From: Alfio Puglisi (puglisi@arcetri.astro.it)
Date: Mon Apr 07 2003 - 15:41:10 MDT
On Mon, 7 Apr 2003, nanowave wrote:
>Hey all you bastards cruising around in wasteful SUV's ...
>
>"During the first minute after the [hypernova] explosion it emitted energy
>at a rate more than a million times the combined output of all the stars in
>the Milky Way. If you concentrated all the energy that the sun will put out
>over its entire 9 billion-year life into a tenth of a second, then you would
>have some idea of the brightness," said Michael Ashley, faculty member in
>the astrophysics and optics department at the University of New South Wales
>and a member of the ROTSE team."
>
>http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/04/030407075127.htm
Energy calculations are usually made on a spherical emission model. If the
emission was instead directional like, say, a pulsar jet (and many
high-energy celestial bodies show a similar behaviour), the actual value
could be some order of magnitude lower. Even then, it would still be
impressive.
Ciao,
Alfio
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