Bbm m7 / Gb
How new is new, To you, If I knew, I'd answer, too. Right this moment, The light pouring over me, This very minute, Feels like the birth, Of a baby... Still on it's way, Out the birth cannel, Yet, all the while, It had been, Travlin', Through time and space, Tryin' to make it to Earth, Tryin' to find it's place. No, not of this instant, The infant, Had been trying to finish, Getting to the start, Maybe nine months... and a day? No, not of this instant, The ray, Had been on it's way, To become part of my day, Maybe, 480 seconds... Give or take a minute? In order to start, It ends.
NOTES
From Physics and Astronomy Online
Question:
How long does it take the sun's light to reach earth?
Answer:
The distance from the Earth to the Sun varies because the
Earth's orbit about the Sun is elliptical. At it's closest, the
distance is 91,402,000 miles and it's farthest distance it is
94,512,000 miles. This gives an average distance of 92,957,000
miles. Light travels at 186,282 miles per second. Dividing the
average distance by the speed of light gives 499.01225 seconds
which is 8.3168708 minutes.
Rounded off, let's say 8 minutes and 18 seconds.
Answered by: Joe Thomas
From The Membrane Domain
rick replied:
now that is fast
i responded:
186,000 miles per second
lot to think about... cuz it kinda seems like a long time 8+ minutes for light to get here
on the other hand... if the sun burns out... it doesn't give us much time to put our back up plan into effect?
rick replied:
not in my lifetime mate
i respond:
heehe... just for the fun of it... i like to consider
all possible scenarios... cuz even though you are correct --
it is unlikely to happen in any of our lifetimes
by doing the scenario planning, sometimes you can apply the results elsewhere
the power of our biggest light bulb has lots of "real life" applications
for instance... we'd been talking about sunlight, mirrors and glass a while back
well, yesterday... we had bright sunlight for the first time this year... and i had a tomato plant that happened to be sitting behind a round fishbowl... as the sunlight came through, i noticed how intense it was on the plant... not thinking much about it, i came back later... and discovered the tomato plant had been reconfigured... as if a laser had tried to cut it in 2
so, i'm guessing that the fishbowl acted as either a convex or concave magnifying glass
this may also apply to the light passing through the earth's atmosphere... or the light passing through convex/concave ice, etc.
sorry... i'm straying from the original sun scenario (but not really)... in the case of planning for the sun "burning out"... how similar is that to pollution... or a volcanic cloud etc obscuring the sun?
the reason i said i'm not straying tooo far... is because both of these scenarios are *really already happening*... they seem to go hand in hand... to form a cycle... normally the cycle takes millions of years... but from paul's post on global dimming... it looks like we may have shortened the cycle to a decade or so?
my guess... the cycles will become shorter... more volatile... and more intense
here's a resend of the paul post:
Paul - did you watch this last night?Recent research by USA and UN funded scientists - it was a 4 year study, well funded- shows that the dirt in pollutants helps form dark clouds which have been helping to cool the earth - its called global dimming - and it is very significant. At the same time CO2 emissions are causing global warming. Now that the western world filters pollution - the dirt is stopped from entering the atmosphere - but not the CO2. The result is that , now that the effects of 15 years of filtering means clearer skies, the CO2 warming effect is rising and will become unstoppable unless action is taken on a mass scale very quickly. A 5 to 10 C increase in world temperatures - much more than previously thought - is on the cards by end of this century - possibly 5 C within 40 years.
sidd knew:
the fishbowl acted as a convex magnifying glass