Yep, It's Thermite! So Much for the "Oxygen" Excuse

pterdine has explained from a position of more implied authority than you that this may not be the case. What authority do you have? You started off by posing questions and have now begun making statements, without any factual backing that I can tell.


Excellent, then we have sufficiently proven the majority of truthers to be biased because of their blanket [ed-spelling] character assassination of over 2000 scientists involved with the NIST report.

I bet you don't agree with that logic, so it seems surprising when someone uses a legitimate complaint to rubbish a report and you object!


I think it is probably paint. Am I unfit to be discussing science? What qualifications do you have that I lack in order to discuss this topic? Are you a chemist? Perhaps a DSC operator? Are you trained with XEDS?


The rest of the world could certainly contribute, but my point is that if even 50% of the supposed people who believe in MIHOP inside the US donated $1 the simulation fund would stand at $75,000,000. Can you show me who you have contributed to and where the fund currently stands? I would put money on you not being able to in fact, because I am completely unaware of any substantive fundraising operation.

The problem is, that 'truthers' will inevitably fall back to the "we're demanding a new investigation" position. But who is to run this investigation? The only people truthers trust are themselves, and because of the lack of an investigation fund they are going to have to be paid by someone. This someone has so far been assumed to be the government.

Tell me, do you trust your fellow truthers enough for them to be paid government money to investigate? Would you be able to trust any investigation that was ultimately government funded?

[edit on 30-6-2009 by exponent]

No answer from "exponent"?

I will ask again:

If the iron spheres which are attached to partially
ignitied chips are not from a form of nano-thermite, then WHAT do you
think this might be?

As far as I was aware, only one of the chips was selected for ignition, and no other tests were run on it. I may be wrong here, but we may not have enough information to say for sure.

Still, I see no reason this could not be paint, after all it was iron based, whether this was just for red colouring or it included iron microspheres I cannot say, as I am not a chemist.

reply to post by turbofan

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I still can't believe we are still even entertaining the idea that the chips are paint. What cured paint ignites at the temperature that the sample did and releases as much or more heat that the control sample of nano-thermite?
Is there any paint in the world that meets these criteria? Forget about composition for now, just find evidence of a paint that is as energetic as the samples, then we can worry about finding a chemist to compair composition...

Paper contains more energy than Thermite, the point of explosives is that they release their energy quickly. Things which burn well release more energy, but over a longer period.

Why do we still entertain the idea it's paint? Because we are well aware that steel columns were painted with red, iron based paint, which then is known to flake off with a grey to black steel scale on one side of it.

Whats more, nobody has actually attempted to sample this paint, to eliminate Dr Jones' red chips from it, only a poor attempt has been made. I mean when MEK did not dissolve the sample as required, why did Dr Jones not try other solvents? Why did he pick a random sample of paint he had access to rather than using a paint similar to that used in the WTC?

Well, lookie here. Mr. 'exponent' did not pay attention to the study
and clearly contradicts himself.

If paper releases energy slowly over a long period of time, do you
think paint would do the same? Yes it would as Jones explains.

So what produced the narrow spike exceeding the known nano-thermite
control sample? NOT PAINT.

See here:
www.youtube.com...



Flake off into chips that have perfect ratios of elements that resemble
a form of thermite?



Wrong. You did not watch the video. You are debating from a poor biased
source.

See here again:
www.youtube.com...




Wrong again. Where's the zinc as compared to the paint used in the WTC?

Explained here and other sections of the lecture:
www.youtube.com...

Now that I know you haven't studied the paper, or watched the video
I can rule out your opinion totally. Study up 'exponent', it's not paint!

reply to post by jprophet420

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MEK does not necessarily dissolve cured coatings. If a cured coating were resistant to MEK, you could cook it for as long as you'd like and it wouldn't dissolve. Why 55 hours? Likely a weekend run. [Perhaps some thought that there was an analytical protocol that called for 55 hours. There isn't.] When MEK only etched the surface, other solvents should have been used. The fact that none were shows incompetence or bias toward trying to show that it was not paint. As it stands, nothing was shown other than the cured coating does not readily dissolve in MEK.
The fact that MEK did not disrupt the polymeric matrix does not mean that the matrix was not a paint. The presence of large amounts of kaolinite actually argue for paint as this material would serve no purpose in any thermite and would be detrimental to the reaction by removing needed heat. See Fig 8; those white blocks are probably kaolinite. Further, a thin layer of any thermitic material would accomplish very little in the way of demolition; super-thermite or not, large masses are required for any demolition. When confronted by Greening, Jones backtracked and said that the chips might be fuse material. Given the estimates he makes of the total amounts, there would seem to be a lot of unburned fuses in the WTC dust. Jones is out on a limb on this botched analysis and he knows it which is why he is planning to redo the experiments.
The DSC run in a stream of air proves only that the matrix burns; not surprisingly as it is a carbonaceous material. I believe that I was the first to point out this flaw on ATS and JREF. Exponent is correct in that paper has more energy per unit weight than thermite. So do gasoline, salad oil, and most other carbonaceous combustables. That is because thermite also contains the oxidizer, iron oxide, while the others use unweighed air to oxidize. The iron oxide greatly adds to the weight and makes energy per unit weight much lower.
The iron and iron containing microspheres are noted when a torch is used to ignite the red chips. There are also claims that these were found in the DSC residua and that none were present to begin with but this was a bit vague in the paper as he also says that spheres were found in the dust.
The onset of reaction and the shape of the exotherms when comparing the red chips and super thermite clearly show that they are different materials. No cured paint sample was run in the DSC for comparison purposes, either. As to the energy release, remember that the heating rates of the DSC are such that the reactions occur over several minutes -- a 40C range is about 4 minutes @ 10C/minute.
Comparing conductivity of the red chips and an unknown paint sample is probably the most ridiculous measurement Jones made and was probably done because he had a conductivity meter available with nothing to do.

