Is the sun dies out how long do we have as a whole? Most of the land will be gulped by ice,right?

Question

If no one knows don't answer. I just want to know if ice will take over first then a quick demise.

Answer 1

Technically when the sun "dies out" it will contract slowly over hundreds of millions of years to become a white dwarf. Right before it dies, it will swell into a red giant which will unfortunately swallow up our planet for we are too close to survive this. Shortly after this (millions of years), our sun will go super nova and most, if not all, planets in our solar system will be obliterated. We know this by watching stars of a similar size and color of our own go through these stages. For people who don't know, it takes light roughly 8 minutes to traverse the distance between the sun and the Earth. The distance is about 93,000,000 miles. Our sun is about middle age so we have a couple billion years before this will happen.

Answer 2

If the sun were to suddenly go out, it would be a little more than eight minutes before anyone would notice. This is simply because the sun is eight light-minutes away from the Earth.

After that, the effect wouldn't be a whole lot different from night initially, just a night that didn't end. Things wouldn't freeze instantly because there is a lot of latent heat in the ground and the ocean that would have to be surrendered first. Consider also that there are many places on Earth already that go long periods without any sunlight.

Probably within a week or two all the plants would be dead. By then the temperature would be significantly lower... probably low enough to freeze up most of the ports and the like. Food riots will have probably already occurred in most of the major cities.

After a couple months the surface of the Earth would undoubtedly more resemble Antartica. Because all the plants are dead, and few animals can survive without food in the cold more than a month or two, almost all the animals would be dead too. Some few predators (and people) capable of surviving the extreme cold will persist for some time.

Eventually Earth would be like Europa. Solid, lifeless sheets of rock and ice, with only isolated niches providing the possibility of life. Ecosystems that exist in volcanic vents deep in the ocean probably won't notice the difference. Likewise, some close cave systems with decomposers and chemovores on the bottom of the food web will probably stick around. It is also concievable that humans could make colonies deep in coal mines and the like, using the Earth's heat for energy and living off mushrooms and cultivated animals.

Of course, most will tell you that we don't have to worry about the sun just 'dying out', because it's going to go red giant first. That IS what astronomers expect, but then five billion years is a long time... who knows what might happen to the sun in the mean time? Hopefully we don't find out!

Answer 3

The sun won't 'die out'.

1. At the moment it is converting hydrogen to helium. When the hydrogen in the core is exhausted, the core will contract and hydrogen-burning will start in a shell around the core. The outer envelope will expand. (At this point, the sun will be termed as a 'red giant'. Earth will be engulfed in its flames.)
2. The luminousity of the sun will increase because of the larger surface area, and the electrons in the core will become degenerate, producing degenerate electron pressure.
The core temperature will rise to about 10^8 K (just under 10^8 C) and helium-burning will start (forming cardon). The heat generated from this will spread and the core will ignite. The increased temperature will increase the rate of helium-burning which will increase the temperature and so on. Electron pressure will become non-degenerate, and the core will expand and cool.
3. The next phase will be of stable helium-burning and hydrogen-shell burning.
4. When the helium (in the core) is exhausted the inert carbon core will contract and become degenerate. There will be both helium and hydrogen-shell buring, and the outer-layers of the sun will expand. Nuclear-burning will cease: The sun won't be massive enough to ignite the carbon in the core.
5. Because of the incredible rate of the helium to carbon burning, and a relatively small change in temperature, the sun will have become very unstable. This will cause thermonuclear explosions in the outer shell to occur every few thousand years, causing the luminousity to rise and dip every few years or decades.
6. Meanwhile, the sun will have developed a strong outflow of mass from its surface (called a superwind), which will rip off the outershell of the sun, leaving behind the hot core. The expelled matter will form an expanding shell of gas, which will be heated by the core (a planetary nebula).
7. The sun will shed the nebula in a series of bursts, each releasing a shell of matter. The nebula will expand and dissipate in a few thousand or a few hundred thousand years.
8. The remaining core (mainly carbon) will contract to a white dwarf and the surface area will become very hot. As there will be no fuel the white dwarf will cool to a brown dwarf and eventually a black dwarf, (this takes billions of years).
9. Degenerate gas pressure inside the core will prevent the sun from collapsing.

Answer 4

Hey, no one really knows ,exactly, when the sun will die . Best estimates are between 5 and 15 BILLION years (so don't go and do anything you wouldn't want photographed tonight on the strength of it). As far as ice is concerned, climatically we may, no, probably will, have a few (or many) ice ages in that time (thay seem to come about every 100,000 years). When the sun does die, opinion seems to be that it will explode and become a Red Giant star, burning up all the inner planets, including Earth. At that point, anyone with an ice making machine could make an absolute FORTUNE! However, given that you and I (and our great great * 10^8 grandchildren will be long dead), I think we can file this problem under S.E.P. (See Hitch Hiker's Guide to The Galaxy by Douglas Adams). (It means Somebody Else's Problem).

Answer 5

I'll answer this as a hypothetical about if the sun were to suddenly stop producing heat and doesn't die out like it normaly would. In this case we would have about a week before the temperature on the surface of the planet was well below freezing, and all life would be frozen solid within a month. The atmosphere would freeze and all the water would drop to the ground. The earth would be a big snowball, the oceans would be frozen solid, and the continents would all be covered in snow and ice. I doubt glaciers would take over all land since there just isn't that much water on the planet, and since there would no longer be any weather to speak of since the solar energy that drives our climate would be gone.

