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So Long TNT, There's a New Explosive in Town
- JackCh 8y agoWhat are they actually going to call it? Bis-isoxazole is a mouthful. If people are afraid to talk about it for fear of mispronouncing it and looking foolish, will it see commercial success?
- elorant 8y agoIt's not like it's gonna be sold in supermarkets. So a catchy name while helpful isn't an issue here.
- JulianMorrison 8y agoI dunno, I'd buy it. Best fireworks ever.
- kijin 8y agoThe military loves cheeky shorthands and acronyms. They're really good at backronyms, too. It won't take long for them to come up with something like Bisox, oxaz, BIAX, BNT ("bomb, not TNT"), etc. Or maybe just the brand name of whoever is selling it. Soon Hollywood catches up, and you'll hear Mark Wahlberg yelling for the "B round" in his next action movie.
- function_seven 8y ago> BNT ("bomb, not TNT") I think BNT should stand for “BNT is Not TNT”
- dogma1138 8y agoThe military will end up using composite explosives so they don’t call them by their compound name. C4 is just an RDX mixed in a stabilizing polymer putty (Semtex is the same with PETN added to the mix), the vast majority of explosives used these days are “PBX” or Polymer Bonded Explosives so the military will end up giving it some classification code which is easy to remember and write down on supply orders like C10 or w/e.
- afarrell 8y ago> BNT Imagine saying this in a noisy environment to a stressed artillery officer who is hard-of-hearing. How do you distinguish between "bee-en-tee" and "tee-en-tee"? If you're going to spell out "bravo November tango", then you'll probably want a different name.
- Someone 8y agoIf you go for cheeky, pick BADAZ.
- WiseWeasel 8y agoThe compound is Bis-oxadiazole; Bis-isoxazole was an earlier prototype compound. I'd suggest BODAZ or OxAz.
- mdonahoe 8y agoBXD
- noir_lord 8y agoBisso maybe.
- JulianMorrison 8y agoBoomystuff
- ddingus 8y agoBix-Z
- angularcow 8y agoNot sure how "TNT, or trinitrotoluene, is a mixture of the seemingly innocent elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen" made it past the editor. TNT is a compound, not a mixture. And nitrogen isn't innocent, it's notorious for being in tons of explosives.
- mathw 8y agoHowever, most people's encounters with nitrogen on a day-to-day basis involve the more or less inert nitrogen molecules making up the vast majority of the Earth's atmosphere, so it is seemingly innocent unless you know about how when you start compounding it with other things it gets all excited.
- DiabloD3 8y agoOr you are old enough to remember the first WTC terrorist attack in the 90s where they had a van full of nitrogen fertilizer.
- dogma1138 8y agoNitrogen goes boom, like the most basic bomb is fuel/oil+fertilizer this should be pretty common knowledge especially considering how common were fertilizer bombs in the US.
- afarrell 8y ago> the most basic bomb is fuel/oil+fertilizer this should be pretty common knowledge especially considering how common were fertilizer bombs in the US. In what context would more than 40% of Americans, people who grew up in a society were "and now I'm on a list" is a common phrase, have learned about the means of manufacturing bombs? What percentage of people do you think have even heard of Fritz Haber?
- dogma1138 8y agoBy being exposed to the news? https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=fertilizer+bomb&num=100&newwindow=1&safe=active&source=lnms&tbm=nws&sa=X https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=fertilizer+bomb&num=100&ne... And add to that the plethora of TV shoes and movies that specifically use "fertilizer bombs" as plot devices.
- voxadam 8y agoLos Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. Army working on a replacement for toxic TNT http://www.lanl.gov/discover/news-release-archive/2018/June/0614-tnt-retirement.php http://www.lanl.gov/discover/news-release-archive/2018/June/...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- radisb 8y agoI love the TNT (the courier) ads that appear on the page (at least in my browser). So much for the sophisticated AI.
- ryanmercer 8y agoIs TNT even widely used anymore? There's far more stable/safer to handle explosives. I'd have assumed TNT was largely abandoned in the developed world.
