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You can reuse this answer Creative Commons License. If you imagine that a gamma ray is emitted right at the center of the sun then it will start out heading right for the surface. When it crashes into a proton the result of the collision is a proton with extra energy.
The proton gives up that extra energy by emitting another gamma ray photon. But this one could head in any direction -- even right back where it started from.
And so it goes, with the gamma ray heading from one collision to another, changing its direction each time it is absorbed and re-emitted.
Imagine there's a guy so drunk that he needs to hold on to a light post to stand up. He wants to get to the next light post, just 10 steps away, but he's so drunk that he can't walk in a straight line. Heck, he's so drunk that after he takes one step his next step could be in any other direction.
That's what physicists and mathematicians call a "drunkard's walk" or "random walk" problem. The question is, how long will it take that guy to get from one lamppost to the next? The answer is that if his starting point and ending point are separated by 10 steps, it will take him -- on average -- steps to get there -- that's 10 squared. That's the same situation a gamma ray faces in the core of the sun. When you're trying to solve a random-walk problem, the most important thing you need to know is how big the steps are.
There are two problems with figuring that out for a gamma ray photon in the sun. First, conditions are not the same all throughout the sun, so the distance between gamma ray "crashes" with other particles changes. 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! But not to the photons themselves. You see, according to Einstein, the closer to the speed of light you travel , the more the time dilates i. Ultimately, for a photon that travels…well… at the light speed, the fastest speed there is, there is no time and no distance. In other words, photons have no age and they do not experience time.
To them, entering your eye happens instantaneously after their birth — no thousands of years of bouncing, no huge distance from the Sun traveled! Did you enjoy this post? Here are some other cool posts about the Sun.
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