Debunked: Iron Microspheres in 9/11 WTC Dust as Evidence for Thermite

[Hitstirrer]

Aluminum (sic) is very rare in its free form.

Thank you. Its possible that I am right then. lol.

 

[qed]

Thank you. Its possible that I am right then. lol.

Based on past experience no, but lets see.

 

[hamishsubedei]

ok sorry i didn't know to explain the video as niels harrit obviously can explain better than i can

the theory is that nanothermite was used in combination with thermite, the thermite used to cut through the steel and the nanothermite either as an explosive.
The DSC shows a rapid release of energy more so than known nanothermite samples, this means its more advanced or better not that is not thermite. The energy is released more rapidly than the known nanothermite tests from LANL , the energy peaks in the graph meaning its released quickly, organic compounds and epoxy paints release their energy at a flate rate the graphs in DSCs have shown to be flat meaning the energy released is at a constant rate.
Sol gel is added to the nanothermite in order to add gases to the explosion thus giving it more of an explosive effect it also hold the stuff together.

In the niels harrrit paper it shows elemental aluminium, either millete didn't test the correct red stuff or he didn't properly separate the aluminium from the iron oxide, further testing should be done I think .

 

[Hitstirrer]

ok sorry i didn't know to explain the video as niels harrit obviously can explain better than i can

hamish. I think that you will find that @Alienentity was slightly pulling your chain. See posts #512 and #514. But Mick in 513 was correct too. Its usually courtesy in here to give a synopsis so that members can decide whether to access a link or not. I see that you do understand much of Haritts work.

 

[Alienentity]

I'm still puzzled why nobody from Harrit's team has been able to find even a single Tnemec or LaClede (or other) paint chip in their samples which they could cross-reference with the supposed 'nanothermite'. I've been told that such samples do exist, but they never seem to show up. Surely, with all that coated steel there would be a substantial amount of primer in the dust for comparison, yet it never appears!
I think this is the greatest mystery of all: what happened to all the primer paint?

I assume Dr Millette was able to find primer paint in his samples. He recovered it using exactly the same techniques as Harrit et al., and I've been gleefully reassured by Jay Howard that Millette's chips are neither Tnemec nor LaClede. So then what are they, exactly? This gets so confusing, because Harrit's chips look just the same as Millette and Couannier's, yet Millette's have zero elemental Aluminum, ruling out thermite.
Which are primer paint and which aren't?
If none of them are primer paint, then what are they?
What else would be painted onto carbon steel, forming a bilayer chip made of Epoxy, Iron Oxide and Kaolin bonded to the steel?

No thermitist seems able to address this obvious question.

If only Dr Harrit would've been kind enough to simply do, on their own chips, the FTIR and other tests that his team promised were important and already underway they could've cleared all this up long ago. Like, 5 years ago. Yet oddly Harrit won't do it. It almost seems like they don't want to come to a scientific conclusion, but that wouldn't be very nice of them. I'm sure they wouldn't play games like that on such important matters.

What are they hiding? Clearly something has stopped them, but what is it?

 

[Alienentity]

ok sorry i didn't know to explain the video as niels harrit obviously can explain better than i can

the theory is that nanothermite was used in combination with thermite, the thermite used to cut through the steel and the nanothermite either as an explosive.
The DSC shows a rapid release of energy more so than known nanothermite samples, this means its more advanced or better not that is not thermite. The energy is released more rapidly than the known nanothermite tests from LANL , the energy peaks in the graph meaning its released quickly, organic compounds and epoxy paints release their energy at a flate rate the graphs in DSCs have shown to be flat meaning the energy released is at a constant rate.
Sol gel is added to the nanothermite in order to add gases to the explosion thus giving it more of an explosive effect it also hold the stuff together.

In the niels harrrit paper it shows elemental aluminium, either millete didn't test the correct red stuff or he didn't properly separate the aluminium from the iron oxide, further testing should be done I think .

Thanks for actually bringing up the points on your own, so they can be discussed.

The problem with this theory is that there's virtually no evidence to support it; it's just a fanciful idea. DSC can't tell you if thermite is present, it's very misleading to try to use it as a proof. The only way you can determine whether thermite is present is to do a number of tests which show elemental Aluminum in a stoichiometric ratio with Iron Oxide. The Harrit team didn't do that, they've said they would do so, but haven't. That was almost 5 years ago.

