Posted by Kromey at 6:18pm Sep 22 '11So while arguing in [private]'s thread that neutrinos, while faster than light, are not, in fact, traveling in time, a thought experiment occurred to me:
[Presume for a moment that wormholes -- or perhaps a different but functionally equivalent phenomenon -- do exist.] If you're out in space, and a wormhole suddenly drops in an object as massive as Sol [our sun] approximately 1 AU from you, it would take a little over 8 minutes before you would be able to see this object with your telescope that you somehow have with you.
But how long would it take for this object's gravity to begin pulling on you? Would it be riding along on the coattails of the photons? Or would it be racing the neutrinos? Or would it instead take significantly longer than either?
How fast is gravity?
[Presume for a moment that wormholes -- or perhaps a different but functionally equivalent phenomenon -- do exist.] If you're out in space, and a wormhole suddenly drops in an object as massive as Sol [our sun] approximately 1 AU from you, it would take a little over 8 minutes before you would be able to see this object with your telescope that you somehow have with you.
But how long would it take for this object's gravity to begin pulling on you? Would it be riding along on the coattails of the photons? Or would it be racing the neutrinos? Or would it instead take significantly longer than either?
How fast is gravity?