If the sun suddenly disappeared, darkness as deep as a moonless night would descend on Earth a few minutes later. Our planet would also leave its orbit.
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00:00 [music]
00:04 If the Sun were to suddenly disappear,
00:06 when would the Earth leave its orbit?
00:12 Albert Einstein was fascinated by gravity
00:15 and how it functions.
00:18 With a mass around 333,000 times that of Earth,
00:22 the Sun dominates gravitational matters in our solar system.
00:27 The many celestial bodies that make it up
00:29 revolve around the Sun.
00:34 Einstein described how gravity works
00:36 in his theory of general relativity.
00:40 It says that heavy objects warp space-time.
00:44 With its enormous mass, the Sun bends it so much
00:47 that the planets begin to move in a curving orbit around it,
00:52 just like the Moon does around the Earth.
00:56 Einstein also showed that nothing can move faster than light.
01:00 It rips through space at nearly 300,000 kilometers per second.
01:05 According to the great physicist's theory,
01:08 gravity propagates at the same speed.
01:11 Researchers were able to prove this in 2015.
01:15 After decades of trying,
01:17 they were finally able to measure gravitational waves
01:20 for the first time.
01:23 Earth orbits the Sun at a distance of about 150 million kilometers.
01:29 It takes just under 8 1/2 minutes for its light to reach our planet.
01:35 So if the Sun were to suddenly disappear,
01:37 we wouldn't know about it on Earth until about 8 1/2 minutes later.
01:42 Then the sky would suddenly go as dark as the deepest night.
01:47 Because gravity also travels at light speed,
01:51 the Earth would also leave its orbit at that moment
01:54 and begin whizzing through space at 30 kilometers a second,
01:58 illuminated only by the light of distant stars.
02:02 In the far future, who knows?
02:05 Maybe gravity from one of them would then pull in our orphaned planet.