Earth was suddenly teleported away from the sun. Can we recover?

Question

Through some evil scientist man's evil plot to destroy the world, he transported the entire Earth away from the sun into an unknown point in space where there is no sun. Could we recover?

Details-

• assume the transportation was instantaneous and there were no collisions with random space bits.
• Earth and buildings and such are unharmed by the transportation
• Earth still has an atmosphere
• humans were not harmed by the transportation
• the nearest star is too far away to provide any warmth
• the Moon is still there. You just can't see it
• any space junk between earth and the moon is still there (satellites, old rocket engines, passing space rocks, etc.)
• people have three months heads up to prepare

Since the only thing missing is the sun and the rest of the solar system, could we recover before we all die?

I don't want any 'we're all dead' answers because those make for bad story lines. Try to be optimistic for the next five minutes and post a good answer that will help.

This is not a duplicate of What would happen to the Earth if it were suddenly transported to a completely empty void? or If only the sun's light went out, how long would it take for all living things to die out?. These focus on the effects of such a transportation, but I'm concerned about the recovery process.

Answer 1

We Can't

Nearly everything you see is powered, directly or indirectly, by the sun. Without it, the Earth cools down quickly and everything will die: vegetation, animals, humans. If you can get to a heated shelter with years of food, you can only last longer. The cold is so immense, any mechanism will fail, the atmosphere does weird stuff under such cold temperatures. What is left of humanity simply doesn't have the manpower or equipment to stay alive, let alone recover.

Answer 2

Yes, you can recover, but you must act fast. The only hope is the emerging planet teleportation technology.

Put all human resources to either:

a) find that evil scientist and force them to teleport Earth back, or near some other suitable star; or

b) duplicate their technology and do the same.

Best strategy may be to try both at the same time.

Answer 3

Survival for a small part of humanity is possible for some time, long-term survival is unlikely, full recovery almost impossible.

Someone calculated that it would take almost a year for the top 100m of Earth (including the oceans) to freeze solid. It would take many, many years for the oceans to freeze through.

So there is some time for the construction of deep underground and submarine shelters, and using geothermal and nuclear power it is in theory possible to maintain these (growing food with artificial lighting) for a long, long time. Sure, it's not renewable energy, but strictly speaking, nothing really is.

The problem is that it's obviously not feasible to do this at a scale that can support all of humanity, or even a significant part. In fact, it's questionable whether it's possible at all to do it both quickly enough and thoroughly enough to last - constructing power plants usually takes years, and this situation would not only give much less time but also add challenges (such as the whole thing having to be underground, and of course freezing cold and everyone on Earth panicking).

And then there's maintenance. You'll have to build these power plants using all the latest technology that's become standard. But you won't have that technology around indefinitely. A lot of modern technology basically requires out entire global civilization to produce. Most significantly, microchips. Producing a current-day CPU requires so much know-how and capital to make the tools to make the machines to make the tools to make the machines to make the machines to make the actual CPU that only a handful of companies on Earth can do it.

A few tens of thousands of humans living in shelters deep under the surface won't be able to maintain that level of technology, not even close. So when the original tech starts to fail, they will almost certainly die.

Then again, the ingenuity of humans is often surprising, and they built nuclear power plants before there were microchips, even before were mass-produced transistors. Maybe they'd manage somehow.

Even then, though, recovering to a billions-strong civilization doesn't seem possible.

Answer 4

Most of us die within a year. Some groups can survive for a few thousand years.

We could theoretically all survive it, the oceans and ground would hold enough heat for the better part of a year to keep the atmosphere breathable. To survive it we'd need to build in 6 months:

• Convert all existing large underground space into a bunker.
  • There is a lot of pre-dug large underground spaces already on the planet. We call them mines. For example. A single salt mine in Pakistan has enough space to hold 110 million people (in bunks). There's enough underground mines in the state of NSW, Australia to give everyone in Australia 50 cubic meters underground each.
  • These would need to be insulated, divided into dorms / small appartments, furnished, connected to utilities, etc.
• Or, build a dome over an existing city.
• Install a small nuclear power plant or geothermal plant in each
• Install hydroponics and water purification system.
• Install air and CO2 filtration systems.

