Re: If the Sun dissipated ?
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I have no idea how long it would take for geothermal energy to die down, but the core of the earth is a gigantic heat sink. It would have to be years at the very least.
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I don't think this is the case. Once the Sun were to die out, space would become unimaginably cold. Heat would rush from the Earth to space at an alarming rate. I'm thinking this process would take no longer than a month max. Probably more like under two weeks.
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It depends what you are talking about. If you are referring to the surface of the planet, yes. The atmosphere would freeze and we all die. If you're talking about the interior of the planet, not even close to right. The timescale for conduction in the lithosphere is of the order of 60 million years - the core would carry on merrily doing its thing for at least a few hundred million years before there would be any effect at all to 'turning the sun off', and even then I imagine the effect would be tiny. Remeber the temperature of the core is ~4000K - a change of 300K in the surface temperature would have little effect on the evolution of the interior.
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