What would happen if the sun turned off for an hour?

Answer 1

No much actually, assuming that you just turn off the heat, i.e. the sun remains there, and still has the same gravity. It would feel like the middle of the night for those in broad daylight, the heat received by Earth would reduce to the same proportion than it does now during the night, but on a global scale.
But losing 1/24 of the energy of a day would not change much, that is a drop of 1/8760 of the energy received in a year, unless it occurs more than once.
If you think that is a nifty way to address global warming, it might be; except that the on/off switch of the sun is not that easily accessible...

Answer 2

The sun is the most important object to Earth. Without the sun, life could not exist. There would be no heat, and all of the oceans would be frozen. There would be no light, and all plants would die. There is almost nothing more important to Earth than the sun. Even for just an hour. When we experience 'night', the other half of the earth is experiencing 'day', so our earth is continually receiving warmth from the sun, no matter the season. Without the sun for an hour or a minute we would freeze.

Answer 3

What do you mean by "turn off"? No nuclear fusion in the core?

The mass of the sun would remain unchanged (therefore, planetary orbits would be unchanged). The pressure that keeps the sun from falling onto itself (gravity) would not be compensated by radiation pressure in the core, so that the sun would start to collapse upon itself. However, in one hour, it is possible that the radius of the Sun would change by only a relatively small amount.

The heat in the sun (being transported by high energy photons near the centre, then by convection as one moves closer to the surface), would still be near its peak amount. (It takes hundreds of thousands of years for fusion energy to make its way from the core to the surface, where it escapes as light).

So the surface of the sun would probably stay very close to its effective temperature of 5780 K (9950 F) and we would not detect a change in luminosity nor colour.

For one hour, there would be no neutrinos emitted from the Sun's core. That would be easily detectable.

At the end of the hour, when the Sun gets kickstarted again, the core pressure and temperature would be higher than before the "power-off" so that fusion would proceed at a relatively greater pace, more than making up for the hour's worth of missing energy. And missing neutrinos...

The extra pressure would push out a little more than usual against the gravity and the sun's radius may increase slightly, after being reduced slightly; this reduces the pressure (thus the temperature) which reduces the output of energy, which causes a reduction in pressure... There may be a cyclical change that could be detectable thought neutrino telescopes and, eventually, through the study of the sun's surface oscillations.

How long (in hundreds of years) would the oscillations continue for a one-hour power-off? tough question.

PS: In an episode of Andromeda, Harper turns off one of the sun's so that Dylan can go in and fix it. In the episode, the sun turns off completely within seconds of the fusion being stopped.
Obviously not the same laws of physics as we have to contend with...

Answer 4

As Vincent has already pointed out, this essentially happens every day, only for much longer than an hour. It's called night. We don't get any heat from the sun during this period. The part of the Earth experiencing night cools off a bit, but there is enough stored energy to make it till sunrise.

Answer 5

if the sun were to turn off for 1 hour, we would see/feel it's effects for 8.3 minutes (8 mins and 20 seconds) due to the time it takes for the light to travel the 93 million miles or so that separates the sun from the earth. i would imagine that the average temperature would not decrease by very much and we would not feel that much of an effect.

Answer 6

the place do those adult men get those recommendations???? vehicles ran for fifty years without OD instruments manufacturing facility put in. the respond isn't any, it won't harm something, expend the transmission, or blow the engine. you have a 22% over stress fourth kit. turn it off at any velocity and the transmission down shifts to direct stress, and the engine accelerates around 22%. you nevertheless have lock up converter, so warmth boost is minimum, basically as a results of swifter speeds interior the tranny. Your gasoline mileage will go through via around 15-20%. AT ninety MPH your engine rpm will basically climb to around 3500. sure, the motor vehicle will experience extra responsive, yet basically floor it and it will drop out of OD besides. sure, the motor vehicle does decelerate extra helpful with engine braking, yet not as a results of fact ok enable freewheel, it somewhat is basically that at once, the OD would not use engine braking besides, precisely comparable to down moving from third to 2d. sturdy luck

Answer 7

Without the input of solar radiation, all the planets would start to cool down as they would be radiating into the largest heat sink that ever existed. The atmosphere would act as insulation to a certain extent, slowing the heat flow. Unfortunately, I don't have the math to give a ballpark figure as to the amount of temperature drop but suspect it would be sufficient to kill off a substantial portion of this planet's species.

Luckily, it's unlikely that there would be such an interruption in the solar fusion process. What's more likely is possibly intense solar flares causing radiation poisoning and electrical disruptions.

Answer 8

Physics would have to be completely reformulated, since there is no way that's physically possible.

It would get dark for an hour, eight minutes later (due to the speed of light delaying the 'dark pulse'). Aside from that not very much; an hour is not enough for a radical climate change.

Answer 9

8 minutes after it turned off, it would be like night on the side of the earth facing the sun. 1 hour later it would be day.

The earth's magnetic filed would spring back out to it's "normal" size temporarily.

Answer 10

CHAOS!!! if the sun turned off for an hour it would be dead for an hour so there would be no gravity to keep the planets in line=
chaos everywhere