That's a lot of work. With 0 warning, 7 billion people working with a near-hive mind in perfect unison could probably get it done, but realistic humans, panicking, disconnected, poorly organised, and all thinking of their own personal issues, no chance in hell. 3 Months warning, some organised, functional societies may get it done.

A group who gets a bunker up and running could survive for a few thousand years in sealed underground bunkers, and could stretch that for another few thousand by digging down further.

But, looking at how we've handled existing, much slower climate problems, it shows that many countries won't be able to accomplish this. As a society, we're still trying to build new coal power plants despite pleas from everyone who doesn't get coal money - many parts of the world would have no hope of getting our act together in time.

So, who survives? Pick a disaster and compare how the people of that country responded to it. USA? Covid19 - enough said. Katrina? Yeah they're doomed. Europe not looking too good either. I'd give Australia a 10% chance of getting a small colony up, we've done very well at containing covid (our critical 2nd wave Victorian outbreak was better than business-as-usual elsewhere in the world) and our bushfires had a very low death toll compared to smaller bushfires in Brazil and America. Most of the 3rd world is gone.

But a very industrialised group, with nuclear power already near their cities, with good production and R&D near their cities, and an authoritative state controlling every part of their lives, could dome their cities within 6 months. It's very possible some Chinese mega-cities can dome themselves in this time. They'd need a lot of nuclear fuel for this, and all the Uranium deposit in China are far away from the cities. They'd need to mine very quickly (as the deposits are going to be harder to get once the ground freezes) and set up hydroponics very quickly, but its just within the realm of plausible that a hundred million or so Chinese survive.

I'd want to give some Arab cities a decent chance too, however the logistics of importing parts and materials needed during this time of panic, not good.

Answer 5

Since there is speculation that we might survive on geothermal and nuclear power, I decided to run some math.

If we had the technology to mine all the uranium in the crust of the Earth, we could gather enough uranium to extract about the same amount of energy as Chicxulub. My calculations are in Is it possible to kill all life on Earth? We definitely don't have the technology to mine al the uranium in the crust because:

1. we can barely dig 12 km experimentally, whereas continental crust has a thickness ranging from 30km to 50km according to wikipedia. Some sources cite up to 70km in some points.

2. that would involve filtering all of the Earth's crust, literally. The surface of the planet would be unrecognizable.

Let's assume that, by magic, we teleport all that uranium to the surface and use it. According to this handy table, we have about 5 $\times$ 10²³ joules available. That is almost 10% of the total solar energy that we get in a year. Let's say we have one month worthy of global solar energy (the next item on the table).

If we could also magically convert all that energy into sunlight, we could keep the planet running for a month. Let's say we divert it all to agriculture, though. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, about 11% of the world's surface were farmlands in 2003 (see section 4.3). So we might keep farming viable for 10 months.

But you see, there is a lot of handwaving and magic being done to achieve those numbers. In reality we wouldn't be able to keep the world going as is. Even the logistics to keep a regular nuclear power plant going involve chains of logistics that span areas much beyond the actual power plant.

Suppose we decide to build a self-sufficient plant on top of an uranium mine. With forewarning, we could build a bunker that could sustain thousands of people with hydroponic farming, right?

Well, no, because:

1. We could barely keep eight people in a "self-sufficient" space designed to provide sustainable farming. We have research on that, both Biosphere missions were textbook fiascos.
2. A few thousand people would probably provide for very poor genetic variability. This would not kill humanity directly. But over time the population would be so homogeneous genetically that, combined with the small population, it can easily and quickly be wiped out by a new germ.

Answer 6

To my understanding, very little of life on Earth can be subjected to deep interstellar temperatures and radiations and survive. Some 'extremophile' bacteria and a very few species like tardigrades can last for a short time, but in the end, no. We're all toast. Very Frozen permanent toast.

