what happens if the sun suddenly disappears?

Question

or if sun is covered with cosmic dust cloud

Answer 1

Well, we'd all freeze to death. Assuming we start burning stuff at an alarming rate, we might stave off the cold for a month or three, but all plant life would die from lack of sunlight (no photosynthesis), and shortly thereafter, all herbivores would die off or be hunted to extinction, followed VERY shortly thereafter by everybody else. Even the cockroaches would eventually freeze to death, because the temperatures would drop to the point where the air itself would freeze and precipitate out. If somebody thought ahead and hunkered down in some bunker a mile down, they might survive on stored rations for a while, because the nuclear furnace of the earth's core would continue to provide heat to the planet itself for quite some time. Since the disappearance of the sun you're talking about sounds like it would be sudden and unexpected, there wouldn't be time for a group of people to prepare and form a new civilization underground, farming mushrooms or something. No, we'd all die, and that would be it.

Answer 2

Two ways to interpret this question:

1) The sun vanishes w/o a trace. Gets lethally cold in a hurry. I could compute how fast the surface cools to where the oxygen starts to precipitate as liquid, but I would rather spend that energy on the second interpretation. If the mass is gone too, the earth goes traveling off in a straight line.

2) The sun encounters a giant molecular cloud (something that statistically should happen periodically). The densest giant molecular clouds still have densities of order 1000 atoms per cubic cm. There is a pretty strong correlation between dust density and gas density in a molecular cloud (see references) which turns out to be about one 0.3x0.3 micron grain per 10^11 gas atoms.

If you work through the algebra, this means you will have about 100000 of these dinky grains for each 1 cm^2 column from the Earth to the Sun. The net result is the sun is obscured by one part in 10,000, or 0.01% . Hardly noticble.

Even in a cloud core (say on the fringes of where a star is forming) the densities are only about 100 times higher. There you see a 1% fall off in the sunlight which would be noticble climate wise, barely. Now if you have the darn protostar collapsing in the inner solar system the cloud will be eventhicker, but you are going to experience other problems like orbital disruption from the gravity.

This may seem counter intuitive since such clouds do block out distant stars, but keep in mind the typical distance between stars is a 100,000 times the distance from the Earth to the sun, making for 100,000 times as much dust between the sun and the next star!

In short, virtually nothing will happen, except it will be harder to see the stars for 10,000-100,000 years.

Answer 3

Well all life on the surface would become extinct in pretty short order as the average daily temperature approaches absolute zero, and most atmospheric gases settle to the surface as snow. The sun, however, isn't the only source of energy on our planet. The core of our planet is kept molten by slow decay of nuclear materials like uranium. In the past it was thought that sub oceanic life was impossible, but that was recently proved wrong. It could be possible that the ocean water cannot freeze all the way to the ocean floor because of thermal vents that continually pump heat into the system. And around these vents strange worm like and shrimp like lifeforms presently exist without any sunlight and may continue to do so for ... I've not heard any estimates,, maybe a few billion years, or more? Maybe long enough for the planet to be recaptured by another sun, and warm the surface again? LOL, not very likely, but I'm always the optimist.

Answer 4

If the sun as an object with mass disappears:

Due to the sudden loss of the gravitational pull from the sun, the difference in acceleration created by a such violent action will "let loose" everything that the force exerted power on, thus eliminating any past orbits.

Think of it as holding a rock in your hand.
You spin the rock around in a circular motion and suddenly let the rock go.
It will fly away.
The same thing will happen to earth if the sun lets us go.

Answer 5

unfortunately, we'll die, either because of the lack of nutrients from the sun we get or too polluted air, since as you know plants need sunlight to live, to create photosynthesis, if we dont have plants then we wouldnt have oxygen then...we'd die. We may live if scientists come up an artificial sun which can provide us all the nutrients we need in time. or something like that

and since gravity wouldnt pull all the planets together, there is a big possiblility tha we'll crash into another planet...which is NOT good

and the temperature would decrease

and...thats about it... i think

Answer 6

Assuming you mean, 'on Earth'... between 7 and 8 minutes later the Earth will become dark as if it were night on both sides of the globe.

After most of the ambient heat that greenhouse gases traps near the Earth bleeds into outer space, the Earth will become a frozen wasteland shortly thereafter. Except for areas near geothermal vents, a majority of life on Earth will be extinguished depending on how long the sun disappears for.

Answer 7

if sun suddenly disappears, as in poof its gone, then all the planets will be out of their orbits. there will be chaos in the solar system. the planets will wander until another star captures it through its magnetic field or it collides with other celestial bodies.

on the other hand, earth will be a frozen piece of rock with no life.
all life processes will halt due to the absence of light which plants need to execute photosynthesis. since it is the primary producer (all other animals depend on plants), animals will be in hunger until they die.

Answer 8

well if this could happen we should say good bye to the life. we will not be alive in this case. just remember what happens when the sky is covered with cloud... the temperature goes down quickley. and hence when the sum will disappear the temperature on the earth will go below the absolute zero and everything will freez instantly and it is death... complete death of the planet "earth"

Answer 9

Partial darkness

Answer 10

Slowly and surely all the living species shall begin to perish depending on their strength of survival i guess.