How long does it take the suns rays to reach the earth?
A beam of light whisks along at 11,160,000 miles per hour. If it could bend, it could zoom around the equator seven times in a single second and go 11,000 miles, or almost half way around an eighth trip. Light, however, cannot bend around in circles. Nothing in the universe travels faster than a sunbeam. Several cosmic travelers can equal it, but none can out race it. After years of patient measuring, astronomers now estimate the speed of light to be about 186,000 miles per second. Sunlight zooms toward us at the same speed as the light from the twinkling stars. Moonlight is sunlight reflected from the face of the moon. It travels to the moon at 186,000 miles a second and at the same speed from the moon to the earth. The planets also shed reflected sunlight toward us. Sunbeams of radiant energy pour forth in straight lines from the entire surface of our sun, fanning outward as they go. About two billionths of the immense output happens to strike our planet. These sunbeams have crossed
The Sun is VERY hot! The core of the Sun, or the center of the Sun, is 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Compare this to the temperature on a hot summer day, about 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The surface of the Sun is cooler than the core of the Sun. Its temperature is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s still very hot! Sunlight travels at the speed of light. The speed of light doesn’t change. The speed of light is 186,282 miles per second or 299,792,458 meters per second. This means the light from the Sun takes eight minutes to travel to Earth. It travels a very long distance in eight minutes because it travels so fast. If the world’s fastest land animal were to travel that same distance, it would take a cheetah over 151 years to reach the Earth!
A process called fusion heats the Sun. Fusion happens in the core of the Sun. It is very hot there. In fact, the core’s average temperature is around 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The surface of the Sun is cool compared with the core, only 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This fusion process not only heats the Sun, it makes the sunlight we see here on Earth. This sunlight travels the speed of light which is 186,282 miles per second or 299,792,458 meters per second. This means the light from the Sun takes 8.4 minutes to travel 93 million miles to Earth. If the world’s fastest land animal were to travel that same distance, it would take a cheetah over 151 years to reach the Earth running about 70 mph nonstop!
