{"id":414257,"date":"2010-03-10T16:20:37","date_gmt":"2010-03-10T21:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/80beats\/?p=11495"},"modified":"2010-03-10T16:20:37","modified_gmt":"2010-03-10T21:20:37","slug":"underwear-bomber-couldn%e2%80%99t-have-brought-down-flight-253-simulation-suggests-80beats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/414257","title":{"rendered":"Underwear Bomber Couldn\u2019t Have Brought Down Flight 253, Simulation Suggests | 80beats"},"content":{"rendered":"

We gave the BBC a hard time<\/a> this morning for going a little overboard in declaring the Large Hadron Collider a broken-down mess. But here’s something cool: In a new documentary, a team simulated the blast that “Underwear Bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to create on Christmas Day last year. Their finding: Even if he had blown up the bomb successfully, it wouldn’t have been enough to take down flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.<\/p>\n

Dr John Wyatt, an international terrorism and explosives adviser to the UN, replicated the conditions on board the Detroit flight on a decommissioned Boeing 747 at an aircraft graveyard in Gloucestershire, England [BBC News<\/a>]<\/span>. Wyatt used the same amount of the explosive pentaerythritol that the bomber carried, about 80 grams, which packs about the punch of a hand grenade. They put it on the same seat and lit off a controlled explosion, which sent a shock wave through the aluminum exterior.<\/p>\n