AN EXPLOSIVE sometimes used by terrorists doesn’t burn when it detonates. Instead, its molecules simply fall apart. The chemist who has discovered this is so concerned by its implications that he has decided to abandon this line of research.
Triacetone triperoxide (TATP) has been used by suicide bombers in Israel and was chosen as a detonator in 2001 by the thwarted shoe bomber Richard Reid. Now calculations by Ehud Keinan from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa show that most of its explosive force comes from a rapid release of gas rather than a burst of energy.
In conventional…
