Jump to content

Gravity, how fast?


alpha2cen

Recommended Posts

There are two stars which are 0.1 light years far away. Two stars are attracted each other by gravity. If one day one star disappears, how about the other star movement?

If no force acts on an object, what does it do? Today's choices are:

 

A. Travel in a straight line.

B. Stop instantly, while waiting for further instructions.

C. Do a funny dance

 

I think you can answer this one yourself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If no force acts on an object, what does it do? Today's choices are:

 

A. Travel in a straight line.

B. Stop instantly, while waiting for further instructions.

C. Do a funny dance

 

I think you can answer this one yourself.

 

It's another problem.

Between two objects gravity had existed, but one moment one object disappeared which was too far away.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If our Sun were to suddenly disappear, the Earth would continue in its orbit around where the Sun was for about 8.3 minutes. Then the Earth would fly out of orbit into space in a straight line (ignoring the gravity from the other planets). Gravitational disturbances travel at the speed of light, some 670 million miles an hour. At this speed, it takes about 8.3 minutes to travel the roughly 93 million miles from the Sun to the Earth.

 

Oh, and sunlight would also continue to be pouring down on the Earth for about 8.3 minutes after the Sun dissapears because light also travels at the speed of light.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Are there any theoretical link speed of gravity has to be same as speed of light?

 

 

In particular look up gravitational waves.

 

In short, small perturbations of a massive object cause gravitational waves that radiate at the speed of light. In this sense, gravity travels at the speed of light.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Between two objects gravity had existed, but one moment one object disappeared which was too far away.

 

Then, how gravity arrived with time?

Example

A star--------------------------------------------------------------- B star

gravity1......1.....1.....1.....1.....1.....1.....1.....1......1......1...1initial state

...........0......1.....1.....1.....1.....1.....1....1......1......1.....1....1 one star disappear

...........0......0.....0.....0.....1.....1.....1....1......1......1.....1....1 C answer

...........0......0.2..0.5...0.7..1....1.....1....1......1.....1.....1.....1 D answer

Above example which one is correct between answer C and D?

and Why?

Edited by alpha2cen
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The question is like this.

Star disappears instantly as 1...0.

The question is nonsense. You are asking what physics says will happen after something currently deemed to be physically impossible happens. Because stars don't instantly disappear, there is no physically plausible answer to your question.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The question is nonsense. You are asking what physics says will happen after something currently deemed to be physically impossible happens. Because stars don't instantly disappear, there is no physically plausible answer to your question.

 

 

 

 

If there are equations which describe such system, we can obtain tendency curves for this artificial situation.

When supernova explosion happen, how about the gravity near around the supernova? Most of the mass might disappear into the light, some of mass might remains.

This is a decreasing step function.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It might have been said to you in several different threads already, but I think it needs to be repeated again:

 

According to Relativity BOTH energy and mass warps spacetime equally.

 

So due to conservation laws it is not possible to instantaneously remove a source of gravity from a location, even if all mass in a supernova explosion would be converted to energy in one single event, all that resulting light would still have the same gravity as the mass had before and then gravity would decrease gradually as the photons starts to radiate away with the speed of c.

 

 

However that is not what you was asking about and not the reason for why I asked how the star disappeared.

 

The rate of how fast mass/energy are accumulated/dispersed is not the same as which speed the change itself is spreading with.

 

As I understand relativity the propagation of the change is moving outward from the source with c but the slope of the change doesn't change with distance, it remains constant. If a star varies its output with regular intervals then the frequency of the twinkles is measured to be equal for a close and a distant observer, but if the star would suddenly change the interval frequency then the closer observer would measure this change before the distant one. Likewise if the observers had sensitive enough equipment they could measure how the gravity decreases in steps with the same interval as the light twinkles and agree on the frequency but disagree on the time when the change of interval did happen.

 

So if we assume that we could remove a star instantly then I think a distant observer would measure a normal gravity and light from this star until the abrupt change would arrive, were both gravity and light would vanish simultaneous and equally instantly as the star was removed.

Edited by Spyman
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.