The natural world is full of loud noises, from the calls of sperm whales and howler monkeys to the crash of thunder and smashing of waves against rock.
Even mass cicada calls can reach a raucous 120 decibels – as noisy as an aeroplane engine. But what was the loudest noise recorded in history?
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The loudest recorded noise on Earth is often cited as the 1883 eruption of Krakatau – a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait, near what is now called Indonesia.
During an eruption period of more than five months, its eruptions on the 27th August were the deadliest in recorded history.
The third explosion that day is the loudest noise recorded in history. While it’s impossible to give a definitive figure for the noise level, Britannica estimates that it reached 310 decibels.
Experts calculated that the explosion was heard at 180 decibels, 160 kilometres away from the volcano.
For comparison, the noise of a jet aeroplane taking off reaches 150 decibels.
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The eruption was heard in Perth, Australia, (3,100 kilometres away) and Rodrigues, near Mauritius (4,800 kilometres away).
The noise was so loud that it was reported to have ruptured the eardrums of sailors stationed on RMS Norham Castle, which was near Sumatra approximately 64 kilometres away.
The resulting pressure wave was recorded on barographs around the world, with data suggesting that it rounded the globe three and a half times.
Pyroclastic flows, volcanic ash and tsunamis changed some of the surrounding landscape forever. Coral was thrown onto the shores of nearby islands and land in Banten, around 80 kilometres away, was never repopulated. It later became the Ujung Kulon National Park, which is now home to the Javan rhino – one of the world’s rarest animals.
Top image: view from Puerto Montt, southern Chile, of a high column of ash and lava spewing from the Calbuco volcano, on 22nd April 2015. Credit: DIEGO MAIN/ATON CHILE/AFP via Getty Images
