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You would not notice for eight minutes

What If the Sun Went Out Tonight?

The light takes eight minutes and twenty seconds to get here. So does the news.

1 The Sunstops2 Eightminutes ofnothing3 The skygoes out4 Coldarrivesover days
Every stage of this is slower than people expect.

  1. Step 1 of 5

    For eight minutes and twenty seconds, nothing changes.

    Light leaves theSun Arrives 8 min 20s later

    That is how long sunlight takes to cross the gap. Birds would sing, shadows would sit still, and the sky would be exactly as blue as it was — lit by light that left a star which is no longer shining.

  2. Step 2 of 5

    Then the sky goes out — and Earth keeps orbiting.

    First 8 minutes Still curving, as ifnothing happenedAfter that Straight line,forever

    Gravity travels at the same speed as light, so for those same eight minutes Earth keeps curving around a Sun that is not there. Then it lets go and we travel in a straight line, at 107,000 km/h, out of the solar system.

  3. Step 3 of 5

    The cold arrives slowly.

    Nowaverage 15°CAfter one weekaround 0°CAfter one yeararound -70°C

    Earth is not a stone; it is wrapped in ocean and air that have soaked up sunlight for billions of years. The surface would be around freezing after a week and about -70°C within a year — cold, but not the instant deep-freeze films suggest.

  4. Step 4 of 5

    The sea would freeze from the top down.

    Air, far below freezingno warmth leftaboveA thickening crust ofsea icefloats, andinsulatesLiquid oceankept warm frombelow

    Ice floats, so the ocean would lid over with a thickening crust — and that crust is an excellent blanket. Under a few hundred metres of ice, the deep sea would stay liquid for thousands of years.

  5. Step 5 of 5

    And something would still be alive down there.

    Everything that needssunlight Gone within a seasonLife around deep-seavents Runs on Earth's ownheat

    Deep-sea vents run on Earth's own internal heat, not on sunlight, and whole communities already live on them in permanent darkness. They would barely notice. Everything that eats sunlight, which is nearly everything else, would not last the winter.

    What will actually happen to the Sun is much slower and much stranger — it swells before it fades.

The short version

The Sun going out would be an eight-minute delay, then a slow freeze — and the deep sea would keep going without it.

Try it yourself

Look at the Sun's reflection in a window. You are seeing it as it was eight minutes ago. There is no way to see it as it is now.

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