How fast does gravity weaken with distance?

According to Newton, it’s a force that goes as 1/r2: a force that gets weaker the farther away you get from it. Get twice as far, and it’s only a quarter as strong; get 10 times as far away, and it’s only 1\% as strong. We call this an inverse square law, where its strength decreases with the square of the distance.

Does gravity decay over time?

As you get farther away from a gravitational body such as the sun or the earth (i.e. as your distance r increases), its gravitational effect on you weakens but never goes completely away; at least according to Newton’s law of gravity.

What will happen to the marble if it gets too close to Earth?

If it gets too close to the center, however, the marble gets sucked in and cannot escape—just like light cannot escape if it ends up inside a black hole’s event horizon.

Are gravity waves faster than light?

A gravitational wave is an invisible (yet incredibly fast) ripple in space. Gravitational waves travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). A gravitational wave is an invisible (yet incredibly fast) ripple in space. We’ve known about gravitational waves for a long time.

How long would it take gravity to travel at the speed of light?

Believe it or not, the answer to this must be exactly the same amount of time as it was for light: 8 minutes and 20 seconds. The speed of gravity not only equals the speed of light to an incredibly precise degree observationally, but these two constants must be exactly equal theoretically, or General Relativity would fall apart.

What would happen if you turned off the sun’s gravitational force?

However, if you were to somehow turn ‘off’ the gravitational effects of the Sun, the planets wouldn’t fly off instantaneously, but rather the inner ones would fly off first, followed by the outer ones, as the gravitational signals from the Sun only propagate outwards at the speed of gravity, which ought to equal the speed of light.

What is the acceleration of gravity?

The numerical value for the acceleration of gravity is most accurately known as 9.8 m/s/s. There are slight variations in this numerical value (to the second decimal place) that are dependent primarily upon on altitude.

What is the speed of gravitational waves in a vacuum?

The speed of gravitational waves in the general theory of relativity is equal to the speed of light in a vacuum, c. Within the theory of special relativity, the constant c is not only about light; instead it is the highest possible speed for any interaction in nature.