Convert Petawatts to Ergs per Second

Convert Petawatts (PW) to Ergs per Second (erg/s) instantly and accurately.

Conversion Formula

erg/s = PW × 1.000000000e+22

About Petawatts

A petawatt (PW) is 10¹⁵ W. Total solar power intercepted by Earth is ~174 PW. The world's most powerful laser pulses operate at petawatt peak power via chirped pulse amplification (CPA, 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics): China's SULF demonstrated 10 PW in 2019; ELI-NP targets 10 PW. These PW pulses last femtoseconds and create plasma temperatures of billions of kelvin in laboratory targets. Gamma-ray bursts radiate 10²⁴-10²⁷ W at peak - thousands to billions of times the petawatt scale. 1 PW = 10¹⁵ W.

About Ergs per Second

An erg per second (erg/s) is the CGS unit of power - exactly 10⁻⁷ W. Despite SI adoption, erg/s persists in astrophysics: the Sun's total luminosity is 3.828 × 10³³ erg/s; a peak supernova radiates ~10⁴³ erg/s - more power than the Sun emits over its 10-billion-year lifetime. X-ray binaries, active galactic nuclei, and neutron star accretion rates are catalogued in erg/s across decades of archival literature. 1 erg/s = 10⁻⁷ W.

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