One of the pieces of evidence conspiracy theorists
use to say the buildings were brought down is a photo with
something they interpret as being left behind by a thermite
reaction.
There are a number of things they claim with this photo. One is the timeline. They
say the photo has firemen which means this
was during the rescue operation which only lasted two weeks.
Why would they have fireman after the rescue operations?
This suggests to them that the cut on the columns were made very
close to September 11. The suggestion here is that it was
done during the collapse.
They
claim that the angle of the cut can't be created by a welding tool and/or is
designed to have the building fall in a certain direction.
The other is a yellow substance they claim is residue from a
thermite reaction.
Let's examine
these claims one by one to see where the evidence takes
us...
Timeline and
Firemen
The rescue operation took about
two weeks. They figured anyone left alive would have died by
then anyway, so they started clean up operations and body
recovery. During this time there was always at least 50
policemen and 50 firemen left on the scene to recover their
fallen brothers. There were even
more than that on ground zero until the city of NY told them
to leave in November 2001. The city couldn't justify risking
the health of 150 police and
fireman for body recovery. In fact there was a protest
about it which ended with the mayor allowing 50 members of each
department on the scene.
Citing safety concerns, Giuliani
had sought to scale back the number of firefighters working
at ground zero to 25. At one point there had been as many as
150 firefighters and police officers at the site.
The decision angered
firefighters still mourning the loss of 343 colleagues in
the attacks. Many bodies have not been recovered, and the
firefighters said they wanted to help find the remains of
their friends and colleagues.
The number of firefighters
working at the site was increased to 50 on Thursday.
Below are photos of firemen well after September 11.
October
December 15th 2001
So the fact that there are firemen in the photo doesn't
mean anything. That cut could have been done at any time
during the clean up and recovery. Lets not forget the
building went down some 6 stories underground. The firemen
were recovering bodies mainly from the core and some were in
the lobby when it happened. So it's not unreasonable to
expect firemen there well after the event. Long enough for
an ironworker to cut the column.
Angle and yellow residue
Another point is the
angle of the cut. The argument here is that it suggests the
column was cut at an angle so the building fell in a certain
direction, like a tree. But is it possible the column was
cut at an angle so just the column fell in a certain
direction during cleanup? This can't be, surely the scholars
would have asked an ironworker or someone else on the scene.
I bet there isn't one photograph someone can find on the
internet of a column which is cut at an angle. Remember,
we're talking about "Scholars" here.
Once again, a close up of their column...
Maybe I'm being a little unfair. Maybe I just happened to
get this from some obscure site. Maybe I work for the
government and have a stash of photos the scholars aren't
privy to... No, actually I got this from the same place the
scholars got their photo.
Note the yellow smoke and residue left behind by the
ironworker.
Thermite in general makes an ugly hole with molten metal drips/blobs.
It doesn't make clean cuts. It's a powder that undergoes a
violent chemical reaction as seen in the video below.
Note how much thermite is used. The pot is about a
liter, but how much thermite is that?
Stoichiometric thermite requires 2 moles of Al per 1
mole of Fe2O3
2Al + Fe2O3 = Al2O3 + 2Fe
2 moles of Al weigh 54 g
1 mole of Fe2O3 weighs 160 g
density of Al=2.64 g/cc
density of Fe2O3=5.24 g/cc
54 grams of Al is equivalent to 20.5 cc of Al.
160g of Fe2O3 is equivalent to 30.5 cc of Fe2O3
Therefore, 51 cc of fully dense powder of 20.5 cc Al and
30.5 cc Fe2O3 weighs (54+160) g = 214 g.
A volume of 1000 cc would weigh (1000/51)*214 = 4.2 kg
For a powder packing density of 50%, the powder would
weigh:
0.5*4.2 kg = 2.1 kg = 4.8 lb
That much just to burn a small hole in a
small car engine. I bet it's even an aluminum block but lets
say it isn't. How much do you think it would take to burn a
massive core column? Then add enough to burn for 6 weeks!
You see where we're going. You'd need tons.
Here's a Debunking911Fun Fact!
How much mass would be required to produce molten
iron from thermite equal to the same volume of molten
aluminum droplets shown flowing from the south tower window:
A mole of Fe weighs 54 g. For every mole of Fe produced
by thermite, one mole of Al and 0.5 mole of Fe2O3 is
needed.
2Al + Fe2O3 = Al2O3 + 2Fe
One mole of Al weighs 27 g. 0.5 mole of Fe2O3 weighs 80
g.
Therefore, (27 + 80) g = 107 g of Al and Fe2O3 is needed
to produce 54 g of Fe.
That means the mass of the reactants to that of Fe
produced is a ratio of 107/54 = 2. The mass of thermite
reactants (Al, Fe2O3) is twice that of the molten iron
produced.
Comparing the weight of molten aluminum droplets
compared with iron:
Iron is 7.9 g/cc. Aluminum is 2.64 g/cc. Fe is denser
than Al by a factor of 3. For the same volume of
droplets, Fe would have three times the mass as Al.
To produce the iron from thermite requires a reactant
mass that is a factor of 2 more than the iron produced.
Also, Fe is 3 times as dense as Al. So, it would take
2*3 = 6 times as much mass to produce the same volume of
molten iron droplets from thermite compared with molten
aluminum droplets.
Example:
Assume 3000 lbs of aluminum fell from the towers. If it
had been molten iron produced by thermite, then 6*3000 =
18,000 lbs of thermite reactants would have been
required to produce that same volume of falling mass.
Suppose 10 tons of molten aluminum fell from the
south tower, about 1/8th of that available from the
airplane. If it had been molten iron produced from
thermite, 60 tons of thermite reactants would have to
have been stored in Fuji Bank to produce the same volume
spilling out of the south tower. The section of floor
would have to hold all of that plus the aircraft.
