Volcanic Eruption That Produced Sound Heard Around The World
- 10 years ago
In 1883, a volcano on the island of Krakatoa erupted and emitted a noise so loud it was heard by people all over the world.
Imagine a sound so loud, that people at 50 different geographical locations around the world all heard it.
That's exactly what happened on August 27th, 1883. At 10:02 a.m. a volcano on the island of Krakatoa erupted.
Krakatoa is located between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia.
The force of the eruption was so great, it split the island in two, and produced a gun-shot-like sound heard as far as roughly 3000 miles away.
The explosion reached 172 decibels even when 100 miles away from the island. What makes that so astounding is that the human pain threshold is 130 decibels.
According to a ship’s captain about 40 miles from Krakatoa at the time, many of his crews' ear-drums were "shattered."
As the sound waves from the explosion travelled around the Earth, it was powerful enough to change the air pressure, as recorded by multiple weather station barometers.
For up to five days after the eruption, the pressure would spike approximately every 34 hours in different cities, that time being about how long it takes for sound waves to travel around the globe.
It just goes to show there are more to natural disasters than what meets the eye, because in this case, it was our ears.
Imagine a sound so loud, that people at 50 different geographical locations around the world all heard it.
That's exactly what happened on August 27th, 1883. At 10:02 a.m. a volcano on the island of Krakatoa erupted.
Krakatoa is located between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia.
The force of the eruption was so great, it split the island in two, and produced a gun-shot-like sound heard as far as roughly 3000 miles away.
The explosion reached 172 decibels even when 100 miles away from the island. What makes that so astounding is that the human pain threshold is 130 decibels.
According to a ship’s captain about 40 miles from Krakatoa at the time, many of his crews' ear-drums were "shattered."
As the sound waves from the explosion travelled around the Earth, it was powerful enough to change the air pressure, as recorded by multiple weather station barometers.
For up to five days after the eruption, the pressure would spike approximately every 34 hours in different cities, that time being about how long it takes for sound waves to travel around the globe.
It just goes to show there are more to natural disasters than what meets the eye, because in this case, it was our ears.