6 ms·
What happens to light when it hits the sun?
- MichaelCrawford 11y agoIt scatters off a charged particle.
- amelius 11y agoI always found this interesting, from an article on wikipedia [1]: > Despite its intense temperature, the peak power production density of the (Solar) core overall is similar to an active compost heap, and is lower than the power density produced by the metabolism of an adult human. The Sun is much hotter than a compost heap due to the Sun's enormous volume. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_core http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_core
- avian 11y ago> The core of the star is actually quite easy for the light to escape from. It’s effectively transparent [...] Citation needed. As far as I know, current models say that radiative transfer ("random walk" described in the article) happens from the edge of the convective zone all down to the center.
- VLM 11y ago"Even if the atoms carrying that photon’s energy make it back all the way down to the boundary of the radiation zone, the photon is very unlikely to wander into the radiation zone again" It does not operate like a marsupial kangaroo pouch.
- x3n0ph3n3 11y agoCan you really even say it's the same photon performing the random walk? Maybe you could say it's the same unique packet of energy, but my understanding is that the photon is effectively annihilated when an atom absorbs its energy.
- effie 11y agoIndeed. The whole idea of photons as particles scattering off matter particles in the sun is just a very simplified model of energy transport. The results may fit well observations, but actually such mechanism is quite far from the basic physical picture of charged particle interaction, which is very complicated process (retarded fields of immense number of particles acting on each other ... hard to simulate already for N=2).
- Sharlin 11y agoPhotons and other elementary particles have no identity, so the distinction doesn't really exist. We can talk about the "same" photon as a useful shortcut, that's all.