As I’m sure you’ve noticed, we’ve had a reduced number of sunspots as of late. Kind of neat, kind of weird, nothing to be worried about. It’s really only a bummer to the aurora seekers, astronauts who will be exposed to a bit more radiation, and anyone with a solar filter on their telescope who likes to watch sun spots.
But all this talk of Suns makes me wonder what would happen if the sun just blinked out one day. As if someone found an unexpected lightswitch in his or her basement and mistakenly turned off the sun. I’m less interested in all the mass mayhem and political uprisings as much as how quickly we’d get cold. And this, my friends, is why the internet exists. This very question was raised in a BadAstronomy/Universe Today forum.
Interesting. They don’t really get to an answer, but it’s a cool conversation. There is an article in popular science on this, but I really dislike that publication. So if you’re interested, you can google it.
Yay Science!
The sun could be gone as I type this. But we wouldn’t know it for another 8 minutes, or something like that, right?
Have you seen the movie Sunshine? It’s a pretty cool sci-fi movie about a space mission to re-ignite the sun. It’s almost like an alternate version of Event Horizon, but good nonetheless.
http://www.allmovie.com/work/sunshine-328646
2008 had the 2nd least number of days with sunspots. I believe 1912 or 1913 had lees days with sunspots. There MAY may a connection with the weather (the cold) and the lack of sunspots.
The Original GGRDonald
a connection that doesn’t help Al Gore.
BEST COMMENT on the discussion of a blinked out sun on that page:
If the sun went out, it would perhaps not be appropriate to ask “how many days”. Maybe better to say, “how many nights”?
Yup! Just over 8 minutes.
Fun fact! it takes over 4 hours for light to reach Neptune from the sun.
Whoa! I have not seen this.
Perhaps that needs to change.