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

Originally posted by bsbray11
Another total rant. And you have no idea what you are talking about when you go on blindly speculating reasons as to why there are so many people here to argue with.

So what was the problem with the authors' conclusion that a nano-composite eutectic is present in the WTC dust?

Read the dozens of messages and links, some of which I provided, that show clearly, unequivocally, and unambiguously, that Jones does not engage in procedural controlled experiments. He attempts to demonstrate he has thermite, not to determine what it is he has by ruling out other possibilities. He will not allow an uninvolved third party to attempt reproducing his results. His stated implication is that thermitic material was involved in the destruction of the WTC buildings. He offers no satisfactory explanation of how charges were sequenced, how they could have provided the continual heat or sufficient energy to do substantial damage to the steel beams.

Independently observed, physical characteristics on the steel are lacking. Molten and resolidified iron pools (the term “pigs” is used) typify melting at separation points of steel and iron. The ends of beams would have molten ends. Nothing like this was seen by those sorting the debris or photographic evidence.

These are off the top of my head and I may have missed or misstated points.

As you choose to dismiss or ignore sources that conflict with you conclusions, a decidedly unscientific attitude, there is little point in elaborating further.

Again I suggest looking at the detailed articulation of the serious problems with Jones and his purported results. They are laced throughout this thread.


Mike

Originally posted by mmiichael
...not to determine what it is he has by ruling out other possibilities. He will not allow an uninvolved third party to attempt reproducing his results.

As we all know, one of the big debates was that these chips were simply paint. Obviously word got out about that, because he DID do tests in attempt to verify that these chips are not paint. Whether you or anyone agrees with his test is irrelevant because he did attempt to rule out that possibility. As far as him allowing 3rd parties to get involved, I obviously can't say for sure, but is anyone actually attempting to get some samples to do their own independent tests?

His stated implication is that thermitic material was involved in the destruction of the WTC buildings. He offers no satisfactory explanation of how charges were sequenced, how they could have provided the continual heat or sufficient energy to do substantial damage to the steel beams.

Nor is that his job. I'm not sure why you would post this. Jones, as we all should be well aware, is simply saying that he has evidence that there is an anomoly (sp?) in the chemical compostition of the dust found at various areas of NYC from 9/11. These anomolies call for a new investigation, and it is the duty of THAT investigation to answer those questions, not Jones. You know this Mike.

Independently observed, physical characteristics on the steel are lacking. Molten and resolidified iron pools (the term “pigs” is used) typify melting at separation points of steel and iron. The ends of beams would have molten ends. Nothing like this was seen by those sorting the debris or photographic evidence.

Weren't there photos of the beams which almost looked as if they were cut clean at an angle? I saw them at some point here on ATS, I just dont have a clue which thread. I think SPreston posted them, but I remember they looked as if they were literally cut with a saw. Of course, this wouldnt imply molten ends as you stated, but I dont think a 'natural' collapse of any of these building would produce such a clean and angled cut.

Originally posted by P1DrummerBoy
As far as him allowing 3rd parties to get involved, I obviously can't say for sure, but is anyone actually attempting to get some samples to do their own independent tests?


[...]


Jones, as we all should be well aware, is simply saying that he has evidence that there is an anomoly (sp?) in the chemical compostition of the dust found at various areas of NYC from 9/11. These anomolies call for a new investigation, and it is the duty of THAT investigation to answer those questions, not Jones.

[...]

Weren't there photos of the beams which almost looked as if they were cut clean at an angle?

Quickly addressing you points with real world stuff impinging. The photos of the angled cuts are classic Truther evidence. They were cut, I think by blow torches, by the guys taking the rubble apart so it could be taken away. Photos of this.

Jones has stated his beliefs and that he is attempting to show that thermite was involved in the WTC building collapses.

His particular samples were donated. They were not hermetically sealed. We have no idea how open to 'contamination' or conditions they were stored under. This is one of the many controls lacking.

Hopefully someone else can better fill in specifics.

