Why do neutrinos escape from the Sun much more quickly than light does?

Neutrinos escape from the Sun much more quickly than light because they interact with matter only through the weak force and lack electric charge, making them extremely unreactive and penetrating subatomic particles. Consequently, they can pass through the vast solar mass virtually unimpeded, exiting the Sun almost immediately after they are produced in the core.12

In contrast, energy released as gamma-ray photons must navigate the dense solar interior, where they are repeatedly absorbed, scattered, and reemitted by local atoms. This process forces the light to follow a random walk outward. Because the density of the Sun is so high, these photons travel only a few millimetres before each collision, requiring an estimated 170,000 years to reach the surface. While neutrinos exit the Sun nearly instantaneously, the light we observe today was generated in the solar core thousands of years ago.2