On July 9 , 1996 , a sunquake was produced by an X2 .6 class solar flare and its corresponding coronal mass ejection . According to researchers who reported the event in '' Nature '' , this sunquake was comparable to an earthquake of a magnitude 11.3 on the Richter scale . That represents a release of energy approximately 40,000 times greater than that of the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake , and far greater than that of any earthquake ever recorded . Such an event contains the energy of 100-110 billion tons of TNT or 2 million modest sized nuclear bombs . It is unclear how such a relatively modest flare could have liberated sufficient energy to generate such powerful seismic waves
1906 San Francisco earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
Quake (natural phenomenon)