Scientists predict how long humans can survive without the sun.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if the sun suddenly ceased to exist? Some scientists have given us a clue of what life on Earth will look like if the sun suddenly disappears.

According to them, “If the sun vanished, life on Earth would quickly become impossible”.

The first thing we would notice is that the sky would go dark, and the last rays of sunlight would reach Earth about eight minutes after the sun’s disappearance, as that is how long it takes for light to travel from the sun to the Earth so don’t worry; you’ll have time to post your goodbye selfies on social media. Just kidding! After that, we would only see the faint light of stars and planets.

The second thing we would notice is that the temperature would drop rapidly. The earth would slowly begin to cool. It wouldn’t be instantaneous because the atmosphere does a decent job of retaining heat for a time. How long you have here depends on the climate and the season of where you are at the moment. If it’s the dead of a snowy winter, temperatures will become nearly unbearable in 24-48 hours. If it’s summer, you might have several days.

Without the sun’s heat, the Earth would lose its warmth by radiating it into space. Within a week, the average global surface temperature would fall below freezing. After a week, the warmest places on the planet would be around negative 18 degrees Celsius (zero degrees Fahrenheit).  Within a year, it would plummet to -100 degrees Celsius (-148 degrees Fahrenheit). The oceans would freeze over, except for some pockets of liquid water near geothermal vents.

This is still relatively warm compared to space because of the residual heat in Earth’s core, but it’s certainly too cold for humans to survive for long. Living on the surface of the Earth would be nearly impossible unless you lived directly over a thermal feature. Although with a few days to prepare, some might be able to make an artificial garden indoors and bring some animals in to shelter as well. Societies at large would collapse, but some families and maybe even small towns could sustain themselves for a little longer.

The big problem would be when it got so cold that the atmosphere herself starts to condense. At -183C, oxygen becomes a liquid. At -195C, nitrogen (78% of the atmosphere) also becomes a liquid. At that point, it would rain and then snow oxygen and nitrogen. (It’s theorized that this is what happens on Pluto; when it gets far away from the sun, its thin atmosphere falls as snow to the surface.)

According to Michael Stevens of Vsauce, this would take about a year. So some individuals and communities with their own food and heat supply could presumably survive this long, as long as they didn’t venture outside after the first couple of weeks. Then they would need to find some method of harvesting liquid and eventually solid oxygen for breathing.

There’s a short story called “A Pail of Air” by Fritz Leiber that envisions this. If people could figure out within a year how to make this happen, then they could potentially survive for years, decades, and centuries in a super-insulated, well-heated, and self-sustaining shelter. However, after several million years, the planet would cool further to a base level of negative 240 degrees Celsius (negative 400 degrees Fahrenheit), and that would likely preclude any type of life on Earth.

The third thing we would notice is that plants and animals would die off. Without sunlight, photosynthesis would cease, and plants would wither and decompose. Animals that depend on plants for food would starve, and so would animals that depend on those animals.

Only some microorganisms that live deep underground or in the oceans will survive using chemical energy. The energy from photosynthesis is the basis for almost all of the food chains on Earth, and without it, everything begins to collapse. Global food stores are currently at a record low, so the population could not survive very long on current reserves, likely a few months to a year. The food shortage would be secondary to other changes making life inhospitable around the globe.

Some humans might survive for a while by using artificial sources of heat, light, and food, such as nuclear reactors, geothermal plants, or hydroponic farms. However, these resources would be limited and difficult to maintain. Moreover, humans will face other challenges as psychological stress, social unrest, and cosmic radiation.

The fourth thing we would notice is that Earth would drift away from its orbit. Without the sun’s gravity, Earth would fly off in a straight line into space. It would encounter other planets and asteroids that could collide with it or alter its course. Eventually, Earth would either be swallowed by a black hole or wander into the cold and dark depths of interstellar space.

Some scientists have disagreed about the earth losing its rotational ability after the sun goes dark. They argued that as soon as the sun goes dark, the Earth would continue to rotate because its rotational inertia is not tied to the gravitational effects of the sun. The Earth will come unarmored from the gravitational pull that the sun recently exerted and will start moving off into space in a straight line from the point in its orbit that it happened to be at. They all agreed that if there were to be a collision at that point, it would likely kill any remaining humans.

Some argued that the new path would not immediately imperil human life but would make it much more possible for humans to run into another cosmic body – say, Jupiter.

Therefore, it is safe to say that humans could not survive without the sun for more than a few years at most. Most likely all humans would die from cold and hunger in the weeks and months after the sun’s disappearance.

Conclusion

The guess is that the average person would probably last a week to a month without the sun. Although this scenario is hypothetical, there is a theoretical possibility that humans could harness geothermal or nuclear energy to stay warm and create light to grow food. Given that possibility, a small contingent of humans could survive indefinitely in an anthropogenic bubble.

Don’t worry

These answers were based on the realms of speculations of some scientists and not on empirical studies or reports. This is a hypothetical scenario from the figment of imagination. There is not a time in history where we lose access to the sun neither is there a formal warning from the sun of an emergency exit, break-down or disappearance.

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