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Is it really true that nothing would change if the Sun's mass was suddenly compacted by several orders of magnitude (into a point mass or black hole)? This see
by stanfordkid 10mo ago
Is it really true that nothing would change if the Sun's mass was suddenly compacted by several orders of magnitude (into a point mass or black hole)?
This seems unintuitive to me. The sun is a million miles in diameter, so surely shrinking that to zero would lower the amount of gravitational force infinitesimally since the gravity is 1/distance^2 not linear. I would think the planets would sort of drift ever so slightly farther.
- voidmain 9mo agoFor Newtonian gravity at least, the gravitational force everywhere outside a sphere or spherical shell is exactly the same as if it was a point mass (and everywhere inside a spherical shell it is zero). Not sure if it holds exactly for general relativity.