Also Harrit isn't being very honest (or competent, if you prefer) by thinking that the red layer could produce a thermitic explosion when
a) there's only about 6% possible thermitic material in the chips, if you allow elemental Aluminum (which is not proven, and not a fact) Nobody can explain how you could get a thermitic reaction with so little active ingredients - the LLNL sol gels contain an ideal stoichiometric ratio of reactants, completely different from the red chips, which don't. Also, the red chips don't resemble the LLNL chemistry in the slightest. You can't just take Harrit's word for it, you have to learn about the chemistry.
Otherwise he can just tell you whatever he likes and you'll never know if it's true. Did you know that the Harrit team didn't actually know what the organic layer was made of? Dr Millette was able to identify it, he's a professional forensic scientist. Didn't seem too difficult for him.
You should all be wondering why Harrit's team hasn't been able to get even a simple replication of the paper, which would be the scientifically accepted way for validation. That's how the process is supposed to work. Dr Steven Jones has outlined exactly that methodology with regard to his cold fusion work. He insists that the work MUST be 100% reproducible in order to be validated.
Unfortunately for them, Millette has invalidated their results so far, by showing that there is no elemental Al in the red layer.

The ball is now in their court to publish some new tests, again as they've promised to do. That's just due diligence. This isn't supposed to be fake science, is it?

b) Can anybody demonstrate the methodology using a nanothermite and conventional thermite together, on a steel beam? So far it doesn't exist. Since the alleged nanothermite was clearly painted on in a layer of roughly 25 microns, can anybody demonstrate experimentally what that would do to steel? So far we have zero evidence to support the idea.

c) If indeed the hypothesis is that a painted-on nanothermite was employed somehow, can anyone explain how it would survive the fireballs and huge fires in the towers, since it decomposes at 430º C, and would quickly burn away? It doesn't make any rational sense. Nobody who was in the towers saw any actual devices going off consistent with powdered thermite. It burns super bright, but in the time before the towers fell, nobody seems to have witnessed any such thing inside the buildings.

You've got hypothesis layered on hypothesis, with each one relying on a bunch of unproven assumptions. Even the authors of the paper seem unable to simply follow through and do the necessary testing, or even get another lab to reproduce their claims, nor have they gone to a scientific conference and presented their case. All they seem to want to do is fly around doing TV interviews, making accusatory DVD's and youtube videos. We certainly can't say they're afraid of publicity - clearly they aren't. But they seem unwilling to do standard science.

Maybe they figure they don't have to, since people will believe them no matter what. I don't agree with this approach, I think it's very deceptive and shady. I think they're fooling you, not informing you of the truth here. And I've shown how they're doing it.

when are you people (thermite theory supporters) going to hold them accountable for their claims? You make it way too easy.

 

[Alienentity]

either millete didn't test the correct red stuff or he didn't properly separate the aluminium from the iron oxide

You left out one other possibility: Millette did the correct test correctly. Why not accept that?

What's the point of testing anything if thermitists such as yourself will refuse to accept a test which doesn't agree with your preconceived idea? Nobody can win then, regardless of the truth. Can you show that Millette performed the test wrong?
Harrit's team didn't even do that test, and they've already agreed it needs to be done. They promised that in 2009 in their paper. Would you like me to quote it for you?

From the paper: 'The Gash report describes FTIR spectra which characterize this energetic material. We have performed these same tests and will report the results elsewhere'
'Further studies of the red material (separated from the gray material) compared to known super-thermite variants using DSC, TGA, FTIR (etc.) analyses would certainly be in order. In particular, NMR and GC-mass spectroscopy and related studies are urged to identify the organic material.'

That''s almost 5 years ago! What happened? What are they hiding? Something suspicious is going on, no doubt about it.

 

[Alienentity]

Is there a single supporter of the nanothermite theory that finds it odd that Harrit et al. haven't identified the organic material in any of their chips after almost 5 years?

I haven't come across one.

I'm just gonna throw this one out there: if you had compelling evidence which proved one of the worst crimes ever perpetrated in US history, would you sit on your hands for 5 years instead of releasing it?
Would you make youtube videos and DVD's or would you publish the proof so the scientific community could support you?

It seems a no-brainer for me. But I'm not a 9/11 truther. I want real proof and evidence before I sign onto something. As the late Carl Sagan said 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof'. What are they waiting for?

