How long we can be alive if the sun suddenly has gone?

Question

How long we can be alive if the sun suddenly has gone?

Answer 1

Fascinating idea, gone like turning of a light switch? or Gone complete as in vansihed?

Just turned off, so the mass remained would in theory give us some years as we would continue in orbit around what would effecively be a giant planet, the only problem being that without the radiation to supply heat things would get very, very cold, so we would have to replace that heat.

If the sun suddenly vanished, we would know about it instantly, but would not see that it had vanished where it was day time for, as elsewhere stated, eight minutes.

The Sun because of it's huge mass holds all of the planets in place by gravity, it also supplies heat and light by radiation, and like the Moon controls the tides.

The immediate removal of the Sun would result in the planets then drifing in open space, this would immediately cause a change in tidal forces within the Earths core, the spin of the Earth would change instantly, affecting weather and the Earth's abilty to hold onto it's atmosphere, what air was left would freeze to the Earth almost instantly.

There is the possibility because the tidal forces would change so suddenly that the Earth would explode, the Moon would hit us as there would be no pull from the Sun to keep it in orbit.

If the Sun literally vanished, I think we would all be dead within minutes, possibly less.

Answer 2

It might be said that at that time there would be no point of staying alive. But there would be some limited time to play with. First, the earth won't go cold right away. We would have weeks to a month or two. The earth would be giving off heat.
Relocating underground would buy us time. For what I don't know, but one could only wish and pray. The earth internally is very hot and it would take several thousand years for the heat to drop. Some several thousand people could survive in deep caverns a hundred years until all food source is consumed. Then those that remain after that can bury the rest. Hopefully no one would be foolish enough to have children once the sun went out or disappeared as in your question.

Answer 3

To downbeatitalian- you coudn't be more wrong, the moon triton is the coldest object in the solar system with temperatures of -390 Fahrenheit, and it still receives some degree of warmth and energy from the sun. If the sun were to disappear altogether, the temperatures would plunge to below 400 Fahrenheits reaching absolute zero, which would cause the entire earth's atmosphere to solidify and fall to earth as ice, Earth would be nothing more than a frozen piece of rock floating through space, and no artificial heat or shelter would be able to sustain humans ,or any kind of life for that matter, in such a hellish environment, even if the shelter were made of metal it would crumble like glass in such cold.

Answer 4

Well in actuality the sun would not just "go out". When our sun depletes its energy billions of years from now it will grow in size and swallow up the inner planets. Some models suggest that when it starts to grow that the earth will be pushed away from the sun to form a larger orbit yet other models show that the first three planets including Earth will be engulfed in the sun as it expands. So either way it happens you wont be living very long when it goes out unless you are a lucky one who is living on Mars or another planet orbiting another star which I am sure we will be in over a billion years time.

Answer 5

A few of us could survive for a very long time. It would take billions of years for the earth to cool off and we could extract enormous amounts of energy from even a frozen planet.

Mankind would most likely find a way to save a thousand to maybe a million individuals and build a new, strange but viable kind of life underground. The rest of the biosphere, I am afraid, would not fare quite so well.

Answer 6

Yeah, within 8 minutes we would be released from the Sun's gravity and fly off into space at a tremendous speed. We wouldn't last even one whole day, probably not even a whole hour, after this. No amount of fire or electricity would keep us warm enough survive.

Answer 7

We would be aware of it's demise in about 8 minutes.
We could likely live on for many years but as the oceans and all water froze we would begin a very rapid decline.

Answer 8

If the sun suddenly went out, it would not be long for everything on this planet to freeze to death ,I mean all life forms that are here, so I would sugest it may start to think about the other question is there life on other worlds that support Homo saipens life forms and if there is, will they make contact and if they did who would welcome them ? here on earth? Condidering man is to much warlike , they would be met with the object of fear?

Answer 9

not sure about that, but it takes 8 minutes for light from the sun to reach earth, so we wouldnt even know the sun had gone out until 8 minutes after.
after that... i'd imagine we would freeze pretty quickly. although this shouldnt be happening for some thousand years, so no worries

Answer 10

we could survive only for about 1 week because the green house gases have increased by a lot of percent so the heat will be trapped in earths atmosphere. earths temperature would decrease day by day till we freeze..no plants would grow.no fire .sun is the ultimate source of energy