Physics behind Supernovae

   Viewing a supernova  the energy released can be up to about 10 Billion solar luminosities, a unit of power measurement with a single luminosities equal to about 3.828 X 10^26 (W or J/s). The shear amount of energy can be estimated just by thinking about the components in an explosion, the explosion would be equal to the gravitational energy of two massive dense stars colliding or the gravitational and heat energy of a super-massive Red-Supergiant, this is also why if to much gravitational energy is present it essentially skips the supernova straight to collapsing to a black hole.