Satellite images: All images were taken with the kind permission of © 2022 Maxar Technologies via AP.

The Tonga eruption is potentially 15,000 times more explosive than the atomic bombs which the US dropped on Hiroshima in Japan in August 1945 which it estimated would yield 15 kilotons of energy (15.000 tons).

‘The blast released hundreds of times the equivalent mechanical energy of the Hiroshima nuclear explosion,’ s nuclear blast,’ NASA said in a statement.

‘This is a preliminary estimate, but we think the amount of energy released by the eruption was equivalent to somewhere between 4 to 18 megatons of TNT,’ said Jim Garvin, chief scientist at NASA’ s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Tsunami warnings extended as far away as the US Pacific Coast and the detonation played out as far away as Alaska.



NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and space research. (wikipedia)


2022 Hunga Tonga eruption and tsunami

A very large eruption of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai, a volcanic island of Tonga in the Pacific Ocean, began on 14 January 2022. Hunga Tonga is 65 km north of Tongatapu, the country’s main island. (wikipedia)


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