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Tonga: Volcanic eruption was apparently much more powerful than Hiroshima atomic bomb

2022-01-25T08:52:15.971Z


The eruption of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai volcano was one of the world's most powerful eruptions in decades. According to NASA, significantly more mechanical energy was released than when the Hiroshima atomic bomb exploded.


Enlarge image

The satellite image shows the eruption of the volcano Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai

Photo: HANDOUT/AFP

According to NASA, the massive eruption of a submarine volcano off Tonga in the Pacific was several hundred times stronger than the explosive force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

"This is a preliminary estimate, but we believe that the amount of energy released by the eruption was equivalent to about 4 to 18 megatons of TNT," the US space agency Nasa quoted its scientist Jim Garvin as saying.

The explosion released hundreds of times more mechanical energy than the nuclear explosion that largely destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.

According to government figures, an estimated 84 percent of the approximately 105,000 residents on all of Tonga's islands have been affected by the ash rain and the tsunami.

The broadcaster Radio New Zealand reported that there was concern that many people in the South Seas state had suffered psychological trauma from what they had experienced.

A reporter at the scene said scores of people were still visibly shocked: "Some people just stare straight ahead."

Eruption triggered tsunamis

The submarine Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai, just 40 miles north of Tonga's capital Nuku'alofa, erupted ten days ago, sending a gigantic cloud of ash and gas miles high like a mushroom cloud.

According to experts, it was one of the world's most powerful eruptions in decades.

Tonga's government has so far confirmed three dead and several injured.

Satellite images show that an island that was only created in 2015 during a month-long eruption of the volcano has completely disappeared.

The island was "wiped out" by the eruption, according to NASA.

Only two small, separate land masses remain.

The eruption triggered a tsunami that reached as far away as Alaska, Japan and South America.

Tidal waves are usually triggered by seaquakes - only rarely by submarine volcanoes.

According to New Zealand researcher Emily Lane, it was the first volcanic-triggered Pacific-wide tsunami since Indonesia's devastating 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, which killed an estimated 36,000 people.

bam/dpa

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2022-01-25

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