First let me state for the record:
- I will not pimp my blog in this post!
- I will not discuss politics in this post!
- I will not discuss religion in this post!
On to the meat of the topic:
The other day I was driving with my 7.5 and 3.5 sons. They Josh was using his watch to reflect the sun onto the ceiling of the car while Sam tried to "catch" it if you will. We turned a corner, changing the angles, and boom - the reflection stopped.
Josh immediately exclaimed, "the Sun disappeared!" I of course corrected him explaining that the Sun hasn't moved appreciably, rather that we just changed where we were and not there's a huge hill between us and yada yada yada, you can't reflect the sun off your watch right now.
So Josh then asks, "what would happen if the Sun disappeared?"
Ground rules - To a 7 year old, the Sun provides light and heat, nothing else. So we will presume that the gravitational forces remain in effect for the remainder of this question.
I told him that it would get very cold very quickly. I predicted that after about 24 hours pretty much all of us would be dead, save the cockroaches and that micro-organism they recently exposed to outer space which lived.
My question to you science geeks or your wives who are scientists, is can anyone provide a better answer or educated guess? Think we'll last less or more time on Earth as we know it? Any other things to think about? How long till Lake Michigan or the Oceans froze over? What would the temps be after just an hour without the Sun?
Josh did say we could start camp fires. I told him that might help for a little bit, but that it would be so cold tha as soon as we left the fire to get more wood, we'd freeze to death!
Cheers,
PittCaleb




Joined: 2007-10-08
Dad Points: 95