# What could temporarily block out the sun?



## theoddone (Jun 16, 2015)

I apologize for asking this type of question.... I have a story idea *ALL* planned out, except for this one concept. The story is basically about a parasitic alien that can live flawlessly on Earth, aside from its inability to live in the sunlight. It cannot go out at night, either, because the moon reflects the sun's light. So, I need an idea that would allow the alien to temporarily block out the sun... and, of course, the hero would have to be able to unblock it and save the planet.


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## popsprocket (Jun 16, 2015)

Well, extreme volcanic eruptions and the smoke from forest fires can block out the sun for varying lengths of time. Being able to unblock the sun again would be the real trick I imagine.

What if the aliens had some kind of method (machine, technology, etc) of injecting dense clouds into the upper atmosphere that could block out the sun, and the hero has to stop the machines from working in order to clear the skies again?


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## musichal (Jun 16, 2015)

Nothing, God.  But, since light behaves both as a particle and a wave, then I'd go with some sort of advanced, alien technology able to divert part of the sun's particle-wave emission, scattering it away from the Earth.  You don't need to explain it much more than that, your scientist(s) simply use observation and math to locate the device so your hero can go flip the switch off, in a manner of speech.


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## cinderblock (Jun 16, 2015)

theoddone said:


> The story is basically about a parasitic alien that can live flawlessly on Earth, *aside from its inability to live in the sunlight. It cannot go out at night, either, because the moon reflects the sun's light.*



Isn't that a direct contradiction of your first statement? 

Nuclear winter, volcanic eruptions can all block out sunlight to a degree, although considering how fragile these parasites are (can't even withstand the moon), nothing short of a massive nuclear winter that eviscerates the majority of the planetary population and causes total blackout, would allow said parasites to stand a chance.


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## Kevin (Jun 16, 2015)

Fog. Fairly harmless except to the curly/wavy-haired, creating endless hair-havoc. We have aliens that cause it to come every June. The Gloom they call it, June Gloom.


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## Riptide (Jun 16, 2015)

It could be an ancient techinique, like the rain dance. They do a little woogie boogie out on a no moon night, a stormy night, an eclipse. To end it you gotta kill whoever, do whatever, then sacrifice yourself.... Okay, maybe not the last part.


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## John Oberon (Jun 16, 2015)

I think it's easiest to make the blocking chemical rather than mechanical. Maybe if the alien ingests a human brain, it renders sunlight harmless to it for a couple days because of some kind of brain chemical. Then the hero saves the day just as the alien is about to use his girlfriend as sunscreen, and it scuttles back into its hole. I think you make the alien able to withstand the sun for small amounts of time, but not without pain, so it can go out and harvest brains or whatever. But the hero needs to hurry to destroy the alien because it reproduces asexually, and it's just about ready to have litter, if it can just consume enough brains to reach the end of the gestation period.


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## Terry D (Jun 16, 2015)

Are these aliens intelligent? Technological? Or are they just an alien version of bed-bugs? If this is an intelligent invasion by a technological species they could put an enormous sheet of some sun blocking material into a geosyncronus orbit between the Earth and the sun to create an artificial, permanent, eclipse. But then you would still have the problem I'll discuss below.

On the other hand, if they are just space-bugs which happen to drop out of the sky on a comet, or something, then you are in a bit of trouble. Even under the worst cloud/volcanic ash/nuclear winter type conditions imaginable far more solar radiation would reach the Earth's surface than is reflected by the moon. 

To achieve the level of dark you are thinking about you would need to block all of the sun's light and that presents a problem far more serious than a parasite -- cold. Without the sun's warming effect, the average surface temperature of the planet would dip below zero in less than a week.


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## qwertyman (Jun 16, 2015)

Factor 30.


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## Nicadeamas (Jun 16, 2015)

.
What a predicament. The earth requires the sun, without it the earth would turn into a dead place, hence why pick earth?
Diddo with the moon.

My solution would be to rotate the planet. The aliens, having experimented on Uranus, correct the earths rotational axis to a 0 degree offset. Humans think its great, no more summer or winter, just an awesome spring time all around that gets warmer the closer you go to the equator.
But then the aliens come back to finish their transformation by rotating the planets axis 90 degrees to be perpendicular to it's rotation around the sun. From which you can either say the day cycle is now just as long as the year cycle, OR;
On top of the Z axis rotation of the earth now being perpendicular to the Z axis of the sun, you also add in a Y or X axis rotation to earth so that the north or south pole is _always_ pointed toward the sun.

