My first posting

Well I can now enter my thoughts on the WWW.
That immediately creates two problems:
1. What DO I think.
2. Who if anybody will read them?.
Well here is my first question:
Given that the Earth is held in orbit around the sun by gravity what would happen if the sun instantaneously ceased to exist.
Would the earth immediately fly off at a tanget to its orbit or would there be a delay of about 8.5 minutes before this happened proving the the effects of gravity operate at the speed of light?