Affect of gravity instant or not?

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    Gravity
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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the nature of gravity and whether its effects are instantaneous or propagate at a finite speed. Participants explore theoretical scenarios, including the implications of teleporting massive objects and how that might affect gravitational interactions.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory, Debate/contested, Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • One participant questions whether gravity's effect is instantaneous or has a speed, referencing a hypothetical scenario involving teleportation of a moon.
  • Another participant asserts that gravity propagates at the speed of light.
  • A third participant supports this view by stating that gravitational information propagates at the speed of light, using the example of the Sun disappearing and the time it would take for that information to reach Earth.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

There is disagreement among participants regarding the nature of gravity's propagation, with some asserting it is instantaneous while others argue it propagates at the speed of light.

Contextual Notes

The discussion includes assumptions about the nature of gravitational effects and their relationship to the speed of light, but these assumptions are not universally accepted among participants.

Simulacrum
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I read an interesting article a couple of years ago, unfortunately I don't remember where. It had to do with the affect of Gravity on planets. We already know the speed of Light and that it takes so many minutes or hours for the light of a planet to reach us. I'd like to know if Gravity's affect is instantaneous or does it have a "speed" of some sort.
Here's a hypothetical situation: we've invented Teleportation of mass, we even built a machine big enough to teleport a moon. If you teleport something of that mass and it arrives instantaneously, does it's gravitational affect on nearby objects take a finite amount of time to happen or is it also instant?
 
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Gravity propagates at the speed of light.
 
Not.

Under current observations, it would seem that the gravitational field propagates information at the speed of light. So if the Sun were to instantly disappear, it would take ~8mins for us to know.
 
OK, thanks for the replay!
 

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