IIRC, conventional thought is that gravity is propogated at <i>c,</i> in which case, it would take 8 minutes and 30 some odd seconds for Earth to fling itself off on a more or less straight trajectory towards the Great Beyond.<br /><br />It brings up interesting questions about the fabric of 4 dimensional space-time. If I take a thin sheet of rubber, and put a bowling ball in the center of it, it creates a depression much like a gravity well.<br /><br />Now. Given that the depression is more or less constant and unchanging, I can take a golf ball, and determine how fast it has to go round inside that depression for it to find it's "orbit" where it will not fall into the bowling ball or fling itself out of the depression entirely, although friction between the rubber surface and the golf ball has to be taken into consideration.<br /><br />In my model, the bowling ball stretches the rubber sheet which means that due to its elasticity, the rubber sheet is storing increasing amounts of kinetic energy as we get closer to the bowling ball in our "well".<br /><br />In other words, if we have say three objects at varying distances relative to the bowling ball "orbiting" around the interior of the depression, if we had Scotty beam the bowling ball out, the rubber sheet would impart differing energies on the orbiting balls as it moved to assume its normally flat nature.<br /><br />So balls closer would be moving faster, and would be flung at a higher velocity than the balls farther out.<br /><br />In 3 physical dimensions, space doesn't appear to have the same qualities; otherwise, the planets would not so uniformly orbit on or close to the Ecliptic, I wouldn't think.<br /><br />To me, this infers that the "gravity well" of a body is expressed "outside" of the three physical dimensions. I know I'm digressing, and also am speaking from a laypersons POV, but if that's the case, I can's be sure that gravity is propogated at <i>c</i>.<br /><br />A wormhole would be an example of the difficulty I <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <em>"2012.. Year of the Dragon!! Get on the Dragon Wagon!".</em> </div>