Depending on the evaluation method, the answer to the question about the largest explosion on Earth (excluding artificial explosions) may vary.
The largest explosion originating from Earth is attributed to the Youngest Toba Tuff volcanic eruption, which caused climate change over 70,000 years ago. Meanwhile, the largest explosion from extraterrestrial sources, evidenced by an asteroid impact, occurred 2 billion years ago, stronger than the event that wiped out the dinosaurs. Additionally, it is hypothesized that the collision between Earth and a planet-sized object 4.5 billion years ago may have created the Moon, releasing energy levels that surpassed any other event on our blue planet.
In 1815, the Tambora volcano in Indonesia erupted. Today, climbers can reach the summit of this massive caldera. (Photo: Muhammad Rinandar Taysa/EyeEm)
The Largest Explosion Originating from Earth
The largest recorded volcanic eruption occurred in Indonesia in 1815, when the summit of the Tambora volcano, standing at 4,000 meters, erupted, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory. Thermal measurements indicate that Tambora erupted with a force equivalent to 800 million tons of TNT, as stated by volcanologist Shanaka de Silva from Oregon State University.
The sound of the violent explosion was heard as far away as Sumatra, over 2,600 km away, according to the Geological Society of London. NASA reported that the material ejected by Tambora into the atmosphere blocked so much sunlight that it caused global cooling, leading to the “Year Without a Summer” in 1816. That summer, snow fell in New England, and chilling rains poured down across Europe, as noted by the Atmospheric Research University Association. De Silva mentioned that the eruption could have been responsible for colder winters and summers in Europe for several years, leading to famines in various parts of the world.
However, scientists have also found evidence of more intense eruptions than Tambora in prehistoric times, when no measuring instruments existed. Among these, the strongest was the Youngest Toba Tuff eruption that occurred 74,000 years ago in what is now Indonesia. This eruption was equivalent to hundreds to millions of trillions of tons of TNT. The event could have caused significant global cooling, impacting the growing seasons of plants.
De Silva notes that the aforementioned volcanic eruptions are only events with verified evidence. It is possible that similar or even larger eruptions occurred, especially during Earth’s early history.
The aftermath of the Tunguska event in Siberia in 1908. (Photo: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group)
The Largest Explosion from Extraterrestrial Sources
The largest recorded explosion from extraterrestrial sources occurred in Siberia in 1908: the Tunguska event. Scientists believe that a meteorite exploded in the atmosphere, releasing energy equivalent to 10-30 million tons of TNT. The explosion flattened over 80 million trees, and people as far as 500 km away still heard the deafening blast, according to the Planetary Science Institute.
However, prehistoric evidence holds records of much more catastrophic events, including the largest impact crater in the world, Vredefort in South Africa. Only the central part, 159 km wide, of this 2 billion-year-old impact crater remains, while estimates suggest that the original crater had a diameter of about 250 km, according to Miki Nakajima, a planetary scientist at the University of Rochester. This makes Vredefort the largest impact event with clear evidence on Earth.
In a study published in 2022, Nakajima and colleagues estimated that the Vredefort asteroid released energy equivalent to 660 trillion tons of TNT, equal to 44 billion Hiroshima bombs.
After the impact, Earth would have endured catastrophic floods, possibly including a massive tsunami, short-term global cooling due to dust and aerosols filling the atmosphere, and long-term global warming due to CO2 and water vapor causing a greenhouse effect. These climatic impacts could have led to mass extinctions of photosynthetic bacteria.
Furthermore, the Moon may provide evidence of the largest explosive energy release in Earth’s history. According to a leading hypothesis about the Moon’s formation, a Mars-sized body collided with the young Earth, ejecting material into orbit. Nakajima stated that such a collision was equivalent to about 5.1 trillion trillion tons of TNT or 340 million trillion Hiroshima bombs.
This violent event may have melted the entire crust of Earth, leaving no geological signs of the impact or previous collisions, according to Nakajima. Therefore, while scientists cannot rule out the possibility that larger collisions occurred before, geochemical evidence suggests that no other explosion since then has matched such magnitude.
