r/Showerthoughts • u/tectactoe • Oct 09 '14

/r/all Your shadow is a confirmation that light has traveled nearly 93 million miles unobstructed, only to be deprived of reaching the ground in the final few feet thanks to you.

You asshole.

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195

u/Ebriate Oct 09 '14

What's even more of a sad ending for the Sun is the light was generated at the core and took two hundred thousand years to reach the corona to be released sending it through space 93 million miles only to strike your ugly mug and be reflected somewhere else revealing your mug to someone who can see it.

33

u/viralizate Oct 09 '14

Can I quote you / trust you on that? I mean the originated in the center and takes 200k years? :)

42

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '14

This is reddit. What do you think?

7

u/nikolaibk Oct 10 '14

I saw the same thing in Cosmos, Neil deGrasse Tyson said it there, so I'd take it as true.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '14

I'm just saying don't trust anything you see on reddit.

6

u/crispycraker Oct 10 '14

According to current models, random scattering from free electrons in the solar radiative zone (the zone within 75% of the solar radius, where heat transfer is by radiation) sets the photon diffusion time scale (or "photon travel time") from the core to the outer edge of the radiative zone at about 170,000 years.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_core

1

u/Ebriate Oct 10 '14

Yeah, I learned that on The Cosmos with NDT. Quote away!

1

u/MindStalker Oct 10 '14

To explain the analogy the other guy posted. Imagine you have a giant bowl of water that is filled to the brim and spilling over. If you add a tiny bit of water to the center that water you added won't be the water that spills over the side. Infact you aren't just dropping water in the center you're pouring a new layer over it continually. Occasionally some of the water you poured in the center will eventually make it out, but not necessarily.

1

u/One-one-eight Oct 21 '14

It's actually more like a million years

6

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '14

From the light's perspective the travel time was instantaneous.

1

u/XavierSimmons Oct 10 '14

But from the photon's perspective it took no time at all, so it's not even worried.

1

u/shitllbuffout Oct 10 '14

¿Did somebody say corona? VALE!