The biggest explosion ever recorded depends on the scale you’re asking about. In the entire observable universe, a gamma-ray burst detected in October 2022 released more energy than the sun will produce in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime. On Earth, the largest human-made explosion was the Soviet Union’s Tsar Bomba nuclear test in 1961, which yielded 50 megatons of TNT. Between those extremes sit supernovae, asteroid impacts, solar flares, and volcanic eruptions, each dwarfing the one below it by orders of magnitude.
The Biggest Explosion in the Universe
On October 9, 2022, gamma-ray observatories picked up a signal so intense it temporarily blinded their detectors. Dubbed GRB 221009A, it was the brightest gamma-ray burst seen in nearly 55 years of observation, more than ten times brighter than any previous record holder. Scientists quickly nicknamed it the BOAT: the Brightest Of All Time.
The burst came from a massive star collapsing into a black hole roughly 2.4 billion light-years away. Its total energy output surpassed 1055 ergs, equivalent to converting more than five times the mass of our sun entirely into energy. To put that in perspective, if you converted the Tsar Bomba’s yield into the same units, you’d need to detonate it roughly 1040 times (that’s a 1 followed by 40 zeros) to match this single event. Researchers estimate a burst this bright and this close to Earth happens only once every 10,000 years.
Supernovae: Exploding Stars
A typical supernova releases about 1051 ergs of energy, most of it carried away by ghostly particles called neutrinos rather than visible light. Only about one percent of that energy comes out as the brilliant flash we can actually see through telescopes. That alone is enough to briefly outshine an entire galaxy.
In 2020, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced the discovery of SN2016aps, the most powerful supernova ever observed. Its total explosion energy reached 1052 ergs, ten times a normal supernova. What made it truly extraordinary was that roughly half of that energy radiated as visible light, making it 500 times brighter than a standard supernova. The explosion likely involved a star between 50 and 100 times the mass of the sun, possibly two massive stars that had merged before detonating.
What About the Big Bang?
People naturally think of the Big Bang as the ultimate explosion, but physicists describe it differently. It wasn’t matter blasting outward through existing space. It was a rapid expansion of space itself, with energy transforming into matter as the universe cooled. There was no central point, no shockwave, no “outside” for debris to fly into. So while it was the most significant energy event in the history of everything, calling it an explosion misrepresents what actually happened.
The Biggest Explosion to Hit Earth
Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid roughly 10 kilometers wide slammed into what is now Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, creating the Chicxulub crater. Estimates of the impact energy range from 1.3 × 1024 to 5.8 × 1025 joules. The upper end of that range is roughly equivalent to 10 billion megatons of TNT, or about 200 million Tsar Bombas detonated simultaneously. The impact triggered wildfires across continents, sent tsunamis racing across entire ocean basins, and ejected enough dust and sulfur into the atmosphere to block sunlight for years, wiping out roughly 75 percent of all species on the planet.
Solar Flares
The most powerful solar flare in recorded history struck on September 1, 1859, an event known as the Carrington Event. It released an estimated 1025 joules, roughly equivalent to 100 million megatons of TNT. Telegraph systems across Europe and North America failed, with some operators reporting electric shocks and equipment catching fire. Aurora borealis was visible as far south as the Caribbean. A solar storm of this magnitude today would cause widespread blackouts and potentially damage electrical grids for weeks or months, since modern infrastructure depends on systems that didn’t exist in 1859.
Earth’s Largest Volcanic Explosion
The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia was the most powerful volcanic event in recorded human history. It ejected roughly 33 cubic kilometers of magma and released energy equivalent to about 30,000 megatons of TNT. That’s 600 times the yield of the Tsar Bomba. The eruption killed an estimated 10,000 people directly and tens of thousands more from famine afterward, because the ash and sulfur aerosols cooled global temperatures enough to cause crop failures across the Northern Hemisphere. The following year, 1816, became known as the “Year Without a Summer.”
The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, while smaller than Tambora, holds the record for the loudest sound in modern history. The blast was estimated at 310 decibels at the source and was heard 1,300 miles away in the Bay of Bengal. Islands in the western Indian Ocean, roughly 3,000 miles from the eruption, still registered the sound at levels comparable to a nearby gunshot.
The Largest Human-Made Explosion
The Soviet Union detonated Tsar Bomba on October 30, 1961, over the remote Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. Its confirmed yield was 50 megatons of TNT. The fireball was visible from 600 miles away, and the heat from the detonation could cause third-degree burns at a distance of 62 miles from ground zero. The shockwave circled the Earth three times. Windows shattered in Finland and Norway, hundreds of miles from the blast site.
The bomb was actually designed for a yield of 100 megatons but was scaled back to reduce radioactive fallout. Even at half its potential, Tsar Bomba produced a blast roughly 1,500 times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined.
Large Non-Nuclear Explosions for Scale
For a sense of how these numbers stack up against explosions most people can visualize, consider two well-known non-nuclear blasts. The 2020 Beirut port explosion, caused by 2,750 tons of improperly stored ammonium nitrate, had an estimated yield between 0.13 and 2 kilotons of TNT. Multiple independent methods, including seismic analysis and satellite radar imagery, converged on roughly 1 kiloton as the best estimate. The 1917 Halifax Explosion, when a munitions ship detonated in the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia, released energy equivalent to about 3 kilotons of TNT and remained the largest accidental human-made explosion for over a century.
Even these devastating events barely register on the scale of natural and cosmic explosions. The Chicxulub asteroid impact released roughly 10 billion times more energy than Tsar Bomba, and the BOAT gamma-ray burst made even that look insignificant.