- #1
Petahanks
- 13
- 0
Hi! I have a question regarding the radiation coming from the sun. It might seem stupid to some people but I would really like to know how this works.
When you see images of the sun's rays reaching the Earth for example on this image from wikipedia (see attached image).
The rays are almost always depicted as lines with gaps between them. So is this just for illustrational purposes or are there actually gaps between the rays?
I don’t fully understand the processes behind solar fusion, but if you chose to see the energy exiting a fusion reaction in the sun heading for Earth as a photon/particle being shot away, then there must be a finite amount of photons for each reaction which would indicate that there must be spaces between the photons without “sunlight”?
And what happens if we chose to view the light as waves? There are a lot of different wavelengths comming from the sun but the wavelengths wouldn’t affect the size of the wave, just the length right? The size of both the electric and magnetic part of the wave is determined by the amplitude of the wave right? And in that case it should also be finite which could mean that there are holes/gaps in the radiation? And if this is the case, how big are these gaps, any way to put a number on it?
So In other words what I’m wondering is: If you have an extremely small light sensor and move it around a bit (but with the same angle of incidence to the sun) on a sunny day – will there be places where the intensity of the sunlight is much lower or maybe even zero? Or are the waves overlapping in such a way that the light density is 100% even all over the place?
When you see images of the sun's rays reaching the Earth for example on this image from wikipedia (see attached image).
The rays are almost always depicted as lines with gaps between them. So is this just for illustrational purposes or are there actually gaps between the rays?
I don’t fully understand the processes behind solar fusion, but if you chose to see the energy exiting a fusion reaction in the sun heading for Earth as a photon/particle being shot away, then there must be a finite amount of photons for each reaction which would indicate that there must be spaces between the photons without “sunlight”?
And what happens if we chose to view the light as waves? There are a lot of different wavelengths comming from the sun but the wavelengths wouldn’t affect the size of the wave, just the length right? The size of both the electric and magnetic part of the wave is determined by the amplitude of the wave right? And in that case it should also be finite which could mean that there are holes/gaps in the radiation? And if this is the case, how big are these gaps, any way to put a number on it?
So In other words what I’m wondering is: If you have an extremely small light sensor and move it around a bit (but with the same angle of incidence to the sun) on a sunny day – will there be places where the intensity of the sunlight is much lower or maybe even zero? Or are the waves overlapping in such a way that the light density is 100% even all over the place?