A photon travels, on average, a particular distance before being briefly absorbed and released by an atom, which scatters it in a new random direction. To travel from the sun’s core to the sun’s surface (696,000 kilometers) so it can escape into space, a photon needs to make a huge number of drunken jumps.
The calculation is a little tricky, but the conclusion is that a photon takes many thousands and many millions of years to drunkenly wander to the surface of the Sun. In a way, some of the light that reaches us today is energy produced millions of years ago. Amazing!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon
The photon is a type of elementary particle. It is the quantum of the electromagnetic field including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force (even when static via virtual particles). The invariant mass of the photon is zero; it always moves at the speed of light in a vacuum.
Like all elementary particles, photons are currently best explained by quantum mechanics and exhibit wave–particle duality, exhibiting properties of both waves and particles.
 Photons are emitted in a threaded laser beam | |
| Composition | Elementary particle |
|---|---|
| Statistics | Bose–Einstein |
| Interactions | Electromagnetic, Weak, Gravity |
| Symbol | γ |
| Theorized | Albert Einstein (1905) The name of "photon" is generally attributed to Gilbert N. Lewis (1926) |
| Mass | 0 < 1×10−18 eV/c2 [1] |
| Mean lifetime | Stable[1] |
| Electric charge | 0 < 1×10−35 e[1] |
| Spin | 1 |
| Parity | −1[1] |
| C parity | −1[1] |
| Condensed | I(JPC)=0,1(1−−)[1] |