The Grey Labyrinth is a collection of puzzles, riddles, mind games, paradoxes and other intellectually challenging diversions. Related topics: puzzle games, logic puzzles, lateral thinking puzzles, philosophy, mind benders, brain teasers, word problems, conundrums, 3d puzzles, spatial reasoning, intelligence tests, mathematical diversions, paradoxes, physics problems, reasoning, math, science.

Jack_Ian · Big Endian

I regularly wile away hours pondering some question that probably can't be answered. Especially if I'm stuck in a queue or if my brain needs a quick holiday from whatever was stressing it at the time.

I was going to post this in "I've got a trivial question..... ", but really, I neither expect nor need an answer to this.

Anyway, I presume I'm not the only one who does this and I would love to hear if you have any ponder-fodder for then next time I visit my bank. While there this morning I was pondering...

Would we have wind if our sun turned off?

The Ragin' South Asian · Head Poncho

We wouldn't have anything, because we'd be dead.

Courk · Daedalian Member

I'd imagine we'd have some sort, still, simply because a volcano produces heat independently of the sun, yadda yadda, wind.

Dented Ford · Hoopy Frood

Breathing converts some percentage of the oxygen in my lungs to carbon dioxide. How long might it be for the carbon dioxide I exhale to be photosynthesised and for me to rebreathe the freed oxygen?

Pablo · Never Draws a Blank

Samadhi would.

Jack_Ian · Big Endian

Hmm! I'd forgotten completely about beans.
Gone to ponder some more...

As for the oxygen question...you might like to ponder this

Makes me not want to ponder ancient flatulence.

Lepton · 1:41+ Arse Scratcher

The outer planets have fairly violent storms, independent of what the sun does to them. Differential rotation of the atmosphere should be enough to provide something.

Zag · Tired of his old title

The moon causes significant "air tides," plus the Coriolis effect creates a lot of wind (the jet stream), though I'm not completely sure how much wind it would create if the heat of the sun wasn't moving the air north and south.

Consider the belt of air around the equator. There is no friction with anything outside the atmosphere -- there's nothing there. The friction is with the earth itself, it is pushing this belt of air to move as fast as the ground moving underneath it.

Now consider that this belt of air travels north or south. The belt shrinks, because the circle it is now surrounding is smaller. In shrinking, it has the same effect as a figure skater who pulls her arms in while spinning, the inertia of the arms, now applied to a smaller circle, makes her spin faster. So the air continues moving at the speed it was going, but that speed is now faster than the ground under it.

Without the sun, though, I'm not sure how much the wind would travel north and south. Probably some, though.

Dented Ford · Hoopy Frood