This is a new, sometime feature, where WC will share with readers both an especially silly email and WC’s reaction to it. Here’s the email:
I read in a Twitter thread that solar panels drain the sun’s energy. Is that true?
Let’s think this through. The sun radiates energy in all directions, not just towards the Earth. It’s a fearsome amount of energy, too; 1,370-1,380 watts per square meter at the distance from the sun of the Earth’s orbit (about 1,000 watts at the Earth’s surface; the difference is absorbed by the atmosphere). If you imagine a sphere at the distance from the Sun of the Earth’s orbit, that sphere has a surface area of
Area = 4 x π x r2
At the orbit of the Earth, r = 93 million miles. So the total surface area of the sun’s radiation at Earth orbit is 4 x 3.1416 x (93,000,000)2 which is about 1.0868717 or over 108 trillion square miles. The Earth presents a tiny, tiny circular spot on that gigantic sphere. The area of a circle is
Area = π x r2
The radius of the Earth is about 3,959 miles. So the area of the circle that the Earth presents to the Sun is 3.1416 x (3,959)2 which is about 49.2 million square miles. So the Earth intercepts about
49.2 million/108 trillion = 49/108,000,000 = .0000004537 = 0.00004537%
of total emitted solar radiation. That means that 99.999954% of the Sun’s solar radiation is blasted into intergalactic space with no apparent harm to the Sun. The percentage captured by the Earth is too small to count as a rounding error. Whether a tiny, tiny fraction of total solar emission is captured by absorption into the ocean, land, a solar panel or your hat makes no difference to the photons or the Sun that emitted them.
If, say, 10% of the Earth were covered by solar panels – an absurdly high percentage – then put another zero on the right hand side of the decimal.
It’s true that the sun is consuming itself. That’s what stars do, fuse all their hydrogen into helium, fuse the helium into other elements and eventually, in the case of a star the size of the Sun, be reduced to a white dwarf star, surrounded by thin nebula of gases. But that’s five billion years or so away, and isn’t a product of what the sun expels but rather a result of stellar fusion running out of fuel.
No, solar panels don’t “drain the sun’s energy.”
Wickersham's Conscience 
the idiot that originally tweeted that question cannot fathom your explanation as you included math and big words like circumference and radius.
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I think the core of the question’s absurdity is a misunderstanding of the law of conservation of energy. You see a thing that is “making” electricity/energy from sunlight. If you don’t understand that the photovotalic effect simply converts the photons to electricity when it passes through a semiconducting material it would seem that the solar panel is taking something from the sun and using it to make something else.
Not everyone learned physics in high school.
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When someone asks a question they are trying to educate themselves. No need to belittle them.
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