Thu, 17 Aug 2006 at 5:02 pm
[IP] On the implausibility of the explosives plot.
I found the above article while hunting the web. Like anything you read, you should take it with a grain of salt. However, as a chemist, I feel marginally qualified to comment.
If you read the above lengthy article, you will stumble across a lot of chemical talk. Its easy to fake science by throwing out terms and concepts that most people won’t bother to look up. I can say that what the author is saying is actually quite correct. The only flaw in his excellent discussion is his starting assumptions.
In fairness, he points out in the beginning that he makes certain assumptions, based on the information that was released. Its a great article, and despite the speculative nature of the initial assumptions, is worth a read.
MC Says:
August 17th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
As a layman, I could see your point about the initial assumption coloring the rest of the article’s development.
MC Says:
August 18th, 2006 at 12:39 am
This is the second time I’ve replied to this, as the first time I was told that the system thought I was a spammer for some reason.
I said that I could see the initial assumption altering the rest of the discussion, as there were a lot of other things you could probably make with 1 or more of the predicted ingredients.
TJ Says:
August 18th, 2006 at 6:07 am
Sorry about that, MC. I think the problem is fixed, but I’ll keep an eye on it.
To your point — there are millions of chemicals out there, but very very few of them are explosive. Plenty are toxic, carcinogenic, corrosive, and flammable, but Explosive liquids — there just aren’t that many of them.
Knowing what one of the starting ingredients is (they released that “a peroxide” was one of the ingredients), it is possible to predict which explosive they are likely to make from it. Basically, i’m saying that the author has made an educated guess, not a wild speculation.