How long could we live if the Sun went out?

Question

We would still have electricty...

Sooo...If the sun went out tomorrow, how long could we survive? What would kill us in the end?

The only two things I can come up with are that we would freeze to death, and that eventually we would run out of oxygen because the trees wouldn't have the sunlight needed to produce it.

Answer 1

Well, at the minimum 499.005215 seconds.

Answer 2

itd be a iceage of course...i have no idea how long, but i can tell you this for sure

Everyman for themself.

Answer 3

Well, wherever you live, think how much the temperature drops between sunset and dawn. It would just keep dropping at pretty much the same rate...or faster as water vapor froze out and all the clouds disappeared.

So at higher elevations and colder areas the surface would be a frozen uninhabitable wasteland in days. Within a week everywhere on Earth would be too cold for life as we know it. Virtually all humans, plants, and animals would be dead.

So yes, the cold would be what kills us first. Life would survive, especially microbial life. Seafloor vent colonies might also survive, the oceans would freeze over but likely the Earth's geophysical heat (tides, radioactive decay, volcanism) would keep them from freezing completely solid.

At some point most of the air would freeze and fall to the ground as snow. Probably in colored layers as different components froze out as it got colder. The clear air would yield spectacular star filled skies, but the Moon would be just dim shadow with no phases as it would only be illuminated by starlight.

Some humans might survive in protected bunkers and the like, but their long term prospects would be poor unless there were a lot of them and they were very well equipped and prepared.

Answer 4

I'd say most people would be dead after two weeks. The cold would come down fast and it would paralyse power production after which it would get far colder than the earth has ever been.

Answer 5

Some of us would make it for 6 weeks.  Not many.

Answer 6

This reminds me of a recent Star Trek Enterprise rerun,  about a 'rogue planet' traveling thru space nowhere near a star (such objects likely DO exist).  Of course it was perpetually dark, but there were plants and animals and people, an atmosphere, and nobody seemed to be overly chilly.

Although I enjoy the whole Star Trek franchise, and accept the science enhancements necessary for a usable plot, this particular postulation was simply preposterous.  They didn't even attempt to explain any plausible scenario (internal planet warmth, some super-greenhouse atmospheric layer, etc).  TOO much of a stretch.

Sorry, this isn't a Star Trek forum, but the idea of the Sun 'going out' certainly fits a Star Trek-type plot.

Addendum (I'm an idiot):  I did some searches for Rogue Planet, and found a reference to this very ST episode.  Seems the ecology of the planet was sustained by superheated gas vents, somehow I missed this explanation, maybe I went to the kitchen or something.  But still, there would be no real photosynthesis as we know it, and the planet looked very 'leafy'.  

Ah well, it's ST after all, gotta suspend that disbelief.  Trust in the ghost of Gene Roddenberry.

Answer 7

The sun is a star.  Stars usually go out in a blaze of glory, probably taking the entire solar system with it.  In other words, if it went out, it would blow up, taking all of us with it.  That is, if we didn't burn up because it would expand before it did that.