# If the sun stoped shining **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 29, 2010, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838 "2010-08-29T00:05:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![staticgrass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b38774/32.png) [@staticgrass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/staticgrass)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/1 "2010-08-29T00:05:59Z")
My question is, what would happen to earth if the sun suddenly stopped shining? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/2 "2010-08-29T00:25:13Z")
We’d freeze in less than a week. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/3 "2010-08-29T00:35:46Z")
Right. There’s no way a planet without light and heat could support life. Oh sure, we’ve got that whole molten thing going beneath us, but how long would it take to seriously get any benefit from it? Those miners in Chile might be the last to go. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/4 "2010-08-29T00:39:04Z")
Well, we’d have eight minutes before it became a problem. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/5 "2010-08-29T00:39:05Z")
We would finally find out how to mend a broken heart. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/6 "2010-08-29T00:40:39Z")
It takes just over 8 minutes for the sunlight to get here. The gravity may get weird if it disappeared. If it went dark, we would be pitch black quickly. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/7 "2010-08-29T00:43:02Z")
Aside from the cold, I expect there would be some really strange weather also. ---
**Author:** ![GHO57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df788c/32.png) [@GHO57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GHO57)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/8 "2010-08-29T00:54:25Z")
Let’s see… Loss of plant life might be a bit of a problem… if you intend to eat… also most of the oxygen production is plankton based, so we’d see a raise in CO2 levels… eventually making the air unbreathable. Also, we’re putting out a significant wattage of waste heat, but nowhere near to sunlight… so it’s going to get wintery and you can expect the water cycle to stop working pretty fast. …so, nothing to eat, nothing to drink, nothing to breathe, no light and no heat. Basically the exact opposite of laying on the beach having fun. ---
**Author:** ![Desert\_Nomad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desert_nomad/32/177_2.png) [@Desert\_Nomad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desert_Nomad)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/9 "2010-08-29T00:57:17Z")
Did just the visible light stop? If so, then we’d still have heat which might let us last slightly longer but either way the situation would be grim. ---
**Author:** ![Asympotically\_fat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47c2d/32.png) [@Asympotically\_fat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asympotically_fat)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/10 "2010-08-29T01:15:33Z")
The science fiction story [‘A Pail of Air’](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pail_of_Air) was about a very simlair scenario. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/11 "2010-08-29T01:37:46Z")
> [@staticgrass](#): > > My question is, what would happen to earth if the sun suddenly stopped shining? Happens every night with no big problems. So I think everything would be fine. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/12 "2010-08-29T05:45:38Z")
> [@](#): > > The Earth’s atmosphere has some capacity to hold in heat but not much of one. A relatively simple calculation would show that the Earth’s surface temperature would drop by a factor of two about every two months if the Sun were shut off. The current mean temperature of the Earth’s surface is about 300 Kelvin (K). This means in two months the temperature would drop to 150K, and 75K in four months. To compare, the freezing point of water is 273K. So basically it’d get too cold for us humans within just a few weeks. Some bacteria seem to be capable of surviving at extremely cold temperatures in space, so there would probably still be some limited bacterial life left on Earth. But anything else would die pretty quickly (even the rats). > > We could probably survive if we went deep underground where the Earth’s internal heat is higher or if we built totally isolated habitation domes, but at the moment I don’t think we’re capable of something like that on any appreciable scales. [http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=656](http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=656) ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/13 "2010-08-29T07:05:52Z")
> [@GHO57](#): > > …also most of the oxygen production is plankton based, so we’d see a raise in CO2 levels… eventually making the air unbreathable. Eventually being several thousand years. It’s not really a problem since we’d be dead of cold and starvation long before then. ---
**Author:** ![BigBertha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@BigBertha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigBertha)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/14 "2010-08-29T07:11:16Z")
Hmm. How much closer, exactly, would it have to get for us to notice a bad heat wave? ---
**Author:** ![PlainJain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5daacb/32.png) [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/15 "2010-08-29T07:41:21Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > We would finally find out how to mend a broken heart. Snerk. ---
**Author:** ![NOLA\_Cajun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ea666f/32.png) [@NOLA\_Cajun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NOLA_Cajun)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/16 "2010-08-29T08:04:55Z")
We’d all fart. All at once too. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/17 "2010-08-29T10:32:54Z")
> [@staticgrass](#): > > My question is, what would happen to earth if the sun suddenly stopped shining? The sun _will_ stop shining when it dies in ~5 billion years. Humanity may very well not make it that far but if it does, that’s the absolute Game Over mark unless we’ve colonized other galaxies by that point. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/18 "2010-08-29T12:11:31Z")
> [@Rigamarole](#): > > The sun _will_ stop shining when it dies in ~5 billion years. Humanity may very well not make it that far but if it does, that’s the absolute Game Over mark unless we’ve colonized other galaxies by that point. Before that things look as if it will expand into a red giant that incinerates the earth. IOW, fire before ice. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/19 "2010-08-29T13:13:06Z")
> [@GHO57](#): > > Loss of plant life might be a bit of a problem… if you intend to eat… also most of the oxygen production is plankton based, so we’d see a raise in CO2 levels… eventually making the air unbreathable. (Assuming the Sun is no longer putting out radiation at all, not just visible light), the atmosphere would liquefy, then freeze solid long before we had to worry about rising carbon dioxide levels. (In fact, based on that “Curious About Astronomy” link in **Duckster** ’s post and the fact that [carbon dioxide](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide) has a boiling point of only 216.6 K or -57 Celsius, CO[sub]2[/sub] should start to rain out of the atmosphere pretty early in the process. [Oxygen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen) would go a few months later, then [nitrogen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen).) **River Tam:** “You’re afraid we’re going to run out of air. That we’ll die gasping. But we won’t. That’s not going to happen… We’ll freeze to death first.” ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2010, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838/20 "2010-08-29T16:16:52Z")
> [@Duckster](#): > > [http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=656](http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=656) I’m not certain how they’re getting their calculation–I assume they’re just subtracting current solar flux from the total radiation balance–but when I ran numbers for this I found that the Earth cooled to freezing temperatures in days rather than weeks, and that was without accounting for the loss of insulating properties due to a change in the composition of the atmosphere once water starts condensing out of the atmosphere. [THREAD=411531]Here[/THREAD] is an old thread discussing the same issue. > [@Desert\_Nomad](#): > > Did just the visible light stop? If so, then we’d still have heat which might let us last slightly longer but either way the situation would be grim. The spectrum of solar radiation has most of the energy in the visible and UV bands, which is converted to kinetic energy and/or IR by interaction with the atmosphere. There are stars that radiate mostly in IR and radio bandwidths, but they are much, much smaller than the Sun, with dramatically less overall energy output. Stranger [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-sun-stoped-shining/551838.md?page=2)