The sperm whale is technically the loudest animal in the world, but the answer is up for debate because how we perceive loudness is subjective. Do you measure the loudest animal by the decibels they register or by the impact of the sound itself? The dispute comes down to two animals: the blue whale and the sperm whale.
Not only can baleen whales emit calls that travel farther than any other voice in the animal kingdom, these giants of the deep also create the loudest vocalisations of any creature on earth: the call of a blue whale can reach 180 decibels – as loud as a jet plane, a world record.
But what about the loudest sound ever heard? On the morning of 27 August 1883, on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa, a volcanic eruption produced what scientists believe to be the loudest sound produced on the surface of the planet, estimated at 310 decibels (dB).
Strictly speaking, the loudest possible sound in air, is 194 dB. The “loudness” of the sound is dictated by how large the amplitude of the waves is compared to ambient air pressure. A sound of 194 dB has a pressure deviation of 101.325 kPa, which is ambient pressure at sea level, at 0 degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit).
At 194 dB, the energy in the sound waves starts distorting and they create a complete vacuum between themselves. The sound is no longer moving through the air, but is in fact pushing the air along with it, forming a pressurized wall of moving air.
(Photo by NASA/CXC/Columbia Univ./C. Hailey et al.) For the first time in history, earthlings can hear what a black hole sounds like: a low-pitched groaning, as if a very creaky heavy door was being opened again and again.
4. The infamous Tzar Bomba reached probably 224 dB(Z) (releasing one fourth of the Krakatoa explosion), and accounts for the largest human-made noise.
This car siren advertised as being 300dB loud, which would make it approximately as loud as 1000 nuclear bombs at once.
1. Cicadas. With over 200 species in Australia, the Cicada is the loudest insect in the world and the Green Grocer Cicada is the loudest of all.
The sperm whale is technically the loudest animal in the world, but the answer is up for debate because how we perceive loudness is subjective. Do you measure the loudest animal by the decibels they register or by the impact of the sound itself? The dispute comes down to two animals: the blue whale and the sperm whale.
Their clicks can be as short as 1/1000 of a second, and their range goes all the way up to their 'gunshot', one of the most powerful sounds on the planet – as loud as 230 decibels. To put this into perspective, a jet taking off registers at around 150 decibels from 25 metres, enough to rupture an eardrum.
Steve Orfield explained: “what the chamber tends to do is it tends to scare people because when you get in the chamber, everything gets tremendously quiet. You feel like there's pressure on your ears – but it's actually pressure moving away from your ears.
The Krakatoa volcanic eruption: Not only did it cause serious damage to the island, the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 created the loudest sound ever reported at 180 dB.
White noise refers to a noise that contains all frequencies across the spectrum of audible sound in equal measure. Because white noise spans multiple bands of sound, it is sometimes referred to as broadband noise. Anecdotally, people often liken white noise to the static that comes from an untuned radio or television.
The grenade is thrown and explodes after a roughly 1.5-second delay. The explosion of magnesium-based pyrotechnic chemicals causes a very bright flash and a loud sound (160−180 decibels), which can cause temporary blindness, temporary loss of hearing and loss of balance, as well as a sense of panic.
It is not possible for a sound to be 1100 decibels (dB) loud.
110 dB is as loud as a rock-n-roll band. The siren emits a high frequency oscillating siren intolerable to the human ear.
Nuclear bomb – Explosion
A nuclear bomb explosion has been reported to be 240 to 280 dB+. A sound level meter set 250 feet away from test sites peaked at 210 decibels. At the source, the level is reported to be from 240 to 280 dB+.
As only one bomb was built to completion, that capability has never been demonstrated. The remaining bomb casings are located at the Russian Atomic Weapon Museum in Sarov and the Museum of Nuclear Weapons, All-Russian Scientific Research Institute Of Technical Physics, in Snezhinsk.
Tsar Bomba, (Russian: “King of Bombs”) , byname of RDS-220, also called Big Ivan, Soviet thermonuclear bomb that was detonated in a test over Novaya Zemlya island in the Arctic Ocean on October 30, 1961. The largest nuclear weapon ever set off, it produced the most powerful human-made explosion ever recorded.
DeForest pegs the sun's din on Earth at around 100 decibels, a bit quieter than the speakers at a rock concert. That's during the day, of course. At night, as we turn away from the sun, the roar would fade.
The viral audio, to be clear, is not a recording: it has been produced by 'sonifying' data taken from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (another space telescope). The audio produced was originally 57 octaves below middle C, which meant the frequency had to be raised 'quadrillions' of times to be heard by human ears.
In terms of sound in earth's atmosphere, anything over 194 dB is a shock wave. 10,000 dB would equate to an overpressure of very nearly 5 x 10^499 atmospheres - quite sufficient I imagine to destroy the earth; though what you would use to create such a shock wave defies imagination.
Orfield Laboratories offers tours of our facility focused on its earlier incarnation as Sound 80 Studios "The World's First Digital Recording Studios" and the later addition of our acoustic labs and our world famous Anechoic Chamber, "The Quietest Place on Earth." These tours run from a one and a half hour minimum and ...