It would get cold here really fast. Tthe surface would freeze relatively quickly. It might be possible for some prepared and especially resourceful humans to survive for a short time (perhaps a generation or two even) but ultimately they'd likely be doomed unless they had enough of a chance to take what they needed in terms of infrastructure into a deep mine where warmth from the earths core would offset the brutal surface cold. If I knew it was happening I'd snatch a couple of the new "portable" nuclear reactors and head to said mine after stopping at first the light bulb then the seed store. You'd of course need to take topsoil too.

The ocean vent ecosystems (chemo-synthesis based) would likely go on without missing much of a beat. Most other aquatic life (top of the water column - exluding air breathers) would survive for a bit longer than surface life but since the bottom of it's food chain begins with light from the sun it wouldn't get by for long. Mid-column aquatic life would go after that. Bottom dwelling life (which is dependent on death from above) would last the longest (with the exception of the aforementioned volcanic vent ecosystems).

I think it would be a dead solar system. There might be even an earth's atmospheric collapse. The humans might go around monkeying around for a while. Might be that there would be an increase in microorganisms! Supernaturally it would be a rise in the ghostly world!


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eric

Ohh, apocalyptic writing, my favorite.


Well, asuming the gravity is still there, but it's just "dark", so we don't slingshot out of orbit and the tidal forces would keep the core warm.

Eventually, the earth surface would cool down to the cosmic background level of around 3 degrees kelvin. The first cooldown would be awefully fast, but if we've had time to prepare, it could be semi-survivable, for a while.

Remember that the earth's core is a very poor supplier of heat. solar radiation makes up about 99.97% of the total energy balance, with the other 0.02 being geothermal and tidal, so without the sun, earth will freeze awefully fast.

As the light goes out, people panic. Think zombie uprising chaos , all sattelite based communication dies, so organising anything will be near impossible

As the heat goes out, the earth cools down. First, the tropical plants and animals go, then the rest of nature, most humans die as the planet cools but some will survive for a while. As the temperature drops further, say -50 celcius, most of the population and all plant and animal life is dead, except those with special equipment. On the plus side, you can now drive your car from Europe to Amerika for the first time in hundreds of thousands of years.

It cools down further, -70, the whole earth is now as cold as the record lowest temperature today, pretty much everything not crazy-prepated is dead, though you could probably survive in deep mines with good insulation and heating.

-120, taking a single breath of air is lethal as your lounges freeze instantly. You practically need a spaceship to survive now. There will be kilometers of ice on the oceans, and they will eventually freeze almost to the bottom.

-180, It starts to rain again, as the oxygen in the air begins to condense, forming pools on top of the frozen water. If your shelter isn't completely airtight, you die.

-220, The atmosphere is gone, it's all liquid now and most of it is starting to freeze. Unless you brought a nuclear reactor down with you, and sealed you shelter with about a kilometer of rock, you die.

As the earth cools further, you're going to have to live your life in a tiny shelter heated by a nuclear reactor, maybe digging out the ocean to get water to electrolyze into air. Going outside is suicide, even with the best protection available.

Of course, I did a bare minimum of math on this, so feel free to correct me on how fast the earth would freeze. My personal guess is a few weeks.

Much thought has already been given this topic. I Googled "sol's fate" and got, in particular these two links:

http://www.bautforum.com/archive/index.php/t-9166.html

and

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sola...rth_000224.html
Probably much more out there too.

Namaste,

-- Charles

The Sun will spend a great deal of time expanding (enough to engulf Mercury's and Venus' orbits) before it collapses into a white dwarf, and then it will be and long time before it "fails". During the expansion Earth will be fried before frozen.

.....and will there be changes in physical forces acting in nature? like gravity? I think there would be drastic changes which should make failure for many of the laws of forces as if they were all incorrect!

I never knew astronomy nor did i happen to visit nearby planets, so doesn't it seem that the information discovered by yester years' scientists were some hoax!!!

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eric

Hmm, I must say, having a "what if" scenario is quite fun. Not forgetting that it is rather a challenge as well.

It swells my heart to read some of your posts about your opinion of what might happen in the next few hundred years.

However, one cannot really say for sure...

Anyway, here are 2 question for the young and old.

Would there be any great alterations of any type of the earth was 10 CM [or less] closer to the sun?


(this one is a wee bit tricky...)

If I had an infinitely thin foil, that was 5 CM wide, and was infinitely long, and was being wound around (like sticky tape) for an infinite amount of time, what would be the outcome?


PM me the answers or post them here, do as you wish.


Sandra