

What happens to light when it hits the sun? - cellover
https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/astroquizzical-what-happens-to-light-when-it-hits-the-sun-b55f68b46710

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amelius
I always found this interesting, from an article on wikipedia [1]:

> Despite its intense temperature, the peak power production density of the
> (Solar) core overall is similar to an active compost heap, and is lower than
> the power density produced by the metabolism of an adult human. The Sun is
> much hotter than a compost heap due to the Sun's enormous volume.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_core](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_core)

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avian
> The core of the star is actually quite easy for the light to escape from.
> It’s effectively transparent [...]

Citation needed. As far as I know, current models say that radiative transfer
("random walk" described in the article) happens from the edge of the
convective zone all down to the center.

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kmill
I was wondering that too. Could it be that they meant the core material is
transparent to the high energies of the photons there?

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x3n0ph3n3
That could have been what the author meant, but it still needs a citation.

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MichaelCrawford
It scatters off a charged particle.

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VLM
"Even if the atoms carrying that photon’s energy make it back all the way down
to the boundary of the radiation zone, the photon is very unlikely to wander
into the radiation zone again"

It does not operate like a marsupial kangaroo pouch.

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x3n0ph3n3
Can you really even say it's the same photon performing the random walk? Maybe
you could say it's the same unique packet of energy, but my understanding is
that the photon is effectively annihilated when an atom absorbs its energy.

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effie
Indeed. The whole idea of photons as particles scattering off matter particles
in the sun is just a very simplified model of energy transport. The results
may fit well observations, but actually such mechanism is quite far from the
basic physical picture of charged particle interaction, which is very
complicated process (retarded fields of immense number of particles acting on
each other ... hard to simulate already for N=2).

