Zephir,
From the link we have a major overhaul to consider.
http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/speed_of_gravity.aspVan Flandern tells us that a large bulk of the astronomy/cosmological industry has considered for 60+ years, more if Newton's fears are considered, that the speed of gravity forces is at least Vg > 10^10*c, or as some say, instantaneous. This is fairly easy to swallow as if the Vg of the force of gravity were equal to c, chaos would reign as a simple analysis shows. A Fg originating on the sun for instance would arrive at Jupiter in 20 minutes or so. JUpiter would respond with a return reaction force arriving at the sun 20 minutes later. The orbits of al.l the planets as you can see whould become very chaotic in the struggle to maintain conservation of angular momentum . In any event observation results indicate that Vg conservatively is Vg > 10^10*c. Hence we can dispense with Newton's nightmare of 'action at a distance' through space. This scenario requires a jettisoning of the 'vector' nature of the universal law of gravitation. The force between two masses confronting each other are, as a non-scientific minded friend, "just is".
This rapid force exchange, with motion an intrinsic element in all of this, doesn't allow a knee jerk subtraction of so called 'off axis' forces as is considered by the shell theorem.
Any thoughts here?
Speculation being a a major elemnt in the theory of free form of thought and analysis, I opine that gravity, the force that is, is a manifestaion of conservation of angular momentum, but in a modified form of what we learned in school.
