Angelic energy consumption

[_NorthboundZax]

I just had a fanciful thought that I felt like pursuing. If angels and gods are physical, they need energy to operate. Can we answer the question, “how much would an angel need to eat?”

If we start with the notion that celestialized resurrected beings appear brighter than the noonday sun (Joseph Smith’s description of Moroni and Jesus), we can make an order of magnitude evaluation of the minimum amount of required energy consumption.

The Sun’s power output is 4 x 10^26 W. The radiance experienced by an observer depends on the distance squared from the emitter. So,

Eangel/Dangel^2 ~ Esun/Dsun^2
where E is energy and D is distance.

The Earth-sun distance is ~150 million km. If we assume the distance between Joseph Smith and Moroni was about 2 meters, the only unknown in the above relationship is Eangel. Plugging in other values, we find that Moroni is using ~7GW to produce his aura.

People working in the Antarctic often keep their energy up by consuming chocolate bars and other high energy foods. A 2oz snickers bar has 270 Cal or 1100kJ. For Moroni to keep up his light emission, he would need to consume 60,000 snickers bars per second. Clearly, for Moroni to keep his energy up, he needs something with a bit more punch than Snickers bars, like uranium. Moroni would only need to consume the equivalence of one Hiroshima atomic bomb every 20 minutes or so. That should relieve him of enough time to stop eating snickers bars and quote some Jeremiah to the young Joseph.

Another way to look at it is, if a typical human uses 2000 Cal or energy per day, Moroni uses a similar amount of energy as 700,000,000 people. There are about 7 billion people on the planet, so ten angels require the same amount of food as all the people on Earth. As the ushering in of the millenium is said to bring many angels to Earth, it could ultimately prove to be Earth’s largest environmental disaster since Chixulub.

[_just me]

Angels get their energy from the sun and the sun gets its energy from Jesus.

[_Simon Belmont]

Photoangelicsynthesis.

[_bcspace]

I've seen flashes of light on a movie screen or a computer monitor that appear as as bright or brighter than the sun and I've had to look away just as quickly. Also, I don't think you would like to look into my pocket laser pointer which requires only two AA batteries. So I think to achieve the effect need not require as much energy as you specify.

In addition, a fusion reaction can produce many times more energy per unit mass than a fission reaction whcih themselves produce far more than standard chemical reactions. And then there are matter-antimatter reactions which produce far more energy than fusion, so I think the available energy is there.

[_harmony]

Whoa. This is way past Physics 333 (Physics for Nonmajors... or as we called it, Physics for Dummies).

[_NorthboundZax]

. And then there are matter-antimatter reactions which produce far more energy than fusion, so I think the available energy is there.

Maybe you've just solved the anti-matter deficit problem for the universe - Moroni and the Archangels ate it all.

[_NorthboundZax]

Angels get their energy from the sun and the sun gets its energy from Jesus.

Jesus is gonna need a lot more loaves and fishes to keep that going.

[_just me]

Angels get their energy from the sun and the sun gets its energy from Jesus.

Jesus is gonna need a lot more loaves and fishes to keep that going.

Bwahaha! He can make a little go a looooooong way.

[Guest]

I just had a fanciful thought that I felt like pursuing. If angels and gods are physical, they need energy to operate. Can we answer the question, “how much would an angel need to eat?”

If we start with the notion that celestialized resurrected beings appear brighter than the noonday sun (Joseph Smith’s description of Moroni and Jesus), we can make an order of magnitude evaluation of the minimum amount of required energy consumption.

The Sun’s power output is 4 x 10^26 W. The radiance experienced by an observer depends on the distance squared from the emitter. So,

Eangel/Dangel^2 ~ Esun/Dsun^2
where E is energy and D is distance.

The Earth-sun distance is ~150 million km. If we assume the distance between Joseph Smith and Moroni was about 2 meters, the only unknown in the above relationship is Eangel. Plugging in other values, we find that Moroni is using ~7GW to produce his aura.

People working in the Antarctic often keep their energy up by consuming chocolate bars and other high energy foods. A 2oz snickers bar has 270 Cal or 1100kJ. For Moroni to keep up his light emission, he would need to consume 60,000 snickers bars per second. Clearly, for Moroni to keep his energy up, he needs something with a bit more punch than Snickers bars, like uranium. Moroni would only need to consume the equivalence of one Hiroshima atomic bomb every 20 minutes or so. That should relieve him of enough time to stop eating snickers bars and quote some Jeremiah to the young Joseph.

Another way to look at it is, if a typical human uses 2000 Cal or energy per day, Moroni uses a similar amount of energy as 700,000,000 people. There are about 7 billion people on the planet, so ten angels require the same amount of food as all the people on Earth. As the ushering in of the millenium is said to bring many angels to Earth, it could ultimately prove to be Earth’s largest environmental disaster since Chixulub.

I like your idea here, but I don't agree with your assumptions. Your values are way too high. Instead of doing all of the fancy calculations, all you really needed to do was to look up the incident solar energy on the surface of the Earth when (or where) the center of the sun is normal to the surface of the Earth (noon day sun).

This is one of the numbers that many scientists and engineers are familiar with and it is easy to remember. It works out to approximately 1000 Watts/square meter (also known as the standard sun to solar energy geeks).

http://www.factsaboutsolarenergy.us/solar-energy-facts.html

Assuming that these heavenly beings had a cross section that was approximately two meters (tall) by one half a meter (wide), they would have a cross section area of (imagine that) 1 square meter. [Let's let them be tall, slim guys with heavenly bodies].

So, they would only have to radiate about 1 kW or so (in the forward direction and spread over the visible spectrum).

While that is more than the normal human radiates (in the IR), it is far from 7 GW.

[_NorthboundZax]

I like your idea here, but I don't agree with your assumptions. Your values are way too high. Instead of doing all of the fancy calculations, all you really needed to do was to look up the incident solar energy on the surface of the Earth when the center of the sun is normal to the surface of the Earth (noon day sun).

This is one of the numbers that many scientists and engineers are familiar with and it is easy to remember. It works out to approximately 1000 Watts/square meter (also known as the standard sun to solar energy geeks).

Assuming that these heavenly beings had a cross section that was approximately two meters (tall) by one half a meter (wide), they would have a cross section area of (imagine that) 1 square meter. [Let's let them be tall, slim guys with heavenly bodies].

So, they would only have to radiate about 1 kW or so (in the forward direction and spread over the visible spectrum).

While that is more than the normal human radiates (in the IR), it is far from 7 GW.

My, my - that is embarrassing. I should have thought about an alternative check on the numbers like that. Going back, I see that I neglected to convert km to m in the earth-sun distance. As this goes in a squared term it adjusts things by a power of 6. That makes for 7 kW rather than 7GW. Moroni's metabolism only needs 500 snickers bars a day. Good catch, Dr.

Maybe we should figure out the amount of energy it takes to get from Kolob to Earth and back. Maybe the high energy cost is why they don't make the trip very often.