evienyx

[evienyx]

AH HAPPY 6 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF FRACTURES EVERYONE

[evienyx]

One of the funniest cultural disconnects to me between America and Europe (or at least the UK) is how we perceive distance and “what’s a long drive,” because I’m going on a three-day trip with my family and was talking about it with my friend from the UK, and mentioned that we were driving because it wasn’t too far.

Friend: Oh, I didn’t know [place] was close to you.

Me: Yeah, it’s not far, it’s only like eight hours.

Friend: pardon did you say eight hours

She just could not fathom that we would drive for eight hours just for a three-day thing, let alone say that it wasn’t too LONG of a drive. I proceeded to explain to her that any trip in the country under 1000 miles is guaranteed to be a drive, and anything more than that depends on timing, route, price of flight, etc.

On the other hand, she apparently only sees her sister a couple times a year because the drive’s ’too long’ (45 minutes). I see my aunt, who lives 10 hours away, just as often when she drives home for holidays.

[evienyx]

Eventide, Chapter Ten: Glass House

Eventide, Chapter Ten

Eventide, from the beginning

-

Gerald: you don't have any triggers, do you Shadow?

Shadow: mainly the cold and drowning, why?

Gerald, looking at the next Emerald in Antarctica: uh, no reason

-

Shadow, looking out at the ocean as he gets assaulted by a snow storm: you know this would be great if it didn't suck

-

Gerald: how about you take a break today

Shadow: you said 'break today?' okay, got it. in other news, where's the next emerald?

-

Shadow, every time he goes down to Earth: wow this place is just so beautiful and vibrant and full of life worth preserving, just like Maria always said

Shadow: too bad I've gotta blow it up to get justice for her :/

-

Shadow: I have a perfectly distant and normal relationship with Sonic and am totally okay with the fact that this plan will result in his death

Also Shadow: and this corner is just for me and Sonic. nobody else can come here, because it's just for us. I'll call it the 'sonadow corner' just so that everyone knows --

-

Maria's Memory, trying desperately to get Shadow to break out of the hold of the unreliable narrator tag:

Shadow, getting character development and at the same time allowing himself to be dragged ever deeper:

[evienyx]

Hi, weird question. I just started ur Peter alt universe fic and based on when it was published, we started college at the same time. I’m about to graduate a bit early and I just think it was such a coincidence. If you’re comfortable, I would love to know how college has been going, what ur major is, and yeah I just think it was so cool to read that and see ur updates and the last one about urself was starting college on that fic. Hope it’s been great!!

College is exhausting, but it's mostly self-inflicted. I've got the opposite thing going on, where I keep adding semesters on by doing more things, so right now I'm only halfway through, even though one of my friends (from high school) literally already graduated as well lol.

I'm actually studying to get two degrees -- a Bachelor's of Science in Astronomy as well as one in Physics -- and then I'm also doing a minor in Computer Science (which I am actually almost done with compared to everything else) and I'm in my school's Honors program. Cause I hate myself, I guess.

You can sometimes see the astronomy thing come out in fics when I randomly go all-in on some sort of space explanation, but I also thinks it helps with especially my more big over-arching worldbuilding, like explaining the multiverse in the most recent chapter of Broken Mirrors. Some of my friends have a much harder time conceptualizing things like 'infinity' and the speed of light and all that stuff than I do, just because I work with them so often. I like to think it helps, at least.

Anyway, if you're ever wondering why updates can take a long time (especially during the school year), all of that is why.

[evienyx]

I can't really write like normal at the moment since I sprained my finger (lame) so instead I've been working on more cosmology stuff for ATLA because I'm not really a fan of how it is in canon lol. Pretty much none of this will even be relevant until Book 4 of Fractures unless I write another fic before that where it is, but I am having a good time and that's what matters.

[evienyx]

it never even occurred to me that that wouldn’t be the universal “wear your seatbelt” phrase.

click it or ticket is genuinely such a good slogan. i went to college in VA and can't even remember what they say

[evienyx]

Of course everyone plays differently, but I genuinely cannot understand how it is that people are so often rejected by the person they're trying to romance in Baldur's Gate 3. Every playthrough I am having to pick at the beginning who I'm gonna go with and then spend the rest of the time trying to let literally everyone else down easy. It's ridiculous.

