What if the sun disappeared?

Factual Questions
1

After watching a rerun of Star Trek: Generations, I was left with the following questions: What would happen if the sun suddenly disappeared? I’m not talking about an explosion like in the movie. In this case, the Aurelians decided that they like our sun better than theirs and just had it transported to their solar system. (They always thought that it would be cool to have a binary system.)

Would we feel the effects immediately? I know that it takes about 8 minutes for light to reach the earth so (assuming that the earth didn’t fly apart) we would have light for a little while. But if we are suddenly on a trajectory right out of Calculus problem, would we know it?

Slightly off topic but since I started this, I guess I can take it wherever I want, what if all of the planets disappeared (not Earth) instead of the sun? Would this bother anyone other than astronomers and JPL types?

And last but not least, why can’t I have normal questions instead of weird ones?

2

In terms of the effect of the sun’s gravity, I don’t believe we would feel it at all. Earth, the moon, and all our satellites would continue hurtling through space on a line tangent to our old orbit. Earth would continue to rotate. We’d still be orbiting the galactic center though.

It would take severals days for the Earth to get really, really, really cold. I don’t think anyone would have enough time to figure out a way to burrow far enough underground to survive on the Earth’s inner heat. We’d be Popsicles pretty fast, but I don’t know exactly how many days it would take. Anyone else?

As to the other planet, I don’t believe it would affect us if they vanished, except to make the sky less pretty.

3

As best we know, there is a speed of gravity. That would be the same speed as the speed of light ©. So, the gravitational effects would be evident at the same time we say the light disappear or move. If the sun just disappeared, the center of mass of the earth/moon system would begin diverging from its orbital path at the same time the light vanished. The change in heading should not cause any immediate problems. The sudden absence of the solar gravitational gradient (solar tides) would probably cause some minor disturbances in the ocean. Since we are pretty far away from the sun, the difference in solar gravity between the lit side and dark side of our planet is pretty small and it wouldn’t be a big problem. Eventually, collision could be a problem, but the darth of sunlight would kill us all long before we would have to worry about that.

This shouldn’t hurt a thing as long as the removal of the planets doesn’t disturb any small solar bodies and send them heading our way (or you took those along with you). I am assuming you would be leaving the moon around the earth.

can’t help ya with this one.

4

A bit silly rather than weird perhaps. But since it’s a simple one to answer…

  1. it would get really dark

  2. the solar system would disperse what with no Sun to hold the planets in gravitational orbit

  3. would take 8 minutes and 2. Would impact our globe pretty much in the same timeframe.

So at 8 minutes post the Sun’s popping yonder life as we know it would end in sudden darkness and a cataclysmic shudder as Earth leaves its current orbit.

The next step would possibly be a collision of heavenly bodies or two, depending on how the planets and asteroid belts are aligned at the time of our little lamp in the sky being stolen.

Sparc

5

As noted above, it would get really dark really fast. It would also get cold really fast, because the sun would be gone – not just getting farther away. We’d move off in a direction tangent to our orbit and things would freeze out of the air, including the air itself. See the sf short story “A Pailful of Air” by (I think) Poul Anderson for details.

6

If the sun disappeared, I’d convert to Islam, myself.