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> Bill wrote:
> Our Sun is gone in a nanosecond. Light continues to come our way for approx. 8
minutes. What happens to gravity (Sun's) the moment it ceases to exist?
>
Peter responded

> "The light from the Sun takes 8 minutes to reach the Earth, so that if the Sun
> suddenly disappeared it would take 8 minutes before it got dark. Similarly the
> Earth would also feel the effects of the Sun's gravity for 8 minutes after it
> magically vanished ...http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=573

Oh my, enough fun at Newton's expense. It does open another off-topic
Pandora's box.

<>

Writing in New Scientist magazine, they say: "We became the first two people
to know the speed of gravity, one of the fundamental constants of nature."

Which begs speculations that the speed of light (or gravity?) is not a
constant, but rather a slowly changing variable.

Having lunch with client and friend years ago (Purdue physicist) we drank
more lunch than usual. After suggesting he might up his income by going on
TV with a crystal ball and turban and riding the "Psychic Friend"
pay-per-call with a three-minute-minimum craze (enough dullards will confuse
physics with psychics) I brought up the variable speed of light concept.

Noting the bizarre state of theoretical physics as of late, he suggested
that concept was quite possible given the consistent failure to achieve
unification theory no matter how outlandish, untestable and unverifiable
theories have become.

If I recall, what I believe I heard through the bottom of his Watney's mug
was something like, "Of course it would also mean that about everything we
think we know now is wrong."

And that is today's moment of Zen. ;-)

Bill


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