At the surface of the Sun, sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach Earth, but its energy spent an estimated 100,000 years diffusing outward through the Sun's dense radiative zone before it escaped — meaning the energy warming your skin this afternoon was generated in the core when Neanderthals were still walking Europe

At the surface of the Sun, sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach Earth, but its energy spent an estimated 100,000 years diffusing outward through the Sun's dense radiative zone before it escaped — meaning the energy warming your skin this afternoon was generated in the core when Neanderthals were still walking Europe

The sunlight on your skin left the Sun's surface eight minutes ago, but the energy it carries spent tens of thousands of years random-walking through the Sun's radiative zone before it escaped.