UK terror plot: the farce
The police and the media are claiming that twenty-odd people in the UK were involved in a plot to smuggle household chemicals onto airplanes, mix them in the lavatory to produce triacetone triperoxide (TATP), and blow up the planes over the Atlantic. Well, an article in The Register blows (ha!) that theory out of the water.
The problem is, the reaction to produce TATP (from hydrogen peroxide, sulfuric acid, and acetone) is higly exothermic. And if you don’t control the heat very carefully, the mixture will get a weak premature explosion, splashing you in the face with boiling sulfuric acid, but not actually damaging the airplane. That means, you will need some way of cooling the reaction (dry ice or a champagne bucket), and you will need to mix the chemicals very, very slowly. The Register describes the process thus:
Once the plane is over the ocean, very discreetly bring all of your gear into the toilet. You might need to make several trips to avoid drawing attention. Once your kit is in place, put a beaker containing the peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath (Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you’ll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you’ll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.
After a few hours - assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven’t overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities - you’ll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two.
In other words, it sounds like the liquid terrorists were totally incompetent, didn’t know chemistry, and committed themselves to a scheme that could never have worked. But given that there wasn’t any actual danger to the passengers, and that binary liquid explosives are simply too impractical for terrorist use, why did the BAA (British Airports Authority) go through the farce with banning all hand baggage for several days? And why does America’s TSA now prohibit liquids and gels in the cabin? Did they just want to scare the public? Or perhaps they know as little about chemistry as do the terrorists they are fighting?
EDIT:
Bruce Schneier links to some people who have similar views on the subject. Mixing up some TATP in an airplane bathroom has a good chance of killing you, but lilely won’t hurt anyone else on board.