The atmospheric plume from an underwater volcano eruption in the Pacific nation of Tonga is pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 269 miles above the Pacific Ocean northwest of Auckland, New Zealand [image credit: NASA / Kayla Barron @ Wikipedia]
This NASA animation leaves little room for doubt about how powerful the Tonga event was. The very low-frequency sound waves it produced were first predicted by Laplace over 200 years ago, as the article below explains.
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The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption reached an explosive crescendo on Jan. 15, 2022, says Kevin Hamilton @ The Conversation (via Phys.org).
Its rapid release of energy powered an ocean tsunami that caused damage as far away as the U.S. West Coast, but it also generated pressure waves in the atmosphere that quickly spread around the world.
The atmospheric wave pattern close to the eruption was quite complicated, but thousands…
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