If the sun stopped producing energy how long would we live?

[hans007]

we would die pretty quick. it would be like living on pluto. or colder.


first it would be cold. all the plants would die. all the oxygen would be used up.


but the coldness would probably kill us quick. i'm sure if say you lived inside of a nuclear power plant, you could survive. with machines to make oxygen from water etc.


but again it would be like living on pluto with all the same things to have to consider.

 

[Looney]

For starters, there will have to be a coefficient of heat transfer out of the atmosphere multiplied by the distance between the surface of the earth and the outside of the atmosphere, multiplied and surface area of the earth. Take that into account, add into the fact that >70% of the earth is water, and that water is fairly effective in retaining heat.

So how long would you guess? I would say no more than an hour, and certainly much less. We would be having a dark antartica type of environment almost within minutes i would think. How much residual heat could possibly be kept in the air, water, and rocks?

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: hans007
we would die pretty quick. it would be like living on pluto. or colder.


first it would be cold. all the plants would die. all the oxygen would be used up.

Oxygen wouldn't be used.. it woudl be literally frozen. Dry ice is carbon dioxide down to -100 celcius. We would be near absolute zero, whichi s about -270. at -273 even the electrons in the atoms freeze.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Moralpanic

Originally posted by: hans007
we would die pretty quick. it would be like living on pluto. or colder.


first it would be cold. all the plants would die. all the oxygen would be used up.

Oxygen wouldn't be used.. it woudl be literally frozen. Dry ice is carbon dioxide down to -100 celcius. We would be near absolute zero, whichi s about -270. at -273 even the electrons in the atoms freeze.

Someone mentioned being in the atmosphere at 2Kelvin - which would be impossible for that reason - the atmosphere would either liquefy or sublimate, probably after a few months. Someone made the arguement too that deserts can be 100F in the day, but near freezing at night - and that's still with a sun heating the planet. Granted, some areas with more water vapor and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might retain some heat a little longer, but in the long run, it wouldn't amount to anything significant.

So how long would you guess? I would say no more than an hour, and certainly much less. We would be having a dark antartica type of environment almost within minutes i would think. How much residual heat could possibly be kept in the air, water, and rocks?

I'd say more than an hour; but less than a full night. Maybe 3-4 hours before the surface reached freezing? At that point, count on lots of frozen precipitation, as the water in the air freezes and begins to fall.

General info:
White Dwarf, from Nasa's site:
- A star that is the remnant core of a star that has completed fusion in its core. The sun will become a white dwarf. White dwarfs are typically composed primarily of carbon, have about the radius of the earth, and do not significantly evolve further.

Stellar phenomena info

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: Moralpanic

Originally posted by: hans007
we would die pretty quick. it would be like living on pluto. or colder.


first it would be cold. all the plants would die. all the oxygen would be used up.

Oxygen wouldn't be used.. it woudl be literally frozen. Dry ice is carbon dioxide down to -100 celcius. We would be near absolute zero, whichi s about -270. at -273 even the electrons in the atoms freeze.

Someone mentioned being in the atmosphere at 2Kelvin - which would be impossible for that reason - the atmosphere would either liquefy or sublimate, probably after a few months. Someone made the arguement too that deserts can be 100F in the day, but near freezing at night - and that's still with a sun heating the planet. Granted, some areas with more water vapor and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might retain some heat a little longer, but in the long run, it wouldn't amount to anything significant.

So how long would you guess? I would say no more than an hour, and certainly much less. We would be having a dark antartica type of environment almost within minutes i would think. How much residual heat could possibly be kept in the air, water, and rocks?

I'd say more than an hour; but less than a full night. Maybe 3-4 hours before the surface reached freezing? At that point, count on lots of frozen precipitation, as the water in the air freezes and begins to fall.

General info:
White Dwarf, from Nasa's site:
- A star that is the remnant core of a star that has completed fusion in its core. The sun will become a white dwarf. White dwarfs are typically composed primarily of carbon, have about the radius of the earth, and do not significantly evolve further.

