It wasn't just you....is it just me, or did the explosions get bigger every time?
How on earth did the remote survive the destruction of Earth?
Intriguing. And a little odd. Certainly an example of how not to use an incredibly powerful item.
Gino Strout told me that the scientists who hid the isotope sample probably blew themselves up by accident -- the pyrotechnics were obviously more powerful than they expected. Hence explosion #1 killed or otherwise removed two people, but left their surroundings more or less intact; #2 leveled a house; #3(? we don't know how many steps there might have been in between), a planet; #4 --? Given the gone-and-back-again effect, the isotope seemed to be fracking about with the space-time continuum on a geometrically increasing scale, probably leading to instability in the structure of matter (hence the explosions). However, the isotope and its container (the remote control) may have been protected because they were not in the same space-time 'plane' as the stuff that went boom (or, like Peter in "Heroes", their power radiated outward without directly affecting the source).
Robert "Plot Oddities Explained, 50 cents" M.