The 2022 Eruption Of The Hunga Tonga Volcano: Unveiling The Mystery Behind A Powerful Explosion

The 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga volcano may have been triggered by the release of underground energy totaling as much as five nukes exploding all at once, scientists have found. This astonishing revelation has shed light on the powerful eruption that surprised many and raised questions about the geological processes beneath the ocean floor. Until this discovery, described in a paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, we didn't really know what had sparked the powerful eruption. Seismic records reveal that this immense amount of energy was built up in rock under the ocean floor due to increasing gas pressure, which was ultimately released in a huge explosion.

According to Jinyin Hu, a Ph.D. student at the Australian National University and co-author of the study, "Our findings confirm there was an explosion, possibly due to a gas-compressed rock, which released energy that equated to five of the largest underground nuclear explosions conducted by North Korea in 2017." This new understanding of the eruption has altered previous assumptions about how such massive underwater volcanic explosions occur.

Hunga Tonga, also known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai, is an underwater volcano located in the South Pacific, near the kingdom of Tonga. The eruption began with increasing volcanic activity in December 2021, culminating in a dramatic explosion on January 15, 2022. This event is considered to be the largest volcanic explosion recorded since the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, sending a plume of gas, steam, and ash tens of miles into the atmosphere and triggering a massive tsunami that spread across the Pacific.