*Amount of aluminum can be ascertained by counting the
droplets and measuring their size compared to the known
size of the window. It's not easy to get a good number
on this. It's based on the number of slugs seen in video
stills, their size relative to the window width which
was about 22 inches, and the density of aluminum,
assuming this was aluminum.
The weight of a gallon of aluminum is about 22.5 pounds.
A hundred of these would already be 2250 lbs. A gallon
size is not unlike the size of the slugs that were
pouring out the window. Look at them relative to the
window size. They look small at first, but when you
realize how big the towers were, the slugs were fairly
large. It must have been in the thousands of pounds.
Some of the video stills show what look like 50 to 100
slugs in just one frame.
The thermite wouldn't have only needed to make a clean
cut like the photo above, it would have also needed to cut
sideways. Not an easy feat for thermite. You see, it's a
powder which burns chaotically.
Maybe with some device but no working device has been proven
to me to work to cut a vertical column.
You can direct it with a
canister
but that method wouldn't work to cut a column. The canister only makes a small hole. Nano-thermite has been talked about but its uses fall far
short of cutting these massive columns. It's in its
research stage. They include possible uses for
welding molecular devices and possible use as a
heat signature flare decoy. Then there is a patent
of a device which has been brought up but as of yet, there is
no evidence the idea went any further. Does it even work?
Even if it did, they are "Ganged" together to make the cut. You
would still need these boxes all over the columns. Once
again the answer to this from the "scholars" is "rationalized
technology". They need this technology to exist so it
exists. There is some secret super thermite which can
be placed in a canister which can survive 1,100 degree C so
the primary charge doesn't go off. "Gee debunking, you're so
dumb."
Update:
Steven Jones:
Actually, the
metal-cutting device employing thermite is well
known and documented; see the paper by Robert Moore
published three months ago (January 2007) in the
Journal of 9/11 Studies:
Furthermore, there is a
demonstration of a “device employing thermite”
cutting through a metal rod,
here.
Yet another
absurd comparison from Jones. A small metal rod is NOT the
same as a large column. See how large that canister is
compared to that small metal rod? The canister in that
video, while being enough to cut the vertical rod, will only
cut a small hole into a vertical WTC column. (Something I
said long ago. See bold text above) For the towers columns
to have been cut by a similar device you would need much
larger canisters wrapped around the buildings at this scale.
Absurd!
If Jones wants
to salvage what credibility he thinks he has left, he MUST
show us a working device which uses thermite and cuts a
sizable hollow column. It MUST also be small enough to do
the job yet hide from the average World Trade Center worker.
Anything less is an attempt to deceive the public.
To illustrate how deceptive this is lets see If I can
find the use of thermite using this same test.
To be fair I don't know if Gallagher uses a real
Nano-thermite coated Sledge-O-Matic.
Alex Jones, professional
conspiracy theorist radio host, has said Jones found evidence
of thermite. This isn't true. What Jones found was something
which would have been in the debris pile anyway. Sulfur...
In Steven Jones' PDF "Answers
to Objections and Questions", to support his claim for
Sol-gels/Thermite he states:
"One molecule, described
by the EPA's Erik Swartz, was present at levels "that
dwarfed all others": 1,3-diphenylpropane. "We've never
observed it in any sampling we've ever done,"
The angle-cut beam in
the first photo above has been the subject of much
discussion. Recently, a first-responder has stated that
he saw this particular cut-column (it is rather
remarkable in appearance) when he arrived at the
GZ scene on 9/11/2001. We are seeking a written
statement from him to this effect to hopefully settle
this issue. An analysis of the slag seen clinging to the
inside and the outside (both) of this angle-cut column
would also do much to answer questions about what did
the cutting. I think you will agree that in the second
photo, the worker is using an oxyacetylene torch to cut
the steel.
INCREDIBLE! His argument for
using the top photo as evidence seems to be that he has no evidence it's made
without thermite... Incredibly, he argues that the photo of the iron
worker cutting the column I uncovered is all the evidence he needs for THAT
column and that column only. With his absurd logic he is at the same time
suggesting that because there is no photo of the iron worker cutting the iron in
his original photo, the original photo is evidence of thermite! To put it
plainly, if it walk and talks like a duck that doesn't mean it isn't thermite.
He doesn't even have a source for the quote from the alleged first responder
saying the photo was taken on 9/11, never mind evidence that he was actually
there. Because we all know, if there is no photo on the internet then he wasn't
there using Jones' logic. And yet this passes Kevin Ryan's peer review! (Editor
of "scholars for 9/11 studies.") I say again, INCREDIBLE!
Had he been
just an average internet poster I would let this go as gross
ignorance of how the scientific method works, but not a
professor. I am left to draw no other conclusion than Steven
Jones is purposely deceiving his flock or he has a serious
mental disease. What other conclusion can a one draw?
Listen to "Demo Dave" Griffin and his crew talk about
ground zero and evidence of pancaking.
"For it being two hundred and ten story buildings,
the pile wasn't an enormous pile. We were expecting it
to be - I think a lot of the guys were expecting it to
be a lot more. I cut away a section of the wall - my
gang cut into a section of the wall and we - we counted 14 floors compressed into 8
feet."
He also points to perimeter columns with angled cuts which he says his men
cut.
"You can see where they made the cuts along - [Dave
points to columns with angled cuts] right above -
that's the bow tie connection they're cutting at about 3
to 5 foot above the bow tie connection before it starts
in to the forming of the candle stick. They've got three
candles left to cut."
Sloppy research or purposeful deception
by the "scholars"? The evidence for one is
growing...
Thanks to Shagster,
ScottS and David B. Benson for their research.
