Foe (unit of energy)

A foe is a unit of energy equal to 10⁴⁴ joules or 10⁵¹ ergs, used to measure the large amount of energy produced by a supernova. [cite journal |author=Hartmann DH |title=Afterglows from the largest explosions in the universe |journal=Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. |volume=96 |issue=9 |pages=4752–5 |year=1999 |month=April |pmid=10220364 |doi= |url=http://www.pnas.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=10220364]

The word is an acronym derived from the phrase [ten to the power] fifty-one ergs. [cite web
url=http://library.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/getfile?25-14.pdf
title=Neutrinos and Supernovae
author=Marc Herant, Stirling A. Colgate, Willy Benz, and Chris Fryer
date=October 25 1997
work=Los Alamos Sciences
publisher=Los Alamos National Laboratory
accessdate=2008-04-23] It was coined by Gerald Brown of Stony Brook University in his work with Hans Bethe, because "it came up often enough in our work". [cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=HaL-NNHBmM0C
title=Hans Bethe and His Physics
author=Gerald Brown
year=2006
publisher=World Scientific
isbn=9812566090]

This unit of measure is convenient because a supernova typically releases about one foe of observable energy in a very short period (which can be measured in seconds). In comparison, if the Sun had its current luminosity throughout its entire lifetime, it would produce 3.827e|26 W × 10¹⁰ years ≈ 1.2 foe.

References