 

[Jazzy]

You can't just take Harrit's word for it, you have to learn about the chemistry.

Undeniably true. A clue might be that Chemistry isn't a sub-branch of Rhetoric.

What happened to all the primer paint?

And Logic precedes Rhetoric too.

Alienentity, you and OneWhiteEye are stars.

 

[Alienentity]

Why thank you Jazzy. You're not so bad yourself!

 

[hamishsubedei]

Im not an expert in nano chemistry , niels harrit is , so maybe you should email him with your questions , I only did chemistry at university what are your qualifications you seem to know a bit and I'm sure niels harrit could answer some of these questions for you .Your asking a lot of questions that very few people know about as nano thermite is a new science and outside of LANL has never been tested or made by other scientists , so your assumptions about what it should be like or would be like are probably due to lack of knowledge .


DSC wasn't proof it was thermite it was proof its energetic , whatever it is is.

A)
6% where did you get this from ?
Do you have a source for the stoichiometric ratio of LANL sol gels ?
Dr millete was not able to identify it as what paint has both a red side and a grey side with nano sized plates connected to each other? It doesn't match the paint primer in the wtc as well , its just a mystery stuff that is unidentified kaolin'' like'' but not the primer paint of the wtc .

Why has no other scientists tried to replicate the experiment ? And why only one scientist has tried to test the stuff and not others, millete was payed by jref to do the study, why don't other scientists investigate this mystery material ? I can ask questions too .

Mark Basille is trying to get a blind study of the material so that the scientists who test it don't know where it came from and test it for what it is .
http://www.markbasile.org

From the bentham paper after soaking for 55 hours elemental aluminium was found.

The next XEDS spectrum (Fig. 17 ) was acquired from a

region that showed a high concentration of aluminum. Using

a conventional quantification routine, it was found that the

aluminum significantly exceeded the oxygen present (approximately

a 3:1 ratio). Thus, while some of the aluminum

may be oxidized, there is insufficient oxygen present to account

for all of the aluminum; some of the aluminum must

therefore exist in elemental form in the red material. This is

an important result. Aluminum particles are covered with a

layer of aluminum oxide irrespective of size, thus it is reasonable

to find a significant oxygen content with the aluminum,

given the very high surface area to volume ratio of

these very fine particles.

I tried to find the Millete paper but couldn't find any XEDS spectra or any BSE images of what he was testing exactly. Maybe I had the wrong link could you provide the paper ?

B) can anyone get LANL to release some samples of nanothermite to test them ? Why was it clearly 25 microns, the red chips are just the chips that survived the thermitic reaction the rest of the thermitic material would have reacted.

c) Maybe there was a protective layer or perhaps it wasn't visible to the eyewitnesses as it was on the steel beams which weren't visible as they were inclosed, I'm not aware of any survivors on the floors of the jets impact.

The scientific community haven't invited them to any conferences I'm sure they would be very eager to go and present their evidence and have others replicate the results. Why has no one else tested the dust ? Why doesn't the scientific community want to do any experiments with the 911 dust ?

More testing should be done , a lot more , problem is getting the scientific community to do testing or become interested in testing the wtc dust ! No one seems to care ..

 

[Hitstirrer]

Why has no one else tested the dust ? Why doesn't the scientific community want to do any experiments with the 911 dust ? More testing should be done , a lot more , problem is getting the scientific community to do testing or become interested in testing the wtc dust ! No one seems to care ..

Much of your complaint was duplicated recently in a blog written by Kevin Ryan.

Here :- http://digwithin.net/2013/12/08/thermite/

The part that I found most interesting was towards the end when he comments on the work by Millette. A very small extract is given below but obviously that link above puts it into full context.

Claiming to have found the chips, Millette perfomed an XEDS analysis for elemental composition but failed to do any of the other tests including BSE, DSC, the flame test, the MEK test, or measurement of the chip resistivity. Having inexplicably "ashed" the chips at 400 °C in a muffle furnace, thereby proving that they were not the materials of interest (which ignite at 430 °C), Millette ignored the remainder of the study he had set out to replicate. Because he did not do the DSC test, he could not do XEDS of the spheres formed from the chips. Since he had still not found spheres in the dust, he could not test those and this allowed him to ignore the testing of spheres from the thermite reaction.

 

[Jazzy]

Im not an expert in nano chemistry, niels harrit is, so maybe you should email him with your questions, I only did chemistry at university what are your qualifications you seem to know a bit and I'm sure niels harrit could answer some of these questions for you.

