←back to thread

The Universe Within 12.5 Light Years

(www.atlasoftheuniverse.com)
266 points algorithmista | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
Show context
jader201 ◴[] No.45145848[source]
Tangential comment, but it’s crazy to think about how, when we look up at the stars in the sky, we’re seeing light in wildly varying degrees of age.

For example, when we look at the sun, that’s 8-minutes-old light. When we look at Polaris (the North Star), that light is 447 years old.

When we look at Andromeda?

Yeah, that light is 2.5 million years old.

replies(3): >>45145857 #>>45145869 #>>45146125 #
HardCodedBias ◴[] No.45145857[source]
Nit: I think that the light from the sun is about 100k years old. Wild.
replies(2): >>45145887 #>>45146899 #
aplummer ◴[] No.45145887[source]
How can that make sense, the photons are emitted and fly straight at us
replies(2): >>45145912 #>>45145942 #
stevenwoo ◴[] No.45145912[source]
Photons are not created on the surface but in the core where the environment has the higher pressure needed for the physical creation of the photon and the photon takes about that long to work its way out.
replies(2): >>45147776 #>>45149597 #
1. Ekaros ◴[] No.45147776[source]
What is the ratio between those and well heat due to nuclear reactions and well pressure. Hot stuff generates visible photons. Say like incandescent light bulb.

So there must be a range in age. As some closer to still hot surface don't need to travel through parts of the sun.

replies(1): >>45175114 #
2. stevenwoo ◴[] No.45175114[source]
So I am not an expert and recalling what I have read in several books and articles, but the conditions of fusion necessary to create photons only exists in the core of the sun. It was a mystery to us and we did not know until scientists were able to use quantum mechanics was able to explain the mechanism, it requires enough temperature and gravitational pressure to force subatomic particles close enough to overcome the forces that ordinarily keep them apart, and this only happens to a small percentage of meeting nuclei with quantum tunneling explaining how they overcome the forces that want to keep the nuclei apart - there's just so many particles squeezed close together that a small percentage that meet (possibly easier to visualize as the quantum wave function describing the position) fuse. This is also why we cannot use this method of fusion on earth - it's impossible to do on earth barring some sci fi artificial gravity invention. If this were not true and fusion could take place anywhere on the sun, the sun could rapidly use up all of the fuel of hydrogen. I am simply repeating what I have read - each photon has to make its way to the surface of the sun after many collisions, since the direction is random and not always outwards, it is theorized they just ping pong back and forth for x years where x can be hundreds of thousands of years. Here's the clearest explanation I found though they only use one slide on the photon's drunken walk https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11084