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Faster than the speed of light?

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Gameboy
Posts: 2657 - Karma: 127
Ok so I have a question.

Everyone knows (probably not)that if the sun dissapears in one second, it will take us 8 minutes to notice since the light from it takes that much time to reach the earth. BUT, as soon as the sun dissapears, the earth is instantly no longer attracted by him. Does this mean that the force of gravitation (that moves in this case, to an infinite speed ) is going faster than the speed of light?

I may be wrong, I'm just curious about that!
Mar 14 2011 12:28AM
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Slinger1x1
Posts: 8853 - Karma: 66
first of all, who is attracted to "him"? who are you refering to when you say "him".

and gravity is exactly that - a force. it is an inanimate object, therefore it cannot be faster than light because it is not anything but a force
Mar 14 2011 12:35AM
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soulskier
Posts: 17806 - Karma: 3,841
haha, i have absolutely no idea and you referred to the sun as a him. clearly a she
Mar 14 2011 12:36AM
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Caspian
Posts: 1475 - Karma: 25
Some believe gravity is similar to light in that it is both a wave and a particle. So who the fuck knows, probably would be the same speed as light.
Mar 14 2011 12:37AM
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MCIRONCOCK
Posts: 3094 - Karma: 30
God, obviously. Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Mar 14 2011 12:38AM
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steevner
Posts: 4502 - Karma: 47
Gravity isn't anything that travels at any rate of time. It's just there, all the time.
Gravity just makes up this crazy space time fabric
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Mar 14 2011 12:39AM
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Gameboy
Posts: 2657 - Karma: 127
sorry sorry, by him I mean the sun, my mistake.
Mar 14 2011 12:40AM
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RudyGarmisch
Posts: 25443 - Karma: 13,844
Haha, I'm wrong! Gravity has a certain speed - it may or may not be the speed of light, but it not instantaneous, as shown by many experiments. Coooooool!
Mar 14 2011 12:45AM
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appa
Posts: 2249 - Karma: 1,739
if the sun stops burning, explodes, flies away, whatever, planet earth is fucked and so is all of it's inhabitants. yea it would be crazy and many things could be discovered, but fuck, who's going to give a shit.
Mar 14 2011 12:45AM
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Gameboy
Posts: 2657 - Karma: 127
I wanted to know if the force of gravitation had a definite speed, and if so, what it was but ginko answered that question.

No of course planets would fire off trajectory since there's nothing to keeping them moving in a regular trajectory like the sun.
Mar 14 2011 12:50AM
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Gameboy
Posts: 2657 - Karma: 127
why do you post if you don't give a shit?
Mar 14 2011 12:51AM
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appa
Posts: 2249 - Karma: 1,739
you're right that post wasn't really in the correct tone. it's interesting, but i guess i went off on a tangent about the end of the world situation.

here's a similar situation (hypothetical, i'm not sure if it could actually happen): two objects spontaneously appear in the universe. before the light of both of them have time to reach something viewing them, they apply gravitational force on each other. it's crazy to think that it would have to be instantaneous, because if it is in existence, and massive, there will be gravitational force. there wouldn't be fractions of a second where they have no force acting upon them. it's a wild theory and i'm not sure what kind of study has been done on it. i think einstein came up with it.
Mar 14 2011 12:58AM
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Talacious[Tally]
Posts: 1686 - Karma: 189

this.

Gravity doesn't travel so it can't be compared to light in that way. It is an interesting thought though.

Mar 14 2011 1:00AM
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Obsessedwski
Posts: 2261 - Karma: 71
If I'm understanding this right, what you're trying to ask is: "Is the speed at which we would be traveling away from our original orbit around the sun (once it disappears, and thus the gravitational pull with it), greater than the speed at which the light emitted from the sun prior to its disappearance is traveling?

So basically would we outpace the light?
Mar 14 2011 1:03AM
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saucybiscuits
Posts: 2554 - Karma: 173
the problem with this is:


the sun will not go out in one second. when it dies, it will become a red giant, and grow large enough to envelope almost all of the planets, including earth. once the sun is actually dead, (white dwarf, pulsar, etc) it will have been millions of years since the destruction of earth.

you are ignorant.
Mar 14 2011 1:05AM
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Gameboy
Posts: 2657 - Karma: 127
No, I was asking if the force of gravitation that attracts us to the sun is faster than the speed of light.
Mar 14 2011 1:06AM
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Gameboy
Posts: 2657 - Karma: 127
I know the sun can't dissapear in one second.
Mar 14 2011 1:07AM
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Mr.Gaga
Posts: 2021 - Karma: 542

Gravity depends on weight of the object and distance not on size.

