NASA: Tonga blast was 10 megatons, more powerful than a nuclear bomb

NASA: Tonga blast was 10 megatons, more powerful than a nuclear bomb Researchers who have been studying the volcano since 2015 say it was likely caused by seawater flowing into a chamber filled with magma. NASA researchers have an estimate of the power of a massive volcanic eruption that took place on Saturday near the island nation of Tonga. "We come up with a number that's around 10 megatons of TNT equivalent," James Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told NPR. That means the explosive force was more than 500 times as powerful as the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II. The blast was heard as far away as Alaska and was probably one of the loudest events to occur on Earth in over a century, according to Michael Poland, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey. Wire reports cite the government of Tonga claiming one additional death and even more damage on outlying islands, including Mango island, where all homes have been destroyed. The volcano behind the eruption had been the subject of study by the NASA team in the years running up to this explosive event. Layers of steam and ash eventually connected the island, known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai, to two much older islands on either side of it. Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai was completely destroyed by Saturday's explosion, says Dan Slayback, a research scientist for NASA's Goddard, as well as Science Systems and Applications Inc. Slayback says the blast was so massive it even appears to have taken chunks out of the older islands nearby.