Think what will happen

Classical Mechanics Level 3

If the Sun suddenly disappears from space, what will happen to the Earth?

The Earth will also disappear The Earth will revolve around its orbit for 8 minutes The Earth will immediately go tangential to its orbit The Earth will start revolving around jupiter

Puneet Mangla by puneet mangla , 21, India

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1 solution

Chew-Seong Cheong
May 14, 2016

Gravitational wave takes about eight minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth therefore the Earth will still revolve in its orbit before the effect of gravity from the Sun disappears.

14 Helpful 0 Interesting 0 Brilliant 0 Confused

This is perhaps one of my favourite questions in fundamental physics.I have one doubt. Does even gravitation obey wave particle duality? (Gravitons and gravitational waves)

Swapnil Das - 5 years, 1 month ago

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It is a doubt of many too. Let us hope that we will find out one day.

Chew-Seong Cheong - 5 years ago

While I agree with your answer do really know that gravitational waves travel at the speed of light? It's not like we've generated a gravitational wave in the lab and measured it's distance over like we have for EM waves.

John Crocker - 5 years, 1 month ago

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We did confirm detecting gravitational wave earlier this year ( see news ). I was assuming it behave actually like EM waves.

Chew-Seong Cheong - 5 years, 1 month ago

Gravitation can not travel faster than light since no information can (yes, it is information). Since light needs around 8 minutes to travel from sun to earth, earth stays in its orbit for at least 8 minutes (it is not mentioned what happens after the 8 minutes)

Serkan Muhcu - 5 years, 1 month ago

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What about slower than the speed of light?

John Crocker - 5 years, 1 month ago

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@John Crocker – Slower than speed of light, I presume particle properties will appear because of wave-particle duality. There are talks about graviton.

Chew-Seong Cheong - 5 years, 1 month ago

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@Chew-Seong Cheong – So you believe in gravitational wave particle duality?

Swapnil Das - 5 years, 1 month ago

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@Swapnil Das – I believe in the unified theory for everything. If gravity is wave-like, it should be like EM wave and exhibit wave-particle duality. If not we will have another set of theories for gravity and no unity.

Chew-Seong Cheong - 5 years, 1 month ago

I think the Earth will leave its orbit around the Sun tangentially and move on with a constant speed.

Chew-Seong Cheong - 5 years, 1 month ago

Which subject you don't know?

I have seen your solutions on about all topics.

Great

Aakash Khandelwal - 5 years ago

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Thanks for your comments. You will do as good if not better. There is a lot of time ahead of you to excel in all subject.

Chew-Seong Cheong - 5 years ago

In general relativity, the curvature of the space-time continuum is the cause of gravity. And the space-time continuum isn't limited to the speed of light. Though this is a matter of dispute. Also, it is most probable that gravitational waves do not follow the wave-particle duality, and hence are not considered electromagnetic waves. Stephen Hawking, is his bestseller "A Brief History of Space and Time" stated so. I believe that questions based on theoretical physics should be left to speculation and no solid answers should be provided.

@Harsh Shrivastava

Utsav Basu - 4 years, 10 months ago

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