I’d say we’ve been incredibly, almost impossibly, lucky. Especially considering that we can’t find anyone else out there.
I can all but guarantee Coppertone and Pugs would go out of business within a day.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Given the OP, then anything is possible. Once the laws of identity and causality are violated, everything is random. If magic, then anything.
Couldn’t we live for as long as there are radioactive minerals, nuclear reactors and hydroponic farms?
This question triggered a sequence of thoughts, resulting in additional questions (hope it’s ok to piggy back):
Thought 1: “hmm, if sun was suddenly gone then the light moving towards earth would speed up because less gravity holding it back”
Thought 2: “wait, the speed of light is not affected by gravity”
Thought 3: “hmmm, why is the speed of light not affected by gravity but the direction of light is affected (e.g. bent around star or black hole)? and isn’t a change in direction considered acceleration?”
Under GR, which is a more accurate model, the Earth is traveling in a straight line, or the equivalent in curved space (geodesic) without any “acceleration” due to the gravity. The model that most people are familiar with under the Newtonian model, which doesn’t actually represent how we understand the effects under GR.
There is zero acceleration and the gravity effects would be disappearing at about the same speed as the light arrived as they both go the speed of light.
Ignoring the much smaller tractive tidal force the earth would experience zero “acceleration”. What we view as gravity is not a “force” it is the effects of masses curving spacetime, primarily in the dimension of time. Basically there is no difference between straight at a consent speed through curved space that ends up in an orbit and a “straighter” path through flatter spacetime without the sun.
This is a bit of a simplification but hopefully helps out with the basic concept. Just remember that “Gravity” as a force is a tool we use to make the math easier and because us humans can’t visualize in 4D. It is often good enough for the job but it is not an actual force.
Some of us could. Seven billion of us couldn’t.
Since the planets orbit around the sun I’d think that once the sun disappeared the planets will drift off into space on a collision course.
On the plus said, we probably wouldn’t have to worry about global warming anymore. In fact, it maybe in our best interest to increase carbon emissions in such an unlikely scenario.
It’d be tough to grow crops and maintain livestock. When would we run out of food?
My WAG is that if we collided with any planet while it still mattered, it would have to be Venus or Mercury. Given that the nearer to the sun a planet is, the faster its orbital velocity, and given the widening distances between orbits as you go further out, Venus and Mercury would pass Earth on their outbound trips before Earth caught up with Mars.
Photosynthesis would cease as soon as sunlight stopped reaching the Earth, so green plants (other than trees), and animals dependent on them, would die pretty quickly. OTOH, keeping meat cold would quickly cease to be a problem, so if you’re somewhere with a decent deer population and you have a rifle, you should have enough food to last until your life became unsustainable due to the cold.
Since they’d all be moving away from where the sun had been, they’d mostly be moving further apart, dispersing over a much greater region of space over time.
No one’s really mentioned it would also be dark, with no daytime and no moonlight either, possibly because its too obvious.
Presumably power supplies could run for a few days or perhaps weeks on stored fuel, and vehicle lights would work; owners of those little give-away hand-pump torches would become the new kings of this night-bound world, and that lady who runs the scented candle and souvenir store that i’ve never seen any customers in its new queen.
Could the world or any nation grapple with the situation sufficiently to reorganise itself to rely on fuels in a land of perpetual dark. Maybe not such a problem in the depths of the coal mine, but conveying it, burning and rationing it to provide power for the things that matter, all probably needing to be done in the first seven days.
I know two posts in a row is uncool, but this is a separate train of thought.
Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall deals with a planet bathed in perpetual sunlight, except for the extremely infrequent moments when its moons create a total and everyone goes crazy with fear. and civilisations collapse. Not quite the same scenario as here, but worth a mention.
Seems likely to me there will be some real fireworks from coal mines, oil wells and frozen forests once it starts raining liquid O[sub]2[/sub]…
Don’t be too sure of that. people will go ape.
Among other things, a sudden upsurge in crackpot religiosity.
Of course, but “we” as a species could.