What happens if the sun suddenly disappears?

Imagine that in the blink of an eye the sun suddenly disappeared. There is no warning, no explosion or disaster, just an icy, silent void where the star that once sustained life on Earth shines.

For us, the inhabitants of this planet, the Sun is much more than a simple source of light. It is the center of gravity of the entire Solar System and the supplier of the energy that heats our world, directs photosynthesis, and ensures the climate is this way. So what happens if the Sun suddenly disappears?

The first thing to note is that it will take about 8 minutes and 20 seconds for the Earth to realize that this is happening. This is because it takes so long for the Sun’s light and gravitational influence to reach us, having traveled the 150 million kilometers that separate us from the star.

Nothing would change in these short minutes; Life on Earth would continue as is under the influence of the light emitted by the Sun before it disappeared.

But things will change drastically after this break. In a very short time, the Earth would be plunged into pitch darkness.

As time passed, mornings, noons and nights would disappear because there would be no sunlight to define these concepts. The Moon, reflecting sunlight, would also disappear and the night sky would be darker than we thought. The only visible sources of celestial light are distant stars and occasional meteors streaking across the sky, both of which are insufficient to illuminate our world.

With the disappearance of the Sun, the gravitational force holding the Earth and all other objects in the Solar System would also disappear. Without gravity to guide them, the planets would no longer have a gravitational center around which they would revolve, and instead each planet would move directly into space in the same direction they were in the past, according to Newton’s laws of motion. The sun’s gravity is over.

Therefore, the Earth will travel in a straight line through interstellar space, moving in a direction tangential to its final orbital position. Collision between planets is unlikely due to the large difference in their size and surrounding space.

This lonely journey through the cosmic darkness It will rapidly bring devastating consequences to all forms of life on EarthBecause the Sun is responsible for providing approximately 99.86% of the thermal energy that warms the Earth.

Without it, global temperatures would begin to fall quickly and dramatically. The effect will be noticeable in the first few days after the Sun disappears, but heat stored in rocks, soil, and oceans will keep temperatures relatively bearable.

However, within about a week the average temperature of the Earth’s surface will drop to about -17°C, and within a month it will be -73°C, a lethal cold for most living organisms except a few extremophile bacteria. and organisms adapted to extremely low temperatures.

The oceans would freeze from top to bottom, forming ice sheets. The top layer will solidify first, partially insulating deeper water, which retains some of the heat for longer.

This residual heat can sustain deep-sea marine life for a while. But in a few decades, even the deep sea will turn into a vast, frozen desert..

Without sunlight, photosynthesis would immediately stop and the plants’ main source of energy, and thus the entire food chain, would be interrupted. Surface vegetation will die quickly, as will organisms that directly depend on plants for survival. If there were no photosynthesis, oxygen production in the atmosphere would also stop, which would ultimately affect all organisms that engage in aerobic respiration.

Without the Sun’s heat, the Earth’s atmosphere would begin to behave strangely. As the air cooled and contracted, atmospheric pressure would gradually decrease. In the long term, the atmosphere will begin to “precipitate” and solidify as ice on the planet’s surface, forming icy layers of nitrogen, oxygen, and other gases.

Shift, All that was left of the Solar System would become a scattering of planets, asteroids, and comets, each following its own path.. Planets that once orbited in harmony would be launched into independent orbits, drifting through interstellar space for possibly billions of years and eventually being captured by new stars.

Fortunately, there is no known or possible physical scenario that would cause a star to suddenly disappear completely. Of all the possible destinations for the continuity of life on Earth, the condemnation of wandering indefinitely through the cosmic vastness does not seem to be one of them.