What if the Sun disappeared? We all know that it will not happen as the Sun will die billions of years from now. The Sun is not going to disappear as matter and energy don’t simply vanish. Let’s take it as an experiment to determine how the Earth would move along without the Sun. Even if the sun does disappear, we wouldn’t notice until quite later, as the light takes roughly eight minutes to reach Earth. We would still be able to see the Sun in the sky for about eight minutes. But once we realise that there is no Sun, mass confusion and panic would likely take place.
What about gravity? Well, the Sun’s gravitational pull would also take about eight minutes to end as gravity travels at the same speed as light. On losing the Sun’s gravitational influence on Earth, the Earth will fly out in a straight-line tangent to wherever it was in its orbit.
With no moonlight or Sunlight, our planet buddies like Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, etc., they would be our only source of visible light from space. Nevertheless, electricity and fossil fuels would still be helpful for a while so that human-made sources would light cities and towns. Another critical factor that will be affected by this probability is photosynthesis. Photosynthesis would completely stop. 99% of the natural phenomena are productive due to photosynthesis which requires the Sun. If photosynthesis stops, the plants would not be successful in giving out the life-sustaining oxygen. But our atmosphere contains a whopping quintillion kilos of oxygen; hence even without photosynthesis, humans, animals, microorganisms would be able to consume oxygen, and it would take thousands of years to run out of oxygen. The poor plants would be in a worse-off condition without the Sun as most of them would die within a few days or weeks. Moreover, the Earth would become cold, and giant trees would freeze to death.
Considering the temperature, the average surface temperature, including the cold places, hot places, and the different seasons across is approximately 14-15 degrees Celsius. But without the Sun’s energy, the Earth would radiate heat away, and by the end of the first week without the Sun, Earth would begin to freeze. Practically, humans would be able to withstand such coldness for about a week or month. By the end of the first year without the Sun, the average global surface temperature would be about -73 degrees Celsius!
The Earth also produces heat. 80 percent of the Earth’s internal heat comes from its core- deep down, where radioactive elements decay, providing adequate energy to keep the Earth’s centre at the temperature of 5000 degrees Celsius. So, the sustainability of life would exist for quite some time even after the Sun would have disappeared.
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