....The only statement I made was that the photons are created when an electron drops from 1 energy state to a lower one. The frequency depends on the difference in the energy. That says nothing about where the electron is. All that is required is that there be a change in energy.
I would expect, at the sun’s temperatures, most atoms would be stripped of their electrons …so electronic transitions wouldn’t be that common.
I posted a link from NASA about how
photons take many multiple millennia to travel from the core of the sun to its surface.
They note how “Originally born as energetic gamma rays,
after billions of collisions with matter, this radiation [as photons] reaches the surface and escapes into space.”
I would imagine, during those “billions of collisions,” that most of the original gamma rays would be “spread out” or “shifted” down into lower energy frequencies, thus (perhaps?) generating the full solar spectrum.
But that is just what I expect and imagine ...
and guess. I'd be happy to see any sources citing otherwise.
~
p.s.
I’m guessing that some large-scale mechanical processes such as convection, possibly involving magnetic fields, might also produce photons of their own; though ultimately these processes are driven by the forces of nuclear fusion and gravity too, so they still depend on the original production of gamma rays.
