Scary Thoughts

So, I was thinking about the butterfly affect a few weeks ago. More specifically, how fast could something have an affect on something else? If a butterfly was to flap its wings, it could have an affect on the world around it, but how fast?

My first thought was the speed of light. No matter what I do on the earth, it shouldn't have any affect on what happens on the sun for 8 minutes, right? No bit of light could reflect off of me and get to the sun in less than 8 minutes. (i'm using rough numbers to prove the point, so please don't feel obligated to leave a comment that tells me the exact amount of time it would take for light to get from the sun to the earth)

Then I thought about gravity. If the way physics works like i've been the way I've been taught/been thinking it works, then what I do could, instantaneously, have an incredibally small, but still existant affect, on the path of objects millions of light years away. But that just doesn't feel right.

Fast forward two weeks.

I was bored, so I was watching Nova's "The Elegant Universe" online. Chapter 1, part 3 I think. It was talking about Einstein's view of space-time, i think. And you know what I found out? He was thinking about the exactly same thing that I was, how Newtonian physics believes gravity to be an instantaneous force, and how that doesn't make sense. He thought that you could view gravity as bends/ripples/whatever you want to call it in the fabric of space-time. The speed that gravity could affect something he said, was the speed of light. I can't really explain it too much in words, so you really should watch at least that chapter of The Elegant Universe. (Follow the link, s'il vous plait)

I scare myself sometimes.