The article kept saying "as much energy as 500 million suns". They lost me: If they meant "power of 500 million suns", then that's plenty amazing but okay. B

The article kept saying "as much energy as 500 million suns". They lost me: If they meant "power of 500 million suns", then that's plenty amazing but okay. But "energy of 500 million suns" -- wow! Just blew the top off my scale of credibility. That is, for "the energy of 500 millon suns", take the mass of 500 millon suns, and calculate the energy from E = mc^2 and get a big number, especially for some radio waves lasting only a few milliseconds. Of course, with more context, their statement was "powered by as much energy as 500 million suns", so they were working hard to confuse energy and power. Eventually in the article I got the impression that they really meant the "power of 500 million suns" -- big difference between energy and power e.g., the difference between KW and KWh, between Joules and Watts (for people who like MKS units). Also likely want to make clear that are assuming that power level was uniform in all directions from the source, that is, not just beamed in a narrow beam pointed at earth. Also of similar interest is an associated article at that site on detection of a cosmic ray with energy 320 EeV, that is, a well thrown bowling ball.