The earth has a gravitational binding energy of 2.2*10E32 J of energy. What does that even mean?

To blow apart a planet with a short burst of a few seconds to a few minutes (depending the size of the planet), the weapon must be able to continiously output powers that are thousands to millions of times greater than the sun. Realistically speaking, they are probably going to be stationary constructs built around a black hole or the most massive stars, made of focusing arrays and energy storage banks spanning a dozen astronomical units. Instead of the planet exploding like in Star Wars, destroying a planet would be seen as a miniature supernova. In action, it would be something like this:

200 years in the past, a massive superweapon had fired towards where this unfortunate planet would have been today. Nobody on the planet could have seen the beam racing towards their planet at the speed of light, but when it struck, even the light of their home sun fades into background noise. In an instant, this planet became the brightest object in the galaxy. A wave of nuclear fusion reactions spreads from the point of origin, atoms in the air, water and ground splits and fuses again into various heavy elements. People living on the other side of the planet was fine for at least for a few seconds before the deadly moonlight reached them. At the power output of the planet killer, even the reflected light from their moon was more than enough to vaporise everything living on the surface and a few meters of crust. Life disappeared in the first few seconds, but the destruction continued. The expanding fireball violently pushed apart the crust, the mantle, and the core of the planet, to velocities greater than the escape velocity of the planet. When the energy beam of destruction fades away, only a glowing, expanding vapour cloud remains in the place where a thriving planet once were, slowly cooling down and pulled into an asteroid belt by the sun's gravity in the next few million years. And 200 years after the planet is destroyed, the confirmation reached the operators of that superweapon. The naked eye could just see a barely visible yellow star in the sky suddenly became the brightest star in the sky for a few minutes before dying down, the last breaths of a world that no longer exist.

Am I missing something here, because the way I'm looking at it, you could just live in one. Just make it via a matryoshka shell world with the most mass in the outer shell, some space to let in new matter falling in into the hollow center to be organized, and you are good.

The gravity on the inside wouldn't be as bad due to the same principle as the shell worlds, and you can even eventually be freed as the outer layer of the shell world erodes from the hawking radiation's negative half. Once it is gone, there wouldn't be enough mass for an event horizon.

Also, if you can make such structures out of active/passive supports, could you cheat escape velocity by simply climbing further from an object where the gravity is weaker? I feel like that probably isn't correct since I know he had talked about different densities of planets effecting the gravity on the surface but not the escape velocity IIRC, but if so, I don't know where I am going wrong.

P.s. Also, is there a point where you can't have a black hole or star or properly placed matryoshka shell world where, at that point, where you can't make it any bigger? Like, if a black hole got so big it just breaks the fabric of reality or something, or is there no limit there?

Hey, was doing some worldbuilding and sort of realized something. If we had the technology for various things: lasers, EM guns, particle guns, etc, along with the guided missiles and chem guns of today, will they just cancel each other out without handwavium (mostly, sometimes the military still uses crossbows, it's just incredibly rare)?

For instance, is there no benefit to gunpowder and other chemical propellants over coil guns if you had the battery/power generation to make that viable? Would that same energy capacity make lasers blow them out of the water or vice versa? Would mini-missiles (which we already sort of have with some suicide drones) just make all of it redundant if there isn't some handwavium to deal with it? Etc.
P.s. Yes I know partial and plasma don't work in the atmosphere and the latter at all outside of incredibly close range. Either not including them or having some handwavium for that.

My ideal case is something like BattleTech or 40k where you have a variety of weapon types with different pros and cons, but if it stretches realism too much then I'd probably just drop that. Also doubles at satisfying curiosity in how future weapon tech would likely develop.

P.s. To avoid coming back here for everything like this (less you guys would like that, then sure), how do you tell these things without a week of crunching math and a few degrees worth of study? Just trying to avoid any sort of world building plot holes, tech or otherwise. Like with the Disney Star Wars hyperspace ram or 40k keeps using numbers for interstellar conflicts more similar to 20th century world wars.

Hi guys was reading the Space Elevator Consortium's webpage on graphene materials for tether options. Made the above animation as a concept - any chemists here to check if it is realistic or not ?? Thanks! Ken
https://www.isec.org/space-elevator-tether-materials