When the news coverage departs from physical reality.

On NPR’s Morning Edition this morning, Dina Temple-Raston told Renee Montagne how Osama Bin Laden tried to evade detection:

[O]ne intelligence official told us that nothing with an electron actually passed close to him, which in a way is one of the ways they actually caught him.

Temple-Raston went on to clarify that suspicions were raised when bin Laden’s compound (which has been described as a “mansion” and was certainly bigger than the neighboring houses) had neither telephone service nor internet connections.

But, let us note for the record that all the furniture, walls, floors, window treatments — indeed, Osama bin Laden himself — were almost certainly lousy with electrons, and that these electrons would have been in motion. Electrons were not only passing close to Osama bin Laden — they were passing in him and through him. Matter, in this universe, is made up of atoms, and ions, and aggregates of these, that contain electrons!

Verily, in the event that bin Laden’s compound was actually electron free, I reckon the strong positive charge of the place would have given him away much sooner.

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Posted in Chemistry, Current events.

7 Comments

  1. “Verily, in the event that bin Laden’s compound was actually electron free, I reckon the strong positive charge of the place would have given him away much sooner.”

    Perhaps people were charged with so many negative feelings as to make the compound neutral.

  2. Pingback: The Physics of Finding Osama bin Laden (As Mis-Reported on NPR) [Uncertain Principles] | Science News | Gakngurus

  3. Well, of course, if it was really totally free of electrons, there would have been nothing left but a lot of bare nuclei, which would have flown apart violently due to electrostatic repulsion. I don’t know how to calculate how much energy would have been released in that event, but it seems like a heck of a lot.

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