But will we feel the shift in gravity/inertia as the planet starts moving straight?
This is the cutting-edge of my understanding so if I’m wrong somebody call me out, but I think because gravity is warping space-time and not actually pulling anything, we wouldn’t feel an inertia change. Our inertia would be maintained, but the space-time we’re going through would suddenly be shaped different, so we’d follow a new path
But not by much longer. People on the other side of the world or connected to satellites monitoring sunspots would notice pretty much immediately after the light ceases to reach the earth and would tell everyone else over the internet
And even if you’re not connected at the moment, the moon will go dark.
yeah but everybody else would be sleeping so it would still take longer
Wouldn’t the planet rapidly start to cool? I think we’d be dead by morning
The core is still hot. If we bury ourselves deep underground, there is a chance the humanity could survive for thousands of years without a sun. If not humanity, then some sort of life will survive long enough for future archeologists to find it millions of years later.
But don’t quite me on this; I’m simply reciting from memory something I read in National Geographic or a similar publication 10-20 years ago. IDK how true this actually is.
Yeah, something will live, but I was more thinking surface life.
Doesn’t the earth itself provide a significant amount of heat from the core? I’m sure I read somewhere that for something like every 10 meters down you dig, the temperature raises by 1° celcius. So maybe we’d not notice a temperature drop so quickly?
The surface would eventually freeze over. But some life would almost definitely survive deep underground and underwater, near geothermal vents not unlike those that hosted the first lifeforms on Earth. And, maybe, in some billions or trillions of years, Earth would stray near another star system, get captured by its gravity and slowly thaw out, restarting the evolution of life.
Not sure how quick exactly, but the earth doesn’t provide enough heat, not even close. I think Kurzgesagt has a video on this subject, pretty sure without the trillions of joules of energy showering the earth every second we’d get awfully cold awfully quick
Atmosphere would hold the heat for a bit, the real issues will begin with food shortages because the crops won’t grow
Yeah but how long is a bit? Also, without the gravity center of our solar system, how long would it take for all the planets to start drifting off into the void?
A bit - probably weeks to months. For the second question - 8 minutes for the Earth, since gravity propagates at the speed of light
A bit - probably weeks to months.
It goes from 85 to 58 in 12 hours right now in reality world
“A bit” = 1 day, and by the end of that day it’d be freezing (below freezing if you live in whiteistan)
The moon also doesn’t emit it’s own light. It would take longer for the moon to “disappear” than it would for the sun but it wouldn’t be the whole night.
The moon is just a few light-seconds away from earth; that’s why they could have conversations with ground control during the moon landings. Moon will go dark a few seconds after the sun.
I agree with you, but also… I’m not sure that I’d notice that I could see the moon a few minutes ago and now I can’t (unless I happened to be looking at it as it happened)… I feel like that is something that could be happening every single night and I’ve never noticed.
The sun disappearing is like… Super noticeable by comparison.
You would notice the lack of light. The night isn’t pitch black xD
Most cities have brighter light pollution than the moon can provide.
False; no sun = no morning!
So extremely cloudy mornings = no morning? lol just kidding!
I wonder how long it would take before you would feel it becoming colder
Forget colder, I kind of feel like we’re missing out on not hearing the sun thanks to space
If it happens at night it will probably take 5 or 6 seconds longer for people to start seeing the first messages on the internet
I wonder if we would feel the sudden disappearance of the centripetal force of the sun’s gravity.
After 8 minutes, almost certainly
After 8 minutes
http://scienceprimer.com/lunar-and-solar-tides
Yes, the tidal effect of the sun would disappear, and that would probably make the oceans all fucky suddenly (after an 8 minutes lag).
Does gravity travel at the speed of light?
Of course. It can’t travel faster
Yes. General relativity.
The gravity does not travel, the gravity is.
If it didn’t travel, it wouldn’t take 8 minutes to stop right?
If the mass vanishes, then the gravity would also vanish, at the same time.
False. If the mass vanished via magic, the effect would ripple out at the speed of light. Source, gravity waves which move at the speed of light.
But vanishing is magic, it goes against the laws of physics, so you could apply any fictional logic
And now for the segue into a shower thought - so the first thing night side would notice is the Moon disappearing (if it’s in the night sky), but after that, how long before effects begin to suggest something is seriously wrong on the day side. Something tells me it will be sooner than the morning.
I’d assume after 8 minutes the people on the day side would notice and all media would blow up, so hopefully you’d be asleep and wouldn’t have to worry :)
worry
I, for one, welcome the inexplicable annihilation of the sun
But all the solar panels will stop working so there will be no electricity. Batteries would run out and any other source of energy would be destroyed by people who started a cult worshipping the Sun hoping it would reappear
So no social media on the part of the Earth that would notice the disappearance of the sun. The other side wouldnt have any problems with electricity since they wouldnt have the Sun-worshipping cult
The ocean would revolt.
Cool writing prompt: Elusive Dawn
The telephone: “Am I a joke to you?”
Who would leave their sound on in the middle of the night?
For further reading, see Galaxias by Stephen Baxter.
