If the Sun's gravity...

Originally posted by Raw760
Also,
If we involve wave forms into a description of the result of a sudden change of a mass's affect on space(as in the very question of this topic), then we must also include time. yes or no?

How can we describe a shift or rebound of space as a wave with out a frequency? That requires time.

So gravity's affect or lack of affect, on space and object ...[text shortened]... ing in the dark.
But I use a full-auto shotgun! What a scatter brain!

OMG I can't see!!!...

You are correct about time and gravity. Space is springy.
You know how you have a bedspring, a lot of springs holding stuff
together and there is an inherent springiness to it, you can pull it
apart and it springs back to its regular shape and if you squeeze it
it comes back to normal when you let go. Same thing with space,
only a bit more complicated🙂
When you add mass to bare space, its like the old trick of the
stainless steel bearing on a rubber sheet, which bends down to
give you a two dimensional visualization of what space is doing when
mass is added. Its really more like a bunch of springs in a mattress
where you have this matrix of springs in all directions and now instead
of gravity you put a strong spherical magnet inside that matrix of
steel springs. The magnetic field attracts the springs which stretches
them out a bit but in all directions. That is just another way of
visualizing the effect of mass on space and time. Time squeezes
also and a gravity wave is a small squeeze in time and a small
squeeze and pull in space at the same time so there is a definite
wavelength and we are trying to sense wavelengths on the order of
a few hundred miles long which is what you might expect if you have
two neutron stars orbiting one another, the system will produce gravity
waves of about 1000 Hertz and that is a wavelength of 186 miles.
Thats what the LIGO and others are hoping to be tuned to. If you
have the space system working you might see much longer
wavelengths because the satellite system would have three boxes
in a triangle about 4 or 5 million Km apart and the beams would go
from one to the other and be able to tell the distance between the
three pieces of less than a micron, this would be tuning for longer
wavelengths, maybe 50 hertz, or a wavelength of about 3700 miles,
maybe even longer.

Hey I thought of that wave form thing on my own, and I wasn't completely wrong!!!

Thanks for explaining.

A few thoughts on this subject.
Many of you have mentioned Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity in the same argument but these two theories actually contradict each other. General Relativity is a 'Classical' theory meaning that objects have specific and definite locations and velocities while quantum theories require that you can't specify both the location and velocity of an object at the same time. This is the reason that physics is so busy looking for a quantum theory of gravity, or a way to combine these two otherwise beautiful theories into one all encompassing explanation for the events and actions in our universe.

There is no requirement for the big bang to be unique. Some string theories suggest that there are many parallel universes to ours, each with a slightly different set of physical laws. Others allow for multiple independent big bangs occurring in a larger space.

Our universe is no longer expected to end in a Big Crunch since not only is it expanding but the rate of it's expansion is increasing. It now seems that eventually all we will be able to see is our local group of galaxies. Everything else will be too far away and too red shifted to detect.

Before I get out of hand let me answer the question: Gravity is thought to travel at the speed of light so if the gravity of the sun were turned off we wouldn't know for 8 minutes. We would not enjoy our new found freedom for very long because the sun would fly apart and eventually engulf us.

If gravity itself were suddenly turned off then the earth would fly apart and kill us long before we could wonder if the sun had joined in on the fun or not.

Originally posted by Shadows2
A few thoughts on this subject.
Many of you have mentioned Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity in the same argument but these two theories actually contradict each other. General Relativity is a 'Classical' theory meaning that objects have specific and definite locations and velocities while quantum theories require that you can't specify both the ...[text shortened]... ld fly apart and kill us long before we could wonder if the sun had joined in on the fun or not.

The first part I agree with 100%. Relativity and Quantum mechanics
are two separate theories and Einstein didn't even LIKE
Quantum theory! "Spooky action at a distance" was on of his
descriptions. The last part about what happens when the sun suddenly
vanishes I don't agree with.
When we say the sun disappears, we mean exactly that, it goes
through a worm hole or something very localized and instantly
is light years away, so even if it does blow up, it won't engulf anything
in the solar system.
Also disagree with the statement the earth would fly apart, it wouldn't
because its only it rotation rate that tells whether it will fly apart or not,
has nothing to do with the sun. What will happen is 8 minutes or so
later, the earth and every other body in the solar system, except at
differant starting times, like mercury would go first, whatever the
tangent line of its orbit, thats the new path it would take, the path
it would have been on if the sun was never there, its the sun's mass
that curves the orbit so it won't fly apart, just go off on a straight line
following the tangent to its orbital path.
Then Venus a few minutes later, then earth, then mars, then Jupiter,
then Saturn, Uranus, pluto, charon, etc.
It looks like a very interesting problem to see what happens to all
the planets, it would be a matter of chance whether the inner planets
would get captured by Jupiter. If they were lined up right, the mass of
Jupiter would be the biggest gravity well in the now free system.
My guess would be the earth would escape getting captured by Jove
because of its previous orbital velocity being so much faster than
Jupiter. Mercury for instance, even if it was aiming right at Jupiter
would probably go right on by, its orbital velocity is pretty fast,
let see if I can do the arithmetic: Just from memory so don't quote
me on this ok! I think its mean distance from the sun is 36E6 miles
and it orbits in 88 days. No big deal. It seems to have an orbital
path of about 226 million miles which takes 88 days, works out to
roughly 30 miles per second. Thats pretty fast.
It would cover 226 million miles in 88 days for sure, 2.5 million miles
per day, so when or if it gets within a couple of million miles of Jupiter
if indeed they would get close, Jupiter would only have a couple of
days to get the capture right, which seems unlikely.
Earth's orbit is about 587 million miles covered in 365 odd days so its
going a bit slower, about 18 miles per second or 1.6 million miles
per day so you can see Jupiter would probably not be able to capture
any of the inner planets. The outer ones however, again a crap shoot
but they are going a lot slower, lets see, Pluto, about 4 ish billion miles
out and a 220 ish year orbit, its going only about 3.5 miles per second
so you can see it would take a pretty powerful simulator to see what
the chances are for a capture. It looks clear the inner planets would
be isolated for pretty much eternity. Bummer.

