Seriously: lots of people and animals would panic big time. That’s a wonderful question to meditate upon, I like to picture the world going dark and mysterious—the fact that we wouldn’t know for how long it would stay like that, the feeling… An awesome experience, it would be.
The suns heat takes about 8 or so minutes to reach us and its light takes about 7 minutes to reach us so we would start seeing it and panic about 7 minutes after it had already happened. All the street lights in the world would come on and the moon would disappear (there would be no light for it to shine) the other planets would disappear slowly in order.
Outside cites the sky would be filled with stars and present a great 20 minute opportunity for astronomers everywhere who would be able to see more stars than ever before and discover quite a lot about the universe and probably take more photos than they have film as long as they can get the cameras around in time.
Temperature would drop off a little, but only just noticeable, remember at night we do without the sun for up to 12 hours and in most places much longer in the winter.
There would be changes in the weather patterns which may disturb things and its possible, but not likely that it could cause an ice age.
Thats about all that would happen really as 20 minutes isn’t really long enough for much to happen unless your talking about removing the sun completely. If you are then we would also travel about 20 minutes out of our current gravity position and its actually possible that earths orbit could become more ecliptic as opposed to its current shape which is not that ecliptic at all, this would mean that depending on were the earth was at the time it would cause longer summers/winters in one hemisphere than the other. This would also likely disturb the gulf stream which would cause a freezing ice age which would likely wipe humanity (despite our technology as they can wipe out as much as 97% of all life and you try living without food!).
So yeah thats whats likely to happen.
If you want to know more end of world scenarios I suggest you visit https://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htm. If your wondering how I know all of this, thank your lucky starts the world still has librarians as bored as I am.
That was a truly awesome post darakat . I know I’m greatful to have a librarian as bored as you.
If the sun were ever to go out for that amount of time. There definitely would be people in some part of this world that wouldn’t even notice. I couldn’t begin to imagine the chaos and panic.
I would say that God was having his fun, get a good laugh out of his joke, and jokingly speak of the end of the world on a streetcorner, and quoting supposedly “relevant” passages from the Bible.
I think there would be a lot of panic, in everyone worldwide, but especially in people that profess the future in solar power.
why would heat take more time than light to reach us? arent they both electromagnetic waves travelling in (near) vaccum? they should take exactely the same time. (Yes heat is a form of light). Anyway I dont think it will be a big deal, people would be confused before they panic, and by then the 20 minutes would have passed. And we wouldnt freeze, not more than we freeze at night anyway But if it’s accompanied by fluctuations in the Sun’s magnetic field, it would affect communications and electricity on Earth, than it would definitely create panic.
The electromagnetic waves bring their associated energy which makes molecular movement to raise, an effect that we know as “heat.” So first light would have to arrive and hit some surface for molecules to start shaking around and thus heat be perceived.
By the way, [size=100]AWESOME[/size] post, Dara! That was brilliant!
Exactly right Bruno, so we would also (assuming its noon or some point long enough for the earths rotation to allow us to see it again that day) only feel the suns heat again a minute or so after it came back. And I forgot to include the whole radio communication issues it would raise, but most systems have fails safes designed to deal with sudden raising of eletromagetic waves, and quite a few office buildings have “Farady cage” designs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage to shield against TEMPEST-like effects (a security measure) and electromagnetic attacks.
Simply put yourself in the shoes of any member of an ancient civilization that has observed a solar eclipse
I’d imagine there’d be a lot of panic and fear, maybe even some rioting. People might pray for deliverance, others might grab their telescopes and simply observe the skies, but either way it would be a really cool 20 minutes to be alive