How long does it take light from the sun to reach Earth's surface?

Answer 1

Sun is about 92 million miles away. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second, so the sun's light takes 495 seconds = 8.25 minutes to reach earth.

Answer 2

Not all rays from the sun going towards earth actually reach the earth's surface. What we have in the propagation of light is a phenomenon called aberration. That means that only the rays propagating at an angle projecting ahead of the earth really hit the earth's surface . The rays leaving the sun in line with the earth would miss the earth all together to continue in outerspace with out ever touching the earth. So the actual time would be a function of the angle that the ray is moving. So each ray would have a different angle ;hence a slight variation in time to reach the earth. You calculate the time by dividing the distance that the ray travels by the velocity of light.

Answer 3

An even more interesting question is, what percent of the sun's light strikes the earth?

The surface area of a sphere with a radius of 92 million miles is given by 4πr² or 106 quadrillion square miles. The surface of the earth facing the sun can be approximated as a pie plate with a radius of about 4000 miles, or surface area of pi(r) ²: 50 million square miles.

The ratio of these numbers is 0.00000000047, or a really, really, really tiny number. Most of Sol's output streams right out into interstellar space.

Answer 4

it takes about eight min for light to travel from the sun's surface to the earth but, it can take a single photon thousands of years to make it to the surface of the sun and be released.

Answer 5

About 8 minutes.

Answer 6

8 minutes