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WASHINGTON, Sept 19 (AFP) - The hijacked jets that slammed into New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington last week exploded on impact with the force of 25 bombs, US scientists said Wednesday.

The fuel-laden planes -- two Boeing 767 jets that hit the New York twin towers and a 757 that plowed into the Pentagon -- gave off energy equivalent to the explosion of 500 kilogrammes (1,100 pounds) of TNT, they said.

"This is an enormous amount of energy," said Stephen Block, a professor of applied physics at California's Stanford University who was one of the experts who calculate the impact of the blasts.

The explosion was equal to around "one twenty-fifth of the energy in the atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945, or to "about 25 times the energy in the largest conventional bombs, which weigh about 20 tonnes," he added.

To calculate the force of the New York blasts, the physicists took into account the total weight of a Boeing 767-200 (about 145 tonnes), with 63,0000 liters (16,380 gallons) of fuel on board, travelling at 850 kilometers per hour (527 mph).

Professor Frank Moscatelli of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania was quoted by the Space.com Internet site as saying that the energy released by the explosion was equivalent to around two percent of the Hiroshima atomic blast.

The Palissades seismic institute in New York, which lies about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from the site Manhattan's World Trade Center, said the collapse of the twin towers triggered earth tremors measuring 2,1 and 2.3 on the Richter scale.

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