DanArmak comments on Open Thread June 2010, Part 3 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Kevin 14 June 2010 06:14AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (606)
Tags: open_thread

Comments (606)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: DanArmak 14 June 2010 09:18:18PM *  0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Christian_Szegedy 14 June 2010 10:46:35PM *  1 point [-]

Your numbers seem to be off: (e.g. 4.26e9 J/sec would be truly minsiscule) You probably meant 4.29e29 J/sec, but then 5.74e5 years are wrong. According to wikipedia, the Sun's energy output is: 1.2e34 J/s which is still at odd with both of your numbers.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit