A slight change in the sun’s position could cause
the Earth to become (UN)inhabitable for all life.
A knowledge known by all is the dependency our planet Earth has on the sun to continuously produce life. The sun produces energy which in turn allows us to receive solar energy to push processes both physical and biological to help support life on Earth. The role of the sun since the 14 century B.C.E. (Before common era) was providing heat, warmth, and sunlight to aid the production of plants and crops. The sun was undoubtedly worshiped by the masses of people like the Egyptian and the Maya, believing that this life giving force was a divine power that controlled survival. Worshipers had the right idea about the benefits of the sun and just decided to acknowledge and honor it in a different way.
Plants are an essential resource on the planet because they take in carbon dioxide and provide needed nutrients and CO2, key parts in the existence of human beings. Constant production of life forces will disappear from Earth due to the disturbance in the chain of life and cause a domino effect if the sun’s position were to change.
Calculated energy rates from the sun have been reported to differ slightly on a day-to-day basis. Different energy rates can affect the distribution of how much energy is received on the Earth’s surface and where.If the solar energy output changes, The production of clouds will be disrupted in the atmosphere and this will affect how water distribution is conducted as well. However, what if the sun was pulled closer to the earth, how would it affect the life as we know it? If the sun was pulled closer to the sun, a few things will occur.
The heat being received initially from the sun would increase exponentially causing the ocean’s temperature to rise. The raise in ocean temperatures would cause aquatic life to deplete especially if species need certain temperatures to thrive and reproduce. In the article “Ocean Warming Is One of the Big Climate Change Question Marks” written by the U.S. Government of Accountability Office on November 30, 2023 is states: “Marine heatwaves can stress and kill marine life and disrupt ecosystems. For example, they can cause coral bleaching.” (U.S GAO). Some species will be forced to migrate in to new area to continue reproduction and this could lead to more “invasive” species and overpopulation. Increased temperature will also cause coral bleaching, this means the coral will start to get rid of the algae that creates their color and results in the death of reefs and biospheres that are dependent on them.
Negative effects on humans due to increased temperature can be heat related illnesses such as rashes, exhaustion, and cramps. Dehydration would be a very common occurrence along with poor air quality that could trigger underlying complications within the body and cause the immune system to become challenged. The intense increase in temperature would make day to day activities limited due to essentially having a constant heat lamp beaming down on every part of the planet. If we were to be reptiles, this would be perfect for survival however I will leave that discussion to the theorists.
Now what would happen to the world if the sun was positioned farther away? When you keep heat on an item constantly, keeping it warm and comfortable but suddenly taking the heat away what happens? The item becomes colder and colder due to the rapid energy release until it no longer has warmth, this results in the item becoming very chilled. This is kind of similar to what would happen to the earth if you were to pull away the heat source, being the sun. The bodies of water such as the oceans, rivers, and bays would freeze over because there will no longer be supported temperature to keep the water in it’s liquid state. The Earth is just the right distance from the sun to keep water in it’s liquid form due to the balanced reasonable atmospheric temperature. You can just imagine when the atmospheric pressure is below freezing how matters originally in liquid states will change and cause challenge for further use.
Think of the worst snow day you’ve ever experienced, now imagine a snow day every single day all below -100 Fahrenheit. According to article “ What would Earth be without the sun?” Written by Wordopolis, It claims that “ The problem is that the temperature would continue to drop steadily. Within a year, the average global surface temperature could dip well below -100º F! By that time, the top layers of the oceans of the world would have frozen over.” (Wordopolis). We would go from living to the tropic to living to tundras within about 10 minutes of the sun disappearing. Vise Versa effects of what would happen if the sun was closer would occur and basically make life of earth uninhabitable and would leave humans on a constant hunt for warmth outside of their domains.
In conclusion, the change in the overall distance of the sun’s position would undoubtedly disturb how the earth has already adapted to be, causing rapid changes in ecosystems, habitats, and biomes. The world, which was once a piece of floating compacted rock, has adapted an accepted distance from the sun and has physically gone through evolutional changes to retain and successfully continue the production of new life at every turn. The Earth nurtures the Plants which produce oxygen and nutrients to sustain human life, aquatic life, animals, geographical landmarks, and so much more. A change in the sun’s position would essentially make Earth food on the stove. If you make it too hot (the sun being too close to the Earth), water will evaporate leading majority of specimens dependent on it to die off. The Earth would become a constantly overheated rock that continues to burn off anything remaining on the surface, survival rates will reduce and force new adaptation. However, if you make it too cold you’ll be left with froze over oceans and depleting temperatures that would eventually turn the Earth into the next pluto.
