If the sun went in the blink of an eye?

Question

What would kill us first. We'd have heat and light for the next 8.3 minutes so would it be earth spiralling out of orbit or something else?

Answer 1

If the sun simply vanished then about 8 minutes later the earth-moon system would go in more or less a straight line (Venus, Mars, and Jupiter would pull them about a bit) tangent to its orbit at that point. It would take a few days for the earth to cool down to the point where life outside became impossible -- consider the rate of cooling at night and just assume that the atmosphere continues to cool at about that rate. I think the nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere would freeze in about two weeks, after a short period of liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen rain and condensation.

One interesting thing is that if the sun went dark instantly all over its surface, we would not see it blink off, but would see it go dark first at the center of the solar disk, then see a widening dark circle (rather like the pupil of an eye) spread to the edge of the solar disk. It would take a little over two seconds; the reason is that we're about two light-seconds closer to the center of the sun's disk than we are to the edges, so we would see the center go dark first.

Answer 2

Gravity waves also travel at the speed of light, so we would continue to orbit the sun for those 8.3 minutes. After that, the source of heat and light to our planet would vanish and we would spin out of orbit and out of the solar system, unless we were to hit a planet like Mars on the way out, which would result in the complete annihilation of all life.
We might be able to save a few people deep undergound, where the heat from the Earth's core would provide warmth, or use a lot of nuclear reactors for power, but that would take time and billions of people would quickly die in the cold of -273 degree space.

Answer 3

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, so I guess the first thing that you'd notice was that everything went dark. The heat would take longer to travel, so it would only feel colder after that.
If the sun had disappeared for some reason then, I suppose we'd fly out of orbit and freeze to death? If it just collapsed on itself it would create a black hole I think, so we'd all be sucked in and crushed to death.
I dunno. It's not gonna happen for a few billion years though, so don't panic.

Answer 4

well, technically the earth would have been engulfed by the sun long before it went out, which would probably kill us all (by probably, i mean definetly - you'd be dead.) But if it went out now, probably not going out of orbit, as there would still be enough mass there to hold the earth in for a while. Probably the loss of heat (when that happened) because it would become so cold so quickly, we would all freeze to death instantly.

Answer 5

Well, it would probably take a while - but we would eventually freeze. We'd move farther away from where the sun was - but so would everything else - and we wouldn't necessarily run into anything. There is a chance we'd collide with another planet or asteroid, but most likely we wouldn't and would end up in the far reaches of space - dark and frozen.

Answer 6

AS the information reached each planet,the planet would fly off at a tangent,in the direction it was going when the information arrived at it's orbit and effect ever planet in the same way.
The moons would continue to orbit the planets but they would follow them out of the solar system.
We may last for a while,but eventually we would succumb to the climate changes.

Answer 7

The cold would eventually kill us if the sun just magicaly disappeared we would no longer have anything to orbit around but that wouldn't actually kill anything.

If you mean a black hole then we won't get sucked in because the sun does not have enought mass to become one

Answer 8

i believe that the force of gravitational attraction acts across the vast expanses of space instantaneously, like a nut tied to a string and swung around - cut the string and the nut immediately departs on a new trajectory in a straight line. so if the sun and the mass its made of just ceased to be in the blink of an eye, the abrupt departure from the earths normal trajectory to a completely new one would probably result in an immediate destabilisation of the very matter that the earth is made of, with instantaneous effect of rapid continent shifts and disruption of anything not tied down... like a global massive earthquake... so we'd all die really fast.

Answer 9

we would die of cold first.everthing would freeze lower than antartica.as you say the earth would have nothing to orbit round.

Answer 10

I think the cold would kill us first