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

Then sun is quite massive. Energy produced in the center, which is quite large, will be constantly absorbed by other bits of sun, and re-emitted in an arbitrary direction. It sort of “wanders” without aim.

Energy emitted from the surface, however, is all EM waves, light. The light isn’t hitting a whole lot along the way to earth, so it travels at more or less C, the speed of light, and so it arrives quite fast.