• Question: What is more powerful 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000 nukes or the sun exploding?

    Asked by Montytibbs to Heather, Helen, Hugh, Jane, Julian on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Julian Onions

      Julian Onions answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      Well, thats an interesting question.

      A supernova puts out between 10^44 and 10^46 Joules of energy.

      The biggest nuke yields about 10^ 17 Joules

      So 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000 which is 10^41
      So that many nukes will put out 10^58 Joules – so the nukes win!
      And by about trillion!

    • Photo: Helen Johnson

      Helen Johnson answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      Pretty interesting question and answer, thanks Julian! When scientists write large numbers they usually write them as 10 to the power of n with n being the number of zeroes.

    • Photo: Hugh Osborn

      Hugh Osborn answered on 16 Nov 2014:

      That’s a lot of nukes!

      So many that we need to drop the standard number system and use standard forms – a way of using powers of ten to count big numbers. 10 = 10^1. 1000 = 10*10*10 = 10^3. So your number of nukes are a one with 40 zeros, which makes it 10 to the power of 40. (10^40).

      The biggest nukes give out the equivalent of 50 megatonnes of TNT. In joules that makes more than 10^17 J. So in total, your nukes are giving out 10^57 joules. (10^(40+17)).

      The sun gives out 10^26 joules every second and will last for 10^10 years or 10^17 seconds.

      So, even if ten billion year’s worth of solar energy were released at once (10^43 J), it would be 10^14 times (100 trillion times!) too small to match energy released by your nukes (10^57J).

      Congratulations, you have destroyed the universe.

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