Stellar phenomena info

Less than a full night? I'm not sure what you mean, since it would be perpetually night after the sun was extinguished. (idea that 5% of people in here might believe: send a match to the sun to re-light it)

I'm interpretting it to mean less than 12 hours... So, I want you to explain how one side of the earth doesn't freeze solid every night... Does the sun-heated air travel fast enough to keep the other side of the earth warm? Again, I don't think the surface temperature on average would drop below freezing for several weeks to a month. (but once it dropped below freezing, the temperature would plunge much more rapidly)

 

[JSSheridan]

Originally posted by: rbloedow
Also, have any of you ever lived in an area where there's severe radiational cooling? Take dry deserts for instance - they can be upwards of 100 degree in sunlight, but at night the temperature drops below freezing. On a clear and dry night almost aynwhere this can happen (but usually less severe). Here it can be in the 60's at day, and freezing at night. Imagine that happening to many areas around the world, it'd get VERY cold very fast.

A good reply. Here is a relavant Link.

I contend that radiation is the primary means to the earth's heat loss if someone "Hit the switch." on Sol. Convection is not applicable in a zero gravity enviroment since weight is irrelevant, so I don't see that it would be applicable to this problem either. Since the near-vaccum our biosphere is in is a poor conductor of heat, I say it's effects are negligable compared to radiation. If anyone disagrees my statements. Let me know.

Now that you have a basic scientific foundation, you can answer the OP's question, "How long we would survive without the sun's energy." You have until 1800 EST hours on 12/22/2003 to report an answer. State any assumptions you make, do your own work, and show all work. First one with a correct answer wins. Winners win nothing. Peace.

PS - Why isn't this in HT. They could have answered it in 10 minutes, and knowing them, they don't get out of that forum to often.

 

[Walleye]

u guys have to remember that a lack of pressure would lower the boiling point of the gasses in the atmosphere. i dont know what would happen... probably helium nd other extremely low condensing gasses would remain gasses for longer...

 

[SuperTool]

I am guessing real estate around geisers and volcanos would go up in value

 

[sxr7171]

I think if we had time to plan, we could assauge the heat issue with geothermal technology. I would worry more about atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide levels. Pretty soon surrounded by dead foliage we're just going to see decomposition everywhere and more and more O2/CO2 imbalance. It won't take long before we can't breathe.

 

[beer]

Virtually instantaneously. Plummeting to -400 degrees would make quick work of the planet and not more than a few minutes, tops.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Elemental007
Virtually instantaneously. Plummeting to -400 degrees would make quick work of the planet and not more than a few minutes, tops.

lmao
weeks or months before the surface of the oceans was frozen.

 

[beer]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: Elemental007
Virtually instantaneously. Plummeting to -400 degrees would make quick work of the planet and not more than a few minutes, tops.

lmao
weeks or months before the surface of the oceans was frozen.

Thermal capacity of the surface of the oceans is irrelevant.
Without light, plants would immediately stop producing oxygen and we would use up the available supply quickly. Plankton excempted for the reasons you mentioned.

Every nonhuman living thing larger than a roach on the surface of the earth would be dead within a week from just the lack of food.

Look how fast the earth cools at night, when the sun still is heating the other half the planet. That heat is still trapped in the earth and moved via convection. I'd imagine it would drop off much, much faster when everything becomes absolute zero.

 

[Gravity]

There was an old b&w twilight zone episode about this. but the guy was dreaming about how hot it was when in reality, the sun stopped shining or someting like that and people had burned all their combustibles and were starting to freeze to death.

Scary idea. Thank God we don't have to worry about that.

 

[WinkOsmosis]

I would find a volcanic vent and go to sleep next to it.

 

[Golgatha]

Let's just say that somehow aliens warped our sun out of existence. For around 5minutes we wouldn't even know the sun went out because of the distance between it and the earth. Thermodynamics would dictate that the earth would transfer heat to its surroundings because it is warmer than them. The earth (including the magma at the core) would eventually (don't know how long, but it should be pretty quick...someone want to do a calculation assuming the heat capacity of water and loss of radiative heat by the earth) cool, at which point we would head towards absolute zero and everything on the planet would essentially freeze solid. Nuclear fusion reactors would be our only viable means of producing energy, and perhaps we could live underground in a nuclear powerd artificial ecosystem, provided we have the time to build such a thing. Of course, since the aliens warped the sun out of existence we would be flying through the cosmos and more than likely hit something since statistically there are a lot of somethings to hit out there in the Universe.

