But seriously I always "knew" in the back of my mind that the universe is huge. But to have to wait 8+ minutes to scroll from Sun to Earth at the speed of light gives a new earth-shattering perspective.
What’s really bizarre is from what I understand is those photons spend something between 10,000 and 170,000 years bouncing around colliding with stuff inside the sun. From there it takes a mere 8 minutes to get to earth. [0]
Technical nitpick (but HN loves these) - the gas and ice giant planets do emit photons, in the infrared, where the energy comes from gravitational compression. Neptune in particular emits 2.4x as much energy as it receives from the sun.
The fastest travel speed we can really understand is about the speed of sound (jet travel), most westerners have travelled at that speed.
At jet speed it takes best part of a month just to get to the moon, to get to the sun takes 17 years. To reach Neptune you’d have to have left about the same time Columbus visited America.
>The fastest travel speed we can really understand is about the speed of sound (jet travel), most westerners have travelled at that speed.
To be pedantic, no, not really. Commercial jets can travel at speeds up to 955 kilometres per hour (593 mph) (per wikipedia). The speed of sound is roughly 1235 kph (767 mph). Also note that commercial jets usually travel slower than their maximum speed to save fuel.