References
U.S. Government Accountability Office. (n.d.). Ocean warming is one of the big climate change question marks. Gao.gov. Retrieved March 3, 2024, from https://www.gao.gov/blog/ocean-warming-one-big-climate-change-question-marks
How does the sun affect our climate? (n.d.). Union of Concerned Scientists. Retrieved March 5, 2024, from https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/how-does-sun-affect-our-climate
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Counterintuitive Spring 2024 
Thanks for requesting feedback, NatureChild.
First, some technical notes:
1. I fixed your title, but you’ll still have to tweak the language. It should be centered and in the Headline style. I’ve done that for you. Your version said the earth would be Inhabitable, which would be nice, but not the point of your essay, which is that it would be Uninhabitable.
2. Your References are good to have. I appreciate the links, but they’re not in APA format, except for the third one, which I fixed in about one minute using the excellent website BibGuru.
3. Here it is, so you can do the rest: https://www.bibguru.com/c/apa-citation-generator/
4. You don’t need to indent your paragraphs (You were using just one word space, which I removed.) or add an extra Return between paragraphs. WordPress adds the extra space and makes it unnecessary to indent.
5. Your In-text citations are almost correct.
Here’s what one of yours looked like before I tweaked it:
In the article “Ocean Warming Is One of the Big Climate Change Question Marks” written by the U.S. Government of Accountability Office on November 30, 2023 it states: “Marine heatwaves can stress and kill marine life and disrupt ecosystems. For example, they can cause coral bleaching.” (U.S GAO).
Here’s what it looks like after several tweaks:
The article “Ocean Warming Is One of the Big Climate Change Question Marks,” written by the U.S. Government of Accountability Office on November 30, 2023, states, “Marine heatwaves can stress and kill marine life and disrupt ecosystems. For example, they can cause coral bleaching.”
What did I fix?
1. You said, effectively, “IN the article, IT states . . . .”
—You have two choices. You can say, “In the article, Someone states . . . .” and provide the name of the author.
—OR you can say, “The article states . . . .” which is very useful if you don’t know who said what.
2. You missed some commas (for apposition). Refer to the Citation resources under the Resources menu at the top of the blog.
3. You used a parenthetical tag following your citation.
—We don’t do that in this class.
—You already named the source (the Government Accountability Office) in your citation. So you DON’T use the parentheses after the sentence.
—I removed it.
I’m happy to do this ONCE, NatureChild, because I know these details seem ridiculously picky AND you probably learned a different way already for other classes. For that, I’m sorry but not responsible. 🙂
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I’m as eager as you to get started on the actual Feedback session, NatureChild, but one more reminder about how we start building your Portfolio right away:
1. MAKE NO CHANGES TO THIS POST YOURSELF.
2. WHY?
3. BECAUSE YOU’LL NEED A CLEAN FIRST DRAFT FOR YOUR PORTFOLIO.
4. INSTEAD . . .
5. Copy and paste the complete contents of this post into a new post you will call Definition Rewrite—NatureChild. You can do that right away.
6. Make all your revisions to the NEW POST.
7. At the end of the semester, you’ll put BOTH the original draft AND the rewrite into your Portfolio to demonstrate that you revised your work in response to feedback.
8. I’ll leave the first round of feedback here.
9. But all the rest of our business will take place on the Rewrite.
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And finally, let’s do some Feedback.
I’m starting at 7:30pm SUN MAR 03.
—This is a pretty strong opening, NatureChild. It acknowledges that humans have always recognized the primacy of the sun as a source of all our energy (before we figured out how to split the atom). It skips past the part that no animals or plants would have evolved in the first place without the sun, but you’re certainly right that we’re all still completely dependent on solar energy to sustain life now. And I like your “Worshipers had the right idea” acknowledgment that you respect that our debt to the sun predates us, sustains us, and will always be necessary to us, even if we don’t quite WORSHIP the sun now. Maybe we should. 🙂
—That’s a rough transition there, NC. You neglect to mention that plants are dependent on light and heat to process the CO2, and without that link you can’t expect readers to understand the connection to “constant production of life forces.”
—You also can’t expect them to follow you to a Total Extinction conclusion resulting from a change in the sun’s position without a bit of preparation.
—Wow. We’ve got some organization issues here, NC.
