What would happen on earth if the suns radiation couldn't travel through space?

Answer 1

Nothing would happen on Earth. I mean none of the things that happen now.

The Earth would be come totally cold and totally dark, and you could forget about

plants, animals, people, liquid water, or light to see anything with.

Answer 2

Certain parts of the Earth would be toast, and the rest would be melting popsicles. Why melting? The Sun's radiation would eventually burn through the atmosphere, rendering us completely helpless, after which we would all die burning or, if we hadn't already, freeze to death. Basically, don't mess the "Circle of Life" up.

Answer 3

this is a very theoretical question - such a thing will never happen completely.

I understand 'the suns heat' as the suns radiation reaching the earth and 'trapped' as no radiation leaving the Earth. The Energy input from the sun by radiation is 1360 W/m². for the heat capacity you can approximately use Cp=1000 J/KgK This would give us a temperature increase of 1.3Kelvin per second! The oceans would boil in less than 2 minutes.

This will never happen, mainly due to one feedback: When a bodies temperature increases, the amount of radiation coming from it will increase too. Some of this outgoing radiation will always be able to escape to space - which will then stop the increase of temperature. For more information look under keywords like 'energy bilance of the earth'

Answer 4

Earth would be completely frozen because if it didn't orbit the sun, it wouldn't have a heat source.

Answer 5

The Earth would become a frozen ball of ice, because we would not be able to retain heat.

Answer 6

There would be runaway global warming due to the 'Greenhouse Effect' as has happened on Venus.