The Sun has been the constant companion of the Earth since the birth of our planet. But if the sun suddenly disappeared, what would happen to our world?
To understand the fate of the sunless Earth, it is important to know how the two came to be. The day formed about 4.6 billion years ago, when a giant swirling cloud of gas and dust collapsed inward and froze, forming the largest object in what would become our planetary system and eventually reaching a temperature of 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius) at its core.
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If the sun were to suddenly disappear, the Earth and many living things would be in great trouble. It would set off “a ticking time bomb for the survival of everything on Earth that depends on photosynthesis, most surface life and all humans,” by Timothy Croninassistant professor of atmospheric science at MIT, told Live Science in an email.
For at least 8 minutes, 20 seconds, no one would know that the sun had disappeared – that is how long does it take from the sun to reach the Earth. At the time, “we certainly wouldn’t have known anything had happened,” Cronin said.
Now, the real problem would begin.
After an eight-minute solar song of the spoons, there would be a “sudden blackout,” Cronin said. Besides sunlight, artificial lights from electricity, oil or gas would be the main ways we could produce light, as well. fire, bioluminescence and fluorescence. We could lose track of day and night. The moon, reflecting the light of the sun, would be completely darkened, although the distant stars in the sky would still be visible. Even without the weight of the sun gravity to keep the planets and other celestial bodies in orbit, “all the planets would fly back to where they’ve gone now,” Cronin said.
But humans would have problems much faster than flying into interstellar space. No sunlight would mean important steps, like growing food, would be more complicated.
Photosynthetic organisms would be designed for, Michael Summersprofessor of planetary science and astronomy at George Mason University in Virginia, told Live Science. Many plants that were not grown in artificial light would soon suffer. And while some “might remain dormant for weeks to months, as they do during winter, eventually all photosynthetic organisms would die.”
Meanwhile, fungi feed on living or dead matter, and “there’s going to be a lot of dead matter available,” Summers said. So the fungi would not die from lack of food, but from the cold.
The world is cold
It wouldn’t take long for the extreme cold to change the Earth as we know it.
Initially, Earth would cool by an average of 36 F (20 C) every 24 hours, Summers said. “That puts almost the entire world into freezing temperatures within two to three days,” even though it’s getting colder, the daily temperature change would be less, he said. Small ponds may freeze within a week, while large lakes may take weeks or months. The oceans can last “for years, maybe decades,” and in some places, like “the deep parts of the ocean where there’s lava, they can stay wet as long as the lava continues,” Summers said. “And that would be billions of years.”
To understand how much the Earth will eventually cool, let’s think Pluto. Now, Pluto is “about 40 times farther from the sun than Earth, and its current temperature is about 400 degrees Fahrenheit. [minus 240 C],” Summers said. “Once you take Earth out of our planetary system, it’s going to be a lot farther away than Pluto very quickly.”
But the Earth’s temperature would not reach a full notebecause of Big Bang that happened 13.8 billion years ago. Even “the lowest temperatures in the universe are measured by the heat left over from the Big Bang,” said Summers. “Take anything very far from a star and let it cool for a million years,” and it will still remain a few degrees above absolute zero. The residual heat is known as the cosmic microwave background would be minus 454 F (below 270 C), while absolute zero is too cold to be removed 459 F (below 273 C).
Extreme cold, human civilization and most of life would collapse. “It makes sense that people could live underground in caves, powered by geothermal or nuclear energy, with plants grown under artificial lights,” Cronin said, “but this would be the last event to make everyone else seem inferior.”
What would survive?
One thing might survive? Near microscopic animals called tardigradesalso known as water bears. “Little critters are nasty,” Summers said, but “hard to kill.” They can be glazed or dipped in certain types of alcohol and they are still alive; maybe hitting them with a hammer would kill them, he suggested. Otherwise, it is one of the most difficult life forms on Earth.
Likewise, bacteria that do not require photosynthesis, such as the ubiquitous species deep sea holesmaybe they would survive. That’s because other organisms, including some bacteria and archaea, use it chemosynthesisunlike photosynthesis, it “lives on chemical bonds in rocks and minerals,” Summers added.
Fortunately for humans, there is no reason to believe that the sun will disappear in the blink of an eye. However, in time, the sun will die. It will continue to create heat and light for each other 5 million years or morebut once it runs out of fuel, it will expand into a red giant, engulfing Mercury and Venus and possibly Earth. However, people will not last that long; the sun gradually increasing in brightness is which is expected to evaporate the Earth’s oceans in more than a billion years from now.
While those effects may be far-fetched, Summers said it’s important to consider the potential outcome. The more we “understand about the stars and how they can change over time, on short and long periods, the better we understand the universe.”
Quiz of the day: How well do you know your home star?
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