[evienyx]

No chapter tonight gamers, had an emotional breakdown o7

[evienyx]

So Goes the Moon, Chapter Ten: The Desert's Keeper

So Goes the Moon, Chapter Ten

So Goes the Moon, from the beginning

-

Sokka, trying to use Math and Science: okay if I triangulate from here I may be able to calculate—

Toph: the sand-sailer has a compass that points directly to the Rock at all times

Sokka: damn it

-

Toph, speaking solely using terms that people from the desert know:

Everyone else, in tears: please just talk normal

-

Toph, finding her dead parents in the sand: oh no! anyway—

-

Sokka, the moment he hears about 'The Fire Nation's Darkest Day': hey what's this about?

Zuko, who failed history class: dude I don't know

Sokka, using the date on the planetarium: oh hey an eclipse

Zuko, who was actually only interested in the fun parts of history class and finally recognizes the date: wait a second

-

Wan Shi Tong: you plan to abuse my knowledge and use it for evil

Sokka: yeah, and what about it?

Zuko: can we just leave him here?

[evienyx]

The deed is done. The intruder has fallen. It is over.

I am free.

just found a centipede I’m about to burn the house down

[evienyx]

final solution I have placed three glass bowls of increasing size on top of the centipede, so that should it escape one, two more await it.

resting atop the largest bowl is a bottle of mayonnaise, both to provide additional weight and, more importantly, to entice my father once he returns home. he is a big mayonnaise fan, so he will be allured to the bowls when he sees it, upon which point I can force him to remove the centipede from the house.

just found a centipede I’m about to burn the house down

[evienyx]

IT GOT OUT OF THE BOX

just found a centipede I’m about to burn the house down

[evienyx]

just found a centipede I’m about to burn the house down

[evienyx]

a chorus better sung in harmony, Chapter One

a chorus better sung in harmony, Chapter One

- - -

Summary:

Sometimes, the Watchtower at the heart of New York City goes dark. The shadows creep down its walls and nearly touch the street, but they always retreat before anyone can be sucked back into them.

"Those New Avengers," people murmur. "So brave, to take that darkness on so much to protect us all. What a burden it must be."

"Bob," Yelena Belova says to that darkness as he sips a slushy and works through a crossword, "If you bring one more of my blankets into the Void and don't come out with it, I'll eat all of Walker's next batch of chicken soup before you can even have a bite."

- Just because Bob isn't using his powers, doesn't mean that the highs and lows aren't still there. The Thunderbolts get used to them, because that's what you do for family.

- - -

Just some classic Found Family stuff. You gotta love it. It's from Bucky's POV (even better!)

This fic is only going to be about three chapters, but it was the most attainable Thunderbolts* story for the current moment. I'm still feeling out how to write these characters, but I'll get better over time, and that improvement will only come from practice.

I am almost certainly gonna write a time travel one at some point, too, but I have to figure out how I want that one to go, first. Plus, I gotta make sure I stay up on both So Goes the Moon and Eventide as well.

[evienyx]

Sentry vs. The Avengers (with science!)

In my previous post I calculated how much power MCU Sentry actually has, given the "power of a thousand exploding suns" statement. Now, I wanna throw the rest of the Avengers into the mix as best I can. We're only gonna look at the original six Avengers in this, because that's generally what people seem to be implying anyway.

I'm gonna focus more on power rather than abilities, because we could argue those all day, especially in regards to our two strongest original Avengers.

For reference, we've calculated Sentry's power as about

2.415 × 10^47 joules

Or, how much energy all of Earth uses in a year, 2.836 octillion times over. So, a lot.

To start, I really don't think that we need to say anything about Steve Rogers / Captain America, Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow, or Clint Barton / Hawkeye. Even without thinking about Sentry's actual power, we saw what he did to the Thunderbolts. Even hits from Bucky's vibranium arm glanced right off of him. Sorry, gang, but those three are done before the fight begins.

