'Starquake' Cracks Star

geekroot's dad writes "Space.com is reporting that a huge 'starquake' releasing as much energy as our sun does in 250,000 years, has cracked a nearby neutron star. The magnetar produced the brightest explosion ever seen by man outside of the milky way. Although it is 50,000 light-years away, the blast was so huge it temporarily blinded some satellites and briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere!"

Comments

Re:Starquake? We need a more... extreme name

[FirienFirien]

Okay, Yikes. Missed this the first time round:

Of the known magnetars, four are called soft gamma repeaters, or SGRs, because they flare up randomly and release gamma rays. The flare on SGR 1806-20 unleashed about 10,000 trillion trillion trillion watts of power.

10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 watts of power. No wonder my brain gave up trying to work out the numbers.

Re:gamma ray bursts

[stevelinton]

You are thinking of Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs). They are actually much MORE violent events than this one, but also MUCH further away.
They are still being studied, and their causes are still somewhat ambiguous, but black holes are almost certainly involved. One theory, if I recall correctly is big bright short-lived stars in the early universse reaching the end of their life. The core of the star then collapses very suddenly, forming a black hole (in a regular supernova you get a neutron star) and the outer part of the star follows it in, and get heated and churned by the implosion, and then explodes out. Another theory is that a GRB represents the last moments a a neutron star falling into a black hole, or two neutron stars colliding to form a black hole.

These magnetar related events are much less energetic, but loads nearer.

trillion ... zillion

[mrthoughtful]

A million is 1000^2 or 10^6,
a billion is 1000^3 or 10^9,
a trillion is 1000^4 or 10^12,
a quadrillion is 1000^5 or 10^15
a quintillion is 1000^6 or 10^18
a sextillion is 1000^7 or 10^21
a septillion is 1000^8 or 10^24
a octillion is 1000^9 or 10^27
a nonillion is 1000^11 or 10^30
a decillion is 1000^12 or 10^33
a undecillion is 1000^13 or 10^36
a duodecillion is 1000^14 or 10^39
a tredecillion is 1000^15 or 10^40
a quattuordecillion is 1000^16 or 10^42
a quindecillion is 1000^17 or 10^45
a sexdecillion is 1000^18 or 10^48
a septendecillion is 1000^19 or 10^51
a octodecillion is 1000^20 or 10^54
a novemdecillion is 1000^21 or 10^57
a vigintillion is 1000^22 or 10^60 ....
a zillion is 10^playground ....
a googol is 10^100
a googolplex is 10^googol (if you wrote this down in its expanded form, the paper would not fit into the volume of the solar system)

So the wattage output of the SGR 1806-20 flare is just a piddly 1.0 tredecillion watts - or, you you adopt Jim Blower's Extended System of Units, that would be 10 tredawatts ..