Energy Transport in the Sun (1)

• Center of Sun: flows by RADIATION

  • BUT I told you sun’s interior was OPAQUE to light!
  • AND I told you fusion produces GAMMA RAYS!
  • How do we see visible photons from surface?

• Photons travel SHORT distance, then absorbed by atoms. Then re-emitted. This process breaks gamma-rays down into many lower-energy photons

  • It takes ~ 1 million years for a gamma-ray photon to reach the surface
  • By this time, it has been converted to ~ 1600 visible photons

Notes: