if our sun would just burn out suddenly, how long would it take for us to feel it or the earth to freeze?

Answer 1

IF, the sun just disppeared (and not exploded) the light, heat and gravity of the sun would disappear, the earth would immediately start to cool. It would start going straight into space and get colder and colder. My guess is that we wouldn't last 24 hours.

But that's not going to happen, is it?

Answer 2

First, the sun isn't going to burn out suddenly. It has sufficient fuel for another 4 billion years or so.

Near the end of its life, it will cool as less hydrogen is fused. Its spectrum will slide down into the red end. Eventually, it will have lost enough mass that more and more of the plasma that results from fusion will escape -- bad for anything in the solar system as this means more hard radiation. Then it will reach a point where it no longer has enough mass to hold the plasma and the entire outer layer will be blown off by the internal fusion process. This will fry anything left in the solar system. Having lost so much mass, the sun will become a red dwarf (like Barnaard's Star or Wolf 359 and most of the stars in the galaxy), and slowly dwindle away.

The sun COULD explode sooner, if it should collide with something of sufficeint mass -- a wandering black hole or a rogue gas giant, for instance. Fortunately, there don't appear to be many of those around.

The sun could also heat up. Isaac Asimov built a story around this called 'the Currents of Space' in which the solar system passed into an area with a higher-than-normal concentration of heavy particles -- carbon atoms in the case of the story, but any heavier element would do. The addition of heavier particles in sufficient concentration would release more energy during fusion.

Should the sun just 'wink out', however, we would be plunged into global night 8 minutes later. We would be able to see stars, but not the moon except as it eclipsed the stars. The entire Earth would begin to lose heat the way it does on a cold winter night. The clouds would snow out and disappear since there would be no solar heat - driven process of evaporation to replenish them. The overall barometric pressure of the atmosphere would drop as the solar heat produced high pressure zones disappeared, and with them, the winds. Within a short time the temperature would plummet to several hundred degrees below zero. Unless we lived on in highly insulated structures powered by nuclear reactors and the remnant of our fossil fuels, we would all be dead before the oceans froze solid.

Answer 3

The effects would be noticeable within 8 minutes to 12 hours depending on what time of day it was at your location.

Except for areas close to large bodies of water, freezing would be likely within 48 hours or so. Close to a warm ocean in the tropics it would take quite a bit longer. Hot springs would be a good real estate investment if you're thinking this is the way the future is going!! There would be plenty of time for general panic and hard decisions. Civilization would not survive, but people are remarkably ingenious and some might just find ways to go on living!!

Deep in the oceans where water is heated by geothermal energy it is not clear that it would ever freeze. And there are life forms there that do not require solar energy.

Since the density of water is a maximum at 4C, unfrozen water could pool in deep areas for very long periods of time.

Freezing of all water on the planet might never happen!

Answer 4

Light takes about 8.5 minutes to arrive from the sun. We would not notice it until then. If we were on the night side of earth, at most 12 hours later we would notice it. Freezing would be a slow process, maybe a week or 2.

Answer 5

I think we woudl begin to feel it very fast. It would get pretty cold probably in a few days, but remebr that the earth absorbs heat from the sun and we also have avery hot core in the middle of the earth. I think we would probably last a few months to a year before the truly unlivable conditions overtook this planet. With good enough insulatio nand a supply of canned foods, some people might live but humanity as a whole would be screwed after maybe 4 or 5 years.

Answer 6

We would feel it in 8 minutes, but we would hardly freeze in 8 minutes. Think of what happens when we face away from the sun at night. It would take a couple of weeks for us to really freeze.

Answer 7

Becuase it takes about 8 minutes for light to reach us, the sun could die now and we would have 8 minutes left of sweet daylight. After that, we would plundge gradually into a winter like state first, all vegatation would die, and people and animals would begin dying. I believe we'd still have a few fighting weeks or months before it was over, as there would likely be enough fuel and shelter to keep SOME people alive for a time.

Answer 8

If the sun exploded the earth would no longer exist. if the sun just dissapeared then it would take about 8 mins. for the heat to stop reaching earth.

Answer 9

Will never happen. The Sun will eventually expand quickly into a red giant and engulf Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars in seconds. You'll never know what hit you.

But I'm guessing if it did; it would take no more than a few minutes to be bitterly cold and hours to kill us all.

Answer 10

If you mean it disappears suddenly, it would effect on us after about eight minutes. (the time that light takes to receive to the earth from sun)