What if the Sun Suddenly Dies Out?

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What happens when the sun suddenly dies? Extreme temperature? Mass extinction? Could humans still survive this apocalypse?

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Stars are born in stellar nurseries called nebulae, live for a long period of time and then die. Our sun does not differ from this. Thanks to the Sun, life as we know it exists. Its light hits the surface of the planet making it warm enough for living organisms to develop. Because of this, some ancient people even worshipped the sun, given its significance.

In a 2007 movie Sunshine, it was depicted how the sun was dying because of a phenomenon known as the Q-ball. A group of scientists then must fly a bomb into its centre to reignite it. But what if a similar situation like that happens today? What if our sun suddenly dies?

First thing first, let’s look at what it takes for a star to die. Stars begin their lives as big agglomerations of gas, mostly hydrogen with a dash of helium and other elements. The hydrogen atoms, each containing a single proton, fuse with other hydrogen atoms to become helium, which has two protons and two neutrons. The fusion releases energy in the form of light and heat. This is how we get the energy from the sun.

There’s enough hydrogen to keep this process running for billions of years. But what happens when the hydrogen is gone? In this case, the sun won’t be able to generate as much energy, and will start to collapse under its own weight. Because of the increased pressure, it heats up even more and gives off more light. This energy also causes the star, in this case the sun, to expand and become a red giant. It’s called “red” because its surface temperature is lower than other stars. If you look at this graph, the coolest stars in the sky glow red, as opposed to blue, which might seem a bit counter intuitive.

Going back to the topic. Our sun dies, what happens after that? Well, at the very least you all might think it would get dark. Well, not instantly. At first we wouldn’t realise anything, because it takes eight minutes for sun rays to reach the Earth. This is because of the constant speed of light, we see things in the night sky that are actually past images, but the light takes quite some time to reach us.

Just as a side note, if 65 million light years away there are some advanced creatures and they have powerful telescopes, somehow.. they would be able to see dinosaurs walking on earth.. or rather making their last steps because that’s approximately when they went extinct. That information would need to travel 65 million years to reach these creatures.

Since we still know nothing that travels faster than light in our universe, right after the sun disappears it would take 8 minutes for us to know what in the universe happened. Another important thing is that it would also take the gravitational pull of the sun 8 minutes to vanish. So, the earth would continue orbiting the sun for another 8 minutes. That perhaps would be a good time to harvest its last remaining bits of energy over the solar panels.
Those on the night side of the Earth wouldn’t notice anything at first, but when the moon starts to disappear, they too will know. The only source of light in our solar system will be gone. We will be left with only the light we would get from the distant stars.

What about the broader impact in the ecosystem? Well, the living processes like photosynthesis would stop, so plants can no longer produce oxygen. That would be horrific, but it isn’t that of a serious issue. Even if the photosynthesis stops, all living organisms would have enough oxygen to breathe for about another thousand years. Though there would be much bigger problems than the oxygen running low.

Without the heat of the sun, the Earth would become extremely cold and would cool down very quickly. Within just the first week, the planet would be about 32 F or 0 C. Imagine going on vacation in the Bahamas, but feels a bit like Greenland.

Okay, so that doesn’t sound so scary. We will still have fossil fuels to keep us warm, right? Well, it would work for the first four to six months, but by the end of the first year it would be so cold without the sun.. and for us and other organisms, we would have to go underground as deep as possible, closer to the core. This would require a lot of digging and won’t be possible. To put it simply, if we couldn’t find a way to leave the Earth, we wouldn’t survive.

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This man is right up there with the best of the astronomy channels.

jonathanvelasquez

402 views, this ain't right this channel needs to be pushed its sickkkk

adamstannard

I used to hate the sun cause it’s heat in the mid day 🥵🥵But, after knowing about this.... just grateful to see the sun rise and set everyday 🙏 ✨🌞

vidysaras

Except earth will have been burnt by our sun and have no atmosphere or life whatsoever by the time the sun dies

Juanze

I’d have to cancel my plans for next week

Daedroh

I think whole solar system will collide due lack of gravitational pull.

gopalkotwal

The things that really suck are..when our sun does go...ALL THIS EVERYTHING will cease to exist..like everything we've all done here..and the fact I won't be around to travel to the next planet when we do that..everything we are doing now means nothing..get depression yet?

treese