Soft Does Not Mean Faint
The designation "soft" in soft gamma ray repeaters does not mean faint in intensity. It refers to the energy
of the individual photons in the burst, not their number. The intensity is quite large, so the total
energy emitted is large;
average SGRs can emit as much energy in a second
as the Sun emits in a year, and the strongest SGR event recorded was one thousand times stronger than such
average bursts.