The only other alternative scenario is that the sun supernovas, and we all get converted to a sea of electron, proton, and neutron soup known as plasma a few minutes after all the lights go out.....and the earth will be consumed by fire.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: Elemental007

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: Elemental007
Virtually instantaneously. Plummeting to -400 degrees would make quick work of the planet and not more than a few minutes, tops.

lmao
weeks or months before the surface of the oceans was frozen.

Thermal capacity of the surface of the oceans is irrelevant.
Without light, plants would immediately stop producing oxygen and we would use up the available supply quickly. Plankton excempted for the reasons you mentioned.

Every nonhuman living thing larger than a roach on the surface of the earth would be dead within a week from just the lack of food.

Look how fast the earth cools at night, when the sun still is heating the other half the planet. That heat is still trapped in the earth and moved via convection. I'd imagine it would drop off much, much faster when everything becomes absolute zero.

Elemental, I've never seen you post something that far from the truth before... I'm only hoping it was a vain attempt at humor for a small percent of us... Nonetheless, for the people who don't recognize it as a joke, "convection" will continue to heat the rest of the world from the thermal capacity of the oceans, not just the surface of the oceans, but from 71% of the surface of the earth at an average depth of 3800 meters (and a freezing point below 32 degrees F - it's salt water, you know)

Also, we wouldn't run out of oxygen, unless we could somehow survive the eventual coldness that would cause the oxygen to precipitate (rain) out of the atmosphere. As far as everything being dead just from a lack of food, most things can survive weeks or months before they die from starvation. But, if half the stuff dies, the carion eaters certainly wouldn't be going hungry, would they?

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: Elemental007

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: Elemental007 Virtually instantaneously. Plummeting to -400 degrees would make quick work of the planet and not more than a few minutes, tops.

lmao weeks or months before the surface of the oceans was frozen.

Thermal capacity of the surface of the oceans is irrelevant. Without light, plants would immediately stop producing oxygen and we would use up the available supply quickly. Plankton excempted for the reasons you mentioned. Every nonhuman living thing larger than a roach on the surface of the earth would be dead within a week from just the lack of food. Look how fast the earth cools at night, when the sun still is heating the other half the planet. That heat is still trapped in the earth and moved via convection. I'd imagine it would drop off much, much faster when everything becomes absolute zero.

Elemental, I've never seen you post something that far from the truth before... I'm only hoping it was a vain attempt at humor for a small percent of us... Nonetheless, for the people who don't recognize it as a joke, "convection" will continue to heat the rest of the world from the thermal capacity of the oceans, not just the surface of the oceans, but from 71% of the surface of the earth at an average depth of 3800 meters (and a freezing point below 32 degrees F - it's salt water, you know) Also, we wouldn't run out of oxygen, unless we could somehow survive the eventual coldness that would cause the oxygen to precipitate (rain) out of the atmosphere. As far as everything being dead just from a lack of food, most things can survive weeks or months before they die from starvation. But, if half the stuff dies, the carion eaters certainly wouldn't be going hungry, would they?

We wouldn't run out of oxygen? How do you propose the atmospheric oxygen levels will be maintained?

 

[rahvin]

Originally posted by: sxr7171

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: Elemental007

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: Elemental007 Virtually instantaneously. Plummeting to -400 degrees would make quick work of the planet and not more than a few minutes, tops.

lmao weeks or months before the surface of the oceans was frozen.

Thermal capacity of the surface of the oceans is irrelevant. Without light, plants would immediately stop producing oxygen and we would use up the available supply quickly. Plankton excempted for the reasons you mentioned. Every nonhuman living thing larger than a roach on the surface of the earth would be dead within a week from just the lack of food. Look how fast the earth cools at night, when the sun still is heating the other half the planet. That heat is still trapped in the earth and moved via convection. I'd imagine it would drop off much, much faster when everything becomes absolute zero.

Elemental, I've never seen you post something that far from the truth before... I'm only hoping it was a vain attempt at humor for a small percent of us... Nonetheless, for the people who don't recognize it as a joke, "convection" will continue to heat the rest of the world from the thermal capacity of the oceans, not just the surface of the oceans, but from 71% of the surface of the earth at an average depth of 3800 meters (and a freezing point below 32 degrees F - it's salt water, you know) Also, we wouldn't run out of oxygen, unless we could somehow survive the eventual coldness that would cause the oxygen to precipitate (rain) out of the atmosphere. As far as everything being dead just from a lack of food, most things can survive weeks or months before they die from starvation. But, if half the stuff dies, the carion eaters certainly wouldn't be going hungry, would they?

