Worldbuilding

2667 readers

11 users here now

Rules of !Worldbuilding:

See here for a longer, more explanatory version.

Rule 0: These are guidelines, not laws.
Rule 1: Be polite and respectful to others.
Rule 2: Provide some lore with your submissions!
Rule 3: Show some effort.
Rule 4: Do it yourself.
Rule 5: Advertising is limited.

Related Communities

For conlang (constructed languages) discussion check out !conlangs@mander.xyz Feel free to discuss the your conlangs in our community, as well!

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

infinitecartographer@lemmy.world

Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world

Zonetrooper@lemmy.world

Imotali@lemmy.world

How long do you think it would take the atmosphere to cool to the point of precipitating if the sun were to vanish? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago by early_riser@lemmy.world to c/worldbuilding@lemmy.world

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

From what I remember, most (all?) of the heat in the atmosphere, or at least in the troposphere, comes from the ground, with convection carrying heat into the upper atmosphere.

Looking at my temperature graph from my weather station in my backyard, overnight the temp dropped about 1 Freedom Unit per hour. So at the absolute quickest, and assuming an average surface temperature of 60 F when the sun vanishes, here's what I have

Atmospheric gas	melting point (F)	hours until gas begins condensing	days until gas begins condensing
water	32	28	1.166666667
CO2	-70	130	5.416666667
argon	-307	367	15.29166667
N2	-346	406	16.91666667
O2	-361	421	17.54166667

This is likely way too fast, as I believe the colder you are, the less heat you lose. Also, melting/boiling points depend on the surrounding pressure, which will get effected by the other gases precipitating. 70 below isn't unheard of, and the coldest temp ever reached was -128 in Antarctica.

What do you think. IDK I'm le tired.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Yeah but I want this community to have more content.

When I'm not running on fumes I should probably look up radiative cooling. Some quick googling says it would take a week for the ocean surface to start freezing, and be -100F by a month or so. But this is for Earth. A terraformed dwarf planet would probably take much less time.