LIGO detects most massive black hole merger to date

> the 225-solar-mass black hole was created by the coalescence of black holes each approximately 100 and 140 times the mass of the Sun.

Does this mean that 15 solar masses were converted into energy? Because that's a LOT of energy.

Let’s see — the Tsar Bomba nuclear weapon released the equivalent of converting about 2.3 kg of matter into energy (1).

One solar mass is about 2 x 10^30 kg, so round numbers this event released the same as 10^31 Tsar Bombas, which is … a lot of energy? That number is too big to be a good intuition pump.

Let’s try again: over the course of its entire lifetime of about 10 billion years, the sun will release about 0.034% of its mass as energy (2). So one solar mass of energy is about 3000 solar-lifetime-outputs.

So this event has released about as much energy as 45,000 suns over their entire lifetime. I’m not sure how much of the energy was released in the final few seconds of merger, but probably most of it? So… that’s a lot of energy.

(1) https://faculty.etsu.edu/gardnerr/einstein/e_mc2.htm

(2) https://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qshrink.html

I have read somewhere that an experiencing a supernova at sun distance would be the same as holding a hydrogen bomb to your eyeball. The energy released in these events is basically unimaginable.

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.