Monday 21 May 2018

This Is A Really Far Out Post,

how big is the sun?


easy answer, the mean radius of the sun is 432,450 miles (696,000 kilometers), which makes its diameter about 864,938 miles (1.392 million km), You could line up 109 Earths across the face of the sun, the sun's circumference is about 2,713,406 miles (4,366,813 km), so a so a photon moving at the speed of light, that is 186,000 miles per second, should take the blink of an eye to reach the sun's surface from its core, but it actually takes a lot longer, "It takes a million years for a photon moving at the speed of light to reach the sun's surface from its core." and here is why, explained on the basis of Thomson scattering, "The mean free path of a photon in the interior of the sun is about 2 centimeters. This is the average distance it travels in between bounces. If you compare this length to the radius of the sun, you see why it takes so long for the photons to escape." the effect is shown in the above video, for a fuller discussion, have a look here.


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