We saw the devastation that was caused in Beirut by a large confiscated shipment of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate. This chemical is otherwise known to be an important ingredient in fertilizers as well as explosives.?
In fact, it is also regarded as a high-order explosive that can cause massive blast waves, when it explodes, something that we saw in Beirut.
The cause for the Lebanon explosion remains unknown as of now, however, the catastrophe Beirut blast caused is clearly evident. Reports highlight that the Beirut blast wave crossed over 1.6 kilometres, shattering windows in its way, and that damage was witnessed up to at least 10 kilometre away from the Beirut blast epicentre. The explosion was even heard nearly 200 kilometres away in the city of Cyprus.?
And if you look at the ammonium nitrate detonation velocity, it's pegged at 2,500 metre per second. So at least momentarily, the Beirut blast wave travelled as fast as 2.5 km per second or 9000 kmph at the time of detonation.
According to the data collected by the United States Geological Survey the Beirut explosion was powerful enough to create seismic waves equivalent to a magnitude 3.3 earthquake. However, this isnĄ¯t the same as an earthquake of a similar magnitude.?
Don Blakeman, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Centre in a conversation with CNN reveals that not much of the energy went underground, but instead, it travelled to the air and the buildings, causing devastation. Had this Beirut explosion occurred underground, however, the magnitude would have been even higher.
When the videos showed the mushroom cloud of the Lebanon explosion, the first thing that came on all of our minds was that this was a nuclear explosion. And while they do look similar, and many people are even trying to compare it with the Hiroshima explosion, the Beirut explosion wasnĄ¯t one.?
According to David Dearborn, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told Scientific American in 1999 (highlighted by Forbes), "Contrary to a common misconception, the shape of the mushroom cloud does not depend on the nuclear or thermonuclear component; as you note, a massive detonation of chemical explosives would produce the same effect.Ąą?
He further explained, "A mushroom cloud forms when an explosion creates a very hot bubble of gas. In the case of a nuclear detonation, the bomb emits a blast of x-rays, which ionize and heat the surrounding air; that hot bubble of gas is known as a fireball. The hot air is buoyant, so it quickly rises and expands. The rising cloud creates a powerful updraft which picks up dust, forming the stem of the mushroom cloud.Ąą
While official numbers arenĄ¯t out yet, experts have speculated that the Beirut explosion was a three kiloton blast. When comparing the Beirut blast to the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, the nuclear explosion was approximately 13 to 18 kiloton making the Beirut explosion one-fifth of the Hiroshima nuclear attack that shook Japan and the world in World War II.?
In the middle of World War I in the year 1917, two ships collided -- one a relief ship while the other had ammunition, and resulted in the largest explosion known to man at that time, releasing the equivalent energy of roughly 2.9 kilotons of TNT. It wiped off buildings in a 500-metre radius of the epicentre while killing over 1900, and injuring over 9,000.?