Answer 7

I'm going to be a dissenting optimistic opinion (to a degree).

A major chunk of Humanity will die, and it's very possible that the knock on effects will cripple our ability to react to to the crisis.

However.

If short term survival can be achieved then there's cause to believe we would be able to recover in time.

Firstly, Earth's supply of fissile materials is actually quite extensive - especially once you factor Thorium into it. Fission power in this setting becomes even more attractive than in real life because the excess heat can be used to heat homes and cities, and the Carnot efficiency of the power generation systems increases as the exterior temperatures drop. I don't know what people are talking about in terms of hurdles with nuclear fuel, it's all bollocks from what I can tell. Why would processing, disposal, or handling of nuclear fuel be show stoppers? Secondly, we can burn as much oil as we want in the short term with no ill effect to tide us over until we can build up enough nuclear capacity. (the ecosystem is dead anyways and we actually want as many greenhouse gasses as we can to slow down the cooling of the planet).

Now, you don't need bunkers to survive either, it's much easier to insulate surface structures. It would become a lot more expensive to feed a person because agriculture would have to move into greenhouses with artificial lighting, so population growth would be slower, but there's no physical reason I can think of that we couldn't recover if we could survive the initial upheaval.

Weather would stop after a while, so we'd see far fewer natural disasters as well (except for earthquakes).

edit: Also, a clear and present danger such as this event has a way of bringing people together and focusing the on the problem at hand, so I feel like there's be less infighting than one would expect.

Answer 8

You want to be optimistic? You need a generation ship (or the earthbound equivalent of it) - this science fiction mainstay is a spaceship that's self-sufficient in power, food, population, medicine, spare parts, and everything else needed to sustain a population for thousands of years. Of course, they're designed to survive in the vast gulfs between stars.

These show up in Sci-Fi pretty frequently - although perhaps that's because it's a good mechanism for social critique, rather than because it's particularly realistic.

You could choose whether to make it a spaceship or an underground biosphere - not needing to go to space keeps things simple, but some would see an eternity trapped in frozen caves as a bit of a pessimistic outcome.

Could we build such a thing at all? Could we do it with only a year or two until the planet froze over? Could all the world's great powers unite and pool their resources, or does their nature preclude that? Would there only be space for a tiny fraction of earth's population? If so, would the 99.99% destined to die be helpful to the efforts? All questions you can explore in your writings.

If you're interested in this subject, you might enjoy the first half of Neal Stephenson's book Seveneves which has a premise with a lot of overlap.

Answer 9

Yes, but you need technology and raw materials...

Phase 1

1. Pump huge amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere to buy time.
2. Build as many geothermal power & heating plants as you can.
3. Put up inflated foil domes (bubble-wrap) over each city to keep heat and air in.
4. Use huge arc lights to shine up towards the foil dome and reflect the light down.
5. Pump water from the ocean to heat the land surface, the ocean re-heats from the earth's core.
6. Build many nuclear fission and fusion reactors near every city to power the lights and heating, shipping container sized plants currently take 5 years to build.

Each city becomes a self contained life support system, outside the cities nature eventually dies away. The heat from the cities keep the atmosphere from complete collapse but is very wasteful of energy emitting to space.

Phase 2

1. Build cities under the ocean, near geothermal sources if your technology can handle the earthquakes.
2. Fleets of space ships search out and mine resources on asteroids and further away planets.
3. Build 1m thick concrete domes over cities for radiation shielding and insulation as the atmosphere freezes.
4. Eventually connect the cities together so that the concrete dome spans the whole planet.
5. After a long time of mining, the planet may be turned into a miniature dyson sphere but instead of being powered by a star, it's powered by nuclear fission and fusion.

Note:

• In 2015 humans consumed 5 × 10^17 btu energy, which equates to consuming 6750 kg of relativistic mass m from E = mc^2.
• The earth weighs 5×10^24 kg which can last 8×10^20 years, ignoring practicality and inefficiencies.
• The energy needed from matter conversion to run the planet is equivalent to the amount of energy lost to space, better insulation means less energy needed.

