why does the heat from the core of the sun takes more than a 1000 years to reach its surface but the heat from the sun to our planet only takes about 8 minutes.

Question

I’m unsure if the 1000 years time is true or not, I just saw a poster of it at an elementary school.

In: 214

Answer 1

Imagine a huge crowd of people, all gathered in a big empty field. Each person is walking at a reasonable pace but when they bump into someone else they have to change direction. If the crowd is big enough you can imagine that someone near the center might take hours to reach the edge. Once they do they can walk in a straight line because they aren’t bumping into anyone.

The people that escape the crowd can just walk right to you now. The people in the crowd might be stuck there for a long time.

There is of course a lot more going on inside the sun, but this is the basic idea.