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

The chanticleer will no longer crow in the morning.

Christopher Plummer tells us---

We Hate The Sun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUiT03FvM3w

Let's assume the sun just burns out immediately.

Right off the bat you'd have localized riots, lawlessness, etc. Globally I'd imagine you'd have a lot of strife as well.

Things would get ugly pretty quickly. Food would start to come in short supply since crops wouldn't be able to grow. Countries would need to figure out FAST how to generate resources. I imagine there'd be a lot of starvation pretty quickly in 2nd and 3rd world countries due to inability to adapt.

On an individualized level it would suck too. Everything would be dark, forever.

QUESTIONS:

- Could our power grid handle it? Electricity use would probably go way up since lights, etc. would need to be on all the time.

- How fast would climate change happen? Obviously not immediately, but would the seasons get messed up? I'd imagine the atmosphere would keep things somewhat warm for a few years, but wouldn't the earth just get colder any colder?

- How long could humans survive? 100 years? Indefinitely?

- Assuming this happened, would you have children? Would you want them to grow up in a world like this?

We would freeze and it won't take seasons just days. Take the coldest spot on the planet, I imagine the whole earth would approach that level within a day. From there, it would only continue to get colder. Do you know how cold space is? I don't, but I know I don't need to worry about having children if the sun goes out.

heyyo wrote:

We would freeze and it won't take seasons just days. Take the coldest spot on the planet, I imagine the whole earth would approach that level within a day. From there, it would only continue to get colder. Do you know how cold space is? I don't, but I know I don't need to worry about having children if the sun goes out.

Amazing what a bunch of Chicken Littles we have on here. Humans have overcome every kind of natural disaster to date. This would be no different. It's called TECHNOLOGY folks. And simply inventiveness when needed.

As has been pointed out there are energy sources that are readily available to last us hundreds of years, if not thousands. Sure there would be disruptions but we'd do OK.

It really wouldn't impact me much. I'm more of a night person.

G.Campbell wrote:

The chanticleer will no longer crow in the morning.

Christopher Plummer tells us---

We Hate The Sun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUiT03FvM3w

Gravity pulls us down so with out the sun we'll just fly away.

Bleu wrote:

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...

We'll never get there.

derpizaziotool wrote:

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.

The west is being asked to take on an unfair burden. Therefore: there is no global warming. Makes sense to me!

Do you know how cold negative 400 degrees Fahrenheit is aka the lowest temperature of Pluto? Again I don't but I'm pretty sure 99.999% of the earth's population would make it through one day of that, especially California. All of the food and water on earth would vanish. You'd make it about as long as it takes for you to die of thirst.

http://www.universetoday.com/13893/temperature-of-pluto/

Well Actually wrote:

heyyo wrote:

We would freeze and it won't take seasons just days. Take the coldest spot on the planet, I imagine the whole earth would approach that level within a day. From there, it would only continue to get colder. Do you know how cold space is? I don't, but I know I don't need to worry about having children if the sun goes out.

Amazing what a bunch of Chicken Littles we have on here. Humans have overcome every kind of natural disaster to date. This would be no different. It's called TECHNOLOGY folks. And simply inventiveness when needed.

As has been pointed out there are energy sources that are readily available to last us hundreds of years, if not thousands. Sure there would be disruptions but we'd do OK.

You are the biggest moron in earth and would freeze to death.

Corey Hart wrote:

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

Good work

genuine random a hole wrote:

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.

I'm going with the "ceases to exist" scenario.

With only small perturbations from other planets, we'd pretty much travel in a straight line through interstellar space. But we really wouldn't be likely to notice: everyone would be dead in hours (at most).

Well aside from the spinning wildly out of control through the universe since the stabilizing gravitational force of the solar system would now be missing ...I think the odds that we would slam into another planet and be smashed to smithereens is far higher than that we will be gently pulled into the orbit of another nearby star. And anyway since those stars are much hotter we would probably be burned to a crisp before we got very close.

It would be as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

No one will be able to effect any 5k times.

cant get much slower than dead wrote:

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.

heyyo wrote:

We would freeze and it won't take seasons just days. Take the coldest spot on the planet, I imagine the whole earth would approach that level within a day.

That's not true at all. Sunlight is an important energy source only for the Earth's surface, and there's plenty of geothermal energy available at the surface too.

To stay warm all you would have to do is stand near an erupting volcano, geyser or hot springs, or other volcanic feature. Lack of sunlight would not affect them at all. You would probably have to kill a lot of people to get a good spot, and there wouldn't be much available food, but if you stocked up you might make it.

Technology would not save as many people. Hydroelectric power does not work on frozen rivers. Nuclear power plants might survive for a while, but the electric grid itself is not designed for extreme cold and would quickly fail. And nobody would bother to fix it. If you lived in a nuclear power plant you might make it.

That would divide the world into two camps, the nuclear plant people and the volcano people, with massive wars to possess those territories. But that wouldn't be the worst problem. With the sun vanished, the Earth and all the planets and asteroids and such would stop orbiting and float off into space. Earth would soon be bombarded by asteroids and meteors that would wipe out all the remaining nuclear plants. Then it would become a rogue planet drifting between the stars.

The volcano people would not survive very long. But something might. Deep-sea hydrothermal vents would be unaffected for millions of years, possibly long enough for the Earth to wander into another star system and warm back up again.

How about the most obvious answer? The Earth would fly off into a tangent, eventually colliding with objects ranging from asteroids to planets.

Just how many planets do you and the other poster think would be dead smack in the middle of our path? How many are close to our solar system?

a true test wrote:

Just how many planets do you and the other poster think would be dead smack in the middle of our path? How many are close to our solar system?

At the moment the sun gives out, planets could fly off into our direction as well. The chances of that happening are slim, but still there. A more likey scenario is that we move into the asteroid cloud and get bombarded.