quote:
Originally posted by Uschi:
Why does the sun shine?

because its a big ball of flaming gas

Nope. The sun is not flaming. It is not on fire one bit. The sun is a mass of incandescent gas. The gas has so much energy that the light waves it produces are in the visiable spectrum. (Fun Fact: people give off light. In fact, EVERYTHING with ANY amount of energy emits light. People light is in the infrared.)

How long does it take for light from the sun's core to reach the photosphere?

A few minutes... [eh?]

Try a few million to one billion years. (damn that sounds stupid. i forgot, exactly, and don't feel like looking it up again.) Neat, huh? The light, as energy, gets bounced around inside the various layers of the sun for lifetimes. eons. millenia.

When will the Earth's magnetic pole flip again?

in hundreds of millions of years.

Within the next few dozen thou. It's about to go. It's happened many times before. First the magnetic axis gets wobbly, then it splits into, say, five individual axis', then they move until they converge at the other end. Takes about a few hundred years, I think.
Huh coolies! Thats really interesting stuff.

Considering Ive never had one physics class I think I'm doing pretty well! [biiiig grin]