Now, onto the teammates that have any real amount of firepower.

First up, Tony Stark / Iron Man.

Surprising absolutely no one I would hope, Tony's not doing very much here.

Within the MCU, his suits are powered by arc reactors, which output an immense amount of power every second. Tony even said specifically that he has found more efficient ways to power his suits, but continues to use the arc reactors anyway.

Now, the palladium arc reactor (as in, the original version of it) was calculated by Tony as outputting 3 gigajoules (10^9) of energy every second, or 3,000,000,000 joules per second.

We could say that the newer arc reactors are way more efficient than the original palladium one was. This is honestly likely. We don't have any numbers for it, but let's be super generous and say that the Mark 1 arc reactor is like a Triple-A battery (5400 joules) when compared to the prime version of the arc reactor from something like Infinity War or Endgame.

Setting up a quick proportion, we can find then that, under this assumption, our best arc reactor (and therefore our strongest version of Iron Man) is producing 1.67 × 10^15 joules of energy (per second).

This is a lot of power. However, when we compare to Sentry's power, we see that his is about 10^32 times bigger. So, unfortunately, Tony's peak possible power giving him many benefits of the doubt is nowhere near what he'd need to take on Sentry.

Next up, Bruce Banner / the Hulk.

I'm gonna be honest, this one is probably gonna be the hardest. Besides the fact that Hulk is certainly nerfed in the MCU compared to the comics, we also don't really have much info on any feats that I can use to measure his strength.

The best thing that I can find for any measure of it that I might actually be able to calculate is that scene in She-Hulk when he throws a boulder into space. So, that is what we will go with.

To throw something out of Earth's orbit (which is what we are assuming he did), it needs to reach escape velocity (which it must have reached immediately given how it just flew straight out of the atmosphere). Earth's escape velocity is about 11.2 km/s, also known as 11,200 m/s.

Next, we need a guess for how big the boulder is. It's a little shorter than Hulk (about 2.6 meters apparently) when he picks it up, so let's be nice and sat 2.5 meters. It's somewhere between two and three times as wide as it is tall, so we'll be generous and say three times, making it 7.5 meters wide.

We'll then calculate an approximate volume for the boulder using two hemispheres for the rounded sides and one cylinder for the bulk of it. From this, we get that the volume is just about 45 cubic meters.

There are a lot of possibilities for the density of stone, which we need to calculate how much this stone weighs. I am not a geologist or anything, so I don't know how to identify the type of stone either. We're gonna go middle-of-the-road here, then, and say that the density is about 2500 kilograms per cubic meter.

This makes the mass of our boulder 112,500 kilograms.

Now, Hulk in the MCU might have an unfairly low number of feats to go off of, but this is not much for him to lift. It is the escape velocity part that makes it so impressive, because throwing something hard enough for it to escape Earth's orbit is crazy.

Anyway, let's calculate that kinetic energy.

E = 0.5 × mass (kilograms) × velocity^2 (m/s)

E = 0.5 × 112,500 kg × (11,200 m/s)^2

E = 7.056 × 10^12 joules

Oh, boy. That is not a lot. What else can we look at? The destruction of the Avengers facility in Endgame? How would we get a measure on that?

As I've said before, MCU Hulk is a hard guy to get a number on. He is nowhere near as strong (from what we've seen) as Hulk in the comics. However, let's look at the comics anyway. He's lifted a lot of things in the comics, one of which is a mountain described as weighing 150 billion tons. We're not gonna use that.

Instead, we are going to go with what could be the greatest push of his MCU strength, given the Avengers Facility lift. Let's see how strong Hulk would be if he had to lift up the entirety of New York City.

In kilograms, New York City weighs about 764 billion (source). This is far less than the 150 billion tons from the comics, but, as we said before, this is MCU Hulk who has been massively weakened. I don't see a world where MCU Hulk (as he is) can lift the entirety of New York City. Still, let's check it out anyway.

