Black Hole Flare Is Biggest and Most Distant Seen
caltech.edu
caltech.edu
It's a great journalistic quote, but the implication here is that the star's entire mass is being converted to energy as part of this process, which it very obviously isn't. (The black hole is net-gaining mass as a result of all this.)
So if only 1/30 of the star’s mass was converted to energy, the quote would be correct (and possibly even an understatement).
Converting the whole sun to energy gives us a term lets say, X Joules.
It sounds like they're trying to say that much energy pours out of the flare every... second? Or do they just mean since we started observing it, until now, it has ticked up to X?
As if the star had any agency in that.