World's Hottest Pepper Goes Nuclear

"Luckily there is no record of anyone dying from eating peppers, according to Paul Bosland, head of New Mexico State University's Chile Pepper Institute, in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Known as "the chileman," Mr. Bosland deserves a large part of the credit for the current craze. Until the early 1990s, only two peppers had reached the 350,000 Scoville mark—the habanero and the Scotch bonnet. A hybrid variety called the Red Savina Habanero claimed the Guinness crown in 1994 with 570,000 Scovilles. That was believed to be about the upper limit of hotness for more than a decade.

Then Mr. Bosland was told of the Bhut Jolokia, or ghost pepper, a variety grown in remote Assam, India, that was being studied by the Indian army for use in grenades. Skeptical, Mr. Bosland got some seeds and was astonished to find that the peppers he grew averaged more than one million Scovilles, as measured by high performance liquid chromatography.

"Once we did that, it kind of opened the floodgates," he says.

Mr. Bosland claims to have broken the two million Scoville mark in February 2012 with his Trinidad Moruga Scorpion. "................

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 12208.html

Wow. Should Bosland be regulated? It sure looks like he is developing weapons of mass destruction.

Tip to chile eating: don't let it touch your lips!

Would anything that hot even make it through your digestive tract? I suspect it would just burn a hole in your guts... On the other hand, it would go a long way toward explaining this photo: