[RadioAstronomer]

And Newton says that Gravity propagates at near instantaneous speeds.

Lets try a different tack.

If you have a flat sheet of rubber and you place a large ball on it, you will see a curve. If you roll a smaller ball near it the smaller ball will curve due to the bend in the sheet. This is a good analogy of a gravity field. This sheet is there all the time. However, a wave can be created in that sheet which will then propagate (but the original curve will still be there) along the sheet. If this is a gravitational field and a gravity wave, that wave will propagate at the speed of light according to General Relativity.

I am not sure I am saying this very well.

[Southack]

You are stating the analogy just fine, but the limits of analogies come into play here because the sheet has no propagation speed and it has no movement of its own, either (nor does the big ball at rest in its center).

Your sheet even has bounds, something that we aren't trying (on this thread) to determine for Gravity.

What we want to know is how fast Gravity's influences propagate. If the Sun simply disappeared, would the Earth shoot off tangentally immediately, or would there be an 8.3 minute delay?

[Old Professer]

If you have a flat sheet of rubber and you place a large ball on it, you will see a curve. If you roll a smaller ball near it the smaller ball will curve due to the bend in the sheet. This is a good analogy of a gravity field. This sheet is there all the time. However, a wave can be created in that sheet which will then propagate (but the original curve will still be there) along the sheet. If this is a gravitational field and a gravity wave, that wave will propagate at the speed of light according to General Relativity.

In an earlier life, when I still possessed all my faculties a journalism teacher once described to me the task of a writer:

"You must learn to paint pictures with words,"

That's one mighty find picture you just painted, reminds me of the time I set my beer down on the trampoline so I could stand up.