The Sun And The Moon
It's a little-known fact that if something dramatic happened to our sun, we wouldn't know about it for eight minutes...
—Bugger. The sun’s gone in.
—Yeah, behind the clouds.
—I dunno, yer know, it’s getting proper dark.
What they don't know is that ninety-three million miles away, the Sun has actually just ceased to exist. It hasn't gone behind a cloud. It has vanished from the fabric of reality. But because light is stuck on a strict cosmic speed limit, the last remaining beams of daylight are still hurtling toward the Midlands at a brisk 186,000 miles per second. Earth is currently coasting on credit.
—Fancy a brew while it’s overcast?
—Aye, put the kettle on. Might rain.
Four minutes pass. Earth is still orbiting a ghost. The gravitational pull of the now-extinct Sun is still moving through space like a ripple in a pond. For another two hundred seconds, the planet will dutifully swing around a massive, empty nothingness, entirely convinced everything is fine.
—Did you check the football scores?
—Yeah, drawn. Waste of ninety minutes, that.
Eight minutes and twenty seconds later. The final packet of solar photons hits the atmosphere over Coventry and vanishes. The gravity wave snaps.
—Er. That’s inconvenient. The sun’s gone.
—And the street lamps haven't come on yet. Typical.
—…And we seem to be hurtling into the dark void of interstellar space at eighteen miles a second.
—Well, the tea's going to get cold, then.
—Er. That’s inconvenient. The sun’s definitely gone.
—Proper gone. Pitch black. Can’t see my hands.
—Hang on, look up. The moon’s still there. Shining bright.
—Well, that makes no sense. Where’s it getting the light from if the sun’s buggered off?
What they are witnessing is the 1.3 light-second delay. The Moon is currently reflecting a ghost beam of sunlight that passed Earth nearly two seconds ago. It is a celestial double-take.
—See? Told you it was just clouds. The moon is—
The Moon blinks out of existence.
—Ah. Spoke too soon.
—Right. Kettle's whistling. Flashlight’s in the drawer under the sink, if you can find it.