What If the Sun Suddenly Disappeared? (Minute by Minute)

What if the Sun suddenly disappeared? For 8 minutes and 20 seconds, you wouldn't notice. Then the sky goes black at noon, one planet keeps shining for over an hour, Earth freezes and flies off in a straight line. Minute by minute, then year by year, with real research and the rough estimates clearly marked. Chapters 0:00 What if the Sun disappeared? 0:39 1. The 8 minutes nobody notices 1:47 2. The sky goes out 2:59 3. Day one to week one: the big freeze begins 4:29 4. Month one to year one: life shuts down 5:57 5. The one place on Earth that wouldn't notice 7:16 6. A million years later: the air falls as snow 8:28 Verdict: could the Sun really disappear? Main sources • NASA Earth Fact Sheet (Earth's orbital speed, 29.78 km/s): https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary... • LIGO/Virgo, Fermi & INTEGRAL (2017), "Gravitational Waves and Gamma-Rays from a Binary Neutron Star Merger: GW170817 and GRB 170817A" (speed of gravity = speed of light): https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.05834 • NASA Earth Observatory, Climate and Earth's Energy Budget (~240 W/m² absorbed): https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/fea... • Davies & Davies (2010), Earth's surface heat flux (47 TW), Solid Earth: https://se.copernicus.org/articles/1/... • WMO Weather and Climate Extremes Archive, lowest temperature (Vostok, −89.2 °C, 1983): https://wmo.asu.edu • NOAA, Tides and Water Levels (the Sun's tidal force is about half the Moon's): https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/educati... • BBC Science Focus, Dr Alastair Gunn (Jodrell Bank), "What would happen to Earth's orbit if the Sun vanished?": https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/wh... • How It Works, "What would happen if the Sun disappeared?" (2018; popular estimates): https://www.howitworksdaily.com/what-... • WHOI, The discovery of hydrothermal vents, 1977: https://www.whoi.edu/feature/history-... • University of Michigan / ScienceDaily (2000), Fred Adams on an Earth thrown out of the solar system: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases... • Laughlin & Adams (2000), "The Frozen Earth: Binary Scattering Events and the Fate of the Solar System", Icarus 145, 614–627 • Abbot & Switzer (2011), "The Steppenwolf: A Proposal for a Habitable Planet in Interstellar Space", ApJ Letters: https://arxiv.org/abs/1102.1108 • NASA Space Place, How old is the Sun?: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/sun-age/ This is a thought experiment: the Sun can't actually vanish. Temperatures for the first week and first year are rough popular estimates, not a published climate model. When Mars, Jupiter and Saturn go dark, Earth's distance after one year, and the final −237 °C are our own simple calculations from public data. Orbits and cutaways are schematic. Photos and video: NASA, NOAA (public domain); Wikimedia Commons images (credits on screen). Music by Scott Buckley – released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au: 'Eyes In The Void', 'The Weight of Air – Katabasis I', 'Penumbra', 'Undertow', 'The Weight of Air – Anabasis II', 'Reverie', 'Song Of The Forge', 'Within Our Nature'. Thumbnail background: AI-generated illustration (not a real photo). Big questions. Checked answers. #space #science #whatif