“If the sun were to blow up, life on Earth would certainly end. It
takes eight minutes and twenty seconds for light to travel from the
sun to the earth, so we would not know that the sun had exploded
until eight minutes and twenty seconds after the explosion occurred.
Most of the energy from such an explosion would be traveling at the
speed of light or nearly as fast, so life on Earth would end pretty
much as soon as the first of sign of the explosion arrived.”
—as published on the UC Santa Barbara ScienceLine, 12/5/2003
If, without warning, the sun goes
out-and-out kablooey next Monday (ugh,
Mondays—am I right?) at precisely
midnight GMT, then during our ignorant
delay: many will be hidden in the ecstatic
hiatus of sleep, swirling on a patch of world
darkened, cooled; some will be cocktail-
lounging and looking out at the last
dusk ever; others will be beginning
their horrible mornings, stuck in rush hour,
late for work they hate, their respective
spouse’s cheating scandal revealed weeks
earlier still a fresh mess in their minds,
their wedding song shuffled on the car stereo;
and nearly none (not the newscasters,
not the tarot card readers, not even
the clockface makers) will be able to tell
that, regardless the time, it’s already up.