• Question: what is the biggest explosin been on earth?

    Asked by donjoshy to Chris, Emily, Martin, Natalie, Tamsin on 24 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Martin Coath

      Martin Coath answered on 24 Mar 2010:

      I will have to check this out. But about 1600 BC (that is more than three and a half thousand years ago – in the Bronze age) an island with a volcano in the middle called Santorini (find it on google earth – you can still see the remains of the crater) just went BANG!

      I am not kidding – the whole island! That was a very big explosion. Could be the biggest. It was a long time ago so difficult to measure.

      Of course scientists think that the moon and earth were formed when two planets collided and the moon and earth condensed from the wreckage. Two PLANETS COLLIDING!

      This is not really an explosion of course but still – what a sight if you were floating somewhere half way to mars and watching it!

    • Photo: Chris Cooper

      Chris Cooper answered on 24 Mar 2010:

      W don’t know because some could have been in the past and left no remaining mark.

      But it will almost certainly have been caused by an asteroid hitting the planet. A really big one hit Mexico and wiped out the dinosaurs.

      http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/dinosaur-killing-asteroid-100304.html

      The biggest one recently hit Russia in 1908 (fortunately where there were no people) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

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