# The sun will go out tomorrow! **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 12, 2012, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sun-will-go-out-tomorrow/609318 "2012-01-12T17:53:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Phnord\_Prephect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/df705f/32.png) [@Phnord\_Prephect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phnord_Prephect)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sun-will-go-out-tomorrow/609318/21 "2012-01-13T06:19:16Z")
> [@Gagundathar](#): > > Goodness gracious. The topics I find here are fascinating. > My wild guess is similar to **Chronos’s**. > About a week would find us having serious issues with atmospheric gases precipitating. > There was a SF story long ago that dealt with this quite well. > A family was able to make it through incredible ingenuity. > I remember the son leaving the shelter to bring back frozen oxygen. > Dang if I can recall the name of the story, but every time when it gets REALLY cold, I remember that story. > Anyone with mad google-fu could probably get the ref. I remember this story! Every day the kid would go out with a pail and fill that pail with air, then he’d take his pail of air into the house (insulated REALLY well with plastic sheets and stuff) and heat his pail of air over a fire, until the air in the pail turned from solid to gas. Then he’d take his air pail back outside and get another pail full of air, and bring that inside to heat up again so he’d have one more pail of air to breathe. I think it was called [The Planet That Couldn’t Slow Down!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pail_of_Air) ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sun-will-go-out-tomorrow/609318/22 "2012-01-13T07:53:20Z")
> [@Gagundathar](#): > > Goodness gracious. The topics I find here are fascinating. > My wild guess is similar to **Chronos’s**. > **About a week would find us having serious issues with atmospheric gases precipitating.** > There was a SF story long ago that dealt with this quite well. > A family was able to make it through incredible ingenuity. > **I remember the son leaving the shelter to bring back frozen oxygen.** > Dang if I can recall the name of the story, but every time when it gets REALLY cold, I remember that story. > Anyone with mad google-fu could probably get the ref. Would the sun-free earth really get THAT cold that fast, that atmospheric gases would condense or freeze? Remember, the earth itself has its own internal heat source (molten core, kept cooking by radioactive decay down there), which should keep the planet from getting totally stone cold very fast. So how cold would the earth’s surface (and atmosphere) get within the first few years (or centuries)? It might take many millenia for the planet to get _totally_ cold. ETA: P.S.: Then what did they do with that frozen oxygen that they collected? Grind it into powder and snort it? ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sun-will-go-out-tomorrow/609318/23 "2012-01-13T08:44:31Z")
Thanks for all the insight. I’m not sure why I had the intuition that it would happen very fast. I was way off base there. While I was plugging around I found this: [ > [@](#): > > Within a week, the average global surface temperature would drop below 0°F. In a year, it would dip to –100°. The top layers of the oceans would freeze over, but in an apocalyptic irony, that ice would insulate the deep water below and prevent the oceans from freezing solid for hundreds of thousands of years. Millions of years after that, our planet would reach a stable –400°, the temperature at which the heat radiating from the planet’s core would equal the heat that the Earth radiates into space, explains David Stevenson, a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology. ]([If The Sun Went Out, How Long Would Life On Earth Survive?](http://www.popsci.com/node/24698)) ---
**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:** [January 13, 2012, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sun-will-go-out-tomorrow/609318/24 "2012-01-13T09:43:06Z")
[POST=8336303]Old post[/POST] on what would occur after the sun is extinguished. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2012, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sun-will-go-out-tomorrow/609318/25 "2012-01-13T09:50:55Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > [A Pail of Air](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pail_of_Air), by Fritz Leiber. Thank you, **Chronos**. I read that so long ago, I couldn’t remember the name of the story. I probably should reread it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sun-will-go-out-tomorrow/609318.md?page=1)