Mike

reply to post by P1DrummerBoy


Jones says he has evidence but, in fact, he has not shown any thermitic activity of the chips. His intentions do not count as evidence.

reply to post by pteridine


Honestly now, Jones was not the only scientist writing the paper, all 8 scientists concluded it was not paint, its open to peer review, and the samples used have chain of custody in tact and can be requested.

And of course its NOT paint.

Originally posted by jprophet420
reply to post by pteridine

 

Honestly now, Jones was not the only scientist writing the paper, all 8 scientists concluded it was not paint, its open to peer review, and the samples used have chain of custody in tact and can be requested.

And of course its NOT paint.

Jones was the instigator. It is his idea that there was some thermitic demolitions, unfortunately for him, there is no evidence of such but he will manage his desired fame, or infamy, just fine. Eight people have their names on the paper, how many are scientists or espouse the scientific method is uncertain.

Of course it IS paint until proven otherwise. The claim that a paint-on thermite that would do nothing for any purported demolition was present is a desperate act of someone who is losing credibility and acolytes by the day. I question the honesty and scientific integrity of the entire gang of eight.

Of course it IS paint until proven otherwise.

It has been proven to not be the paint used in the construction of the WTC. That alone is enough for a new investigation.

Originally posted by jprophet420
It has been proven to not be the paint used in the construction of the WTC. That alone is enough for a new investigation.

I won't get into Jones et al fudging data to get a desired result. Let's just say they're wrong.

Italian researcher Enrico Manieri has gone to great length to identify the material used in WTC construction that has been misidentified as nano thermite.

Details including pictures and chemical analysis, translated to English, here:

11-settembre.blogspot.com...

Abstract: A recent paper claiming "active thermitic material" in dust collected in the vicinity of the Twin Towers after their collapse is found to have shortcomings in its methodology.

The paper also fails to explore adequately alternative, non-thermitic explanations for its findings.

*
Specifically, the paper's use of methyl-ethyl-ketone (MEK) to demonstrate the presence of elemental aluminum is known to yield inconsistent results because MEK could react with aluminum;
*
alleged elemental aluminum nanoparticles are claimed to remain unreacted after 55 hours of MEK bath, but also contradictorily to react violently already at 430°C;
*
photographic and spectral comparisons between commercial thermite and spheroidal particles in Ground Zero dust omit any other comparison with possible alternative sources of such findings;
*
DSC analysis was conducted in air, but should have been conducted in an inert gas environment in order to obtain reliable results for thermite, which does not require an external oxidizer.

The paper also does not consider the chemical composition of the corrosion-proofing paints and of the vermiculite used as thermal insulation and soundproofing at the World Trade Center and extensively documented by NIST.

These products contain exactly the same elements and exhibit the same structural characteristics as the allegedly thermitic material found by the paper's researchers in their samples.

The researchers therefore appear to have been somewhat hasty in reaching their conclusions.

[...]

a clear attempt to influence the less than careful reader by suggesting explicitly the analogy between the analyzed samples and the products of thermite reaction, without investigating whether a similar spectrum might be due to other causes and reactions.

In other words, the authors jump immediately from the incorrect assessment of the presence of highly reactive elemental aluminum to the (evidently highly desired) conclusion that the collapse of the World Trade Center involved some sort of thermitic reaction of a mysterious product that is triggered at low temperature, provides twice the energy of ordinary thermite, and is characterized by the presence of nanoparticles that give explosive properties to a substance that otherwise is only an incendiary.

These are dramatic claims that need to be backed by equally dramatic evidence, not by suggestions.

M



[edit on 19-7-2009 by mmiichael]

The paper also does not consider the chemical composition of the corrosion-proofing paints and of the vermiculite used as thermal insulation and soundproofing at the World Trade Center and extensively documented by NIST.

there is no aluminum listed in the MSDS yet it occurs in both the ocular and sems evaluation. If it occurred in just the SEMS, you could cite some sort of bias, however since this has been verified by a second source (ocular inspection) this is not possible.

