Light Takes 17,000 Years to Escape the Sun

Light from the Sun's core is trapped in an endless pinball game. Photons are absorbed and re-emitted by densely packed plasma over 100 trillion trillion times before they finally reach the surface. This cosmic pinball journey takes between 10,000 and 170,000 years. Once free, they race across 93 million miles of empty space at the speed of light, arriving in just 8 minutes. That means sunlight hitting your face right now was born somewhere between 10,000 and 170,000 years ago, deep inside a roiling nuclear furnace older than human civilization. You are literally looking at ancient light from the dawn of humanity's existence, trapped inside a star before it ever had the chance to escape. The sunlight warming your skin is quite literally a fossil of the early universe, a relic from a time when humans didn't exist. Every ray of sunshine is a cosmic time traveler.

Видео Light Takes 17,000 Years to Escape the Sun канала Time and Space