—I can help, but it will take some doing, and work on your part.
Stepping back a ways from where you’re at already . . .
—You want to establish the ABSOLUTE NECESSITY of the sun’s energy to all life processes on earth. You’ve made a start there.
—You want to warn readers that even a slight change in our relationship to the sun could tip the balance in favor of extinction. After all, conditions have to be JUST SO for life to start and remain viable.
—You could point out, which we sometimes forget, that life doesn’t exist as we know it on the other planets in our own solar system. They all have access to the sun just as we do, but JUST HAVING THE SUN NEARBY isn’t enough.
—You could also point out that of all the trillions (millions of trillions, actually) of stars, we’re aware of life on only one of the planets of all of them.
—Make sure your readers know how VERY DELICATE the balance of pre-requisites to life actually is before you start making nutty-sounding claims about extinction.
Remember, this is a DEFINITION argument, not a CAUSAL argument. You’ll have another 1000 words to devote to WHAT WILL HAPPEN if the sun goes even a little bit darker, or if the earth gets bumped even a little bit from its current orbit.
What you’re looking for in a Definition argument is the set of conditions that make life possible. THEN, in a Causal argument, you can express the results of any small change to those conditions.
—This is good stuff, and it will certainly be valuable when you write your Causal argument, but for now, you should concentrate on the delicate conditions needed to sustain life as we know it.
—Taking coral as your example:
—What is the maximum temperature range of ocean water that can sustain coral?
—Remember, the sun’s energy could be either HIGHER or LOWER than it is now, so temperatures might also decrease. What would that do to coral?
—What’s so bad about bleaching? It sounds pretty benign, but it means more than just color loss, right?
—Our distance from the sun wouldn’t have to increase or decrease at all to change the amount of energy we receive from it, right?
—Our own atmosphere is extraordinarily rare in all the universe and radically alters our relationship to the sun by protecting us from much of its intensity.
—So a thinning of our atmosphere, or even a thickening of it, could have the same effect as our getting nearer to or farther from our sun.
All these considerations contribute to the very delicate balance between earth and sun that give your essay its power. Don’t rush ahead to consequences until you’ve convinced readers that with just a tweak, we might never have existed. And just another little tweak could very well spell our end.
—This is all Causal (it’s about the Consequences of a Cause/Effect relationship) and best left to your next essay, BUT!
—But that last little observation points out once again the value of very carefully calibrating the CONDITIONS on earth that are so perfect for life . . . so far.
—We have a SET of ENVIRONMENTAL SECTORS that sustain DIFFERENT KINDS OF LIFE.
—Right? Some species eke out an existence at the bottom of the deepest oceans where there is virtually NO LIGHT. Some actually live inside volcanoes at temperatures that would cook you and me in seconds. Others suffer extreme cold without complaint, or can survive for decades dormant and then “spring to life” when conditions are just right.
—So, what would happen if the sun moved away a million miles, or came a million miles closer?
—Everything wouldn’t die all at once, right?
—But the balance of species would change radically, and perhaps irreversibly.
—I see you’ve anticipated a lot of what I’ve been getting at, and that’s great. It’s still sounding very Causal, except for that wonderful observation that “The Earth is just the right distance from the sun to keep water in its liquid form due to the balanced reasonable atmospheric temperature.”
—It wouldn’t hurt to provide some evidence of how rare liquid water is in the universe, to the best of our knowledge.
—It’s the first thing we look for when we get close enough to another planet to take measurements of any kind.
I’ve come to the end of my hour, NatureChild. I don’t want to obligate you to any more revision time just now. Remember, by the nature of our “contract,” you’re now obligated to spend at least an hour making revisions to this essay ON YOUR DEFINITION REWRITE post before you can get a Regrade or request more feedback.
I’m sorry I didn’t quite make it to the end of the page, NC, but I hope the feedback was helpful and that you can apply the advice and modeling to the rest of your work. If I didn’t get to something specific you’d like me to consider, please ask. But . . .
. . . by the terms of our contract, you now owe me at least an hour of revisions first.
Provisionally graded at Canvas. It’s not the grade you want. But welcome to the process. Your grade is just temporary.
Don’t forget. MAKE NO CHANGES TO THIS POST. Copy and paste it into your Def/Cat Rewrite. Make your revisions there. You’ll need evidence of where you started so you can brag about how far you went to get to your final draft. We can do this. I will gladly Conference with you at any time.
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