If the Sun suddenly vanished, how would it impact us?

Certainly would result in a loud cheer from the Global Warming Denial political party.

We'd be dead in a matter of hours

The majority of the world would turn cannibal. Countries with hydroelectric/wind power could grow limited crops with man-made light.

One thing's for sure, there would still be a lot of douchebags wearing sunglasses.

As always, xkcd has you covered:

http://what-if.xkcd.com/49/

WhatIf? wrote:

As always, xkcd has you covered:

http://what-if.xkcd.com/49/

Are there any downsides to this scenario?

We would all freeze and die.

In other words, it wouldn't effect most of your 5k times.

WhatIf? wrote:

As always, xkcd has you covered:

http://what-if.xkcd.com/49/

pod. Now I'm going to start having nightmares about wild parsnips.

We would still get light from the moon.

Nice

Oregon grad student wrote:

We would still get light from the moon.

Doctors specializing in skin cancer would see a drop off in business.

No more page 3 girls.

I really don't think it would have that big of an impact. People exaggerate so-called disaster scenarios all the time.

We've got plenty of energy for thousands of years between fossil fuels and nuclear. People would definitely adapt to growing crops using artificial light. Or maybe just grow food via test tube.

We would adapt, that's for sure.

Al Gore would say it's only temporary and that he predicted this a long time ago.

WhatIf? wrote:

As always, xkcd has you covered:

http://what-if.xkcd.com/49/

For what it is worth...

They addressed if the sun suddenly "switched off". OP is asking about the sun vanishing. Does that mean that it is not visible or or ceases to exist? If no longer exists I think there would be gravitational concerns that have not been addressed by that link.

Carry on.

Superman would be powerless.

Google-University of Illinois

After the sun burns out, there will be very little light around here.

Here's a quick summary of the expected future of the sun:

The earth is doomed. If we haven't already blown ourselves up by then the planet will be vacated.

From the pattern followed by other stars, astronomers expect that the sun will get slowly brighter. About four billion years from now, the sun is expected to be about 40% brighter than it is today, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect, making the planet Earth quite a lot like Venus (really hot). If the sun is like most other stars its size, it will run out of hydrogen, start burning helium, and turn into a "red giant" with an expected maximum radius possibly engulfing the orbits of Venus and the Earth at a time of about 8 billion years from now. Even if the "surface" of the sun doesn’t make it all the way out to the Earth’s orbit, all the gases emitted from the sun during the red giant phase will be enough to slow down the Earth in its orbit due to friction with the gas, causing the Earth to fall into the sun. If the sun loses enough mass early enough, then the Earth’s orbit will get larger and the Earth may escape falling in, but still it will be severely baked (or even vaporized).

After the red giant phase, the sun will eject material and shrink down to a white dwarf. There will be some light left on Earth (if there is one left after all this) from the white dwarf, but not very much.

Bleu wrote:

There will be some light left on Earth (if there is one left after all this) from the white dwarf, but not very much.

That's racist!

derp wrote:

Certainly would result in a loud cheer from the Global Warming Denial political party.

LOL. Idiots still believe that Marxist propaganda?

Oh yeah, it's real. But it only applies to Western nations. It doesn't apply to China or India. Or Israel.