This would then give you half planet of sunlight, half planet of darkness, which in return would start to cause life on earth to die out in burning, or freezing weather conditions. But the aliens picked earth so they probably want to keep it lively and non-dead. But they also hate the moon cuz it throws sunlight at them. So they fix one problem by using another problem.

Rather then destroying the moon or whatnot, they use it as a shade caster for the pole of the earth that they pointed toward the sun. Slightly offset. 

So now South pole of the earth is pointed toward the sun 24/7/365. The very center of the south pole, an area some XX miles wide, is a burning fiery place where no forms of life exist, the outer ring around that place is earth life inhabitable, and the moon casts a shadow similar to the day cycle (also maintaining the oceans to prevent stagnation.)
The equator, which is basically doing cartwheels around the sun, is a nice spring like environment where earth life thrives. Just past that on the 24/7/365 night time side of the earth you get a equator-ish ring of spring like weather, but it's always night time, this is where the aliens wanna live.
And then the further you go toward the north pole, the more cold and shivering it becomes. Eventually becoming some -400F. Which also is the reason that land mass has increased throughout the earth. Because the north pole has been building a really big block of ice.

There is my solution :cool2:
Mind you, in reality such planetary defilement would more likely destroy the solar system.


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## Schrody (Jun 16, 2015)

Eclipse, anyone?


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## hhourani (Jun 16, 2015)

A massive alien spaceship could park between the sun and the earth, orbiting precisely around the earth to blot out the light.

Edit: just noticed that TerryD mentionned this already. Woops.


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## theoddone (Jun 16, 2015)

_*Thank you for your comments everyone!*_

When I originally thought up this story, I was actually going to use creatures, possibly from deep underground. Plus, if I did the creature thing, the darkening of the sun could be less scientific and more fantasy... I thought an alien would be more interesting and plausible...?

The idea is that one single orgasm is able to separate its body to create hundreds of other creatures that will spread across the planet, devouring everything. The host can remain in one place while its mind slaves do the work. So, it is essentially a parasite with a big appetite. It needs to remove the sun because it cannot survive in the powerful rays. Unnatural lights have the same effect, to a lesser degree.

To answer *Nicadeamas*: it chose Earth because there are plenty of yummy things on it to eat.

Also, *Terry D*, you put it rather well. Alien bed bugs. Haha. -and you're right, I had not considered how cold it would be....

How intelligent to make the creature is difficult because if I make it too intelligent, the humans defeating it would become very unlikely. Of course, I cannot make it too mindless, because of the issue with it needing a way to block out the sun...

If all else fails, I could back to the original idea of it having some weird fantasy-esque method for blocking the sun. Or I could follow Riptide's idea.... I laughed really hard at the "woogie boogie" part.

..........Or I could just scrap the sun idea all together... It just seemed far more interesting of the entire book was in darkness and it would make the creatures far more frightening.


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## musichal (Jun 16, 2015)

Well...

Perhaps the creature has devolved during its centuries-long existence underground but is descended from a highly intelligent species who left somewhere buried in the ground a Particle Wave Deflector which is powered up by someone who accidentally dug it up - some tinkerer who gets killed before he can un-power it, and the total darkness triggers the creatures to arise from their dormant state and begin feeding.

Your hero may discover odd disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field.  Some other scientist, that blonde perky love-interest, finds odd readings of increased light on other planets (points the light supposed to be for Earth is deflected to};  nobody listens to them, of course, but they get together and find the focus of the disturbance, and must fight creatures and the dropping temps in a race to save the planet.


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## Bloggsworth (Jun 16, 2015)

You have a basic problem here, a half intelligent reader will ask "So why don't they live underground then?" Blocking the sun would extinguish life on earth in very short order (read _The Black Cloud_ by Fred Hoyle). 

They could, I suppose, set a large, geostationary satellite in orbit round the sun, an artificial lunar eclipse if you will; but if they did, they would start an ice-age the like of which the world has never seen, it wouldn't just be dark, it would be under tens of metres of ice...


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## Phil Istine (Jun 16, 2015)

I have customers who swear blind that it rains for a week every time I clean their windows - so I suppose a mass window clean might work.
Joking aside, maybe some mad Earthling scientist makes a brilliant discovery regarding the harnessing of dark matter/energy to block out the sun. You could get away with quite a lot as so little is known about it currently, so it's achance to really play with your imagination. Maybe even build Prof. Hawking into the story?

EDIT:  Oops!  I got that the wrong way around.  The alien can manipulate dark matter and the Earthling scientist has to undo it


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## Sleepwriter (Jun 16, 2015)

On an episode of the Simpson's , Mr burns created a large disc I think it was that cast all of Springfield into darkness, so the city had to use more electricity from his nuclear power plant.


