Loudest noise

What on earth makes the loudest noise?

Explosive volcanic eruption, e.g. Krakatoa (heard 4500 km away). I suppose an asteroid impact might be louder, but I hope we don't find out any time soon.

Robert Israel This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Department of Mathematics http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada

||EDEB.

The Earth's largest empty vessel?

If we are allowed to extend the puzzle beyond the physical, a google for '* heard around the world' (*with* the quotes) provides lots of

My guess it a jet engine.

Man made objects, probably a nuclear weapon.

Non-man made, probably a volcano. Certainly total sound energy released would be very high. Though the sound level at any given location might not peak very high. Another similar contender would be a meteor strike.

So how many decibels can a nuke produce?

That depends on how close you are.

decibels is not a measure of total sound power of a source, it is a measure of power density at a receiving location.

Having lived for several years under Concordes take-off flightpath , I know where my vote would go!!

Be glad you didn't live under an explosive volcano or a nuclear weapons test site.

Robert Israel This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Department of Mathematics http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada

The volcano would probably be noisier if you lived _over_ it.