The energy to lift something on Earth of a given mass a certain height can be found with

E = mass (kilograms) × gravity (m/s^2) × height (meters)

The mass is 764,000,000,000 kilograms. Let's say the height he is lifting it is 1 meter. Gravity is a constant of 9.8 m/s^2.

E = 764,000,000,000 × 9.8 × 1

E = 7.4872 × 10^12 joules

Honestly, kinda crazy that this is just barely better than throwing the rock into space.

That is a feat I cannot see MCU Hulk doing, really (though based on these calculations he probably could). Either way, what we're seeing from this is that, while he is very strong, he does not hold a candle to Sentry's power.

Even if Hulk was a thousand times stronger than he is, he does not hold a candle. Even if he was a million times stronger, Sentry still has him beat by a factor of 10^29, or 100 octillion. In the comics, they might go toe-to-toe easily, with it being a coin toss either way depending on the issue and the Hulk, but in the MCU? Nah. The real shame, though, is how much weaker the MCU has made him :(

Finally, Thor

This is the one we were all waiting for, wasn't it? You know him, you love him, it's the God of Thunder. But, is he stronger than Sentry?

Let's see.

Thor's biggest (and most calculable) feat that I can think of in the MCU is in Infinity War when he holds open the iris of the forge to form Stormbreaker, and takes on the full force of the neutron star within for a period of time.

Now, for Nidavellir, things get a little weird to calculate. This is for a couple of reasons, one of the biggest being that it is hard to know information about neutron stars. It varies immensely depending on the star, just as it does for regular stars like our Sun. Most of what we have measured of neutron stars is from the youngest amongst them, as those are hottest and brightest.

Neutron stars are very small (at least in comparison to most stars). They are what remain of the collapsed cores of massive stars following a supernova explosion (provided there isn't enough mass left to form a black hole instead) (source).

Someone with far more patience than me has already calculated the diameter and surface area of Nidavellir given Thor's height and the number of pixels on screen and stuff, so I will use those numbers for this, though I am going to break away for the rest of it lol. So, we'll say the surface area of Nidavellir is 5,410,729 square meters.

Neutron stars don't actually tend to have a particularly high luminosity, with the youngest ones having the highest. From what we know, though, Nidavellir is not a very young neutron star. If it was, it would be very hot, hot enough that the ice wouldn't have been able to form around it, even given the Dyson's sphere containing it. I don't care how good your sphere is, you're not stopping a young neutron star that is 1 million Kelvin from melting ice off of it.

So, this has gotta be an older neutron star. That drops the luminosity even more. When the star is around 1 million Kelvin, the luminosity is around 10% that of the Sun. That's gonna go down more the cooler the neutron star gets.

However, I want to be as generous to Thor as possible. So, instead, we're just gonna say that the 10% of the Sun's luminosity is what we're looking at. In fact, I'll even be extra generous, pretend this is a younger neutron star, and give it 20%.

This leaves Nidavellir's luminosity as 7.656 × 10^25 watts (joules/second).

Now, what is the surface area of Thor? Using Chris Hemsworth's height and weight, we can calculate that his BSA (body surface area) is about 2.3 square meters. Since the star is only hitting his backside, we'll divide this by two to get about 1.15 square meters.

The power per square meter of Nidavellir can be found by dividing its luminosity by its surface area, leaving us with 1.415 × 10^19 watts per square meter.

Now, to see the amount of energy that Thor took on while holding the iris open, we need to multiply the power per square meter by his surface area, by the number of seconds that he endured it. Within Infinity War, he lasts maybe fifty seconds of the few minutes he is supposed to in order to finish the axe. This also mortally wounds him, and he would not survive if not for Groot using his arm as a handle and allowing Thor to heal with the completed Stormbreaker.

I'm gonna be extra extra generous here and say that, considering movie cuts and editing, Thor lasts, in universe, a minute and a half, or 90 seconds.

Let's calculate our energy.

E = power per square meter (W/m^2) × surface area (m^2) × time (s)

E = 1.415 × 10^19 W/m^2 × 1.3 m^2 × 90 s

E = 1.656 × 10^21 joules

At our most generous.

