r/science • u/Skoltech_ • 1d ago

Materials Science Scientists found many new molecules, some with over 75% of TNT's explosive power

https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S2468606925000292
215 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

View all comments

30

u/StacyChadBecky 1d ago

I’m not sure I follow. Is it that hard to find things less explosive than TNT? 75% of means less powerful. It’s just a weird way of saying “scientists found many new molecules less explosive than TNT”

27

u/KiwasiGames 1d ago

TNTs main value proposition isn’t even that it’s explosive. It’s that it will sit there not exploding until you want it to explode.

Most advances in conventional explosives have all been directed at this point. Make something that is stable under normal handling conditions and only explodes when you are ready for it.

Makes sense when you thing about it. Most of an average explosives life cycle is spent not exploding.

7

u/BPhiloSkinner 1d ago

Science is making things that explode: Engineering is making those things explode only when you want them to.

8

u/KiwasiGames 1d ago

Ain’t that the truth.

I was severely disappointed when I started as a chemical engineer how much of my job was dedicated to avoiding explosions.

2

u/Cautious_Parsley_898 1d ago

Looks like we were both misled by higher education

2

u/chadwicke619 1d ago

What does this have to do with the comment to which you replied, and by extension, the title of the post?

4

u/KiwasiGames 1d ago

Comment says “it’s weird that they are getting excited about something less explosive than TNT”

My comment says “it’s particularly weird because TNT isn’t even all that explosive”.

We know plenty of things more explosive than TNT. Which makes the choice of TNT as a baseline odd.

9

u/Jacob_Ambrose 1d ago

TNT is a pretty common choice for reference of how much energy an explosion releases. Nukes come to mind, or large explosions like the Beirut or Halifax explosion

1

u/Sacagawenis 5h ago

How many TNTs is 1 nuke?

1

u/Jacob_Ambrose 3h ago

A few thousand tons up to 50 million if we're talking detonated nukes

0

u/chadwicke619 1d ago

The original comment is about the choice of wording - why do we care about something that is specifically between 75% and 100% of TNT effectiveness. It’s an odd phrasing that really has nothing to do with TNT. Your comment is about the main value proposition of TNT, which is stability. Not only that, but saying that using TNT as a baseline is odd, or that it’s not very explosive, also makes no sense. It’s extremely common to describe the power of an explosive in terms of equivalent TNT.

1

u/beipphine 1d ago

On the other hand, a few advances in conventional explosives have been directed at increasing how energetic the material is even at the expense of stability. Derek Lowe has an article in his Things I Won't Work With Series called "Azidoazide Azides"

Out of it we get lovely quotes like

"The compound is wildly, ridiculously endothermic, with a heat of formation of 357 kcal/mole, all of which energy is ready to come right back out at the first provocation"

"The sensitivity of C2N14 is beyond our capabilities of measurement. The smallest possible loadings in shock and friction tests led to explosive decomposition"

"The compound exploded in solution, it exploded on any attempts to touch or move the solid, and (most interestingly) it exploded when they were trying to get an infrared spectrum of it. The papers mention several detonations inside the Raman spectrometer as soon as the laser source was turned on"