Robin van Spaandonk wrote:
Don't forget that the analysis was outsourced. IOW the product of the reaction
(presumably a black solid resembling soot) was sent offsite to be analyzed,
implying a likely time between production and analysis of days at
least. Far too
long for a radical to continue to exist.
I have been meaning to raise that point. Maybe we should mention it
in the paper, although it seems kind of obvious.
Mizuno has various mass spectrometers in his lab, including some
fossils from the 1960s, but none as good as the Finnigan Mat Element
gadget. He bought a quadrupole mass spec himself to analyze effluent
gas on-line in real time. ("Quadrupole" -- which I find difficult to
pronounce -- means exactly what it sounds like: four polls, which are
at the heart of the gadget.)
- Jed
