#like math and science stuff

[pidgefudge]

idk where i read this but a special interest really is the lens through which you view the world. or at least mine is

[piles-of-numbers]

you either die a mathematician or live long enough to see yourself become a computer scientist

[spirkbitch]

(Didn’t include tas since it’s pretty much just tos but animated)

Put in the tags what you think your job/role would be too (because I think it would be fun)

[anxietyfrappuccino]

i'm the kind of nerd that enjoys all the different kinds of nerd stuff but i could not tell you a single thing about any of it, i am a black hole of "oh, that's cool" and then it's gone

[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)

[askblueandviolet]

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[buggbuzz]

orgo 2 exam #3 tomorrow 😭😭 a little behind on studying but i still have time in the morning cause all i need to do really is the practice exam.

just wish i knew what's gonna be on the exam's reference sheet because theres like 25 complex reactions w/ unique reagents and rules i have to memorize on top of other stuff 💀

but considering i got a 79% on exam 2 with relatively similar study methods i should be okay!! i just want this to be over already 🙏

[unnonexistence]

one of my friends is a biologist & i was really amused hearing some of her stories yesterday because they put into context just how believable newt's kaiju drift is as Shit A Biologist Would Do. like my friend has personally met both a guy who got infected with a botfly larva and didn't do anything to remove it (because he just didn't mind), and another guy who identified a tapeworm species by intentionally exposing himself to it (he had it narrowed down to 2 species and needed to know if it was the one that would infect humans) (it was)

[gridgamesgalore]

im afraid my evil classmates are out to get me

[dykegeology]

Stuff that's like 'we want to increase representation of women + people of colour in science' and it's like yay awesome so you're you're going to do stuff about systemic discrimination, and racist and misogynistic views about only white men being good at academic stuff right??? and they're like 'lol noooo we are just looking at doing more focus on scientific communication rather than maths and programming because everyone knows only white men can do those things, and women and people of colour hate data and love Community' and it's like wow what if I put 10000 funnelweb spiders in your house

[sapphorror]

my top controversial Zim headcanon is that Zim actually performs absurdly well at skool because

1. he's a perfectionist with a compulsive reaction to ANY system of scoring

2. I 100% believe test scores are this guy's forte because he had to become an Invader SOMEHOW and he sure as hell wasn't passing based on the practical

3. He has hyper-advanced alien AI to do his homework for him. like come on.

meanwhile Dib is really only scraping by on raw intelligence and the inherent educational advantage of having a mad scientist father. He doesn't have TIME to study, there's an evil alien he has to stalk and besides, you know what's better than a high school diploma? The Nobel Peace Prize for proving the existence of extraterrestrial life.

[thebardbullseye]

hot take ame is the interdisciplinary studies major of the coven of elders

[caffeiiine]

i love math so much holy fuck, especially when it makes sense it’s sooo everything🫶🫶

i feel like it has a good deal to do with the fact it’s all logic and everything connects back to something else.

[loser-pet]

school is kicking our collective asses time to sleep for 10 hours and be lazy and regret not doing schoolwork wheeeeee

(more context in tags cuz we feel like it lol)

-K (📺📚, 🍁☮️)

[cleradinthealps]

chemistry major max mayfield is so real to me

[muontron]

It’s so hard to be exceptional while being normal in a family full of exceptional people . and I really don’t wanna seem like that “smart kid that complains over getting a 98% instead of 100” but those 2 points really matter in the grand scheme of things especially when the 98 is instead an 88 and when I have a pathetic average of Bs and the occasional A and whatever seems so bad compared to my genius family members and it sucks that because of one singular weakness I’ll never be as good as them, when I was raised so well qwith so many more opportunities than them anf yet I still do worse. why? ill never know and it’s making it hard to give it my all