If the suns light went out how long would it take to find out?

Answer 1

One Astronomical Unit, or A.U., is just the average distance between the Earth and the sun, which works out to 149 597 870 kilometers. A beam of light would take 8-and-1/3 minutes to cross this distance, which, to put it another way, means that anything we see happening on the surface of the sun actually took place 8 minutes and 20 seconds ago.

Answer 2

When the little woman who runs the Sun forgets one day to change the battery, we'll know about it here on Earth about 8-and-a-half minutes after she finds out.

The Sun is, on average, about 150,000,000 kilometres away and the speed of light is as close to 300,000,000 metres per second as to make very little difference, so it would take roughly 500 seconds for light to go that far (or in this case, to NOT go that far).

Answer 3

Since the sun is the only source of illumination on earth, darkness would cover the earth

immediately if light ceased to radiate from the sun.

Technically, we suppose, a more precise answer is: 8minutes 19seconds after the sun went out,

since light that left sooner is already en route but hasn't yet arrived on earth.

==============================================

Another contributor mused:

There wouldn't be time for the Earth to go dark. The repercussions of the sun expanding (the death of a star starts when it expands) would reach the Earth at the same time as the last rays of light. The entire planet would be burned to a crisp almost instantly.

Answer 4

It would take about 8 minutes and 20 seconds for us to realize that the sun's light had gone out, as that is the time it takes for light from the sun to reach Earth.

Answer 5

a day