Why not stick to coal power? The following calculations indicate there's ample oxygen in the atmosphere to run the planet on coal power for years.

Weight of earth atmosphere
= 5×10^18kg
Atmospheric oxygen as percentage
= 20vol%
Weight of Atmospheric oxygen 
= 5×10^18kg * 20vol%
= 1×10^18kg

Allocate 33% of oxygen to human & animal breathing, 
33% to electricity generation and leave 33% as unextractable.

Human and animal breathing:
Weight of Atmospheric oxygen budgeted
= 1×10^18kg / 3
Oxygen consumed per person sized animal per year
= 740kg
Number of humans and animals saved
= 7 billion humans + 14 billion animals
= 21 billion
Max person years of oxygen extractable from atmospheric oxygen
= 1×10^18kg / 3 / 740kg/year / 21 billion animals
= 21,450 human & animal years of oxygen for breathing.


Electricity generation:
Weight of Atmospheric oxygen budgeted
= 1×10^18kg / 3
Weight of CO2 per kWh electricity from Coal 
= 1kg
Oxygen percentage weight of co2 
= 72.7%
Weight of O2 per kWh electricity from Coal 
= 0.727kg/kWh
Annual electricity generation
= 2.2×10^13 kWh/year
Max years of electricity supply extractable from atmospheric oxygen 
= 1×10^18kg / 3 / 0.727kg/kWh / 2.2×10^13kWh/year
= 20,841 years of coal based electricity available
.

Ref:

• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149197014002960
• https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/100000000000000
• https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Dyson_sphere
• https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollowWorld
• http://insideenergy.org/2017/01/12/energy-explained
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_conversion_(energy_source)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget#Earth's_internal_heat_and_other_small_effects

Answer 10

Interesting question but as per the other answers, this would lead to the death of almost all species within a few months. Humans would fair a bit longer, well the few who have access to underground bunkers with large reserves of food and fuel. Some species of bacteria would survive for eons, as if the earth had not moved at all.

Alternate Interpretation

But you do not mention if we have warning (although the question does imply almost no time). Given enough time to prepare, we could survive and even expand our civilization to the stars beyond.

Infrastructure

With enough time, we could shift all of our manufacturing and agricultural infrastructure below ground, granted we have a united and coherent populace where cost is of no concern.

Underground dwellings would offer insulation from the sub zero temperatures of the surface and agriculture would produce not only food but oxygen for the inhabitants. Manufacturing could continue as oil and the various metals/minerals we rely on would surround us. I'm sure there would be a lot of details we would need to iron out and technologies that would need to be researched, but with warning we could move this underground. Obviously as this infrastructure will need to be powered!

Power

Geothermal activity would still be present for billions of years and could be used much as we do today. Uranium and Thorium are abundant in the crust and both could last us around 100,000 years depending on how efficient we can get. With the large deposits of solid oxygen at the surface, we can also make use of bio-fuels in combustion for remote work that is off the grid (if battery tech does not advance).

Society

How society as a whole would fair is a different story as the human mind is complex. Would we all become manic-depressives without sunlight? Would society lose it's cohesion leading to tribal warfare? It's hard to say but an interesting topic for another question.

Answer 11

TL:DR It is plausible, probable, and in fact very likely, that at least a small portion of humanity will survive and indeed prosper if that event actually occured today. Further, if this question were asked, or this event occurs, in as little as ten years from now, the answer would be an even more certain 'yes'. Change that 'three month' lead time into a 'five year' lead time, and our chances are almost completely assured.

We already have technologies that would allow us to survive, and even more are in the pipeline, and are being ramped up. We are developing technologies that will allow us to survive in the depths of space, on very long journeys, on alien planets, and in very hostile environments. In fact, surviving under such conditions would be equivalent to surviving on the moon, during the lunar night, and even to some extent on Mars. Certainly, the first food production in these colonies will be biodome hydroponic based, using synthetic solar power (non-biological) technology. Replace solar power with nuclear power, and all of the other technologies we are developing for survival on these space habitats are relevant.

