• Question: if there was no sun could we be able to survive by cloning particles and using electric light? (that is if it doesn't explode violently)?

    Asked by goldeyes202 to Dilwar, Lou, Rachel, Simon, Susan on 13 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Simon Langley-Evans

      Simon Langley-Evans answered on 13 Nov 2013:

      Hi goldeyes- that’s a very interesting question.

      If there was no sun, then we would be sunk unless we could migrate to another world where there was a sun. With no sun we would be lacking three important things:

      1. Gravity. Our planet only stays in place because the sun is there at the centre of the solar system keeping everything in order. Take it away and the planets would fly off their orbits and there would be chaos. Earth would probably end up being a moon of Jupiter, or smashing into something catastrophically.

      2. Heat. Without the sun our planet would cool down dramatically and we would be frozen down to minus 230 degrees C. We though last winter was awful in the UK, and that never went below minus 15 degrees even in the worst conditions. No amount of clever technology or electricity could enable any life to survive the cooling due to the loss of the sun.

      3. Light. Life on Earth depends completely on sunlight. Plants convert sunlight to sugars and starches through photosynthesis and are then food for animals and humans. No light, means no plants, means no animals, means no humans. Also with no plants the oxygen in the atmosphere would drop so we would all asphyxiate.

      When the dinosaurs went extinct the cause was a comet strike which threw up enough dust and debris to blot out the sun for many years. This killed off thousands of species of plants and animals in just a short space of time just because the light had gone.

      The good news is that our sun has billions of years left in it, so we have no need to worry. When the end comes it will expand into a giant star that will engulf Earth and destroy it. Humans will be long gone by then.

    • Photo: Susan Skelton

      Susan Skelton answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      Hi goldeyes!
      What a brilliant question! I had to think really hard about this one…

      I think you are asking whether we could make enough energy from nuclear power generation to heat and light the Earth if the sun were to disappear? I’ll try to answer this question, but if I have misunderstood, please just let me know in the comments and I’ll try again!

      There are quite a few things to take into account in this problem, so we’ll take them one at a time…

      Firstly, there is actually a lot of heat stored in the centre of the Earth. This is called ‘geothermal energy’ and is caused by some radioactive materials which occur naturally inside the planet. The temperatures at the centre of the Earth may reach over 5000 °C! Sometimes this heat reaches the surface and heats the water, creating natural hot springs. We can use this naturally occurring heat as a free, renewable energy source. In Iceland, 93% of homes are heated using geothermal energy!

      But unfortunately geothermal energy wouldn’t provide enough heat to heat the surface of the earth if the sun disappeared. I wonder if we could build some sort of civilisation underground, though!

      It is a great idea to try to generate power for heat and electricity using a nuclear fusion reaction, which is the same process that powers the sun. This requires changing hydrogen gas (which we have loads of on Earth – all the water in the sea is made of hydrogen and oxygen!) into helium gas, and catching the energy that is released.

      In theory, this should be possible, but we don’t yet have advanced enough technology to be able to do it. If we could manage it, it would produce a lot of power, but I don’t know if it would be enough to keep everyone alive without the sun!

    • Photo: Dilwar Hussain

      Dilwar Hussain answered on 16 Nov 2013:

      That is a very good question. I think if there was no sun to begin with, there would be no life on earth therefore we’d be long gone before we could even think about cloning particles. If you’re preparing for the distant future, it sounds like a good idea but it might be really expensive and the maintenance for these electric lights to stay on will be astronomical. Producing the electricity would’nt be a problem because we could do that from nuclear or as Susan suggested Geothermal, but the sun provides light that reaches distances where electric lights might be limited.

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