If the sun were to die out naturally we would be vaporized as the sun expanded out past our orbit.

Also, somebody said it takes 8 years for the sun's heat to reach us... this is not true. The light from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach earth, and the heat from the sun in the form of radiation takes a few days at most...

Answer 6

Well the sun should swell to a red giant first and that would bring us very close to it (and possibly engulf us in it) so we'd burn up first. If we survived that I think it still dies fairly slowly.

But if it magically went out, it would take 8 minuets for the last of the radiation including visible light, UVrays and heat to reach us. After that I don't think things would freeze over immediately. Living things would probably die off quite quickly but since the oceans and land hold in heat (and if it's too quick it wont go through the phase change right away) it might take a bit for the ice to creep down.

Answer 7

No ice -- we'll get fried.
As the sun uses up it's hydrogen fuel, it will start to puff off its outer layers and grow to a larger size, known as a "red giant" star. While this much larger outer part will be cooler than the sun is now, it's still awfully hot (many millions of degrees). This larger outer envelop will reach out past earth, incinerating our planet and everything on it. We'll go out with fire, not with ice.

By the way, the sun's light and heat take 8 MINUTES to get to us, not 8 hours. We'll have plenty of warning that the sun is entering the red-giant phase, and the growth of the sun and the increase in temperature will be gradual -- but unstoppable.

But no need to worry yet, it won't happen for another 4-5 BILLION years.

Our sun will NOT ever go supernova -- it's well under the Chandrasekhar limit of 2.5 solar masses, the size that a star must be to explode in a nova or supernova.

Answer 8

Since our sun is a low mass star it has no chance of becoming a black hole or going supernova instaed as it bigens to fuse heavyer elements such as iron the core tempreture increases, therefore the radiation pressure (photons) becomes greater than the gravitational collapse of the star and the star begins to expained which will swallow the earth our sun will become a planerty nebular which means a white dwarf in the middle and it's outer shell expanding into the space around it (anyone observating from the out side would see the stars size increase), but this wont happen for another 5 billion years:

since the luminosity of the sun is 3.9x10^26 watts, the mass defect per second is:

E=mc^2 therfore m=E/c^2 = 3.9x10^26/(3.0x10^8)^2 =4.331^9

therfore say approximently 10% of the suns mass (2x10^30kg)is avalible for fusion and the mass defect of a proton fused is 0.0070kg we can work out the lifetime of the sun:

mass defect- the missing mass when particals form nuclei this mass is converted into energy

total masss avalible for fusion is 0.1x2.0x10^30 = 2.00x10^29 kg
therefore the change in mass x the total mass avalible to change= 0.0070x2.00x10^29 =1.4x10^27kg^2

E=mc^2 = 1.4x10^27 xc^2
=1.26x10^44j

Energy = power x time therfore time = energy/power=1.26x10^44j/3.9x10^26 = 3.23x10^17s = 10.2 x 10^9 years or a total life lime of 10 billion years, the sun is approximently 5 billion years old so it has 5 billion years left

As for the time it takes the ligth to reach us:
our distance from the sun is 150 million km or 1.5 x 10^11, the speed of ligth is 3.0 x 10^8 (approximently), therefore using speed=distanc/time, s=d/t t=d/s = 1.5x10^11/3.0x10^8 = 500 seconds, approximently 8 minutes. s if the sun had used up its fuel it would be 8 mins before the ligth reached us and hence 8 mins before we knew. it would take several more days for the solar winds to reach us (electrons and protons) and millions of years before the sun had expanded to such a diameter taht it swallowed us. as it got close the ocans would boil. Light follows an inverse square law which means if ou double your distance from the sun you would recive 1/4 of the light intenity and heat, so if the sun expains to twice its size we would experiance four times the heat. so it's not hard to see why the ocaens would boil and so would we.

Answer 9

Firstly, it won't happen for a LONG time: as we've only been around for 1 million years (imagine the age of the earth as 1 day with now being midnight - we only appeared on the scene at 11:59:59 PM) I doubt any humans as we would recognise ourselves would be around.

Secondly, one reason for this is that whatever fate befalls the Sun - either to contract or expand, cool down or heat up - the Earth would have become unable to sustain life at the very beginning of the process.

Answer 10

the solar is to small to blow up so fairly it is going to first dissipate all of its hydrogen and commence burnin its heilium, wich will reason to expande like a ballon, it is going to swallow up mercury and venus and then turn earth molten, some million years after that the solar will dissipate its helium then unexpectedly shoot off all of its gases abandoning a small cool well-loved individual said as a white dwarf, the gases that were shot off will damage the gassy atmosperes of each and every of the gas giants, then the metal middle of jupiter and saturn and and so on. will now no longer be held in orbit via former suns (white dwarfs) a lot less gravity so the metal cores of the gas planets will be destined to floot through area forever. for sure our death solar nevertheless has some skill left so it remains giving of a dim elementary yet after yet another few billion years our well-loved individual will completly lose all skill, and elementary. the white dwarf will be over come through an odd and mysterious substance said as darkish count number the solar will turn black blending in with the historic past of area, our solar is lifeless. for sure through the time this happens people will be wiped out or the universe can were destroyed through the large rip, why?, because this wont ensue for yet another 4.8 billion years plus this procedure will take a minimum of three billion years, or maybe with if people did exist they could probable be residing on some distant alien international.