With full apologies to the answer provided by @Ash, unfortunately for America and the West, however, the most likely country to have any survival chances will be China, if this event happened today, with only a three month lead time. They are now the undisputed world leaders in advancing the necessary technology. (It is also worthy of note, that the Western news media is unfortunately deliberately obfuscating and downright censoring exactly how advanced China and Asia are in this area, and in fact are deliberately throwing roadblocks in the way to prevent China from developing the necessary technology. See this and this, for instance. Even Internet searches are being filtered. Legitimate sites highlighting Chinese technology advances that came up as late as last year, no longer show up in Google or Duck-duck-go.)

Basically, if Sci Fi writers can argue that Generation Ships are plausible, and people can survive hundreds of years on them, certainly humans can build the equivalent here on earth, and equaly survive for hundreds of years, probably longer. I do not see why @mjt was down-voted, as the answer just needed to be tweaked from humans building a Generation Ship, to humans creating the same concept here on Earth. That is, turn the Earth into a Generation Ship.

We already have aircraft carriers and submarines powered by nuclear rectors that can go years on their own power. They have been doing so safely for almost 50 years. But now, the technologies to do so are no longer military secrets, and small scale nuclear reactors are going into commercial production. Last year, a google search could get you the names of major corporations in China that were leading in the field. In fact, China is already well into commercial production of community-sized nuclear reactors, so the production facilities already exist. China and Asia, are the world leaders in small nuclear reactor technology, and the US are Johny-come-lately to the party. If anyone will survive, it will be because of these Small Modular Reactors (SMR's)that power our survival in local, even remote, enclaves.

We have biodomes in Canada's North, and in the sub-Arctic that can produce enough food to provide a small community, based entirely on artificial light. They have been built quickly, with limited resources. Combine one of these with a commercial community SMR nuclear reactor (at least one is being proposed already in Canada's North). Given the incentive of assured destruction, and the complete evaporation of any fiscal or economic barrier (money will become meaningless) humans can be mobilized into churning them out in mass in three months. A government that can quickly set policies in place, centralize administration, and mobiize the entire manufacturing and production of the country, will be best positioned to survive. Some countries, however, will be rendered impotent through partisan and ideological in-fighting, back-stabbing, political posturing, and blame-gaming while the citizenry dies off.

We already have in Canada underground salt caverns sufficiently large enough for a Generation Ship type environment, as one will realize if they take a tour of such caverns. Here are some pictures depicting how massive salt mines are. It would take a Herculean effort, but not beyond the capabilities of a determined socially responsive nation, to collectively outfit and stock these caves into shelters that could provide refuge in the short term. Incidentally, the interior temperature of the Gooderich salt mine is a balmy 70 degrees F, and this does not come from the sun, but from the Earth's core. Deeper mines have temperatures upwards of 130 degrees F or higher. Definitely not a deep freeze environment. Add hydroponics for food, and insects for protein, and you have a habitat that will be warm and cozzy for millenia. China, of course, has an abundance of such large cavernous mines, all at downright tropical temperatures.

Oh, and that oxygen thing? Here we have a distinct advantage over Generation Ships. We have an almost unlimited supply of water for electrolysis, given that we no longer have to share it with other life forms. The energy to drive the electrolysis? Did you read that 'mini nuclear reactor' thing? Not a practical solution, you might say. Yet American nuclear submarines get all the oxygen they need, for staying under water for perhaps years at a time, from the electrolysis of water using energy from their nuclear reactor. Except for food, a nuclear submarine is entirely self sustaining for every human need, completely independent of the sun, for years if necessary. Just up-scale the level to that of a large cave, and it is evident that human survival on a Generation Spaceship Earth is entirely feasible.

As for a practical, real-world example, again I have to turn to China. They have already completed (2018) and tested such a habitat, with inhabitants surviving for over a year in a completely enclosed, self-sustaiing module, as a proof of concept.

With all of these technologies currently in development, it is certainly feasible today, and when they are perfected within the next ten years, highly likely, that at least enough humans could survive such a catastrophe to maintain our existence.

