Recreating a failed terrorist attack

An explosion under an aircraft seat is shown here in a full-scale mockup of an aircraft-cabin environment, including real aircraft seats and life size mannequins. This recreates the failed attempt by terrorist Ramzi Yousef in Dec. 1994 to bring down a Philippine Airlines flight with a nitroglycerin bomb under a seat. The full-scale schlieren facility at Penn State University was used to take this photograph, which captures in microseconds the bright flash of the explosion and the propagation of a strong shock wave into the aircraft cabin. In reality, some milliseconds later a real terrorist blast would destroy the aircraft seat.