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 Originally Posted by OngBonga
Gravity affects light, hence black holes.
An explosion can only happen as fast as waves can propogate through a medium. That will be the local speed of sound. If gravity affects light, I imagine it affects sound, too.
I'm sure I read somewhere that it takes millions of years for a radiated particle emitted from the centre of the sun to emerge at the surface.
Gravity affects light but not by changing its speed. The black hole's gravity well changes the photon's frequency. As a photon moves up out of a gravity well, it increases its gravitational potential energy, and loses energy in the form of reducing its frequency, conserving energy. The energy of a photon is defined as its frequency time plank's constant. Plank's constant is the proportionality of the energy of a photon to its frequency.
In a black hole, the frequency is reduced to 0, as there is no amount of energy great enough to avoid this.
With 0 energy, there is nothing to detect. I.e. no photon.
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The medium thing is cool. Like space explosions in movies. I always thought they were so fake 'cause no sound in space, right. Turns out, hearing explosions in space is real. The explosion moves at the speed of detonation, which is uninhibited by any medium, so travels quite fast. The debris from the explosion is moving outward in all directions and carrying the sonic information with it. When it contacts your ship's hull, that information will be transferred.
You will hear a satisfying roar as you slay your alien pirate foes.
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Millions of year for "the" photon to escape the sun?
That's a naive application of water molecule based motion to photons in a plasma. My explanation above is (more) physically motivated.
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