From: utzoo!decvax!cca!REM@MIT-MC@sri-unix Newsgroups: net.space Title: Gravitational attraction and shifts Article-I.D.: sri-unix.2385 Posted: Sun Aug 1 18:40:11 1982 Received: Mon Aug 2 03:40:27 1982 From: Robert Elton MaasIt is my understanding that most supernovas are rather symmetrical. Since an object that is symmetric has the same gravitational force at a given distance from its center of mass regardless of the radial distribution of the mass, providing the distance is greater than the radius of the object (distance from center to furthest part of its mass), a supernova would cause no gravitational effect on another object until after the outer parts of the star that exploded had passed the other object, by which time that object would be knocked about by physical impact, masking the change in gravitational force. An asymmetrical explosion would cause a net change in gravitational force at distances beyond the radius of the explosion, but computing just what this change might be as we look at a 2-dimensional telescope image of the supernova from a distance of many light years, would be too difficult. We might see the gravitational effect on the other object and not know whether our observed supernova did it or not (perhaps a dark star collided with it, perhaps some other gravitational wave did it, ...). I doubt we can predict the gravitational change accurately enough to confirm or refute it by our observations of that other object.