Believe it or not, this was the subject of an Air Canada in-flight video last month! <br /><br />The "rubber sheet" analogy is useful here: objects placed on a stretched rubber sheet will make dimples proportional to their mass, and the Sun will make a big dimple around which all the planets (and their little dimples) spiral, not unlike one of those roll-the-penny charity things you see in shopping malls, except without friction the planets orbit forever instead of gradually spiraling into the sun.<br /><br />Anyway, if the Sun suddenly disappeared from the rubber sheet, the dimple would disappear, and the event would ripple outwards like the circular wave from a pebble being tossed into a pond, only at the speed of light. As the wavefront passed each planet, they would get successively released from dimple bondage, and go flying off at a tangent as of that moment.<br /><br />Actually I'd think it would be a bit more complicated because the wavefront would "ring" - meaning gravity would oscillate back and forth for a little while, the planets would bob in and out briefly, and THEN they would go flying off at a tangent.<br /><br />Hey, Wile E. Coyote also once used a rubber sheet and a large mass (anvil). Coincidence? I think NOT!<br />