Rishab Aiyer Ghosh forwarded a note from Perry Metzger: [ on 09:33 PM
8/11/2006 ]
So, I'm doing a bunch of reading, and I find the claimed method the
"highly sophisticated" attackers came up with for bringing down
airliners kind of implausible. I wonder if it could ever work in
reality.
Here's some more informed speculation from the SciAm blog. Perry and
a couple of other interested parties are copied on this note. Feel
free to copy silklist on your responses, if any.
Udhay
http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=what_was_the_explosive&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1&ref=rss
August 10, 2006
What Was the Explosive?
News reports [1] of the multi-plane bombing plan mention an explosive
that could have been smuggled as seemingly innocuous fluid and mixed
together on board.
One possibility is triacetone triperoxide [2], or TATP, which may
have been used in the London Underground bombings and in the alleged
shoe bomb. Last month, a student in Texas City, just south of
Houston, died [3] when he created some in his apartment and it
literally blew up in his face. TATP can be readily made from hydrogen
peroxide, acetone, and a small amount of acid, typically sulfuric
acid. (I'm not giving anything away to mention these ingredients --
they are widely known.) It takes hours to crystallize out of
solution, but the New York Times [4] reported that a bomb-maker would
not need crystals; the solution itself could be detonated.
New Scientist [5] quoted experts saying it might have been
nitroglycerine, but that nitro would have quickly reacted to form
ammonia at easily detectable levels.
The Independent [6] cited several other possibilities: nitromethane,
nitroethane, methyl nitrate, and the Astrolite family. I think we can
rule Astrolite because hydrazine, one of the binary compounds used to
make it, is so toxic. Nitromethane is the primary component of PLX
[7], thought to have been used by North Korean agents to blow up
Korean Air flight 858 in 1987. Methyl nitrate can be made from nitric
acid, sulfuric acid, and methanol, but it takes some care.
I'm interested to learn just how tightly sealed the containers were,
what sort of chemistry lab the terrorists proposed to set up on the
plane, and how they proposed to detonate the explosive.
Andrew Sullivan [8]suggested that the liquid may not have been an
explosive but a binary chemical weapon.
My colleague Dave Biello has more [9] to say.
Posted by George Musser
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6006388,00.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetone_peroxide
[3] http://www.houstonist.com/archives/2006/07/21/khou_tx_city_me.php
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/world/europe/11liquid.html
[5] http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9712
[6] http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article1218318.ece
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLX
[8] http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/08/their_igod.html
[9]
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000A108C-BE4B-14DB-BE4B83414B7F0000&ref=sciam&chanID=sa003
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
