And then at the most distant point, it takes seconds 8 minutes 27 seconds for sunlight to make the journey. But interestingly, those travelling photons light radiations are much, much older than eight minutes.
They were made thousands of years ago inside the sun itself. Once they reach the surface and escape they travel fast. They start as gamma radiation and then become photons waiting to be released inside the giant star, with a diameter times larger than earth.
The short answer is that it takes sunlight an average of 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth. We orbit the Sun at a distance of about million km. Divide these and you get seconds, or 8 minutes and 20 seconds. This is an average number. Remember, the Earth follows an elliptical orbit around the Sun, ranging from million to million km. At its closest point, sunlight only takes seconds to reach Earth.
As we move through the radiative zone, the temperature drops by about an order of magnitude, from 15 million degrees C in the core to to 2 million degrees C on the outer edge of the radiative zone. The density drops too. Further out is the convective zone. It extends all the way to the visible surface.
Radiative and convective zones got their names from the way the energy is being transferred through each zone, i. In between the two zones is tachocline, a thin [but very important] interface area. Finally, the outermost part of the Sun is the atmosphere. Our photon loses a lot of energy to these collisions, becoming first X-ray and then UV photon. Through this continuous random bouncing back and forth no wonder that mathematically this problem is known as random walk , up to a million years after it was born, our photon finally enters the convective zone.
Our photon hitches a ride in one of these bubbles up to the visible surface. The sunlight we see is years and 8. It is ancient!
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Share Twit Share Email. April 15, Source: Universe Today. Citation : How long does it take sunlight to reach the Earth? This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission.
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