It's an interesting thing to think about. As for how long it would take before we freeze to death, I floated the question at one of the technical meeting today, and set the whole team to work on figuring out the answer. Their result: 295.92 seconds, just shy of 5 minutes. Now I know what you're thinking, because I thought the same thing, too. It takes around 8 minute for light from the sun to reach the earth, how could we possibly freeze to death in under 8 minutes. Nothing travels faster than the speed of light.

This happens because the force of the ion stream emitted from the sun is responsible for pushing other ions ahead of it. This is how they explained it to me. Imagine you've got a yardstick on a table, what happens when you start pushing one end of it at the speed of about a centimeter per second? Well, the entire yardstick starts moving at a centimeter per second. The whole thing. Now if you stop pushing on one end, the whole things stops. While no individual particle is traveling faster one centimeter per second, if you stop one end, you stop the other end, it's the very first thing they teach you in Physics 101.

See, these ions aren't moving faster than the speed of light, but when you stop the pressure behind them, they stop moving too. Of course, an ion cloud isn't as ridged as a yardstick, so there is a bit of elasticity in it, hence it takes 2 minutes, and is not an instantaneous stoppage.

We certainly know what happens if the earth isn't constantly bombarded with ions. Then the outermost layer of the atmosphere loses its positive charge and is no longer held in by the earth's magnetic field. Bye bye atmosphere. Once this happens, we've got about another 3 minutes before all our accumulated heat decides its too cool to hang out with us, and it takes a hike, too.

Then we freeze.

Thank goodness the sun won't instantly collapse into a black hole.

Wait a minute! You say that the ion cloud is like a ruler being pushed through space, take away the impulse behind it and it stops. While this may be true, turning the sun into a black hole wouldnt be like just pulling your hand away from the yardstick. It would be more along the lines of pulling your hand away and immediately turning on a powerful vacuum. The ion cloud would not only stop but begin to fly backwards toward the sun. Therefore I believe your time of roughly 5 minutes to be much too high. In fact, by my calculations (I am a physics major at one of the leading American Universities) the time is 143.53542 seconds. A far cry from your team's calculated 5 minutes. Please, next time you post such facts make sure you take into account all possibilities. Or just hire me onto your team, as I will do this job for you.

Actually, black holes have the exact same mass as the suns they previously were. So despite Earth being turned into a desolate, cold rock, it would still orbit the black hole in the same way it orbited the sun, 365 "days" a year.
So in 50 years, we would have been dead for 50 years, and that's about it.
And I think I've had Cadet as a professor. Cambridge, right?

I see your point.
I just spoke with my Physics professor from last year, and he did confirm that you have spoken here previously; recently, in fact. I distinctly remember your beard, actually, and I believe you lectured about the recent revisions to String Theory. What an interesting topic, to say the least!
If I can request, though, could you possibly provide the quantum values necessary to predict the nature of a Mercury-annexed black hole? Also, I noticed that you said that the black hole's mass would increase exponentially, whereas it would increase only by 1/10,000,000, though that would be enough to damage the delicate balance of the nine planets' orbit.
My professor, Prof. Durkin--you surely know him personally, as he speaks highly of you--and I did some calculations and found that the Earth would be consumed in 50.132563 (truncated) Earth years, not (a very unprofessionally rounded) 50.34 Earth years. We posted our equations online, if you'd like to look over our work: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089222/
Saturn would be consumed in roughly 7,000,000,000 years because of its ignorable mass. Interesting!

Surely if the sun was instantly turned into a black hole, then all masses with less tangental motion than us relative to the black hole would instantly begin accelerating towards it in relation to our position? Therefore the energetic particles from the sun would reverse their direction of travel relative to us rather than simply stop. Since all the particles from the sun are travelling radially, all of the particles ever (in the short time we are concerned with) emitted from the sun that were still travelling through space would begin accelerating back towards the black hole. Therefore, wouldn't it be logical to conclude that day and night on earth would rapidly be reversed as our exposure to the stream of particles was reversed? The intensity of the stream would also be equal to what we were exposed to while the sun existed. I do not think we would freeze, but it would depend on the size of the gravitational pull of the black hole and I do not care to make calculations right now.

please gently critisize. first timer here and im only 18 :)

I have a question that maybe one of you can answer. Why would mercury get pulled into the black hole? The mass of the sun would remain constant if it collapsed into a black hole, and so the orbits of the planets would not change, right?

legatissimo :)

The more I think about it, the more I disagree with your team's conclusions... I don't think that the particles traveling through space from the sun will act like a gas as they assume. I do understand that they made that conclusion because the ionized particles will have electrical fields around them that will repel like particles, but those electrical field forces drop rapidly as you move away from the ion and the space they would have between each other is vast. Also, not all the particles carrying energy from the sun are ionized and nearer the sun the pressure of this ion "gas" will be greater due to more density and therefore expelling particles outwards if the emission was to simply stop... just mulling thoughts here...

Side notes:
Ionized particles rarely pass through earth's atmosphere.
Most of the sun's energy is emitted in electromagnetic waves.