After all, all humans arose from a population of only 5,000 or so after an extinction event some 50,000 t0 100,000 years ago. Humans with far less technology than we have today have survived ice ages, with very limited resources. They found a way, they adapted.

Answer 12

The obvious thing to do is to position the moon (which we still have) at the right distance, and persuade it to function as a star. (This would give us something to orbit around, which I presume helps, but that would require a particular combination of distance and orbital speed.) I have no idea whether or not this is feasible. I am hoping other people can fill in that gap.

Answer 13

This is not an answer directly to 'How would we recover?', but it is an answer to the implied question 'How bad would it get?'

I have not found a single credible scientific reference anywhere that even suggests the atmosphere of earth would in any way disappear, as in 'blown off into space'. In fact, the absence of the solar wind seems to make this less likely. There is nothing to 'blow it off', and since gravity is not affected, it would still be gravitationally bound to the Earth. I think it is safe to assume, in light of the absence of any credible theoretical mechanism to the contrary, that Earth's atmosphere would remain.

Many posters are suggesting the atmosphere would quickly freeze, but again I have found no supporting scientific evidence for that, just a lot of baseless opinions. From everything I have read in credible science refrences, the earth would not 'instantly freeze'. The article with the most credence indicates that it would quickly fall below zero degrees F, probably within a week, but that is just a mild winter day. In fact, it WOULD be like a dark winter day, all over the earth, so it is entirely reasonable that the earth would cool to this level. But even if, as the article suggess, if it dips to -100 degrees F, within a year, that is still surviveable, with enough energy and insulation. And according to the article, it would take millions of years for the surface temperature to drop to a stable -400 degrees. At that temperature, the heat from the Earth itself would balance the heat lost to space. But this heat from the Earth would still be insulated by whatever atmosphere is present, so I posit the lower atmosphere would certainly be warmer. I would accept that there would be huge convection currents in the air, as the cold air at the top freezes and drops, but the earth heats it up and it rises, just like it currently does.

Add in volcanoes, thermal vents, and such, along with all of the heat that us humans would put into the atmosphere from trying to stay warm, and trying to keep our manufacturing base going, it leaves us a very long time, perhaps a hundred thousand years or so, before the Earth reached a point where at the surface all of the gasses'froze' out of the atmosphere. And even at that, the oceans would still have liquid water below the thick insulating layer of ice for hundreds of thousands of years. That is a very long time for humans to stick around.

Ice is a poor conductor of heat, so the heat from the water would have to travel completely through the ice layer before it was given off. But here is the thing - it is my understanding that until ALL the water froze, the ice temperature would not drop below freezing. A bucket of water left outside in the winter will stay near the freezing point until substantially ALL the water is turned to ice. If this happened above our oceans, it seems to me that this would keep the lower levels of the atmosphere above the oceans at least around the freezing point. Areas above the land could certainnly get much colder, but enough for the entire atmosphere to freeze?

The primary way that heat would be lost from the Earth is radiation (there is no conduction into space), and most of the heat currently given off by the Earth is reflected solar radiation, from the sun. Absent this reflected solar radiation, what is left to radiate heat from the Earth? I can not understand why the earth would cool down substabtially at all, except by radiation over a very long time. Where would the heat in the atmosphere go, and more omportantly, how would it go? It seems to me it would be the 'heat dissipation from a spaceship' problem on steroids. If a spaceship can not 'cool down' and rid itself from all the heat produced by its weapons, except by radiation, how would the Earth quickly cool down, except by ejecting material into space?

I have found no credible science-based theory or evidence that indicates the Earth would quickly cool down, below -100 degrees or so, as it does on a very, very cold winter day. In fact, there is lots of scientific evidence that the earth would NOT rapidly cool down beyond a really cold winter day. There is no large scale way for it to do so. It would not 'warm up' like it does in a sunny day, but why would it cool down below its inherent residual temperature? I am not saying the atmospherre would NEVER cool down sufficiently to 'freeze out' the atmosphere, I am saying that it would take a very long time, measured at least in hundreds of thousands of years, for the atmosphere to reach a temperature where oxygen would turn liquid.