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## bazz cargo (Jun 16, 2015)

Massive dome. Ah, someone did that. 

Massive umbrella. How about painting the aliens with a mirror paint? 

Seeding the upper atmosphere with self replicating reflectors. That would give you a race against time.


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## T.S.Bowman (Jun 16, 2015)

Bloggsworth said:


> You have a basic problem here, a half intelligent reader will ask "So why don't they live underground then?" Blocking the sun would extinguish life on earth in very short order (read _The Black Cloud_ by Fred Hoyle).
> 
> They could, I suppose, set a large, geostationary satellite in orbit round the sun, an artificial lunar eclipse if you will; but if they did, they would start an ice-age the like of which the world has never seen, it wouldn't just be dark, it would be under tens of metres of ice...



Wouldn't an eclipse have to be caused by something large enough to block the sun from an entire hempisphere at one time? Even  a total Lunar Eclipse is only optimally seen from an area in a relatively small band. The further away from that band you go, the less effect you would see from the eclipse. 

If one would try to go with something to that effect, wouldn't it have to be something so large that NASA would have been able to see it coming from quite a ways out?


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## musichal (Jun 16, 2015)

Bloggsworth said:


> You have a basic problem here, a half intelligent reader will ask "So why don't they live underground then?" Blocking the sun would extinguish life on earth in very short order (read _The Black Cloud_ by Fred Hoyle).
> 
> They could, I suppose, set a large, geostationary satellite in orbit round the sun, an artificial lunar eclipse if you will; but if they did, they would start an ice-age the like of which the world has never seen, it wouldn't just be dark, it would be under tens of metres of ice...




They can be dormant underground but when darkness comes, they come out to feed.


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## voltigeur (Jun 17, 2015)

Why not play off an existing conspiracy theory? There is a theory among UFO buffs that there are several secret underground alien bases in the Rockies. The one that comes to mind is Dulce NM. Supposedly a battle took place where 60 people were killed. 

Maybe humans find out the aliens plan to cause the Yellow Stone Volcano to erupt, weakening sunlight and make the world more habitable for them.

Having it based on this theory when people Google they will see pages of people who believe it is real. (I'm not one of them but hey if it sells books?)


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## kbsmith (Jun 17, 2015)

Well, 
you could have the aliens land on earth during an eclipse, then the cut power to the earth and live inside buildings out of reach of sunlight and moonlight.

OR

you could have the aliens blow up the moon before landing, then they can thrive at night and hide during the day.

I think the latter would be a more interesting read.


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## Xander416 (Jun 17, 2015)

Schrody said:


> Eclipse, anyone?


An eclipse wouldn't really last long enough for the alien to do anything significant. The longest duration for one I can find was 11 minutes, 8 seconds on January 15, 2010. Even then, no (natural) eclipse would ever be large enough to blanket the entire planet and there isn't much any hero can do about one beyond somehow destroying the Moon, which would make our lives on this planet extremely difficult to say the least.


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## voltigeur (Jun 17, 2015)

> you could have the aliens blow up the moon before landing, then they can thrive at night and hide during the day.
> 
> I think the latter would be a more interesting read.



The problem with that is: The moon is what keeps the poles steady and on a regular rotation. Otherwise the earth warbles out of control all life ends anyway. 

(Damn putting science in science fiction.)


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## Mesafalcon (Jun 18, 2015)

*Mr.Burns* can do it!

I can't believe nobody has said yet!


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## Crowley K. Jarvis (Jun 18, 2015)

A bomb detonation. Nuclear winter, they call it. I don't know if that would fit, since you're saying the aliens caused it...

The problem is, indeed, that such large scale changes would take considerable time and have severe earth-altering effects. As if the plot didn't involve that already...

Also, if gravity is strong enough, it can even pull sunlight. Such as, black holes. 

Perhaps orbital devices or stations that manipulate, filter, or otherwise redirect the sunlight. 

Maybe, say, a linked network of these orbiting stations, with, of course, a primary control center, which, if shut down, would then disable the devices.

I myself would say they use particle colliders to create miniature, contained black holes, which they use to bend, or filter, all the sunlight before it reaches earth, so they can safely do whatever they want on it. 

Then there could be an epic space journey to, of course, blow the crap up. xD Haha. I dunno, just my musings.


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## Bloggsworth (Jun 18, 2015)

musichal said:


> They can be dormant underground but when darkness comes, they come out to feed.



In which case they need do niffink...


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