Given that the paper has already concluded that it is NOT paint, then it's NOT paint until proven otherwise. Not the other way around, which would be idiotic. If you have a counter-claim then PROVE it. Where is the peer-reviewed paper showing these to be paint chips, what kind of paint it is, who manufactured it, etc., because I still haven't seen any kinds of paint that match what is in the paper. They have an obvious eutectic.


Look at all the straw-man arguments assuming conventional thermite rather than just any nano-composite eutectic material that will do the job:

'Not compared to commercial thermite' -- DoD thermite is NOT AVAILABLE commercially, and it is NOT commercial thermite. It's nano-composite material and the DoD has even published magazines talking about its development at Los Alamos. Why not get a sample of THAT? Because they probably would never send it to you, because it's military grade.

'Thermite uses its own oxygen source' -- even if this eutectic doesn't have its own oxygen source (and apparently "debunkers" aren't even sure if it does or not), if it works on external oxygen, then it works on external oxygen. I'm sure someone could have counted on oxygen being present in NYC air that day either way.


So is this just the best they could come up with? Or are they intentionally being stupid just to buy time until someone can find a REAL problem with the paper? I don't think there is really any intelligent disagreement with any of these findings.

[edit on 19-7-2009 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by bsbray11
Given that the paper has already concluded that it is NOT paint, then it's NOT paint until proven otherwise. Not the other way around, which would be idiotic. They have an obvious eutectic.
'Thermite uses its own oxygen source' -- even if this eutectic doesn't have its own oxygen source (and apparently "debunkers" aren't even sure if it does or not), if it works on external oxygen, then it works on external oxygen. I'm sure someone could have counted on oxygen being present in NYC air that day either way.
So is this just the best they could come up with? Or are they intentionally being stupid just to buy time until someone can find a REAL problem with the paper? I don't think there is really any intelligent disagreement with any of these findings.

Ah, BS, you are certainly an "EE major" because you know very little about chemistry or science. The authors may conclude, erroneously, that the chips are not paint. That means nothing as they have failed to prove it. "Idiotic" is not a word that you, of all people, should bandy about.
You seem to be enthralled with the word "eutectic" which you seem to want to apply to everything. They have not shown that the chips are a eutectic mixture because they were not competent enough to separate and analyze the components so that they could make that determination. You might also want to look up the definition of "eutectic" so that you may properly use it in the future.
If a thermitic material doesn't have its own oxidant, it isn't thermitic material. It is a combustible material. To get the heat of reaction, elemental aluminum is used to reduce a metal oxide. This is because the aluminum is a good enough reducing agent to reduce most metal oxides and becasue the heat of formation of aluminum oxide [one of the products of reaction] is high and will produce a nice molten metal product.
An example of a combustible material is cured paint. So are gasoline, olive oil, and newspaper. All of them have higher energy per unit mass than any thermite, including the nano particulate thermite. To help you comprehend this, it is because the metal oxides have significant mass. Oxygen in air has a lesser mass but when the DSC is run in air it is not even measured. Only the fuel weight is measured so when output energy is divided by mass, energy per unit mass is much higher than thermite.

As to your last point, "they" came up with this because it is one of the major flaws in Jones' paper. Maybe some people are unintentionally misunderstanding this point because they don't understand it.

Originally posted by bsbray11
Given that the paper has already concluded that it is NOT paint, then it's NOT paint until proven otherwise. Not the other way around, which would be idiotic. If you have a counter-claim then PROVE it. Where is the peer-reviewed paper showing these to be paint chips, what kind of paint it is, who manufactured it, etc., because I still haven't seen any kinds of paint that match what is in the paper. They have an obvious eutectic.

[...]

So is this just the best they could come up with? Or are they intentionally being stupid just to buy time until someone can find a REAL problem with the paper? I don't think there is really any intelligent disagreement with any of these findings.

What I have found here is that there is no real attempt to examine the merits of the thermite claim. A lot of chest beating bombast throwing around limited scientific knowledge to give those with less understanding of the chemistry involved the impression that there is actual science on the table.

