Could we live without the sun?
Question
This is one my boyfriend wants to know: With all the technology we have in modern times, could we survive without the sun?Stacey, Wimbledon
Answer
** Definitive **Name: Colin, Croydon
Qualification: A degree in physics
Answer: The general scientific consensus on this is that it will take around a week for the Global average temperature to dip below freezing and within a year, it would dip to around -100 degrees. The layers of the oceans will freeze over and act as an insulator to the ocean underneath. So at the bottom of the ocean, where creatures currently live with no light anyway, life is likely to remain. On the surface, photosynthesis would stop immediately with no sun and most plants would die off in the first couple of weeks. But larger trees would survive for decades as they have such a low metabolic rate, they would keep themselves going. As for humanity, you should head up to Iceland, where you’ve got huge geothermic heat being created, which would keep you warm and a lot of plankton and plant life live there to keep us alive. However, the Earth would eventually fall to -400 degrees and we would all die. Although if we went into a nuclear submarine, we could live for as long as we could create oxygen within it.