Man, I gotta say thanks to EPR for that chemistry blog.

I am dying over this:

When you read through both papers, you find that the group was lucky to get whatever data they could - the X-ray crystal structure, for example, must have come as a huge relief, because it meant that they didn’t have to ever see a crystal again. 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, which must have helped the time pass more quickly. This shows a really commendable level of persistence, when you think about it - I don’t know about you, but one exploding spectrometer is generally enough to make recognize a motion to adjourn for the day. But these folks are a different breed. They ended up having to use a much weaker light source, and consequently got a rather ugly Raman spectrum even after a lot of scanning, but if you think you can get better data, then step right up.

The art of understatement is a delicate one, wielded with much precision.