The red layer has some interesting characteristics. It may have elemental aluminum in it. One EDS trace shows Chrome and Zinc. These are not unheard of in anti-corrosion paints but probably won't help a thermite. It has an aluminosilicate clay in it. It has a binder that, when cured, does not readily dissolve in MEK but burns in air. It is too thin to do anything to any structural member.
In short, it has many charateristics in common with red, iron oxide paint.

reply to post by turbofan

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Without wanting to post a one liner, clearly pteridine has addressed your points. Whether you wish to admit it or not these samples share a lot in common with paint.

Now, as you obviously believe it was thermite, perhaps you could tell us what it was for? We know that it could not have done a huge amount of damage to a column, and surely a fuse would work better as a fuse, rather than a material which will leave column surfaces covered in molten iron.

I await your answer.

Clearly, Jones had admitted that he hasn't proven anything, since he is doing a follow-up paper that will attempt to address his critics.

With this in mind, it's hard to understand how trutherz still proclaim this as proof, when Jones himself admits that he hasn't proven anything.

reply to post by exponent

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I think Dr. Jones was making a guess that these chips may have come from an early form of these:

awards.lanl.gov...

That's quite interesting, there's nothing implausible about that technology, but then the question that must be asked is why are the remnants chips of a bi layered material? Do you happen to have any more information on this product?

reply to post by exponent

---

Not all shadows are dark
Nor do all mirrors reflect true images

Sometimes life seems to be nothing more than a black, meaningless void.
And it's hard to tell what is real and important.

But Darkness is only the absence of LIGHT
And it is LIGHT that gives LIFE to the SOUL

So allow that much needed LIGHT to Enter
Open your hearts ... Open your minds

Find the underlying meanings within these images.
It is in the seeking that one finds
So become the True Seeker.
A true gift to the world.

reply to post by exponent

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Nope, I don't have any more information. This was just a link in one of the footnotes in the paper. Doing a search so far, all I've found is this:

www.lanl.gov...

Which doesn't say much. All the other places I'm finding are either 911 sites referencing Dr. Jones paper, sites mentioning the 2003 award or pay to view journals. This journal would be nice to read:

www.jpyro.com...

(Scroll down to "Feasibility Study on the Use of Nanoscale Thermites for Lead-Free Electric Matches") But right now I can't even afford the $5.50.

Okay I just took a longer lunch hour to do more searching and did find that the Patent Application Number is 20080011398 which if you enter it here

appft.uspto.gov...

the application will come up.

(I didn't even attempt to put a direct link to the application as the URL was a mile long and had a bunch of &'s and ='s and %'s)

Yeah, I'm coming up with essentially the same information. It is an interesting product but it's a way off being a good match yet (no pun intended!)

I'll buy that journal article later if nothing else comes up, but I suspect it's not going to answer many questions. I am interested in exactly how this would resist the fire occuring on those floors for example, as it would basically be used to ignite a blasting cap instead of using detcord or similar, and blasting caps and high explosive are still extremely vulnerable to fire.

Still I appreciate the legitimate research, and please keep me informed if you find out anything more.

Indeed, in fact you can view it in a slightly nicer format at freepatentsonline:

www.freepatentsonline.com...

Unfortunately there is no mention of two layer chips, or indeed of any of the features found by Dr Jones other than the general elemental makeup. There is also information that they will survive for at least 5 seconds at 300C, but no information about what temperature they will ignite at.

Still, at least this is a more coherent theory, but the question then has to be what were they igniting?

reply to post by exponent

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That would be the next logical speculative question, but I'm not convinced that these chips are from something like these electric matches. I believe I read somewhere that based on the amount of chips they found in their samples, they think there was approximately 10 tons of this material in the buildings. That seems awfully high to me if it were just matches to ignite something else. My question would be: how many tons of explosives did this 10 tons of matches ignite?

(I looked back over the paper to see if I could find this estimate, but I didn't see it. Now I can't remember where I read it... maybe it was someone else who made this estimate, maybe it's just a delusion I picked up somewhere).

Edited to add: I found where I read the 10 ton estimate. It was on the link on the first page, zelikow.wordpress.com... , where Dr. Jones wrote:

"To answer, approximately 70% of the weight of the material was removed in the removal of concrete and glass fragments. If we then consider the total mass of the dust generated during the destruction of the WTC buildings, we can roughly estimate the total mass of red material extant in the dust; I estimate this at about ten tons (order of magnitude estimate)."



[edit on 30-6-2009 by NIcon]

Its point blank wrong.

"Cured" in paint means dried.
IF the paint had an epoxy layer on it, MEK might not do the trick, he is right about that. If the paint is CURED in epoxy, MEK might not dissolve it.
However, there is NO epoxy on this paint. It has been examined under ocular and electron microscopes.

Case closed.

I'm not a truther I'm just pissing you off with the truth.


I'm a taxpayer and I paid for the first investigation. Thanks for asking.


As I said Ive used SEMS. The signatures dont lie, and the signature from the chips dont match the signature of paint. I'm not an expert on paint itself, no.

You would have to be sniffing the paint thinner to come to the conclusion that the SEMS lied.

[edit on 30-6-2009 by jprophet420]

Nobody's lying of course. Maybe some faulty reasoning, incorrect assumptions, misinterpretation of data.

Sometimes scientists reach forced conclusions based on their expectations. When it is a high profile issue and serious questions are asked by their peers they find they themselves having to further defend their claims, having painted themselves into a corner, so to speak.

Below, interesting points. A critical outstanding question at the end.

M





[edit on 1-7-2009 by mmiichael]