Light From The Sun Takes About 8 Minutes To Reach Us.

[SnookerPlayer]

Why do you feel the warmth of the sun as soon as a cloud passes over ?

After all, sunlight takes 8 mins to reach us.

[donny48]

The cloud is relatively close to earth and not 8min away.

[SnookerPlayer]

I presume there is warm air above the cloud which is immediately felt when the cloud moves.

[SnookerPlayer]

Aha, just looked at related questions, most informative

[bhg481]

It's nothing to do with warm air above the cloud, it's the radiation from the sun (travelling at the speed of light) whose warmth you feel.

[donny48]

Yes the heat from the sun takes, shall we say 7 minutes and 50 seconds to reach the top of the cloud so when the cloud moves the heat has only got 10 seconds to reach us.

[SnookerPlayer]

Fascinating, I never realised that heat and light travelled at the same speed.

[SnookerPlayer]

Would you still feel the heat if you were half way to the sun in outer space. I always thought it was well below freezing outside out atmosphere.

[Togo]

The light radiated from the sun does not become "heat" until it comes into contact with the Earth's atmosphere. Space is not warmed up by the sun. Convected, conducted or even radiated heat does not travel at the speed of light by a long chalk.

[SnookerPlayer]

Hi Togo, I thought the heat was radiated.

[bhg481]

Think about being outdoors on a cold morning with a clear sky. Whilst you're standing in the sunshine you can feel the radiation heat from it. If you go into the shade you immediately feel colder even though the air temperature is the same. Being in space would be like that; in fact spacemen wear special suits because the radiation from the sun is not filtered out by the atmosphere, so they would be toasted even though there was no heat outside. On earth the sun heats the ground and the ground heats the air, hence the higher you go the colder it is because the air up there is further away from the ground.

[SnookerPlayer]

Thanks for replies. I really must stay indoors and not ponder on such heady matters.

[ichkeria]

A lot less than 10 seconds unless the cloud is nearly 2 million miles away.
Say the cloud is at 6,000 ft then the warmth will arrive seemingly instantaneously

[Togo]

Some of the suns energy is felt as radiated heat some as conducted and some as convected. We would not feel any of these types of heat without the Earths atmosphere. You will suffer from the effects of many types of energy radiated by the Sunif unprotected out ib t would not be one of them until you got much much closer to the source. ie Mercury.

[SnookerPlayer]

Thanks Togo and icky. Fascinating stuff, it really is.

[donny48]

Ichkeria, The term "shall we say" in my reply was there to indicate that this was an example not to be calculated to the last degree.

[Togo]

// Sunif unprotected out ib t would not//

Sun if unprotected out in space, but heat would not (keyboard lag and me not proof reading)

[melv16]

It doesn't seem to reach women's backsides, though:-)

[SnookerPlayer]

Not sure what that means melv ?

[melv16]

Women's *** are ALWAYS cold!

[Zacs-Master]

This thread was already kinda strange. It just moved up a notch.