Remember, Thor did survive this, but not really? Like, he would have died if not for Stormbreaker.

Regardless, we can then say that this is about the power that we know Thor can withstand. How does that measure up to what we calculated for Sentry's power? Well, Sentry is about 10^26, or 100 septillion, times stronger.

So, once more, it looks like Sentry comes out on top.

Now, what does any of this actually mean? I don't know. Like I said at the start, we're not talking about abilities or anything like that (because those make things so much more complicated). We're just looking at what we can calculate.

And, with what we can calculate, even when we give those original Avengers as many generous takes as we can (arc reactor output, lifting New York, surviving ninety seconds rather than like fifty), they are still nowhere in the ball park of what we have calculated Sentry's power as.

I like to imagine, in a funnier world, that this is what Valentina meant when she said that Sentry was "stronger than all the Avengers rolled into one," because, if so, she's right.

POV: They don't know I'm stronger than all of the original Avengers combined times 100 septillion (they do)

[evienyx]

One of my friends likes consuming projects I work on like a podcast instead (not sure if she likes my voice or mic quality but whatever), so I recorded myself explaining this post to her.

Then thought well maybe some people wanna be audio learners too, so here are two audio files if you'd rather listen to me explain Bob's power level rather than read it.

Calculating Sentry's Power Level (with science!!!)

In Thunderbolts*, we are told rather explicitly that Sentry has "the power of a thousand exploding suns." I have seen this used a lot when discussing how he might measure up against other beings within the MCU.

Now, I have no real way of calculating or quantifying the power of someone like Wanda or Loki or anyone like that. For Bob, though, we might actually be able to find a number. What would this number mean? Unimportant, this is just for fun, so don't take anything as gospel either because I'm barely checking my math here and am just stream-of-consciousness-ing this thing.

Okay, so, let's figure out just how much power Bob has (spoiler: it's so much omg lmao). My man is stressed and doesn't wanna know but that's too damn bad okay here we go.

To start, let's look at how much energy, or power, the Sun outputs.

When it comes to stars, their power output is referred to as their luminosity, and is measured in Watts (also known as Joules/second, or the energy output every second).

The Sun's luminosity is about 3.828 × 10^26 Watts. (source)

For reference, the total U.S. electricity consumption in 2022 was about 4.07 trillion kWh (or about 1.4652 × 10^19 Joules) (source). Dividing our Sun's luminosity of 3.828 × 10^26 Joules/second by this, we can find that the Sun outputs enough energy to power the U.S. for a year 26,126,126 times over, every second.

So, a lot of power.

This alone would pack quite a punch. However, we are not looking at the power of just one Sun, but of 1000. So, we multiply our Luminosity by 1000, and can also multiply our number of United States as well to find that our power output is now

3.828 × 10^29 Watts, or 26,126,126,000 United States (in a year, every second).

Even now, though, we aren't getting the whole picture. After all, Sentry's power isn't "the power of a thousand Suns." It's "the power of a thousand exploding Suns." Therefore, we need to look at the amount of energy that the Sun would output at the end of its life.

In astronomy, stars are categorized based off of their luminosity and their surface temperature, as well as color (source). The majority of stars (as in about 90%) fall into the "main sequence," while the other 10% are made up white dwarfs, giants, and supergiants. They are organized in what is known as the Hertzprung-Russell (HR) diagram, shown below.

Our Sun is what is known as a G-Type (yellow) star. It is a very average star (which is a good thing). For average stars, their life comes to an end when they run out of excess hydrogen to use for nuclear fusion (the process of fusing hydrogen atoms into helium, which releases immense energy and powers the star). Once that hydrogen runs out, the star begins to collapse.

This collapse, however, produces more heat, so that the star can then create essentially a burning shell of its little remaining hydrogen that wraps around the star's core. This shell causes the outer layers of the star to expand rapidly, turning the star into a red giant, which will consume its helium until it is gone, and collapse and expand again.

