Analysis of the Beirut explosion?!

[Snark]

Much content has been removed or redacted, due to people who should know better choosing to turn a civil discussion about physics into a personal flamewar, slinging insults and personal remarks.

C'mon, folks, you know better than this.  I can't believe I'm having to say this, but it looks like a refresher is in order:

• It is always okay to state an opinion.  (But other people have different opinions, and it would be unreasonable to expect them to agree with you.)
• It is okay to state assertions of fact.  But others may disagree, so you'd be well-advised to cite evidence if you make an assertion.
  • "Everyone knows this" is not evidence.
  • "You're ignorant if you don't understand this" is also not evidence.
• When someone asserts that you're wrong, by citing what you said, it is not a personal attack on you.
  • This is simply what's called "civil debate" and is perfectly fine.
  • They're not insulting you.  They're merely pointing out that they believe you are, in fact, wrong, because reasons.
  • Which you might be.  Or maybe they're wrong.  Which is why things work best if all parties concerned simply cite their evidence so that people can decide for themselves whom to believe.
• It is never okay to make personal remarks.
  • It's not okay to make personal remarks in response to civil debate.
  • It's also not okay to make personal remarks in response to someone else making personal remarks.  When you do this, it's not "debate", it's a "catfight", and not something that's appropriate for the forums.
• To be clear:  "Personal remarks" (which are not allowed) includes addressing a person's behavior rather than the content of what they said.
  • Example:  calling a person ignorant, or uneducated, or uninformed, or speculating about their level of personal knowledge.
  • Example:  referring to or putting interpretations on a person's behavior (e.g. "you always do X", "you don't seem to understand X", etc.)
• Address the post, not the poster.

In short:  Please comport yourselves like civil adults.  Don't respond to civil debate (including someone saying you're wrong) by making personal remarks.  And if someone else makes personal remarks, please either ignore them or report them-- but don't respond to them.

If you don't feel that you can be a grown-up, or can't handle people civilly disagreeing with you, then kindly hold your fire and pass on by.  Thank you for your understanding.

[Arugela]

On 8/10/2020 at 12:07 AM, Silavite said:

This is just my opinion, but it seems to me that all the discussion about the AN being wet, decayed, partially stolen, or not detonated seems to be rather beside the point right now. There is some circumstantial evidence for these, but trying to pin down the energy released in the blast by these (circumstantial) factors seems to be of questionable utility. The only piece of direct prior evidence is that the freighter offloaded 2,750 metric tons of AN. On the other hand, we have sundry imagery of the blast itself, the crater, and damage the blast caused. We have seismic data which may be compared to other explosions.

Rather than trying to estimate the energy by factors from prior to the blast, it seems better to look at factors which came about during/after the blast.

That is why I posted the video of the first parts of the blast. I don't know if it shows anything new. It does show stuff though. I would be interested in if it confirms or deny's anything we currently think. I haven't seen any other super close up video footage besides it. 0:35-0:49

 

It sounds like it could be fireworks. But I don't know. It's also a little weird sounding for fireworks. Does anything in the video give solid evidence as to what was happening?

Edited August 14, 2020 by Arugela

[sevenperforce]

16 hours ago, Arugela said:

It sounds like it could be fireworks. But I don't know. It's also a little weird sounding for fireworks. Does anything in the video give solid evidence as to what was happening?

I think it's clearly fireworks cooking off.

What I'm not sure of is whether part of the AN exploded initially and then the rest exploded in the second blast, or if the first explosion was a chain reaction of fireworks which amped up the heat surrounding the AN warehouse.