Gravity is a reciprocal attraction between 2 weights. If one of the weight suddently disappear the gravity force between the 2 weight will do the same. It's not like the sun is sending us the force and it take a certain time to reach us, the sun and the heart are both there so there is an attraction force between each other. There's no time of reaction or speed.

Mar 14 2011 1:16AM
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word-sauce
Posts: 1151 - Karma: 11
 Physicists believe there could be a gravity particle called a "graviton" that causes the effects of gravity; they're looking for these particles now with the LHC and if they are there then theoretically i guess they would be faster than light. But if you were to go with the theory we have now gravity is simply a force and thus instantaneous it doesnt have a velocity
Mar 14 2011 1:25AM
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Obsessedwski
Posts: 2261 - Karma: 71
That doesn't make any sense, speed is not a derivative of gravity in the sense you're talking about
Mar 14 2011 1:39AM
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TheStamos
Posts: 9311 - Karma: 910
String theory . OP if your interested read The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene
Mar 14 2011 1:42AM
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Niceguy33
Posts: 90 - Karma: 10
Being nit picky but weight is relative. Mass would be more appropriate.
Mar 14 2011 1:46AM
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no_steeze
Posts: 23992 - Karma: 4,273
mr. sun, sun, mr. golden sun
Mar 14 2011 2:13AM
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huge-go
Posts: 1451 - Karma: 33
I'm not completely sure, but I think I remember reading something about this and general relativity. Basically I remember that general relativity uses the constant c not only as the speed of light, but the natural speed limit for the universe, which includes gravity.
Mar 14 2011 3:24AM
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Dan.P
Posts: 1351 - Karma: 12
What? how is gravity a wave or a particle?
(not a hateful reply, I am actually wondering)

Mar 14 2011 3:56AM
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I_Am_Mod
Posts: 13214 - Karma: 3,753
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_gravity


"The speed of gravitational waves in the general theory of relativity is equal to the speed of light in vacuo, c."

c isn't just about the speed of light, it's the highest possible speed for any interaction ....

Mar 14 2011 8:10AM
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I_Am_Mod
Posts: 13214 - Karma: 3,753
just gonna leave this here... :)
Mar 14 2011 8:13AM
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a_pla5tic_bag
Posts: 9217 - Karma: 5,399
thats what I was thinking.
Mar 14 2011 8:49AM
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maximiliaan
Posts: 7711 - Karma: 2,857
ive got an headache
Mar 14 2011 8:52AM
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Yinzer
Posts: 1011 - Karma: 73
speed of light is a speed, gravity is an acceleration.

your momentum is wrong.

btw if anything goes over th speed of light everyone will die. mass is not conserved at that speed (human detonation).
Mar 14 2011 9:53AM
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.newman.
Posts: 1552 - Karma: 236
I just did this in physics. Gravity will travel at the speed of light.
Mar 14 2011 10:05AM
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Bar_Down
Posts: 5896 - Karma: 395
wtf. this makes no sense to me. maybe what happens in the experiments is that after you remove the object creating the force, the other object continues moving for a bit until other forces stop it. i really cant imagine gravity having an actual speed, its a force, if you make a big mass appear out of nowhere, right at the moment of apparition, there will be a force acting on the objects surrounding it, there will be a delay in observable evidence of this force being there but that would only be due to friction, inertia, etc. but im no expert, thats just the way i see it in my head, i cant picture it being any other way aha
Mar 14 2011 11:23AM
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Flying~Squirrel
Posts: 6494 - Karma: 192
i suppose that there is a chance that the light would not reach us as soon as it normally would because we would be moving away from where the sun once was, but we are not moving the speed of light, so it would just take a little while longer.
Mar 14 2011 11:58AM
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airic
Posts: 720 - Karma: 16
No, information of any kind CANNOT travel faster than the speed of light. If the sun suddenly exploded or whatever, the change in graviational force exerted on the earth by the sun (a form of information) would not be felt by the earth until delta(t) after the explosion, where
(distance between earth and sun) / (delta(t) )  is less than the speed of light.

