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WHAT IF THE SUN WENT OUT


	Disasters are in fashion these days, and  somehow I have been
led to think about  a really big one - what if the sun went out?  The
first question to ask before  writing our tale of panic and  paranoia
is this.  How many people could survive how long?

	Not many and not long is  the obvious answer, and we envisage
the  scene in the  movie a  last survivors in  the underground bunker
shiver and draw lots as  to who will be eaten next and  secretly plot
to fix the lottery.

	Unfortunately  for you fans  of disaster movies,  the obvious
answer is  mistaken.    The  more  one  thinks  about  it,  the  more
possibilities for survival come  to mind, and my final  conclusion is
that most Americans would die of old age, and their descendants would
survive almost as long as they would without the disaster - for a few
billion years.  I  have not so far been able to find  a way for India
to survive.

	The  first problem that comes to mind  is that it would begin
to  get cold.    How  cold  and  how  soon.   During  the  winter  in
Antarctica, it  is dark all the  time, but it takes months  to get to
-100F even at the pole.  At  the coast, it doesn't get anywhere  near
that cold because of the sea.  The facts seem to be as follows:

	The thermal time constant  of the atmosphere is a  few weeks.
However,  the time constant of  the ocean is many  years.  Because of
convection in the  ocean, the  surface can't freeze  until the  whole
ocean  reaches 4  degrees  Celsius.   Because  of  convection in  the
atmosphere,  the atmosphere  can't get  much below freezing  near the
coasts or much  below Antarctic temperatures  inland until the  ocean
surface  freezes.     Therefore,  we  will  have   very  cold  winter
temperatures near  the  coasts and  had  better evacuate  the  inland
areas.

	We will be unable to heat our  houses, because we already use
40% of our  energy for that purpose, and we couldn't even get through
one year with our available  energy production.  Therefore, we  would
start dying off in  a few months, right.  Wrong,  we just wouldn't be
able  to afford so much  housing.  In fact, we  would have to abandon
90% of our  housing and live  in the remaining  10% and insulate  the
walls of that 10% by  piling up dirt.  At barracks levels of crowding
and good insulation, we could almost get by on body heat if we  could
find the food to generate the body heat.

How long would the  initial supplies last, and what would  we do when
they ran out?