The Sun just vanished. For the next 8 minutes and 19 seconds, nobody on Earth can tell, because its light and its gravity are still on their way to us.

This is that window in real time, and then everything after it: the Moon going out, Earth flying off in a straight line, the planets going dark one by one, and the cold, from the first week to the last life on the planet. Every number is sourced below. Where science has no answer, we say so.

A thought experiment: mass can't really vanish. Times use average distances; Moon and planet times from JPL Horizons.

Where does your clock stop? Tell me in the comments.

Chapters
0:00 The Sun just vanished
0:35 The rules
1:09 Why it's 8:19, not 8:20
2:00 Gravity is late too
2:55 Mercury is next
3:25 Everything is still normal
4:35 "0°F in a week"?
4:55 Neutrinos pass through you
5:21 Nothing can outrun it
5:41 Venus is next
6:10 What goes out, in order
6:40 The solar wind outlasts the light
7:00 One last look at the sky
7:19 The last 60 seconds
8:19 Dark
8:56 The Moon goes out
9:40 Earth leaves its orbit
10:05 The machines notice
11:31 The planets go out one by one
12:00 Where "0°F in a week" comes from
12:54 What the science does say
13:44 How long would you last outside?
14:14 Where could you survive?
15:03 The food chain
15:28 What won't kill you
15:42 15 years
15:59 The sky falls
16:25 Earth's final state
17:07 Where does your clock stop?

Sources
Distances, Mercury, Venus: NASA https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/ · https://science.nasa.gov/mercury/facts/ · https://science.nasa.gov/venus/venus-facts/ · JPL Horizons https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/
Neutrinos: Bahcall https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0411190 · KATRIN, Science 388, 180 (2025)
Solar wind: NOAA SWPC https://www.spaceweather.gov/phenomena/solar-wind
Core light: NASA SVS https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11084
L1: ESA SOHO, NASA ACE
GW170817: Abbott 2017 https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.05834
Solar share: Ember 2026
GPS timing: https://archive.gps.gov/applications/timing/
Satellite power: NOAA OSPO
ISS: NASA facts and figures
Tides: Bowditch, ch. 35 · NOAA tides tutorial
Night vision: Kalloniatis & Luu, Webvision
"0°F in a week": Otterbein, Popular Science, Nov 2008 · 0°F in 879 days: Straight Dope (Cecil Adams) · −198°C in 4 months: ScienceAlert 2016
Impact winter: Bardeen 2017 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1708980114
Lux: Schlyter https://stjarnhimlen.se/comp/radfaq.html
Record cold: WMO https://wmo.int/asu-map?map=Temp_020
Survival: Tikuisis 1995 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8530210/
Frostbite: NWS wind chill chart
Iceland: Gov. of Iceland
Sub patrols: US Navy
Reactor fuel: EIA https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45176
Intake ice: NRC https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1634/ML16349A563.pdf
Ocean heat: Schmitt 2018, Oceanography
Grain: FAO cereal brief
Plankton: Field 1998 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9657713/
Trees: Muhr 2018, New Phytologist
Oxygen: Astrobiology Primer https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0610926
15 years: Marotzke & Botzet 2007 https://doi.org/10.1029/2006GL028880
CO₂ snow: Agee 2013, J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol.
Liquid air: NIST https://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C7727379&Mask=4
Inner heat: Davies & Davies 2010 https://se.copernicus.org/articles/1/5/2010/
Ice lid: Abbot & Switzer 2011 https://arxiv.org/abs/1102.1108
Ocean freeze: Laughlin & Adams, Icarus 145 (2000)
Triton: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.04595
Deep microbes: Lin 2006 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17053150/ · Chivian 2008 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18845759/
Vent oxygen: WHOI · Smith 2012, Biogeosci. Discuss.
Derived by us: front distances, 21 ms sweep, Moon and planet delays, Sun vs Earth pull on the Moon (2.2×), Moon escape speed 1.44 km/s, ~35 min ISS night, 2.57 million km/day, air = top 2.5 m of ocean, 12 m of liquid air, ~36 K.

Footage, photos, textures (CC BY: cropped, colour-graded, reprojected)
CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ : jazzcool, Lisbon tramparade · Thomas Bresson, timelapse nuages Belfort · Danilo Hegg, Awaroa Inlet timelapse
CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ : John Hardin (IceCube Lab) · Quintin Soloviev (grain silos) · ESO/S. Brunier (Milky Way) · Solar System Scope (textures)
CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ : btwashburn, Wildfire smoke
Public domain: NASA, Roscosmos, USGS, JPL · NOAA · U.S. Navy · USAF · USDA · Gretar Ívarsson · Juliancolton
CC0: Alejandro, JJ Ying, Les Anderson, Dev Benjamin/Unsplash · Tobi Kellner
Space renders (real data; some sizes, brightness and motion exaggerated): NASA/SDO, AIA/EVE/HMI teams · NASA SVS star maps (Gaia, Hipparcos, Tycho: ESA) · NASA Earth Observatory · GEBCO · JPL Horizons
Additional footage: NASA/JHU APL/NRL (Parker WISPR) · NASA EPIC/DSCOVR · NASA/Joel Kowsky

#space #science #whatif