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 Originally Posted by Poopadoop
Well he said the photons get emitted at the speed of light, so I think the answer is that gravity doesn't inhibit the explosion. Gravity in the first place causes the fusion through the build up of pressure (i.e. heat) if I understand it correctly. Gravity at the edge of the sun is not enough to cause fusion to occur (again if I understand it correctly).
@bold
Pressure isn't heat, but perhaps misuse of i.e.
It's the buildup of both and density building helps, too.
Lots of particles zipping about real fast near each other.
Interestingly, the energy transport is pretty slow. The photons are always moving at the speed of light, that's a given. They don't travel in a straight line, without interacting on the way out, though. They are absorbed and re-emitted over and over again, often splitting into multiple, lower energy photons.
The tiniest peek of the energy from any given fusion reaction will make it to the surface and out within minutes, but the expected time for half of the total energy from a single fusion reaction to have escaped is on the order of thousands of years. ALL of the energy from any single fusion interaction is probably never going to escape. The long statistical tail and extreme numbers involved make it supremely likely that some of the energy from each fusion process with remain to the end.
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