We wouldn't run out of oxygen? How do you propose the atmospheric oxygen levels will be maintained?

Given the amount of O2 in the atmosphere and the consumption rate of that oxygen by living organisms the atmosphere would begin precipitating long before we even reduced the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere a serious amount. There is a whole lot of air out there.

 

[sharkeeper]

Imagine the swings in NAO and PDO! At least the severe weather nuts would have a nice surprise before their dicks fell off.

There would be volcanic activity as well. The lack of natural CO2 exchange would make the environment quite hostile abroad.

Cheers!

 

[nCred]

Originally posted by: Golgatha
Let's just say that somehow aliens warped our sun out of existence. For around 5minutes we wouldn't even know the sun went out because of the distance between it and the earth. Thermodynamics would dictate that the earth would transfer heat to its surroundings because it is warmer than them. The earth (including the magma at the core) would eventually (don't know how long, but it should be pretty quick...someone want to do a calculation assuming the heat capacity of water and loss of radiative heat by the earth) cool, at which point we would head towards absolute zero and everything on the planet would essentially freeze solid. Nuclear fusion reactors would be our only viable means of producing energy, and perhaps we could live underground in a nuclear powerd artificial ecosystem, provided we have the time to build such a thing. Of course, since the aliens warped the sun out of existence we would be flying through the cosmos and more than likely hit something since statistically there are a lot of somethings to hit out there in the Universe.

The only other alternative scenario is that the sun supernovas, and we all get converted to a sea of electron, proton, and neutron soup known as plasma a few minutes after all the lights go out.....and the earth will be consumed by fire.

The core of earth would not cool quickly, it would take millions of years at least.

 

[emb09]

not long. but, if the entire world were mating, enough energy would be produced to live an additional week.

 

[Chrishuff1]

Who cares.

 

[Walleye]

mods, please kill this thread...

 

[tooltime]

i would guess some would start to die in days

 

[SunnyD]

You folks are silly.

#1 - Yes, the earth would eventually turn into a deeply frozen wasteland on the surface after the sun would "hypothetically" fizzle out. However, the timeframe would be far greater than the average 8 minutes (1 AU) that most are suggesting. I have no real or provable estimated timeframe, but it would be a significant amount of time before the earth's ambient heating radiated away completely. After all, approximately half of the world is not being exposed to the warming effects of the sun as is at any given time, and with that our temperature swings are usually within 10 to 20 degrees centigrade anyway. Radiational cooling I would venture to guess would take the better part of a month or so for all ambient surface heat to be radiated away.

#2 - The earth and any most planet for that matter generates heat internally at it's core due to gravatational compression of the materials within it (in earth's case, nickle and iron, constantly in a moulten form) With no ambient heating from the sun, the planet theorhetically should freeze through the core of the planet as well, but we're talking probably a magnitude of decades or centuries before that breakeven happens. This core heat obviously isn't enough to sustain life on the surface of the planet (re: ice ages), but because it does extend outward in the form of thermal vents, volcanoes, etc, my guess is probably life around the mid-Atlantic ridge and possibly the Ring of Fire (pacific rim) at the bottom of the oceans would continue for some time.

#3 - Without the sun - again, if it just fizzled out - we'd have two immediate problems to worry about. Photosynthesis would cease, meaning no vegitation, and no oxygen production. We'd sufficate rather rapidly (probably within a month or so). Second probably would be gravity. Without the sun as the gravitational center of our solarsystem (okay, one of 2 focii), we'd have two problems. Firstly, the oceans would immediately go nuts without the solar tides to counter the lunar tides - we'd have some monster surfing going on (probably 50 to 100 foot tides easily). Secondly, the earth would no longer have an orbit, meaning that probably rather quickly the earth would be speeding through asteroid debris fields which are also thrown out of orbit without a gravitational focus. Presuming one of the other planets doesn't happen to hit us first.

My guess would be humanity would be sustainable for a month or two at most under these circumstances. But honestly, if that were the case, I'd grab a :beer: and a chick on an hourly basis and say "screw me baby, the worlds about to end."