- mannykannot 8y agoI believe TNT is pretty stable. In his memoir "Target Ploesti", Leroy Newby tells of an incident where B24s dropped their bombs if they were running out of runway on takeoff - something they would not have got away with if the bombs contained RDX rather than TNT. It was a hot day, the planes were heavily loaded, and the first to go ran off the runway and burst into flames. Newby's was next, and his pilot refused to go; this was the compromise they worked out.
- ryanmercer 8y agoThanks for the book mention, I love stuff like that!
- dogma1138 8y agoTNT is still used for military explosives primarily because it's A) pretty darn powerful and B) one of the few explosives that works well with molten casting, the latter is especially important for ease of manufacturing and more importantly when you need a very specific explosive geometry for things like shape charges, fragmenting munitions and nuclear warheads. But it depends on the application, RDX and PETN are often uses for demolition, mines and such applications because they can be easily stabilized in a polymer, however that also makes their end PBX form much less powerful.
- gruturo 8y agoI'm surprised that this is being compared to TNT. I was (naively, maybe) under the assumption that weapons moved away from TNT already since long time - to HMX and RDX, mostly, which should be already 50-60 years old. Also - at 8.18km/s detonation velocity, this thing isn't even so exciting. Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane has much better performance, higher density, a cooler name :-), seems to be reasonably practical to produce/handle (at least as far as high explosives go), and is a fantastic excuse to link to Derek Lowe's eminently enjoyable "Things I won't work with" articles: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2011/11/11/things_i_wont_work_with_hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2011/11/11/thi...
- dfsegoat 8y agoHave you looked at what environmental impact a TNT / HMX plant has? Lots of environmental contaminants. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has declared TNT a pollutant whose removal is priority. ... This seems like a much safer organic compound.
- Merad 8y agoThis is mentioned in TFA: > It's also not that explosive, owing to the fact that TNT doesn't have enough oxidizer to burn all its carbon and hydrogen fuel, which is why you see a black cloud of mostly carbon after TNT is detonated. So TNT is generally mixed with other chemicals, such as RDX to form an explosive mixture called Composition B that is found in many bombs.
- gruturo 8y agoYep, got that part. I'm just amazed that TNT, a compound dating back to 1863 (just googled it) is in active use 155 years later. Of course it works well enough, but I'd imagine the military to go for the absolute most bang for the buck (pun absolutely intended) and am surprised it ha[sd]n't happened yet.
- RickJWagner 8y agoRelated fun fact: Dynamite was invented by Alfred Bernhard Nobel. Nobel didn't want his legacy to be one of destruction, so he founded the Nobel prizes that are still awarded today.
- aidenn0 8y agoOf course Dynamite is now used almost exclusively for non-violent uses now in any event, so perhaps that's a non-issue. Even thought dynamite is more powerful than TNT, it's not castable, and is much more unstable, so TNT and other explosives have completely displaced dynamite in the military.
- logfromblammo 8y agoPopular Mechanics is not great for people with more than the bare minimum knowledge of chemistry. The new explosive is bis(1,2,4-oxadiazole)bis(methylene)dinitrate: ONO2 / H2C \ C---O // \ N N \ // \ // C | C // \ // \ N N \ // O---C \ CH2 / O2NO I propose the acronym "BODAMN" (Bis Oxa-Di-Azole Methylene Nitrate), as the one most likely to catch on among those melt-casting it. Army folks love pronounceable acronyms. In the absence of sufficient oxygen, reaction products are likely to be C6H4N6O8 --> 3 N2 + 2 H2O + 6 CO C6H4N6O8 --> 3 N2 + H2O + H2 + CO2 + 5 CO C6H4N6O8 --> 3 N2 + 2 H2 + 2 CO2 + 4 CO That beats TNT, which produces between 1 and 3.5 moles of C (as soot) per mole of TNT. With BODAMN's all-gaseous products, the hot CO and H2 can expand after the initial detonation, and then react with O2 whenever they can find one. With excess oxygen available, the hot, pressurized N2 might also form some NO or NO2.