Life without the Sun?

PittCaleb
Posts: 61
Joined: 2007-10-08
Dad Points: 113

First let me state for the record:
- I will not pimp my blog in this post!
- I will not discuss politics in this post!
- I will not discuss religion in this post!

On to the meat of the topic:
The other day I was driving with my 7.5 and 3.5 sons. They Josh was using his watch to reflect the sun onto the ceiling of the car while Sam tried to "catch" it if you will. We turned a corner, changing the angles, and boom - the reflection stopped.

Josh immediately exclaimed, "the Sun disappeared!" I of course corrected him explaining that the Sun hasn't moved appreciably, rather that we just changed where we were and not there's a huge hill between us and yada yada yada, you can't reflect the sun off your watch right now.

So Josh then asks, "what would happen if the Sun disappeared?"

Ground rules - To a 7 year old, the Sun provides light and heat, nothing else. So we will presume that the gravitational forces remain in effect for the remainder of this question.

I told him that it would get very cold very quickly. I predicted that after about 24 hours pretty much all of us would be dead, save the cockroaches and that micro-organism they recently exposed to outer space which lived.

My question to you science geeks or your wives who are scientists, is can anyone provide a better answer or educated guess? Think we'll last less or more time on Earth as we know it? Any other things to think about? How long till Lake Michigan or the Oceans froze over? What would the temps be after just an hour without the Sun?

Josh did say we could start camp fires. I told him that might help for a little bit, but that it would be so cold tha as soon as we left the fire to get more wood, we'd freeze to death!

Cheers,
PittCaleb




JohnGilroy
Posts: 418
Joined: 2007-04-26
Dad Points: 670
No Idea

But 24 - 48 hrs sounds about right.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.



jimpmc
jimpmc's picture
Posts: 122
Joined: 2008-02-26
Dad Points: 171
Ah Mr. Frost

Great Poem.

I'll leave this for the scientists.



TimB
Posts: 70
Joined: 2008-06-21
Dad Points: 94
The earth's temperature

The earth's temperature would drop to -460 degrees F and we'd use up all of our reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas to keep us warm in about three days.

http://library.thinkquest.org/15215/Friend/temperature.html



Itux
Itux's picture
Posts: 136
Joined: 2007-09-17
Dad Points: 237
8 minutes

What it's sure is that the Sun is 8 light minutes away from Earth.

So, the last electromagnetic radiation and Gravitational effects from the Sun will reach the Earth up to 8 minutes after the Sun goes away, after that everything will be dark(?), cold(?) and chaotic.

Gravitational Effects:

Our solar system is similar to the vortex you find in the museums, where the Sun is in the center and all the planets orbit around it. If the Sun disappears, all the planets (and other cosmic bodies) will reach their maximum escape lineal speed (no more turning around), maybe crashing with each other. The Moon will crash again us and depending of the Earth position, maybe we will crash again Jupiter. (no survivors)

Electromagnetic Effects: (if we survive the previous part)

The magnetic field of the Sun has direct influence in our own magnetic field, and our MF keeps the molecules of the Atmosphere in place, so any disturbance will make part of our atmosphere to escape to the empty space.

Without the Sun's radiation, our atmosphere will stop heating the surface of the Earth, making it colder than the dark side of the Moon (around -250 F or less). Without the light from Sun, there is no photosynthesis by plants, so less Oxygen and no way to burn anything. If this is not catastrophic enough, if no light is present, the temperature will drop so quickly that big cold storms should frozen the surface and the oceans,

Finally, the closes example I can give you, is what it is supposed happen 65 million of years ago, when a comet's impact generated a big cloud of dust that cover the Earth, preventing the Sun radiation (light and heat) from reaching the surface, killing most of the plants (no photosynthesis), this make the big plant eaters to disappear, and this make most of the meat eater disappear too. That was the main reason for the disappear of the Dinosaurs.

But still there is hope:

The core of the Earth is full of Magma, this is a kind of high temperature fluid that keeps moving very slowly, and that can be used to warm some parts of the deep inner surface of the oceans, so maybe some of the micro organism (bacteria and so) can survive the longest and darkest winter.

Hope this educated (but still incomplete) answer will help here.

Itux;

The author is a former teacher of Physics with high interest in Astronomy and Biophysics.

======================
Congregatio pro erudio et auxilium
Information Technology User X
Itux



ticktock
ticktock's picture
Posts: 789
Joined: 2006-11-06
Dad Points: 1419
This was covered...

on an episode of the astronomycast podcast, but I couldn't find the exact one. I remember that she said it would take a while (a few days - minutes actually; I stand corrected) for the last waves of heat from the sun to reach Earth before we started to freeze to death. She also said that the Earth would shoot out of it's orbit in a straight line until it impacted or orbited another star.
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http://www.altparenting.com



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