Quote · Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast
Ep 620 - In Defense of Sunlight (feat. Rowan Jacobsen)
Where this was said
The Philosophy and Physics of Light
At 31:47 · chapter starts 28:50
Matt sets the scene with a fact that already blew his mind: photons are trapped in the sun's core for up to 100,000 years before escaping to Earth in 8 minutes. From there, Rowan walks through what makes light cosmically strange: it is pure energy without mass, and for a photon time does not exist — it is everywhere it has ever been simultaneously, falling into time only when absorbed by matter. Earth, in this framing, is an experiment in what light does when it hits stuff. Every calorie humans have ever consumed was originally solar energy captured by a plant and passed up the food chain. Both Matt and Rowan find this vision more spiritually resonant than reductive materialism — Rowan notes that light has been religion's metaphor for the divine across cultures, and maybe it's not actually a metaphor.
Light generated by nuclear fusion in the sun's core takes roughly 15,000 to 100,000 years to escape to the surface before traveling to Earth in about 8 minutes.
Light is pure energy without mass, and for a photon, time literally does not exist. It is everywhere it has ever been simultaneously — only falling into time when it hits matter and gets absorbed. Earth is basically an experiment in what happens when light meets stuff.
For a photon traveling at the speed of light, time does not exist — it is everywhere it has ever been simultaneously, and only 'falls into time' when it hits matter.
