If The Sun Went Out, How Long Could Life On Earth Survive?
Solar prominence NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory Don't worry, you'll have time to post your goodbye selfies to Facebook. If you put a steamy cup of coffee in the refrigerator, it wouldn't immediately turn cold. Likewise, if the sun simply "turned off" (which is actually physically impossible), the Earth would stay warm-at least compared with the space surrounding it-for a few million years. But we surface dwellers would feel the chill much sooner than that. Within a week, the average global surface temperature would drop below 0°F. In a year, it would dip to -100°. The top layers of the oceans would freeze over, but in an apocalyptic irony, that ice would insulate the deep water below and prevent the oceans from freezing solid for hundreds of thousands of years. Millions of years after that, our planet would reach a stable -400°, the temperature at which the heat radiating from the planet's core...