User blog comment:Paleomario66/Piccolo's Moon Busting Feat Re-Re-calc/@comment-9261410-20191127180943

This is incorrect. It only takes about 53 quadrillion megatons to destroy the Earth. This is based on the amount needed to overcome the planet's gravitational binding force and keep it from reforming again. Based on that scenario, the Death Star's Superlaser would be a better example.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Beam/DeathStar.html

To destroy the Moon in the same manner, you would need to overcome its gravitational binding force, which is a lot less than Earth's. The Moon also has far less mass than Earth's. If we plug in the correct mass and gravitational escape velocity for the Moon, we come to an amount of roughly just under 30 Trillion Megatons. A supernova is 10 Octillion Megatons. Your amount of 4.82 Yottatons is a complete over-estimation and would have destroyed the Earth with just the shockwaves alone. Yet we don't see that happen so Piccolo's feat is nowhere near large planet level.

Your error is assuming each piece of debris is the same as the Moon itself. Also you used the speed of the debris AFTER the explosion, rather than using the speed needed to overcome its gravitational binding force, which is basically gravitational escape velocity.