Though no recognized American for British peer review journal is prepared to publish the findings of Jones et al, a presumably compliant Dutch publication has. Though claimed to be peer review, we can only take their world for it, and so far no third part critique, pro or con, has been made available.

The Enrico Manieri evaluation provided by link does as thorough an evaluation of the thermite claim as anyone could. It examines alternative explanations for the results Jones show that are more consistent with materials used in WTC construction.

11-settembre.blogspot.com...

The conclusions of the study are obviously favorable to the "alternative" hypotheses. In other words, they suggest that a nanothermite-based substance was used on 9/11 in the Twin Towers and was applied by unknown means, in unknown locations, at an unknown date by unknown individuals, yet it was able to cause the collapse of the two giant steel buildings and of the relatively smaller WTC7 building.

After examining the paper, which we can now describe as pro-conspiracy in its conclusions, I would like to present a few thoughts and consider whether there might be other working hypotheses that should be examined before jumping to the hasty conclusions presented in the paper

[...]

In practice, the red layer of the wafers identified by the researchers contains exactly the same elements that we now know were present in the corrosion-resistant coating used during the construction of the World Trade Center, including the organic base constituted by linseed oil and alkyd resin.

It's not just a matter of the same chemical elements being present. The presence of fossil flour in the paint, too, is compatible with the porosity observed in the samples of the red layer. If one considers, moreover, that mica is also often present in fossil flour, then the presence of laminar particles mixed with crystalline particles of iron oxide might also be explained.

[...]

These panels were bonded by means of adhesive to the internal face of the columns, in direct contact with the corrosion-proofing paint. Vermiculite has practically no structural strength, and its use is limited to thermal insulation and soundproofing work. If impacted, it breaks into pieces. The Twin Towers contained enormous amounts of vermiculite in direct contact, by means of adhesives, with the painted face of the perimeter columns.

Yet the researchers that signed the study do not appear to have considered and investigated correctly this possibility before claiming residues of "active thermitic material" in Ground Zero dust.

It is unlikely any other serious scientists will go to the same length to review the thermite claims in what is essentially a forensic examination. There is little payback in disproving something that has not even been adequately proven. So the Jones paper will stay on record as one of many thousands of papers in the scientific literature that are just odd anomalies that slipped through the cracks.

Off the record one American scientist recently referred to the work as
"the Jonestown Science Massacre going in drag as a peer review paper."

He also noted how Jones has gained some notoriety in trying to show NIST was providing false information by showing their inconsistencies with a set of architectural plans for a WTC building that he obtained. This was quickly dismissed as Jones was not aware or concealed the fact that the final construction of the building did not follow the theoretical details of the original design in every detail.

We get a pretty clear picture of Jones and his ethics from even cursory examinations of his methods.

All this will escape those who have invested emotionally in Jones and his flailing attempts to show the WTC buildings collapsed due to a controlled demolition.

More scientific double talk will be exchanged, tempers will flare, and in the process real science and real truth will be buried under a ton of agenda driven misinformation rubble.


Mike





[edit on 19-7-2009 by mmiichael]

reply to post by mmiichael


I agree there will continue to be plenty of scientific exchanges. I look forward to seeing them. I'm not sure whose tempers are flaring, though. Nor do I care what your spin on "the truth" is, it's not like you would know any better than anyone else.

Read it and weep Pt!

3. Thermal Behavior
When the chips are heated to about 430ºC (806ºF), they undergo a runaway chemical reaction producing temperatures of at least 1535ºC

Although a trace does not capture the increase in temperature once a sample ignites, the area underneath it approximates the sample's energy density.

The thermal behavior of the chips is analyzed using an instrument (a DSC) that measures the flow of heat into and out of the sample as its temperature is gradually increased.

