How Long Does It Take Light To Travel From The Sun To Earth

Here is a question… how much time does this take the sun to reach Earth? Photons emitted from the Sun’s surface should journey to achieve our eyes.

When the Sun suddenly disappeared from the Universe (not this may actually happen, do not panic), it’d take somewhat bit more than 8 minutes until you understood it was time to wear a sweater.

Here is the math. We orbit the Sun. Moves in 300,000 kilometers/second. Split these and you also get 8 minutes and 20 minutes, approximately 500 seconds.

This is an ordinary number. Bear in mind, that the Earth follows an orbit around the Sun. And it requires minutes to create the journey.

However, light’s narrative becomes much more interesting, when you think of the travel light should make within the sunlight.

You probably understand that photons are created by fusion reactions inside the center of the Sun. They start off as gamma radiation than are emitted and absorbed occasions from the radiative zone of the Sun, drifting around within the star before they get to the surface.

What you probably don’t understand, is these photons striking against your eyeballs were ACTUALLY created thousands of years back and it took that long to be emitted by sunlight.

Once they escaped the outside, it was just a short 8 minutes to all those photons to cross the distance to the Earth from the Sun

You looking backward in time as you look out into space.

The light you see in the personal computer is old. The light reflected from the Moon’s surface takes a moment to reach Earth. The Sun is over just 8 light-minutes away. Therefore, if the light in the nearest star (Alpha Centauri) requires over 4 decades to reach us we’re seeing that star 4 decades previously.

There are countless light-years away, so the light we are seeing left the face of these celebrities millions of years.

If aliens dwelt in these gagalaxiesnd had powerful telescopes, they’d see the Earth as it seemed previously. They may notice dinosaurs.

We’ve written many posts about the Sun.

If you would like more information on sunlight, take a look at NASA’s Solar System Exploration Guide about sunlight, and here is a link to this SOHO assignment homepage, that has the most recent pictures from sunlight.