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as I have thought with the other numerous "boiled earth" comparisons i've read in the past few weeks : who cares? In what case is this a useful way to describe something to anyone? since when does a laymen comprehend the size of the earth in any meaningful way?

aside : it's funny how many wordy multi-step unit conversion comparisons have flooded the discussion space post-LLM... I'm sure that's unrelated.

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I find multiples of the amount of energy needed to vaporize our oceans a useful unit of energy because 8.5 x 10^27 joules is too abstract.

It's just like 1 AU being the average Sun-Earth distance. It is easier to comprehend than 149,597,870,700 m when talking about large distances.

Many discussions recently have centered around processes which require tremendous amounts of energy and the vaporized oceans unit provides some more tangible if absurd perspective.

And remember, 1 AU is about 997.3 billion bananas laid end to end.

In a straight line?

Yes, laid end to end, after they've been bent.

If you were to lay them end to then, then bend the them, you'd have a coil of bananas about three to four bananas (bent) in diameter.

How do you define the major axis of a banana?

The longest dimension.

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