The most violent volcanic cataclysm ever seen in our solar system has been witnessed on Jupiter’s moon Io by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, with simultaneous eruptions covering an enormous 40,400 square miles (65,000 square kilometers). The synchronous eruptions point to a hitherto undetected network of interconnected magma reservoirs just beneath the volcanic moon’s lava-encrusted surface.
The eruptions released an amount of energy estimated to be between 140 and 260 terawatts (one terawatt is a trillion watts). The previous most energetic volcanic eruption seen on Io was about 80 terawatts, from a volcano called Surt in 2001. For comparison, the Mount St Helens eruption in Washington state in 1980 had a power of 52 terawatts.
