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.<p>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.<p>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).<p>Also likely want to make clear that are assuming that power level was uniform in all directions from the source, that is, not just <i>beamed</i> in a narrow beam pointed at earth.<p>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.