As material continues to be ejected from the red giant, it also forms a planetary nebula around the dying star. After about a billion years, it will run out of material and the inner core of the star will be exposed. At this point, the star is left as a white dwarf (source).

Now, that was a lot, and a lot of energy was involved, but there are three main parts of the G-Type star's death: the red giant, the planetary nebula ejection, and the white dwarf.

When a star expands into a red giant, it heats up a lot, and its luminosity increases significantly (source). We don't know exactly how much the Sun's luminosity will increase by at this point. Some estimates put it anywhere between 1000 times greater and 3000 times greater, so for the sake of this, let's just say 2000 times greater.

So, the luminosity of our dying red giant star is about

7.656 × 10^29 Watts.

Unfortunately, Watts is measuring our energy output per second, and we want it overall. So, let's keep going.

Though the red giant period lasts for about a billion years, the increased luminosity is really only toward the end of it, as it comes from the burning of helium into carbon, which goes by much quicker than the hydrogen burning that took up most of the star's life.

So, instead of a billion years, we will go with about ten million years worth of our high luminosity.

Energy = luminosity (watts) × time (seconds)

Energy = (7.656 × 10^29 joules/second) × (3.154 × 10^7 seconds/year) × 10^7 years

Energy = 2.415 × 10^44 joules.

I'm not even gonna try to figure out how many United States that is.

This is only the red giant phase, of course. We still have a bit more to look at.

Though there is no fusion involved or anything, the planetary nebula ejection still outputs a lot of kinetic energy, which we can thankfully calculate relatively easily. We only need the mass and the velocity.

For mass, we're looking at about 40% of the Sun's original mass being sent out into space (source), so about 7.9536 × 10^29 (source).

For velocity, we're looking at about 20 km/s, or 20,000 m/s (source).

Another note: 1 joule = 1 kg × (m/s)^2

Now, onto kinetic energy:

E = 0.5 × mass × velocity^2

E = 0.5 × (7.9536 × 10^29 kg) × (20,000 m/s)^2

E = 1.591 × 10^38 joules.

That's a lot of energy, but in terms of stellar and astrophysics things, it's not actually that much lol. Still, now we know it.

Lastly, we have the white dwarf phase. Now, once a star is a white dwarf, its death is essentially already done. All that would be left in terms of energy for this white dwarf phase would be the energy that is output as it is cooling. Certainly, this is a lot of energy, but it isn't really enough to make much of a dent in our calculations, especially since it is happening over the course of billions of years.

So, our final number for the amount of energy output by the Sun in its death is about:

2.415 × 10^44 joules.

Our planetary nebula ejection number (1.591 × 10^38 joules) is so insignificant against this number that adding it changes literally nothing.

This is just one Sun, though. We need a thousand.

So, if we want to quantify the amount of power that Sentry has, knowing that it is the power of "a thousand exploding Suns," we can say that it is about:

2.415 × 10^47 joules.

This is more energy than the Sun will output over its entire lifetime, and by quite a lot.

Now, one thing may have caught your attention through all of this.

The idea of "exploding star" evokes a very particular image, and it is certainly not that of a star turning red and expanding and contracting over the course of a billion years. When you hear "exploding star," you don't think red giant; you think supernova.

The thing is, most stars don't go supernova. Our Sun is not nearly massive enough to go supernova. It would need a mass at least eight times that which it has to even have a possibility of going supernova.

However, supernovae have a general amount of energy that they output when they occur, in the ballpark of about 10^44 joules (source). Multiply this by 1000, and you get about the answer we already found (10^47 joules).

The exciting thing about a supernova explosion is not just the amount of energy that it outputs, but the speed at which it does so. The fact that the Sun cannot go supernova, and therefore cannot explode, will not affect our final answer in any way but vibes.

And so, we come to our not-at-all-peer-reviewed, done at midnight, completely without double-checking my work, final answer.

MCU Sentry, with the power of "a thousand exploding Suns," has the power roughly equivalent to 2.415 × 10^47 joules.

Or:

241,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules.

