Screw photons, neutrinos are where the real numbers start racking up
radix@lemmy.world â¨8⊠â¨months⊠ago
Any given star is constantly emitting an unimaginably large, but finite, number of photons. A tiny few of them travel tens to hundreds of (Earth) years, only to end their journey in your eyeballs.
rockerface@lemm.ee â¨8⊠â¨months⊠ago
Jilanico@lemmy.world â¨8⊠â¨months⊠ago
And from the photonâs perspective, it all happened in an instant đ¤Ż
NOT_RICK@lemmy.world â¨8⊠â¨months⊠ago
Even crazier when you consider how long that photon bounced around inside the star before escaping out into space
LostXOR@fedia.io â¨8⊠â¨months⊠ago
Technically the photon is being absorbed and re-emitted inside the star, so it's not exactly the same photon.
intensely_human@lemm.ee â¨8⊠â¨months⊠ago
A âphotonâ is basically just the universe producing a new field in response to an existing one, repeatedly. So photons travel through space in much the same way: they are absorbed and emitted by successive regions of space, with each region being the photonâs wavelength in size.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world â¨8⊠â¨months⊠ago
Thatâs not really the same thing, as well as being afaik straight up wrong
LostXOR@fedia.io â¨8⊠â¨months⊠ago
I'm not smart enough to understand that, but I'll believe you. :D