The Sound So Loud That It Circled the Earth Four Times

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http://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/the-soun...four-times

EXCERPT: On August 27, 1883, the Earth let out a noise louder than any it has made since. It was 10:02 a.m. local time when the sound emerged from the island of Krakatoa, which sits between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. It was heard 1,300 miles away in the Andaman and Nicobar islands (“extraordinary sounds were heard, as of guns firing”); 2,000 miles away in New Guinea and Western Australia (“a series of loud reports, resembling those of artillery in a north-westerly direction”); and even 3,000 miles away in the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues, near Mauritius (“coming from the eastward, like the distant roar of heavy guns.”

[...] So what could possibly create such an earth-shatteringly loud bang? A volcano on Krakatoa had just erupted with a force so great that it tore the island apart, emitting a plume of smoke that reached 17 miles into the atmosphere, according to a geologist who witnessed it. You could use this observation to calculate that stuff spewed out of the volcano at over 1,600 miles per hour—or nearly half a mile per second. That’s more than twice the speed of sound.

This explosion created a deadly tsunami with waves over 100 feet (30 meters) in height. One hundred sixty-five coastal villages and settlements were swept away and entirely destroyed. In all, the Dutch (the colonial rulers of Indonesia at the time) estimated the death toll at 36,417, while other estimates exceed 120,000.

[...] In all, the pressure waves from Krakatoa circled the globe three to four times in each direction. (Each city felt up to seven pressure spikes because they experienced shock waves traveling in opposite directions from the volcano.) Meanwhile, tidal stations as far away as India, England, and San Francisco measured a rise in ocean waves simultaneous with this air pulse, an effect that had never been seen before. It was a sound that could no longer be heard but that continued moving around the world, a phenomenon that people nicknamed “the great air-wave....”
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