How fast are you moving right now? That seems like an easy question. The first tempting answer is, “I’m not moving.” Upon further reflection, you realize that maybe the Earth’s motion counts. So, a second tempting answer is, “19 miles/second around the Sun.” But then you recall learning that the Sun moves around the center […]

A few seconds or a minute at most? Well, oddly enough, the answer is many thousands of years. Here’s why. Photons are produced by the nuclear reactions deep in the core of our Sun. As the photons flow out of the core, they interact with matter and lose energy, becoming longer wavelength forms of light. […]