What if the sun disappeared for five seconds?
Seems like a really odd question.
5 seconds isn't very long, but the sun is also so vital to everything on Earth as well as to the rest of our solar system.
Even if it only disappeared for 5 seconds, that five seconds would be enough to cause some serious damage.
The sun is 330,000 times the mass of our earth and every single second it produces as much energy as 100 billion hydrogen bombs.
The sun is so big that it's the dominant gravitational force in our solar system, and eight planets along with countless space objects orbit around it.
To sum it all up, we need the sun.
If it went anywhere, even for just five seconds, it would be a major catastrophe.
It takes eight minutes for light from the sun to reach the earth.
So if the sun disappeared for five seconds, we wouldn't even know about it until eight minutes later.
If the sun disappeared for five seconds, the parts of the world that were experiencing daylight at the time would get a very quick five-second night where the stars are visible.
The parts of the world that were experiencing a night at the time that the sun disappeared wouldn't see the moon.
Because the moon's light is reflected from the sun, it would be complete and total darkness, minus the light from electricity.
If the sun disappeared for five seconds, it wouldn't be too big a deal.
At first, we would still have electricity for those five seconds, plants would stop making food because, without the sun, there's no photosynthesis.
They, of course, will continue making food after the sun returns after five seconds.
It's not necessarily the light from the sun going out for five seconds that we have to be worried about.
It's how it would affect gravity in our solar system.
The sun provides heat and light for our solar system, but the sun also holds everything in our solar system in place.
Interestingly, before Einstein, scientists assumed that gravity acted instantaneously, but in his theory of general relativity, Einstein pointed out that the force from gravity isn't instantaneous.
Gravity travels at the speed of light as well.
So we would see the sun go out and we would feel it disappear at the exact same time.
If the sun disappeared, even if it were just for five seconds, all the objects in our solar system would go into an unstable orbit - they would then be sent flying in the direction that they were headed in a straight line rather than continuing on their elliptical orbits.
The Earth orbits the sun at a speed of 67,000 miles per hour, or 30 miles per second - do a bit of math and the Earth's orbit would change by less than a kilometer.
Even though this doesn't seem like much, this could cause our planet to move further away from the sun.
So when it goes back into orbit, the earth could be quite a bit colder.
This would affect the environment in many ways.
Certain plants can survive in colder weather and certain species of animals who rely on the heat would also suffer.
It's difficult to determine just how much a change in temperature would affect life on Earth.
But as we have seen a drop in temperature has caused many different species to go extinct, even though the sun and its gravity would return after five seconds.
In extreme cases, its temporary disappearance would cause the objects in our solar system to be knocked off course, where eventually they could float away into space entirely and be lost forever or they would eventually crash into other objects in our solar system.
Again, any crashes wouldn't happen right away because gravity also travels at the speed of light.
But throwing our planets off-course would definitely have long-term implications.
You might not have known this but the sun also creates a magnetic field around the solar system.
This field is called the heliosheath and it deflects harmful radiation particles that come from outside our solar system.
Take away the sun and our Helio sheet is gone, which means that all the radiation that is currently blocked will be able to make it into our solar system.
Once the sun returned, the heliosheath would be far less able to safely deflect all the radiation that bombards our solar system from space.
On the bright side, we would see beautiful Aurora light up the atmosphere, but on the negative side, electrical grids we rely on would short out and satellites that are currently in orbit might stop functioning.
This already happens when solar flares hit our planet.
Thankfully, the sun isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
And it definitely isn't disappearing for five seconds either.
Next, let’s see what would happen if the Sun Disappeared forever…
Well, that sounds like a topic for another video on DiscoverZen.