Mar 14 2011 12:06PM
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skiierman
Posts: 28699 - Karma: -5,563
are you sure you don't want to discuss the speed of love?

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Mar 14 2011 1:33PM
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I_Am_Mod
Posts: 13214 - Karma: 3,753
people who try to explain this scientifically should use "c" instead of "the speed of light" since the speed of light is variable and only equals "c" in a perfect vacuum...

/end nerd
Mar 14 2011 1:36PM
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CharlieSheen
Posts: 173 - Karma: 10
What about quantum tunneling or whatever?
Mar 14 2011 1:44PM
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airic
Posts: 720 - Karma: 16
The speed of light is not variable; light APPEARS to travel more slowly in, say, water compared to a perfect vacuum because it has to be absorbed by an atom, then re-emitted, and so on in order to propagate. But the actual speed of the light as it moves between the atoms/molecules is the same as in a perfect vacuum.
Mar 14 2011 1:47PM
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airic
Posts: 720 - Karma: 16
Quantum tunneling (as far as I know) offers no examples of things/information travelling faster than the speed of light.
Mar 14 2011 1:50PM
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I_Am_Mod
Posts: 13214 - Karma: 3,753
that's because the space between atoms and molecules is a perfect vacuum .....

generally speaking you could say that lightspeed varies depending on the medium ...
Mar 14 2011 1:51PM
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I_Am_Mod
Posts: 13214 - Karma: 3,753
and, when we start going into advanced quantum physics and relativity, even lightspeed in a vacuum is relative ......

Mar 14 2011 1:54PM
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andrew.
Posts: 2349 - Karma: 165
youre basing all this off the current theory of gravity, which is exactly that, a theory. there have been a bunch of studies that give a lot of evidence that our theory is wrong too, so in order to answer that absurd hypothetical question we would have to have a solid understanding of how gravity works to figure out how it would behave in the absence of the sun. its like youre trying to do long division when you dont know addition.
Mar 14 2011 2:08PM
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poluhasuper
Posts: 599 - Karma: 13
Although you referred to the sun as a animate object you showed slot of intelligence by realizing this... Gravity is not instataneous, how high are you?
Mar 14 2011 2:12PM
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I_Am_Mod
Posts: 13214 - Karma: 3,753

Mar 14 2011 2:20PM
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airic
Posts: 720 - Karma: 16

Okay, well the only relativity course I have taken was in special relativity, and in the course we always used Einstein's postulate that the speed of light is constant in all reference frames.

Mar 14 2011 2:23PM
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I_Am_Mod
Posts: 13214 - Karma: 3,753
under extreme gravity, c is a variable, just think of a black hole that draws all light towards it and "devours" it .....

if you're interested in stuff like that, take your time to read up on it, quantum physics isn't all that difficult to comprehend, it's just ffin weird sometimes :)

only when you have to work with QP, it can get really complicated :)
Mar 14 2011 2:28PM
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airic
Posts: 720 - Karma: 16
Cool. The only quantum physics I have done was non-reletavistic, but it was still super interesting.
Mar 14 2011 2:48PM
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Nathn
Posts: 2408 - Karma: 63
That's like the speed of being. If you turn the light on, you're there before the light turns on. You aren't faster than it.
Mar 14 2011 3:30PM
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I_Am_Mod
Posts: 13214 - Karma: 3,753
in quantum physics, only zorro was faster than his shadow .....
Mar 14 2011 3:56PM
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FerrisBueller
Posts: 8280 - Karma: 5,173
so much wrong in this thread and i laugh at the people who try to explain things like physicists, when they know little to no shit at all about what they're speaking of.
Mar 14 2011 5:48PM
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Joe_Brogan
Posts: 360 - Karma: 11

How can the force of something be compared to speed?  If the sun dissapeared, all the planets would would continue in a line tangent to their orbit at the same speed they were moving at the time the sun went bye bye.  They would continue at this speed until something interacted with them, either slowing them down or launching them faster.

You also have to consider that space isn't flat, and if you took the sun away instantly, it wouldn't go back to being flat instantly, kind of like a drop of water in a pond.  Maybe if the earth was moving at the perfect speed, it could gain speed using the ripples in space just like constructive waves do to out run the force of gravitation.

Another idea:  If nothing can go faster than light, and it takes 8 minutes for light to reach earth, if the sun dissappeared, would it take 8 minutes for it's gravity to reach earth?

Mar 14 2011 6:22PM
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