For reference, in 2019, the world total electricity consumption was about 22,848 TWh (source), or about 8.225 × 10^19 joules. This means that Sentry's power is equivalent to about how much energy the entire world uses in a year, 2.936 octillion times over (or 2.936 × 10^27).

Considering this is (I think) representative of his power level and not something like the total amount of power he can use ever, it's safe to say that, even if it is the power of a thousand exploding Suns rather than a million, MCU Sentry is still pretty strong, all things considered.

Anyway, if you find anything in particular that is grievously wrong with this, feel free to let me know. I did this in like under two hours.

POV: They don't know I've got 2.415 × 10^47 joules worth of power inside me (except they kinda do lol)

[evienyx]

Calculating Sentry's Power Level (with science!!!)

In Thunderbolts*, we are told rather explicitly that Sentry has "the power of a thousand exploding suns." I have seen this used a lot when discussing how he might measure up against other beings within the MCU.

Now, I have no real way of calculating or quantifying the power of someone like Wanda or Loki or anyone like that. For Bob, though, we might actually be able to find a number. What would this number mean? Unimportant, this is just for fun, so don't take anything as gospel either because I'm barely checking my math here and am just stream-of-consciousness-ing this thing.

Okay, so, let's figure out just how much power Bob has (spoiler: it's so much omg lmao). My man is stressed and doesn't wanna know but that's too damn bad okay here we go.

To start, let's look at how much energy, or power, the Sun outputs.

When it comes to stars, their power output is referred to as their luminosity, and is measured in Watts (also known as Joules/second, or the energy output every second).

The Sun's luminosity is about 3.828 × 10^26 Watts. (source)

For reference, the total U.S. electricity consumption in 2022 was about 4.07 trillion kWh (or about 1.4652 × 10^19 Joules) (source). Dividing our Sun's luminosity of 3.828 × 10^26 Joules/second by this, we can find that the Sun outputs enough energy to power the U.S. for a year 26,126,126 times over, every second.

So, a lot of power.

This alone would pack quite a punch. However, we are not looking at the power of just one Sun, but of 1000. So, we multiply our Luminosity by 1000, and can also multiply our number of United States as well to find that our power output is now

3.828 × 10^29 Watts, or 26,126,126,000 United States (in a year, every second).

Even now, though, we aren't getting the whole picture. After all, Sentry's power isn't "the power of a thousand Suns." It's "the power of a thousand exploding Suns." Therefore, we need to look at the amount of energy that the Sun would output at the end of its life.

In astronomy, stars are categorized based off of their luminosity and their surface temperature, as well as color (source). The majority of stars (as in about 90%) fall into the "main sequence," while the other 10% are made up white dwarfs, giants, and supergiants. They are organized in what is known as the Hertzprung-Russell (HR) diagram, shown below.

Our Sun is what is known as a G-Type (yellow) star. It is a very average star (which is a good thing). For average stars, their life comes to an end when they run out of excess hydrogen to use for nuclear fusion (the process of fusing hydrogen atoms into helium, which releases immense energy and powers the star). Once that hydrogen runs out, the star begins to collapse.

This collapse, however, produces more heat, so that the star can then create essentially a burning shell of its little remaining hydrogen that wraps around the star's core. This shell causes the outer layers of the star to expand rapidly, turning the star into a red giant, which will consume its helium until it is gone, and collapse and expand again.

As material continues to be ejected from the red giant, it also forms a planetary nebula around the dying star. After about a billion years, it will run out of material and the inner core of the star will be exposed. At this point, the star is left as a white dwarf (source).

Now, that was a lot, and a lot of energy was involved, but there are three main parts of the G-Type star's death: the red giant, the planetary nebula ejection, and the white dwarf.

When a star expands into a red giant, it heats up a lot, and its luminosity increases significantly (source). We don't know exactly how much the Sun's luminosity will increase by at this point. Some estimates put it anywhere between 1000 times greater and 3000 times greater, so for the sake of this, let's just say 2000 times greater.

So, the luminosity of our dying red giant star is about

7.656 × 10^29 Watts.

