system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why does it take 10,000+ years for a photon to go from the core of the sun to the outside?

I apologize if this has been asked before.

I've heard that it takes millenia (or more) for a photon to go from the core of the sun to get to the outside of the sun. Why is this? What are those photons doing in there? Are they moving? If they are moving, are they just going in circles or something, and if so, why? If they're not moving (or for some reason moving slower than photons on Earth) what causes them to go so slow?
gpt
The last time this was answered, the answer was the the individual photons themselves were not that old, but that they are generally absorbed and re-emitted by atoms in the sun for a very, very long time before managing to escape and not be re-absorbed. So it doesn't literally take that long for a single photon to escape, it's just an idea of how long the energy that the photon is carrying bounces around inside the sun before flying out.