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aaronharnly | 7 months ago

Probably here:

https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/

And it’s even more astonishing — the supernova at 1 AU would be the same as a billion hydrogen bombs at your eyeball.

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bravesoul2|7 months ago

But you are safe at a parsec. Showing how also incredibly big space is. Space's bigness makes it hard to blow up a galaxy. Big bang excepted.

ordu|7 months ago

It depends on the kind of supernova. Type Ia[1] is really insane. 10^44 J is a thing, that I think can blind you, even you've chosen a spot for your picnic to watch a Big Boom at distance of 1 parsec. A white dwarf made mostly of carbon burns all the carbon into oxygen in matter of seconds, and then it burns some of oxygen that was a result of burning carbon. It would like to continue brewing more and more heavy elements, but can't, because it becomes so hot, that gravity is no longer enough to keep the matter from flying away.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_Ia_supernova

thechao|7 months ago

All the stars in the universe, burning as brightly as they are, are the tiniest fraction of additional energy compared to the 2.73°K background temperature of space. The Big Bang was very warm.

ithkuil|7 months ago

Space is big and quadratic function grows fast

mr_toad|7 months ago

For certain values of safe. It’s close enough to strip the ozone layer, significantly increase the risk of cancer, alter the climate, and possibly cause extinctions.

mytailorisrich|7 months ago

Another way to look at it is that a hydrogen bomb is very small at planetary scale and so microscopically small at any astronomical scale.

aaronharnly|7 months ago

I appreciate this point – it would take quite a few Tsar Bombas to approach the binding energy of a planet.