Science in the skies

Last week I flew home to Nova Scotia--sans toothpaste, shampoo, or the eye drops which are medically necessary to prevent scars from forming on my eyes but for which I don't actually have a prescription because the bottles are sold over the counter for $20 a pop. Although I went through security in the Montreal and Halifax airports rather quickly--the standard 15 minutes max that it normally takes me to get from the check-in counter to the gate--it was highly inconvenient not to be able to take these items with me (because it's not like I'm going to check a bag, and then wait 15 minutes on the other end to pick it up, all for a tube of toothpaste). Before I went, which was just one day after the alleged liquid plane bombing in Britain, I already thought that the new security measures were highly exaggerated, over-the-top, fear-mongering by the U.S. government--as is their wont--which would have absolutely no security effect but merely inconvenience travellers.

Well, it turns out that there is science out there--gasp! yes, actual scientific facts, imagine that!--which confirms that the new no liquids security measures are completely ridiculous and that it would be impossible within the known laws of chemistry and physics for the suspected terrorists to blow up a plane in the way that the mainstream media ruckus reported. Not that that's really a big surprise.

This article in The Register entitled "Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible?" explains the chemistry alleged to be underlying the plot and how the proposed plot described in the media would not be able to produce an explosion capable of taking down a plane. This article at Working for Change entitled "Was British terror plot a load of crap?" cites from The Register article and gives a bit of a political analysis at the end of the benefits of fear-mongering in a U.S. election year. The Register article claims to be based on a 2005 peer-reviewed study in the Journal of the American Chemical Society--ie, it's based on actual research by real scientists and further vetted by other real scientists, not just thrown out there to terrorize (how ironic where the terror really comes from) ordinary citizens by the likes of the pretty faces on CNN or the Republican cronies on Fox News.

After seeing Loose Change, I'm not surprised that there hasn't been a lot of reporting out there on the science of this plot. Loose Change puts forth the argument that it was scientifically impossible, according to the laws of physics, for the Twin Towers to implode at a free-fall rate from planes hitting them--ie, that only demolition-like explosions within the building, which can been seen going off in the original news footage, could have brought down the towers--and it examines how the science of the other two reported plane crashes at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania doesn't add up. Why should we be surprised that the science of this alleged terror plot doesn't add up either?