Comment on Open Thread June 2010, Part 3

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:18:18 GMT

This may not be very practical to do to the whole moon at once though :-)

Well, I shouldn't speak before checking. Taking numbers from Wikipedia (ETA fixed numbers):

The moon has a mass of 7.36e22 Kg, converting it to energy would yield 6.624e39 J.

The Sun's total output is about 3.86e26 J / s, so this is the equivalent of 3.17 million years of Sun energy (if you have a Dyson sphere).

A nova releases ~~ 1e34-1e37 J over a few days; only 1/100 as much as converting the moon to energy. A core-collapse supernova bursts 1e44-1e46 J of energy in 10 seconds - a lot more. (Range is according to different Google results.)

ETA: the numbers were completely wrong before and I corrected them.

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