Unfortunately, Watts is measuring our energy output per second, and we want it overall. So, let's keep going.

Though the red giant period lasts for about a billion years, the increased luminosity is really only toward the end of it, as it comes from the burning of helium into carbon, which goes by much quicker than the hydrogen burning that took up most of the star's life.

So, instead of a billion years, we will go with about ten million years worth of our high luminosity.

Energy = luminosity (watts) × time (seconds)

Energy = (7.656 × 10^29 joules/second) × (3.154 × 10^7 seconds/year) × 10^7 years

Energy = 2.415 × 10^44 joules.

I'm not even gonna try to figure out how many United States that is.

This is only the red giant phase, of course. We still have a bit more to look at.

Though there is no fusion involved or anything, the planetary nebula ejection still outputs a lot of kinetic energy, which we can thankfully calculate relatively easily. We only need the mass and the velocity.

For mass, we're looking at about 40% of the Sun's original mass being sent out into space (source), so about 7.9536 × 10^29 (source).

For velocity, we're looking at about 20 km/s, or 20,000 m/s (source).

Another note: 1 joule = 1 kg × (m/s)^2

Now, onto kinetic energy:

E = 0.5 × mass × velocity^2

E = 0.5 × (7.9536 × 10^29 kg) × (20,000 m/s)^2

E = 1.591 × 10^38 joules.

That's a lot of energy, but in terms of stellar and astrophysics things, it's not actually that much lol. Still, now we know it.

Lastly, we have the white dwarf phase. Now, once a star is a white dwarf, its death is essentially already done. All that would be left in terms of energy for this white dwarf phase would be the energy that is output as it is cooling. Certainly, this is a lot of energy, but it isn't really enough to make much of a dent in our calculations, especially since it is happening over the course of billions of years.

So, our final number for the amount of energy output by the Sun in its death is about:

2.415 × 10^44 joules.

Our planetary nebula ejection number (1.591 × 10^38 joules) is so insignificant against this number that adding it changes literally nothing.

This is just one Sun, though. We need a thousand.

So, if we want to quantify the amount of power that Sentry has, knowing that it is the power of "a thousand exploding Suns," we can say that it is about:

2.415 × 10^47 joules.

This is more energy than the Sun will output over its entire lifetime, and by quite a lot.

Now, one thing may have caught your attention through all of this.

The idea of "exploding star" evokes a very particular image, and it is certainly not that of a star turning red and expanding and contracting over the course of a billion years. When you hear "exploding star," you don't think red giant; you think supernova.

The thing is, most stars don't go supernova. Our Sun is not nearly massive enough to go supernova. It would need a mass at least eight times that which it has to even have a possibility of going supernova.

However, supernovae have a general amount of energy that they output when they occur, in the ballpark of about 10^44 joules (source). Multiply this by 1000, and you get about the answer we already found (10^47 joules).

The exciting thing about a supernova explosion is not just the amount of energy that it outputs, but the speed at which it does so. The fact that the Sun cannot go supernova, and therefore cannot explode, will not affect our final answer in any way but vibes.

And so, we come to our not-at-all-peer-reviewed, done at midnight, completely without double-checking my work, final answer.

MCU Sentry, with the power of "a thousand exploding Suns," has the power roughly equivalent to 2.415 × 10^47 joules.

Or:

241,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules.

For reference, in 2019, the world total electricity consumption was about 22,848 TWh (source), or about 8.225 × 10^19 joules. This means that Sentry's power is equivalent to about how much energy the entire world uses in a year, 2.936 octillion times over (or 2.936 × 10^27).

Considering this is (I think) representative of his power level and not something like the total amount of power he can use ever, it's safe to say that, even if it is the power of a thousand exploding Suns rather than a million, MCU Sentry is still pretty strong, all things considered.

Anyway, if you find anything in particular that is grievously wrong with this, feel free to let me know. I did this in like under two hours.

Read next: Sentry Vs. The Avengers (with science!)

POV: They don't know I've got 2.415 × 10^47 joules worth of power inside me (except they kinda do lol)