Think Your Headphones Are Loud?
THESE SOUNDS PUT THAT TO SHAME
Most of us think we’ve experienced “loud”: a front row seat at a rock concert, a jetliner taking off, or a fire alarm blaring in a small room. But those everyday rumbles don’t come close to the Earth’s loudest sounds that have shattered records, and in some cases, been heard across entire oceans. Krakatoa’s Earth-Shattering Blast In 1883, the volcanic island of Krakatoa in Indonesia exploded in a detonation so violent that it obliterated most of the island and generated tsunamis that killed more than 36,000 people. People heard the sound from over 3,000 miles away, as far as Mauritius and Australia. At an estimated 310 decibels (dB), Krakatoa’s roar remains the loudest sound human ears and instruments have ever recorded. To put that in perspective, even 150 dB can rupture eardrums. Krakatoa more than doubled that. Tsar Bomba: The Loudest Human-Made Explosion Tsar Bomba was almost as intense as Krakatoa, but humans created this one. Detonated by the Soviet Union in 1961, this hydrogen bomb released the energy of 50 megatons of TNT. The blast was measured around 224 dB, enough to flatten buildings hundreds of miles away and break windows across Northern Europe. The mushroom cloud rose to over 40 miles high. The Mysterious Oceanic ‘Bloop’ In 1997, underwater microphones in the South Pacific picked up an ultra-low-frequency sound dubbed the “Bloop.” It was so loud it could be detected over 3,000 miles away. At first, the unexplained noise caused people to speculate about unknown sea monsters. But scientists later attributed it to an icequake, or giant icebergs cracking and shifting in the ocean. Even so, its eerie origin and intensity are fascinating. Cosmic Vibrations Beyond Earth Although sound can’t travel in space’s vacuum, cosmic events still generate wave-like disturbances. In 2003, scientists discovered a black hole in the Perseus galaxy cluster that was emitting pressure waves in space gas — the waves translated into an incredibly deep B-flat, 57 octaves below middle C. If we could “hear” it, it would be an impossibly deep, booming rumble across millions of light-years.
Magic Kingdom Meltdown
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–Sandra B.
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