Please allow me to clarify. I answered the question that was asked: What would happen if the sun's gravity were turned off, not what if the sun were instantly moved or obliterated.

If the sun were obliterated we would float gently into the dark night, just as you suggest.

If the gravity of the sun were turned off the pressure that produces the solar wind and powers fusion would, when freed from the constraints of gravity, expand the sun very quickly. Somewhere in-between the transition to red giant phase and a small super nova. The solar wind currently often exceeds 400 miles per second and that's with gravity working at full strength. It would catch up to the earth pretty quickly without gravity. I'll leave the math to you as you seem to enjoy that sort of calculation, but off the top of my head I figure we would have about 3 days.

I'm not sure why you phrased it the way you did, but you are correct that Jupiter would not capture any of the inner planets. Jupiter's escape velocity is about 10 miles per second. If you are going faster then that then Jupiter doesn't have the strength to capture you. Of course you could always run smack into it and I suppose that's a capture of a sort.

You stated that Earth's rotation rate was too low to cause it to fly apart if it lost it's gravity, but what is it that resists this tendency besides gravity? Would not the atmosphere go easily, and the oceans? What about all the loose stuff laying around like rocks and people? I suspect gravity plays a larger role then you allow for. The pressure at the center of the earth is almost 4 million times atmospheric pressure at the surface. If gravity were gone then the weight that holds that pressure in would be gone and 'pop' no more earth.

Yea gravity!

Originally posted by Shadows2
Please allow me to clarify. I answered the question that was asked: What would happen if the sun's gravity were turned off, not what if the sun were instantly moved or obliterated.

If the sun were obliterated we would float gently into the dark night, just as you suggest.

If the gravity of the sun were turned off the pressure that produces the solar ...[text shortened]... the weight that holds that pressure in would be gone and 'pop' no more earth.

Yea gravity!

The orbital velocity of Jupiter is about 8 mps so its possible if
the planets were lined up just right, the escape velocity of Jupiter
is almost 60 MPS which means any of the planets COULD get
captured, just depends on the exact timing when they started in
a straight line motion. The only problem "turning off gravity" is
its the mass of the body that bends space and time so I don't
see how you could turn off gravity and leave the mass, its the
springiness of space, the warpability of it that generates gravity
and time warps. When you say to turn off gravity I could only think
you move the sun somehow, which is just about as impossible
as turning off gravity also but what the hey.
Wouldn't it be a sight if Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune all
collided. Maybe it would ignite a new sun! Probably not enough mass
but its a mindboggling thought anyway.

sorry, your source is off but so was my math. I shouldn't convert metric to english in my head late at night. The escape velocity of Jupiter is about 37 Miles per second, not 10.

Originally posted by Wildfire
If the Sun's gravity were suddenly "turned off," would the Earth be immediately affected? Or would it take eight minutes (the time it takes for the sun's light to reach Earth)?

The earth's orbit depends on its gravitational attraction to the sun. If the sun's gravity ceased to exist, as unlikely as that would be without huge reprocussions and certainly impossible without obliterating the mass of the sun completely. This is no longer an einstienian problem, it is newtonian. The earth's orbit would begin to deteriorate immediately. The possibility is absurd, but the facts remain.

Originally posted by shufty
The earth's orbit depends on its gravitational attraction to the sun. If the sun's gravity ceased to exist, as unlikely as that would be without huge reprocussions and certainly impossible without obliterating the mass of the sun completely. This is no longer an einstienian problem, it is newtonian. The earth's orbit would begin to deteriorate immediately. The possibility is absurd, but the facts remain.

Uh. A deteriorating orbit normally implies falling towards the centre of orbit. Not what would happen. You also didn't answer the question that the original post asked, which is good because I would have then pointed to the 5.5 pages of discussion that you didn't read.

Actually I'll do that now.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Well actually gravity doesn't warp space-time, gravity IS warped
space-time, its an effect not a cause. The cause is a local
concentration of mass, THATS what causes the warping of space and
time we perceive as gravity.

Oh, really? I suggest that you are exercising yourself over semantics, just as is Mr. Bowmann.

How then, do you explain the graviton?

Originally posted by sonhouse
... the escape velocity of Jupiter is almost 60 MPS which means ...

I believe you mean 60 *kilometers* per second.

Originally posted by Suzianne
How then, do you explain the graviton?

The what...?

Originally posted by Bowmann
The what...?

Perhaps you need to read the thread before replying. 😛

Or possibly take some more physics courses...

Originally posted by Suzianne
Or possibly take some more physics courses...

Would that be Theoretical Physics? 😛