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A comment on Biggest explosion ever documented in the universe [pdf]. Parent comment

Re:Biggest explosion ever documented in the universe [pdf] by contravariant on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @08:09AM (#22545073)
The estimates in the article are on the order of 10^61 erg (not sure why they used this unit), which is around 10^54 Joule, or 10^42 kilotons. Even the biggest nukes are below 10^5 kiloton, so this would be about 10^37 of them.

Not that you'd ever get that many because 10^61 is about 10^7 solar masses worth of energy.

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Re:Biggest explosion ever documented in the universe [pdf] by arethuza on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @08:19AM (#22545141)
Edward Teller did apparently try and push for a 10 gigaton (!) bomb to be produced:

https://www.rbth.com/opinion/2016/01/05/nuclear-overkill-the...

Edit: Apparently this monster was the infamous "Backyard" bomb - "since that particular design would probably kill everyone on Earth, there was no use carting it anywhere."

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Re:Biggest explosion ever documented in the universe [pdf] by saagarjha on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @09:00AM (#22545421)
CGS is still commonly used in astrophysics, for some reason.
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