The Topic: Gravity.

Ok, who is right here?

If you were to remove the sun out of existance instantly, i say the orbits of the other planets would not be affected until time x, where x is a function of each planet's distance from the sun divided by the speed of light. My father on the other hand, contends that all the orbits of all the planets would be affected instantly and the would travel in straight lines. In summary, my proposal agree's with special relativity and my father's approach agrees with newtonian mechanics. I have not found any material on how general relativity would deal with this situation. Either the curvature of space would change as a wave traveling in all directions at the speed of light (agreeing with special relativity), or the curvature would change instantly (agreeing with newtonian mechanics.) Any thoughts on who is right? Any insights to how general relativity or superstring theory (heteroitic) would deal with this?

Spock, simply create a warp feild around the sun and move it several million light years away in under planck time. Duh. This will suffice for "instantaneously". Or, we could describe another experiment to determine the speed that gravity propigates in the universe. Perhaps, how will a super massive black hole affect the orbits of the planets if it shot through the solar system at very high relativistic speeds.

Fine, how fast do YOU think gravity propigates through the universe?