Sunlight is way older than you think - Sten Odenwald
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/sunlight-is-way-older-than-you-think-sten-odenwald It takes light a zippy 8 minutes to reach Earth from the surface of ...
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You may know that it takes light a zippy eight minutes to reach us from the surface of the Sun, so how long do you think it takes light to travel from the Sun's core to its surface? A few seconds or a minute at most? Well, oddly enough, the answer is many thousands of years. Here's why. Photons are produced by the nuclear reactions deep in the core of our Sun. As the photons flow out of the core, they interact with matter and lose energy, becoming longer wavelength forms of light. They start out as gamma rays in the core, but end up as x-rays, ultraviolet or visible light as they near the surface. However, that journey is neither simple nor direct. Upon being born, each photon travels at a speed of 300,000 kilometers per second until it collides with a proton and is div...
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You may know that it takes light a zippy eight minutes to reach us from the surface of the Sun, so how long do you think it takes light to travel from the Sun's core to its surface? A few seconds or a minute at most? Well, oddly enough, the answer is many thousands of years. Here's why. Photons are produced by the nuclear reactions deep in the core of our Sun. As the photons flow out of the core, they interact with matter and lose energy, becoming longer wavelength forms of light. They start out as gamma rays in the core, but end up as x-rays, ultraviolet or visible light as they near the surface. However, that journey is neither simple nor direct. Upon being born, each photon travels at a speed of 300,000 kilometers per second until it collides with a proton and is div...
