Just as the title says…
-FrL-
I imagine this is related to a couple of other discussions about TSA screenings and airplane bag inspections, here and here . I’m going to move this over to GQ, since I figure they’re most likely to know the answers to this one.
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Oops, yeah, that’s where I meant to post it. Thanks!
-FrL-
Depends on what it is. Honestly 3.4 ounces of mercury will probably do more damage to a plane then nitro. But its just one of those things to make you feel safer when its not.
Note that it needn’t necessarily be 3.4 ounces (100ml). You could mix 100ml of A with 100ml of B and maybe create 200ml (approx) of some kind of chemical kablooey compound.
3.4 ounces of antimatter can do an awful lot of damage…
According to this site, 3 ounces of coarse black powder will send a bowling ball over 500 yards.
There is a Wike article on explosives
but this article describes explosives in a more easily understood manner.
Remember, something as commonplace as 3-4 oz of gasoline or alcohol could easily jumpstart a serious fire on a plane even without any cool reactions or explosions. Properly packed/placed im sure even 4 ounces of plastic explosives could do serious damage. IIRC a hand grenade contains about that much and few would question is potential for unhappy endings.
Most organic liquid explosives I can think of off the top of my head have a TNT equivalence of about a quarter to half. In other words, around an ounce of TNT would produce the same level of overpressure as three ounces of a liquid explosive. If you mix container A with container B into container C to get six ounces of explosive, or two ounces equivilancy, you’re going to have about as much explosive power as the F1grenade.
If it was 3.4 ounces of antimatter, it could set off a 4.5 megaton blast (assuming the antimatter has roughly the density of water).
I leave the problem of actually getting 3.4 ounces of antimatter, getting a suitable containment vessel, and getting the thing past airport security and onto a plane as an exercise for the reader.
A pie-in-the-sky vision has antimatter costing about $25 million per gram, so you’ll need about $2.5 trillion. You should probably tip the guy who delivers it, too- you don’t want to mess around with people who have access to large amounts of antimatter. Currently it’s more like $1 quadrillion per gram (you’ll need a little over 96 grams), and you’d have to get exclusive use of CERN or a similar facility for literally hundreds of billions of years. Just to give you some idea of the difficulties involved here (and we haven’t even talked about containment yet)…
I’m sure you could have some fun with a 3.4 ounce bottle of neutronium, as well. It would weigh at least 10[sup]17[/sup] grams, which is about 2x10[sup]14[/sup] pounds. It would be probably at least 2 trillion times the mass of the fully loaded plane. They’d probably charge you extra for having heavy baggage. I suspect the TSA guys would notice something when you tried to go through security, too.
Wouldn’t 3.4 oz of Neutronium be invisibly small? 
3.4 ounces by weight would be. But “ounce” as in “fluid ounces” is a measure of volume. I’m talking about what would happen if you somehow filled up one of those bottles they allow you to carry on planes with neutronium.
I work with explosives every day. It is absolutely amazing how powerful good explosives really are. Less than 1oz of properly composed and shaped explosives can effortlessly cut a person in half.
Yes, but I think in the case of the current liquid restrictions, it was due to the threat of someone bringing onboard two inert-on-their-own liquids and then mixing them to form the explosive compound. Which, IIRC, several experts said would probably only do away with the idiot trying to mix them in an airplane lav!
True.
But how easy is it for J. Random Terrorist to get properly composed and shaped explosives? I imagine you guys account for what you’ve got, and you’d have trouble giving some to a friend. I doubt they sell the kind of explosives that can cut a person in half off the shelf at the local Wal-Mart where anyone can buy it, no questions asked.
It’s easy if J. Random Terrorist has the support of a country like Iran or Syria, or friends who have access to unexploded ordnance such as land mines, bombs, and artillery shells.