Yes, we would lose our food supply that comes directly from the sun, but I can not see why the temperature of the earth would quickly descend into levels that we could not compensate for, by supplying enough nuclear energy, or even fossil fuels. We have hundreds of years of coal resources, for instance, since we no longer have to worry about greenhouse gases. And electrolysis of water on a mass scale could replenish our oxygen.

As for our food disappearing? Maybe many living things would freeze, but the absence of the sun would not immediately rid the Earth from all of the organic material. It might not be replenished, but there would be lots of dead organic material around for scavangers like cockroaches and rodents to survive. They do not need the sun at all, just a lot of organic matter - even if it has been dead for hundreds of years. And cockroaches are quite nutritious. Lots of protein. Squeamish societies like prissy Americans might not have a food source, but there are many cultures that would live quite well on whatever food sources remained, even without photosynthesis. This is not like a long distance space journey, with limited organic material available, this is the Earth, with an abundace of organic material already laid down. Millions of years of organic material, in fact.

And it would not be completely dark, either. It is estimated that light from the stars would be about 1/300ths of moonlight, but there would still be light. Enough, in fact, for night scopes to still work. Cats would be fine. They could even survive on all of the scavanger mice that would still be around.

It would not be all doom and gloom.

Answer 14

I agree with Michael Borgwardt's answer: there is a very small chance a few small clusters of humans will survive in places with high geothermal activity, specially if there are already geothermal power plants nearby. As he said, nuclear energy is an option, but I think the hurdles with nuclear fuel (processing, disposal, handling, etc) will make it a worse in the long run.

But suppose mankind is able to survive in sustainable society for a long time. In the long run, hope is not all lost for the planet: far from the violent radiation bombardment of the sun, Earth's atmosphere will eventually grow much thicker (both from capture of interstellar gas or from volcanic emissions) which will make the greenhouse effects many times more intense. Maybe even enough that the meager 47 TW of Earth's internal heat energy that flows to the surface will be able to sustain temperatures high enough for water to be liquid in some places.

With unfrozen atmosphere, the range of isolated human communities greatly increases, which might make nuclear energy and fossil fuels feasible again.

Answer 15

The obvious thing to do is to position the moon (which we still have) at the right distance, and persuade it to function as a star. (This would give us something to orbit around, which I presume helps, but that would require a particular combination of distance and orbital speed.) I have no idea whether or not this is feasible. I am hoping other people can fill in that gap. I do not know whether to make this an answer or a comment; here it is. Some admin person might like to move it or whatever.

Separately… As I understand it, bodies in space give off all the heat they receive, once they have reached an equilibrium state. Arguably then, all we need is a Dyson Sphere? (I believe they are on special at the moment.)

Answer 16

We all die.

There is no easy way to say it. Discussion of underground habitats and power requirements are moot... we don't know how to make closed environment systems which actually work. Even with planning and preparation and decent conditions, our best sealed biosphere experiments have lasted months, not years. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

So, questions of long term power and heat retention are irrelevant. The biosphere will collapse and we will go extinct due to starvation, not freezing.

Answer 17

Unfortunately, within seconds of having no sun, the earth would:

• Be flung into the universe ( with nothing to hold it or the solar system in orbit, the earth would hurdle into space at around 66 - 67,000 mph,
• Freeze (Every day that passes would have a drop in temperature. I believe four to five days would bring us to -273 degrees Celsius or absolute zero (this is where even the molecules of an object cease to move)
• Become absolutely dark ( Absolute dark would be darker than your eyes shut in a dark room under a deep cave lol)
• and I believe the tectonic plates would shift dramatically causing volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and mega tsunamis world wide (very scary to think about all that happening in the dark.)

It is a cool premise, but unless the sun was replaced with another star, we would be dead. Also, even one second of our suns disappearance would cause our planet to react in negative ways. Hope this sheds some light.