• 0ops@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      This is the cutting-edge of my understanding so if I’m wrong somebody call me out, but I think because gravity is warping space-time and not actually pulling anything, we wouldn’t feel an inertia change. Our inertia would be maintained, but the space-time we’re going through would suddenly be shaped different, so we’d follow a new path

      • Etterra@discuss.online
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        1 month ago

        So would all the other planets, so there’d be a non-zero chance we’d smack into one of them. Most likely though we’d become a very, very cold rogue planet.

      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 month ago

        I know gravity moves at the speed of light. I’m just referring to the slight pull of the gravity and the sudden shift to traveling straight off instead of a circle.

        • stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 month ago

          All of that will only happen after 8 minutes, see this comment.

          Earth has a circular orbit because space-time is curved by the mass of the sun. (Think of a large bowling ball on a trampoline, you can make a small ball travel in circles around it, and if there was no friction, it would go on indefinitely.) When the sun’s mass suddenly disappears (by pure magic, as this would violate many laws of physics), spacetime would flatten out, at the speed of light.