Fake AP Graph Exposes Israeli Fraud and IAEA Credulity
Gareth Porter, LobeLog, Nov 30 2012

Nuclear physicists Yousaf Butt and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress also pointed out that the graph depicted by AP is not only so rudimentary and crude that it could have been done by an undergraduate student, but is based on a fundamental error of mind-numbing proportions. The graph shown in the AP story plots two curves, one of energy versus time, the other of power output versus time. But Butt and Dalnoki-Veress noted that the two curves are inconsistent. The peak level of power shown in the graph, they said, is nearly a million times too high. After a quick look at the graph, the head of the Dept of Physics and Astronomy at Cal State in Sacramento, Dr Hossein Partovi, observed:

The total energy is more than four orders of magnitude smaller than the total integrated power that it must equal!

Essentially, the mismatch between the level of total energy and total power on the graph is 40,000 times too small in relation to the level of power. One alert reader of the account of the debunking of the graph at Mondoweiss blog cited further evidence supporting Kelley’s observation that the graph shown by AP was based on an another graph that had nothing to do with nuclear explosions. The reader noted that the notation “kT” shown after “energy” on the right hand scale of the graph does not stand for “kilotons” as Jahn suggested, but “Boltzmann constant” (k) multiplied by temperature (T). The unit of tons, on the other hand, is always abbreviated with a lower case “t”, he pointed out, so kilotons would be denoted as “kt”. The reader also stated that the “kT” product is used in physics as a scaling factor for energy values in molecular-scale systems, such as a microsecond laser pulse. The evidence thus suggests that someone took a graph related to an entirely different problem and made changes to show a computer simulation of a 50 kiloton explosion. The dotted line on the graph leads the eye directly to the number 50 on the right-hand energy scale, which would lead most viewers to believe that it is the result of modeling a 50 kiloton nuclear explosion. The graph was obviously not done by a real Iranian scientist, much less someone working in a top secret nuclear weapons research program, but by an amateur trying to simulate a graph that would be viewed, at least by non-specialists, as something a scientist might have drawn.