What would happen if the sun suddenly disappeared?
We all sometimes gaze at the beautiful golden star in the sky which kind of mesmerizes us during sunsets and sunrise. We are taught by not just in our schools but also by our elders about how important this golden star is to us. From the plants that we eat, vitamins that we get from sun light till the moon that we see at night, everything depends on the sun.
But what if it goes missing one day? Like what if the sun decides to go on vacation.? What would happen in that case? Let's find out!
So we all know that our planet Earth along with other planets revolve around the sun. The gravity of the sun is responsible for the planets revolving around it in an orbit. Kind of on the lines of the sun attracts these planets towards itself.
Now if the sun goes missing suddenly, there would be no force of attraction that would bring the planets together revolving around in an orbit. Without this it would give a free license for the planets to move around. And move around it will, all the planets will start on a journey in the space. This journey will continue until it finds another star whose force of attraction pulls the planet towards itself and brings an revolution to start.
That being said, the planet would have to endure and save it self from the space traffic of asteroids any other debris and comets which it might come across during the journey. And this chaos of rogue planets colliding with other planetary bodies will add to additional set of impact and possible destruction.
Well that's about what would happen in space! But, what would happen to our planet Earth?? Let's find out!
Well, firstly we would not notice the change.. for the first ~8 minutes, that's how much it takes for the light of the sun to reach our planet. Then we would start the darkness embracing the earth slowly and slowly. So much that if it's night time in some places then even the Moon would not be visible to us.
Why you ask? because we are able to see the moon because of the light it receives from the sun which it then reflects back to us. And this is applicable to many other planetary bodies who depend on sun for its illumination.
Coming back to our planet, in absence of the heat provided by the sun light, slowly slowly the temperature would start decreasing. The temperature drop would start affecting the situation everywhere.
Plants in absence of sunlight who use photosynthesis for their life process would start dying. Herbivores would as a result would face death in this situation and this would impact the carnivores and omnivores like us as well. Although, the human beings are capable of surviving due to their way of adapting, it would still take some efforts to deal with this situation.
Oceans at the surface level would start freezing soon and this would affect the species who are at this level. The total freeze of the oceans till the bottom would take some time kind of around hundreds if not thousands of years because of the heat from the earth's molten core. Until then probably the atmosphere would also go for a toss.
Extinction of many species probably humans would happen!!
Well, luckily for us it does not looks like the big golden star is going anywhere on a vacation. And stars like sun take around 10 billion years to burn completely and it's only halfway in that journey so we still have enough time for the unimaginable things to happen.
Well, that's about the imagination of what might happen if this happens! Too much for the curious mind? Well here's something more.
Some fifty years ago, Kenya experienced a solar eclipse, a kind of total eclipse in the north of Nairobi provided a glimpse of what can happen. Animals, birds kind of got agitated and were put under the spell of it being the night time. The temperature is said to have dropped by literally 4 to 5 degree celsius. And this eclipse was only for some few minutes.
Well, that's about the imagination for the curious mind. Until next time, let the curious mind wander in the presence of sunlight!
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