Sun is the only star in our solar system. It gives life to everything here on earth. What would happen if the Sun disappears suddenly? Could we survive without it? Let’s take a look at this hypothetical situation and imagine what it would be like to live on Earth without our star.
If the Sun disappears suddenly, we wouldn’t even notice its absence for the first eight and a half minutes. This is the time it takes for the sunlight to reach our planet. The Earth would still be orbiting a recently vanished star with no clue of the upcoming darkness but for just eight and a half minutes. When the last rays of the sun reach us, the eternal night wouldn’t be our only problem. The Sun is the source of dominant gravitational force in our solar system. It has all eight planets moving around it. If the sun suddenly goes off our solar system, the earth would fly off into space at a speed of 18 miles per second. Einstein’s theory of general relativity suggests that gravity travels at the speed of light. So after those initial eight and half minutes, there won’t be any gravitational force to hold the earth on a particular orbit and it will fly away from the solar system into the endless space in a straight line, at a speed of 18 miles per second. And if we are lucky enough not to collide with other planets and asteroids or not sucked in by a black hole, we will continue to travel for the next 43000 years until we find another star to revolve around. But that would be rather a long time.
Could humans survive without the Sun? What would happen to plants without it? If the Sun disappears suddenly, the current condition of the Earth will continue to depreciate, and with the eternal night, photosynthesis would stop. Larger trees would survive for few decades due to their slow metabolism but most small plants would be dead within days. As it affects the food chain, most animals would die off slowly. Only scavengers, the dead-eating animals and birds would remain until they freeze. The moon would go dark as there would be no sunlight to reflect from its surface. But the stars will continue to shine in our night sky. Electricity generation would still be possible except from solar cells.
Oceans would grow colder too, but just on the surface. The ocean’s interior will remain liquid due to the heat emitting from the earth’s core. Only geothermal vents would remain in the liquid underneath. In the end, organisms living around those geothermal vents would be the only living beings not to notice any difference. They don’t need the Sun to survive and could continue to thrive for billions of years until the planet becomes a chunk of rock drifting in space. Humans won’t survive on the earth for more than few weeks. We’d probably have to pool together and build a few nuclear fusion reactors in order to last a while without the Sun.
Lucky for us, our Sun is showing no signs of disappearing any time soon. We should be thankful to our Sun because of which everything is in perfect order.
Read another interesting article: “What would happen if the Earth suddenly stops spinning?“
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