# How Long Would Life Survive Without the Sun, and Why We Bond With Fictional Characters
New Scientist posed two distinct scientific questions this week that probe the boundaries of astrobiology and cognitive science.
The first examines a catastrophic scenario: if the sun vanished instantly, how long different organisms could survive. Surface life would perish quickly. Plants depend on photosynthesis and would die within days as temperatures plummeted below freezing. Most animals would follow within weeks as food chains collapsed and cold became lethal. Humans could survive perhaps a few months in heated shelters with stored food, though psychological effects of permanent darkness would prove severe.
Deep underground life presents a different picture. Subsurface bacteria and archaea thrive in Earth's crust using chemical energy from mineral reactions, not sunlight. These extremophiles inhabit depths up to several kilometers and could persist for years or potentially much longer, limited mainly by available chemical nutrients rather than solar energy. Some estimates suggest certain microbial communities might endure for centuries in isolated pockets.
The second question addresses emotional attachment to fictional characters. Humans readily treat invented people as real, experiencing genuine grief when characters die or joy at their triumphs. Cognitive scientists attribute this to how our brains process narrative. We activate the same neural regions for fictional narratives as we do for real social interactions. Mirror neurons fire when we watch characters act, creating empathetic responses.
This phenomenon exploits how our brains evolved. For most of human history, stories around fires were actual social information. Our neural systems developed to extract meaning and emotional weight from narratives, treating them as socially relevant. Fiction essentially hijacks these ancient systems.
The questions highlight contrasting timescales and mechanisms. Solar extinction would test life's deepest resilience, revealing which organisms truly depend on the sun's energy versus those tapping into Earth's internal chemistry. Meanwhile,