In what sense is light we receive from the sun not 8 minutes old, but hundreds are thousands of years old?

Answer 1

the light takes 8+ minutes to get from the sun to the earth, but it was inside the sun for a long time before it actually made it to the suns surface and began its journey to the earth

Answer 2

The Sun converts approx 400 million tons of hydrogen into helium every second in its core. The result of this fusion process, as explained by the famous equation E=mc^2, is a quanta of electromagnetic radiation, or photon. Now, photons, being massless "things" move at the speed of light. But, there are so many of them and they are so energetic inside the Sun--you know where it's hot...heat technically meaning energy of particle motion..anyway.. All the photons collide with each other and knock each other around, so it takes by some estimates centuries or longer for a photon to make its way up to the surface of the Sun [the photosphere] and then take off on a pretty much unfettered straight line path out into space.
So, the time it takes for a photon to get from the photosphere to us is the speed of light divided by the average distance of the earth to the Sun, or 1 AU, which equals approx 8 minutes. But, if you mean from the creation of the photon in the fusion process to its getting to earth, again it could be there are some in there that haven't gotten out yet.


Someone send them a map...PLEASE!!!
:P

Answer 3

Hanumaster is correct (wish I knew who the idiots were who gave him a thumbs down). When a photon leaves the Sun's photosphere, it then takes 8 minutes for it to reach Earth. But photons are generated at the core of the Sun, where hydrogen is fused into helium, releasing energy (photons) in the form of gamma rays. These photons don't go straight from the core to the photosphere, they bounce around many times inside the Sun first, getting absorbed and re-emitted many times. With each bounce, the photon loses a little energy. In fact, it takes tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years for an average photon to make it to the photosphere!

Answer 4

The light that we see is the result of sun burning. The materials on the surface of the sun that are burning are millions of years old, not the light itself. Think of it as burning a candle that you both couple years ago. The candle itself (the wax and the wick) are 2-3 years old, the light is not.