is the gravimetric effect on the simulation. And the RUCA can never compute the simulation faster than the sum of it's computational power. The effect of the last sentence is the root of what we percieve as the speed of light. C is in DM the same as the highest possible computational speed. C = the computational power of the universe over the affected area.

Carl

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Actually I think you should read up on physics basics. I recommend Brian Greenes eminent book "The beautifull universe".

Carl

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... If the Sun were to (hypothetically) suddenly cease to exist, it would take the Earth 8 minutes to notice, before everything went dark.

In the same situation, how long would it take for the Earth to notice that the gravitationally pull from the Sun has suddenly ceased?

That would certainly give LIGO, GEO, VIRGO and Einstein@home quite a jolt!

Hope the Vogons stay well clear until we can deal with them...

Keep searchin',
Martin

Vogons?
Finally...some HHG2G Fans!

Actually I think you should read up on physics basics. I recommend Brian Greenes eminent book "The beautifull universe".

Carl

The Elegant Universe

Simplest answer:
8 minutes
Carl

In computing the orbits of planets the "speed of gravity" is taken as infinite.
I read somewhere that given the current measurements of the planets, Vg >= 10E6 C

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In computing the orbits of planets the "speed of gravity" is taken as infinite.

That is just a simple inelegant fudge-factor trick to allow for the idea that the gravity is already there in the way that the fabric of space is already distorted by the gravity field.

Happy crunchin',
Martin

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Vogons?
Finally...some HHG2G Fans!

I guess since you're new you've missed frequent references to HHGTTG.
Stramrovulon Beta.

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Capitalize on this good fortune, one word can bring you round ... changes.

Actually I think you should read up on physics basics. I recommend Brian Greenes eminent book "The beautifull universe".

Carl

The Elegant Universe

Sorry, retranslated the title from Swedish:-) Oh my god, I am a bablefish!

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Simplest answer:
8 minutes
Carl

In computing the orbits of planets the "speed of gravity" is taken as infinite.
I read somewhere that given the current measurements of the planets, Vg >= 10E6 C

William, the only time you do that is when you are computing a model of the solarsystem in Newtonian static style. A model is never reality, especially in this case.
The big split between newtonian mechanics and relativity is that everything that has mass or influnces mass ie., have energistic properties of one plank-unit is restricted to C.

Let's state it like this.
Newton stated that an gravitetic events power decreases with half for everytime the distance doubles. He also stated that the effect of the event would be instantenous.
Einsteins mathematics is slightly more exact than Newtons but that is irrelevant. The thing is that he stated that gravitetic event effects propagate at C. Something that is actually testable. And it has been tested a lot.

A way to do this experiment is;
1. Put up a gravitometer in a vacuum room.
2. Drop a 10kg ball past it at a convenient speed one meter away from the gravimetric detector.
Here you will know the expected time between the ball and the detection. If Newton is right that time should be 0, if Einstein is right it should be 1/300,000,000 of a second.
It can still be something else that inluences this minute timedifference so let's see what happens if we halve the distance?
If it stays the same something is wrong with the aparatus and we cannot say anything.
But, if the time halves then we have proved Einstein beyond any doubt.

The experiment is in reality on a slightly bigger scale but it has been done on numerous occations. Einstein right, newton wrong. ;-)

BTW, why do you think you get a redshift on light passing intense gravimetric sources? Yes, because the gravimetric source is decreasing the flow of time, something that would not be possible if gravitational effects where instantenous. This last paragraph is simplified for simplicity.

Carl

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Light is mediated by a particle called the photon.
Gravity is believed to be mediated by the graviton.
Both are massless particles.
Both travel at exactly the same maximum speed.
~186,000 miles per second which is the known top speed
for massless particles, nothing to do directly with light.
Therefore,
answer to question,
~8 minutes.

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