• Question: What do you think would kill us if the sun "went out": Lack of light, lack of heat or drifting out of orbit and crashing with another planet/moon/asteroid?

    Asked by mattiosmmm to Adam, Geoff, Rob, Sheila, Suzie on 21 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sheila Kanani

      Sheila Kanani answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      The Sun isn’t likely to just ‘go out’ What is more likely is the Sun will go ‘red giant’ and get cooler and expand so much that it swallows us whole. That will kill us 🙂

    • Photo: Adam Tuff

      Adam Tuff answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      Well, we’re not expecting the sun to go out or about 5 billion years, so I hope you don’t worry about this! The one thing vital to life on earth is light – light is what lets plants photosynthesise and grow, and if there are no plants the herbivores can’t eat, if the herbivores can’t eat, they die, if they are dead, the carnivores have nothing to eat – it’s as simple as that; light is essential to plants.

    • Photo: Suzie Sheehy

      Suzie Sheehy answered on 15 Mar 2011:

      I think it would be between lack of light and lack of heat. I suspect lack of heat would get us first… but I have nothing to back that up with!
      Even if the sun “went out” it’s gravity would still remain so we shouldn’t be thrown off orbit.

    • Photo: Robert Simpson

      Robert Simpson answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      I think that all of those would kill us. We wouldn’t last longer than a few seconds or minutes really. The temperature would quickly drop to absolute zero and our atmosphere would freeze onto the Earth’s surface. At that point anyone who was somehow still able to breath would have to be sheltered deep underground. The lack of the Sun would cause the Earth and Moon to chaotically spiral our of orbit and the Earthquakes and volcanic activity would likely start to tear us apart. Without an atmosphere to protect us we would irradiated by cosmic rays from outer space and pelted by micrometeorites. Fun!

Comments