On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 1:51 PM, <mix...@bigpond.com> wrote:
The delay is caused by the photons trying to fight their way through the
> plasma
> and gas. Even after the explosion has taken place, some of them still have
> to
> fight their way through the expanding plasma cloud ...
Note also that in a star like the sun, the estimated time for radiation to
reach the surface is between 10,000 and 170,000 years [1]. I'm not sure
exactly how this time is apportioned for different starting points from the
center. But nonetheless if these values can be compared to the 4 hour
delay, then we can get a rough estimate of the speedup:
10,000 years / 4 hours = 8.76581E7 hours / 4 hours ~ 21,914,531
So if you're right about the delay being due to the light traveling slower
in the milieu of the supernova than in a vacuum, even then there's been a
21 million-fold increase in its velocity, which seems reasonable. I
imagine they're measuring the start of the four hours by looking for
radiation from the direction of the source above some minimum intensity?
Eric
