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I'm writing a science fiction novel in which Earth essentially gets the boot out of our Solar System. No sun, no moon, just Earth flying through the depths of deep space. I need to nail down rogue Earth's climate before I can really dig into it.

• What temperature would the surface be?


• How quickly would it drop year to year?


• Would the atmosphere freeze, and if so, what would it look like?


• What would happen to cities, trees, the ocean, etc?

Any tips/ideas you guys have would be a huge help!

• What temperature would the surface be?

Cold, really really cold, imagine the coldest winter you can remember, it's going to be colder than that, a lot colder, honestly it's going to be really cold, so cold you can't imagine how cold it's going to be.

Lets just say extra socks & a bobble hat aren't going to be much help.

• How quickly would it drop year to year?

Year by year? it wouldn't even take one year, assuming you start by moving away from the sun you'll be in a new ice age colder than any before it long before you get half way to the orbit of Mars.

• Would the atmosphere freeze, and if so, what would it look like?

Yes, it'll look like ice, what else would it look like.

• What would happen to cities, trees, the ocean, etc?

They'll all freeze.

Any other questions?

The only place you've any real possibility of life persisting for a bit is going to be in close proximity to an active geothermal of some sort. Yellowstone for instance might provide a haven for a few humans for a bit longer than elsewhere on the planet.

Earth pretty much looked like this not so very long ago:

Welcome to Snowball Earth, some 650 million or more years ago. And this happened within the Goldilocks Zone!

Rogue Earth probably won't end up looking like a cue ball, simply because absent the Sun's influence, there won't be much weather. Whatever's in the atmosphere will rain or snow until Earth is far enough away that incoming solar energy no longer affects ocean currents and winds. Eventually, the surface will just be nut (and bolt!) freezing temperatures and rapidly diminishing amounts of incoming heat and light. Bad news for us.

Liquid water would likely persist in the oceans, meaning those buggers that live deep down won't even notice that us surface dwellers have turned into ice cubes.

How quickly depends on several factors:

• Where Earth is, at the time of ejection, with respect to the direction of the Sun's travel around the Galaxy;


• Which direction Earth gets ejected (this is very important, because if Earth is ejected in the wrong direction, it will just plummet into the Sun and your whole project will be moot)


• How fast Earth is travelling

Rogue planets can zip right along, and if Earth is positioned "behind" the Sun's direction of travel and gets ejected back the way it came and at speed, we could be waving bye-bye to the Sun pretty quickly! If we end up heading in the Sun's direction, perhaps we won't notice much difference?