07/06/2022
3. It takes a photon up to 40,000 years to travel from the core of the sun to its surface, but only 8 minutes to travel the rest of the way to Earth
A photon travels, on average, a particular distance before being briefly absorbed and released by an atom, which scatters it in a new random direction. To travel from the sun’s core to the sun’s surface (696,000 kilometers) so it can escape into space, a photon needs to make a huge number of drunken jumps.
The calculation is a little tricky, but the conclusion is that a photon takes many thousands and many millions of years to drunkenly wander to the surface of the Sun. In a way, some of the light that reaches us today is energy produced millions of years ago. Amazing!
4. At over 2,000 kilometers long, The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth
Coral reefs consist of huge numbers of individual coral polyps (soft-bodied, invertebrate animals) that are linked together by tissue. The Great Barrier Reef is an interlinked system of about 3,000 reefs and 900 coral islands divided by narrow passages, located just beneath the surface of the Coral Sea. Spanning more than 2,000 km and covering an area of some 350,000 sq km, it is the largest living structure on Earth and the only one visible from space. However, this fragile coral colony is beginning to crumble, battered by the effects of climate change, pollution, and manmade disasters.
5. There are 8 times as many atoms in a teaspoonful of water as there are teaspoonfuls of water in the Atlantic ocean
A teaspoon of water (about 5 mL) contains 2×1023 water molecules, but each water molecule is comprised of 3 atoms: two hydrogen atoms and one of oxygen. Moreover, if you’d laid down end to end each water molecule from a teaspoon down end to end, you’d end up with a length of 50 billion km — 10 times the width of our solar system.
6. In an entire lifetime, the average person walks the equivalent of five times around the world
The average moderately active person takes around 7,500 step/day. If you maintain that daily average and live until 80 years of age, you’ll have walked about 216,262,500 steps in your lifetime. Doing the math; the average person with the average stride living until 80 will walk a distance of around 110,000 miles — which is the equivalent of walking about 5 times around the Earth, right on the equator.
