What’s the Loudest Sound We Know Of?

The human ear has a limited range of hearing. The maximum range of human hearing includes sound frequencies from about 15 to about 18,000 waves, or cycles, per second. The general range of hearing for young people is 20 Hz to 20 kHz. As you age the hearing range depletes further as the hair cell’s hair-like stereocilia may get damaged or broken. If enough of them are damaged, hearing loss results which is often irreversable.

Noise induced hearing loss occurs at more than 80 decibels for human beings. The louder the noise the more instant the damage. A rough estimate of loudness of the Big Bang that created us all is between 100 dB to 120 dB. Naturally no human ear will survive actually hearing this sound. Still this is not the loudest noise known to humans.

Apparently the explosion of the Tunguska Meteor which occurred in the year 1908 was recorded at 300 dB making it the loudest sound that human beings know of. Of course there is always the possibility that somewhere out in space there is a planet collision, supernovae explosions or black hole creations which may be louder than this, but that is subject of a different space exploration science project for someone to tackle in the future.