Adapted for the Internet from:

Why God Doesn't Exist
Is the speed of gravity
finite or infinite?

    Gravitational speed has been raised as the most compelling argument against Newton’s universal law. The
    inverse square factor of his gravitation equation entails instantaneous action:

    F = G (m1 m2) / (x1t – x2t)²

    where x1 and x2 represent the respective ‘positions’ of the ‘masses’
    m1 and m2 at time t (i.e., the distance between the objects at a particular time)

    In more familiar terms, should the distance separating two objects at opposite sides of the Universe shorten
    by a hair, the mutual force of attraction increases spontaneously!

    “ the Newtonian theory of gravity, which said that objects attracted each other with a
       force that depended on the distance between them. This meant that if one moved
       one of the objects, the force on the other one would change instantaneously.”
       (p. 29) [1]

    " Isaac Newton's formulation of a gravitational force law requires that each particle
       respond instantaneously to every other massive particle irrespective of the distance
       between them. [2]

    You can verify these statements by plugging some numbers for mass and distance in the foregoing equation:

    F = G * (10 kg * 20 kg) / (10 meters) 2 =   200/100 = 2 units of force
    F = G * (10 kg * 20 kg)/ (5 meters) 2     =    200/25   = 8 units of force

    Therefore, by merely halving the distance between the objects, we quadruple the force of attraction! This
    notion is so absurd that even Newton abandoned hopes of rationalizing it:

    “ That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the
       mediation of any thing else, by and through which their action and force may be
       conveyed from one to the other, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no
       man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever
       fall into it.” [3]

    It is the instantaneity of force implied by Newton’s equation that prompted massive exodus from Classical
    Mechanics to mainstream General Relativity, a theory that places all its hopes on the ‘finite’ speed of light.

    “ General relativity predicts that gravitational radiation should exist and propagate
       as a wave at the speed of light.” [4]

    “ Newton thought that gravity was a force that acts instantaneously across any
       distance. And so we would immediately feel the effect of the sun’s destruction.
       But Einstein saw a big problem with Newton’s theory, a problem that arose from
       his work with light. Einstein knew light doesn’t travel instantaneously. In fact, it
       takes eight minutes for the sun’s rays to travel the 93 million miles to the earth.
       And since he had shown that nothing, not even gravity, can travel faster than light,
       how could the earth be released from orbit before the darkness resulting from the
       sun’s disappearance reached our eyes?” [5]

    The lesson to be gleaned from these statements is that if the speed of gravity is shown to be different than
    little c, General Relativity collapses in one fell blow. That’s why the establishment’s cops are nervously on the
    look out for anyone attempting to circumvent c and instantly pull them over. Low [6] uses finite gravitational
    propagation to debunk Alcubierre-type FTL gimmicks, and Will [7] and Samuel [8] take the opportunity to
    reaffirm GR’s speed limit in their criticism of Kopeikin, [9] [10]  who claims to have experimentally determined
    that the speed of gravity is equal to c. Another Kopeikin critic, maverick astronomer Van Flandern, [11] [12]
    says that gravity travels much faster than c, but just under instantaneous. He argues that any speed below     
    2 x 10¹º c  for the propagation of gravitational potential – which he distinguishes from gravitational force –
    should produce aberration, a time delay in the transmission of gravitational effects. Speaking on behalf of the
    establishment, Carlip [13] [14]  replies that relativistic field speed is offset by velocity-dependent interactions.
    He argues that when these are factored in, the results approach Newton’s equation.

    To see what the fuss is all about between Newtonian instantaneity and Einsteinian speed of light, let’s look at
    an example that almost anyone can relate to. The Sun emits a gravitational wave to Earth pulling our planet in
    its direction to where the Sun is NOW. The Earth also sends a gravitational wave to the Sun and tugs it (even
    though much more lightly) to where it is NOW. These signals take 8 minutes to reach their targets. Meanwhile,
    both the Sun and the Earth moved and are somewhere else. The Sun rotated around the Milky Way and the
    Earth around the Sun. By the time the signal arrives from the Sun to where the Earth was 8 minutes ago, the
    Earth is already gone. This is the ‘time delay’ problem that has the mathematicians up in arms. Of course, if
    we postulate that gravity travels no faster than the speed of light, we wouldn’t be able to explain the orbits of
    the planets. So now you know why relativists were desperate to come up with a solution to this problem.
    Ergo, Carlip and his buddies invent gravito-magnetic nonsense and velocity dependent excuses to preserve
    relativity at all costs. Their last minute attempt to salvage relativity with farfetched arguments is a joke. They
    should have quit relativity when they had a chance instead of looking for more idiotic ways to justify it.

    I will not rehash mathematical arguments because they are irrelevant to Physics and to the instant issue. The
    mathematicians are overly concerned about 'measuring' the speed of gravity and ignore the more
    fundamental conceptual framework. I will show rather that:

    a.        We can conceive of an instantaneous physical mechanism.

    b.        Gravity in fact acts instantaneously through a physical mechanism that is consistent with
     Newton’s gravitational law and Cavendish’s amply verified torsion balance experiment.

    c.        All relativists are a bunch of idiots (this is the easiest of the three to prove).

    We will discover that the reason the mathematicians discarded Newton’s theory for Einstein’s a hundred
    years ago ultimately was because they insisted on modeling his equations with the wrong hypothesis: the
    corpuscle.

    But let’s begin by getting our terminology straight. Otherwise, we are guaranteed to talk in circles like the
    mathematicians have for at least 400 years. We also need to dispose of the well hypothesis before we offer an
    alternative.

Stop it right there, Steve!
Gravity travels instantaneously!
So you're wrong. It's more like a
photograph!
This is the speed at which light
and gravity travel. It's like a movie!

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        Copyright © by Nila Gaede 2008