this post was submitted on 23 May 2026
9 points (100.0% liked)

Worldbuilding

2667 readers
21 users here now

Rules of !Worldbuilding:

See here for a longer, more explanatory version.

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
 

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.

top 7 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] zener_diode@feddit.org 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

This sounds to me like a question that could be answered using Universe Sandbox.

So, loading up the default solar system, here's Earth:

(note the temperature and gas pressure maps on the left)

Now, lets delete the Sun:

I'm setting the sim speed to 1 hour/second, so that I can see what's going on. Aaand hit play.

... it's much slower than I expected. I'm pretty sure the temperature sim was not meant for this, because after one simulated month, the average surface temperature has only dropped by about 2.5 °C. That sounds very wrong. (There is unfortunately no option to show the atmosphere's temperature.)

So ... the only significant difference is a slight temperature change, and (if you look at the liquid depth map) most of the northern hemisphere has been covered in a few millimeters to centimeters of liquid (maybe this is actually the atmosphere?). But gas pressure still looks mostly normal. Maybe I should file a bug report.

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

That’s absolutely a bug. Temps dip more substantially even overnight. Assuming there’s no temperature advection during the night, the low is hit just before dawn. No dawn means no rising temperature.

[–] zener_diode@feddit.org 2 points 18 hours ago

Yeah, running it a bit longer (and much faster), it took a bit more than 150 years for the atmosphere to liquify.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] 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.

[–] JangleJack@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge, explores this question with a star that goes dark every 50 years. Seems like it would depend upon the planetary specifics, i.e. atmosphere composition and volcanic activity. You could have a great telescope afterwards.

[–] JangleJack@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Five days does seems right for reaching uninhabitable planet state. The soil would stay warm for quite a while longer, I imagine.