Sunlight's Journey : A brief overview

What's In This Article...

1. Sunlight's Journey
1. Light's Journey of Life
2. Inside various layers of Sun

Sunlight's Journey

When you see around yourself or think about any region of Earth, you will find a very large variety of plants and animals, in other words you will see a huge biodiversity.

All the plants, animals, seasons, climate, etc is largely governed by the sun, for fascination 'Auroras' are the best example.

We are generally introduced with the fact that, "light takes 8 min 22 sec to reach Earth from the Sun, that varies with the Earth's position during revolution".

But, in reality the above statement is not at all true. It takes about 8 min 22 sec to reach Earth from the Sun's atmospheric surface and not from the Sun itself.

Actually, the light coming from the Sun that we observe today, has not come to Earth in just 8 min 22 sec, but it takes more than 100000 years i.e. 100,000 years! 😲!😲!

Light's Journey of Life

Sunlight's journey of life is not simple, the light that we observe and feel has tolerated a lot in its past.

Sunlight, as proposed by Einstein, has particle-like properties and we call that light particle as a 'Photon' that carries energy which is very very much essential for life on Earth.

Light's journey starts when it is born i.e in the core of a Star, here is Sun by the plasma at very temperature and pressure. Light or Photons are born in very hot and dense environments due to which they are very harmful and at that time they can emit very harmful radiations. After that it starts to come out of the Sun, since it's very small, its energy can overcome pressure and gravitational effects on it, but in this whole process till it has not come out of the Sun, the Photon continuously loses its energy.

Inside Various Layers of Sun

After crossing the core part it enters the Radiation zone which is very dense but lesser than core. This zone is very long and the photon doesn't go in a straight path, rather it travels in a zig-zag way. Since, the density is very high, the atoms are very close and as a Photon travels a few millimeters, it is absorbed by an atom (energy can be absorbed and emitted and Photon is an energy particle, that emits frequencies in visible spectrum, thus we can see light) and the absorbed Photon energy is emitted by the atom in any direction (hence zig-zag).

After crossing the Radiation zone the Photon enters the Convection zone, this zone is somehow less dense than the Radiation zone but here also the process to escape is the same i.e zig-zag way. But this process happens at a faster rate since the density is lower than earlier.

"At last the Photon enters the vast Universe and goes for its infinitely endless Journey."

Thus, by overcoming all the obstacles the Photon leads to an endless life. Millions and millions, billions and trillions of Photons are showered towards us from the Sun and when filtered by passing through our Ozone layer, supports all the life on our planet, the 'Earth'.