Just for a sidebar:

If the sun transformed into an equally-massive black hole instantly, the earth would continue to orbit it as before. If you threw in all the other object in the solar system except the earth and moon, the earth-moon orbit would probably not change by much. The sun contains 99% of the mass of the system.

If the ion-stream is being pushed as you say, the analogy is like pushing a ruler and then pulling your hand back suddenly... the ruler should continue to move forward for a bit due to inertia.

But what you are all forgetting is that singularities spin faster than stars. AND, it is the sun's spin rate at its equater which determines the planets' spin rates. So, if Sol (the sun) became a black hole, Terra (the earth) would being spinning faster. Venus, which spins in the opposite direction, would spin slower.

The sun being replaced by a black hole would have no effect on the Earth's orbit. Since Mercury is inside Earth's orbit, it's mass already effects Earth's orbit exactly the same way as it would if it were where the sun is.

The only reason that the orbit would not change is because of the mass, if I am not mistaken. However, it it were a true black hole with the density of a neutron star, I am sure that we would all be sucked into its wrath at the speed of light. And due to the abscence of the sun, we would reach near absolute zero in the time it takes infrared energy to bounce around the atmosphere and dissipate. That gives a baseline of about 4 seconds, and our deaths would be slightly longer, so I would say about 4.5 seconds until all life on earth is obliterated, which is very close to legatissimo's colleagues' calculations.

Therefore, I assume that said colleagues assumed a regular black hole in the place of the sun; not one created from a near white dwarf. However, were it only the mass of the sun, it would take the time it takes for infrared energy to reach the erath from the sun, dissipate in the atmosphere, and the human body completely freeze; about 8.7 seconds.

Well I'm not one to directly contradict hawkings, but it would seem to me that since all energy is also a particle (wave-particle duality) and therefore has mass, it will be affected by gravity and thus unable to escape the pull of a black hole.

black holes are black because no energy is emitted from it, hence we cannot see what is going on inside.

Pushing one end of a yardstick does not cause the far end to move instantaneously. The movement travels along a rigid body at approximately the speed of electricity (which is near the speed of light). This is because yardsticks are held together by electron bonds. When you push on the nucleus of the first atom, it brings along its electron. And of course the electron is travelling as fast as electrons travel. Not instantaneously. This electron then pushes against the electrons of the next atom, which get pushed along, again at the speed of electrons. These electrons bring along their nucleus, and so on. No matter what analogy you use (matter, energy, information, yardsticks) nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. So the effects of the sun changing from emitter to sink will take at least 8 minutes to reach the earth.

on some levels those are identical

Posted By: Illnab1024

Infrared energy will radiate throughout the earth due to the greenhouse effect. No matter how much you think it is not important at night, we still do have plenty of infrared energy coming to those on the dark side of the planet.

You are going to need to explain to me why infrared wavelength electromagnetic waves are able to do that and not visible light electromagnetic waves.

Yes, the heat from the day is trapped at night by the greenhouse effect, but I've never heard of specifically infrared waves bouncing around to the backside of the planet.

Posted By: Illnab1024

Well, I wasn't talking about the energy waves...my bad...just a misnomer I tend to use for heat.

Ah, I see, so you were just explaining my point then :)

I would figure the radiation of a supernova would destroy us all, but if it were simply replaced by a black hole, we would (1) Be sucked out of orbit due to the gravity and (2) Freeze to death for lack of a major heat source.

for anyone who is having problems with the density factor, remember that gravitational fields are proportional to 1/d^2 so if you have all the mass of the sun collected into a point, the gravity right next to the point is extreme, whereas normally the same position from the center of the sun would be inside of it and would be subjected to gravitational forces all around it in every direction. so as long as you are outside of the sun before and after, the gravitational force you experience will be the same no matter what volume it occupies.

you can theoretically produce a black hole from a mass the size of the sun, the trick is in getting it to collapse in the first place. infact, theoretically any mass you can get into a singularity produces a black hole because the distance from its center of mass can be infinitely small.

My point exactly. His point is that if the sun were to undergo a transition, it's mass would be the same, thereby keeping all objects orbiting it in the same orbit. However, the sun would not be able to be a "stable" black hole, if you will. My point is that the average black hole contains much more mass than the sun, and would suck all objects into it under it's gravity.

average yes, but we are hypothesising.

he is talking about "average black hole" (in terms of mass), normal evolution of sun wouldnt result in black hole
you can turn anything into stable black hole (ie compress earth to the size of an orange ;) ), artifically but you can

anyway i want to know what is the "pressure" that makes ions move beacuse it looks like it allows information to travel faster than c

By the way what is C...

I hope im not annoying any of you, because im asking so many questions...but i like this kinda stuff

c is the speed of light :)

Posted By: migrena

~299,792,458 meters per second to be precise

Rethink the way you put that: approximately....to be precise :P

so the whole calculation was wrong and we still nedd to wait that 8 minutes to start freezing, i rally liked the idea of being warned ahead