When the samples are elevated to about 430ºC, they ignite in a run-away reaction that reaches at least 1535ºC. The fact that the reaction reaches those very high temperatures is evident from the reaction's residue of minute solidified iron-rich sphereoids -- residues that had clearly experienced temperatures above the melting point of iron to create molten droplets that became spherical under the influence of surface tension.

A measure of a pyrotechnics' performance is its energy density: how much energy can be packed in a given weight or volume. Estimates of the energy densities of chips ignited in the DSC shows them to be similar to those of conventional high explosives and conventional thermite.

Whereas structural and chemical analysis of the chips shows that they were designed as some kind of pyrotechnic, thermal analysis shows that, despite their fragmented form and age, are still active pyrotechnics, and ones with impressive energy densities.

Although building rubble can contain flammable materials, it is not possible that legitimate materials in the Twin Towers or residues of them formed in the buildings' destruction would be capable of reacting to produce temperatures above the melting point of iron.


Conclusion
As this simplified summary of the findings of the paper Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe shows, the distinctive red-gray chips found consistently in dust samples from the destroyed Twin Towers are clearly an advanced engineered pyrotechnic material. It is not even remotely possible that the material could have been formed spontaneously through any random process such as the total destruction of the Twin Towers. Nor is it possible that the material was present in the Towers for some innocent reason.

911research.wtc7.net...

you see, just like I said before, DSC is not measuring the "burn time" of
anything!

reply to post by bsbray11


I take it by the lack of response to my posts that I am being ignored by bsbray now.

Such a thing is hard to tell. I will be forced to assume he could not come up with a reasonable response.

Originally posted by turbofan
Read it and weep Pt!

911research.wtc7.net...

you see, just like I said before, DSC is not measuring the "burn time" of
anything!

A Truther site with commentary written by California Software Engineer Jim Hoffman is considered scientific confirmation, now?

And while we're on the subject of credentials, where are the 9 PHDs we keep hearing about?


For starters, Jeffrey Farrer is only the lab manager of Brigham Young U's Transmission Electron Microscopy Laboratory. Jones's old alma mater.
No Doctorate.

Daniel Farnsworth was a physics student there who helped out. No Doctorate.

Kevin Ryan is a water quality expert who runs a Truther site. No Doctorate.


Mike




[edit on 20-7-2009 by mmiichael]

and you are anonymous, no credit.

Keep up the character bashing while you ignore the info, that's real
good science.

Originally posted by turbofan
and you are anonymous, no credit.

Keep up the character bashing while you ignore the info, that's real
good science.

Keep up the avoidance of confirming what you have stated repeatedly.

"9 PHDs worked on the paper" Where are they?


M

Farrer is listed as a Ph.D. on STJ911; Ryan is listed as a chem. engineer. (not a Ph.D.).

Andersen reviewed the paper; he is a Ph.D.

So we'll go with your numbers and still call it a landslide for credible
authors and associates.

The point is, the science has been presented. The other point is, I've
supplied explanations of what the DSC measures.

The last point is, I'm not interested in pointless discussion about character
slamming. It's getting old.

Originally posted by turbofan
Farrer is listed as a Ph.D. on STJ911; Ryan is listed as a chem. engineer. (not a Ph.D.).

Andersen reviewed the paper; he is a Ph.D.

So we'll go with your numbers and still call it a landslide for credible
authors and associates.

The point is, the science has been presented. The other point is, I've
supplied explanations of what the DSC measures.

The last point is, I'm not interested in pointless discussion about character
slamming. It's getting old.

This has nothing to do with character assassination.

As stated, Jeffrey Farrer is the lab manager of BYU's Transmission Electron Microscopy Laboratory. He does not have a PhD, is not a chemist, and is not a professor or a researcher.

Kevin Ryan, is the laboratory director at Environmental Health Laboratories Inc., which is a subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories Inc. They deal with water quality. No Engineering degree.

Daniel Farnsworth was a BYU physics student at the time of writing.

Conflicting claims of the credentials of a couple others, but I think the picture is pretty clear. On the simplest thing to ascertain we have Truther sites making thing up on the fly.


M