You don't have to be an expert in "nano chemistry". Just a reasonable ability to be logical should suffice.

When half a million tons of primer-coated steelwork collapses, one might expect a proportion of the ensuing dust to contain chips of primer paint, and be prepared to distinguish these from any other types of material.

If the chips are composed of material which is nowhere near 100% stoichiometric then they are already insufficient for the job, and cannot be "nanothermite", and are, of course, primer paint (which can, of course, burn, liberating enough energy to reduce some iron oxide back to pure iron).

Even if the information on the dust is true (and as its provenance isn't secure this idea is also moot) then this topic has been so far a total waste of space, except for information gleaned on the "intellects" dealing with it.

.

 

[Mick West]

Claiming to have found the chips, Millette perfomed an XEDS analysis for elemental composition but failed to do any of the other tests including BSE, DSC, the flame test, the MEK test, or measurement of the chip resistivity. Having inexplicably "ashed" the chips at 400 °C in a muffle furnace, thereby proving that they were not the materials of interest (which ignite at 430 °C), Millette ignored the remainder of the study he had set out to replicate. Because he did not do the DSC test, he could not do XEDS of the spheres formed from the chips. Since he had still not found spheres in the dust, he could not test those and this allowed him to ignore the testing of spheres from the thermite reaction.

Millette did not set out to replicate, or even refute, the Harrit study. He set out to study the chips. He then studied them, and concluded they were "consistent with a carbon steel coated with an epoxy resin that contains primarily iron oxide and kaolin clay pigments."

If Harrit wants to be taken seriously, then he should get his test replicated, and do the additional tests he said should be done, back in 2009.

We observe that the total energy released from some of the red chips exceeds the theoretical limit for thermite alone (3.9 kJ/g). One possibility is that the organic material in the red layer is itself energetic. Determination of the chemical compound(s) involved in the organic component of the red material would promote understanding. Further studies of the red material (separated from the gray material) compared to known super-thermite variants using DSC, TGA, FTIR (etc.) analyses would certainly be in order. In particular, NMR and GC-mass spectroscopy and related studies are urged to iden- tify the organic material.

We have observed that some chips have additional ele- ments such as potassium, lead, barium and copper. Are these significant, and why do such elements appear in some red chips and not others? An example is shown in Fig. (31) which shows significant Pb along with C, O, Fe, and Al and displays multiple red and gray layers.

In addition, the gray-layer material demands further study. What is its purpose? Sometimes the gray material ap- pears in multiple layers, as seen in Fig. (32).

The red-mesoporous material is on the left in this view, with the touching dark-gray layer next and a lighter-gray material on the right as seen in a photograph of the same chip (right hand image in Fig. (32)). The gray layer in con- tact with the red layer has the XEDS spectrum shown in Fig. (33) in which iron is not seen, while the outer gray material had an XEDS spectrum just like those displayed in Fig. (6).

Thus, the middle-layer gray material contains carbon and oxygen and presumably also contains hydrogen, too light to be seen using this method. Since the gray inner layer appears between two other layers, it may be a type of adhesive, bind- ing a red porous thermitic material to another, iron-rich ma- terial. One might speculate that the red thermitic material has been attached to rusty iron by an adhesive. The cooling ef- fect of the iron in such close proximity, acting as a heat sink, might quench the reaction and explain the fact that unreacted red thermitic material, always found by us in thin layers, remains in the dust. These hypotheses invite further experiments.

Go for it!

 

[Hitstirrer]

Millette did not set out to replicate, or even refute, the Harrit study.

Millette was financed by a fund raising effort from JREF members. They were so rabid in their desire to debunk Harrit that they threw cash at him to finance his work. To now say that Millette's paymasters specifically tasked him not to replicate or refute the Haritt paper is so much bunk that I'm astonished that you have the cheek to write that. An opportunity for Millette to 'peer review' Harrits work by duplicating his tests, and then move on to other 'vital' tests that were being demanded by JREF -- and he wasn't asked to do that by JREF ?

I leave readers to come to their own conclusion.

 

[Alienentity]

Im not an expert in nano chemistry , niels harrit is

Really? His bio reads 'organic photochemistry and photophysics, including the photophysics of nanostructures and the structural dynamics of photochemical processes'
His PhD is in Mechanistic Photochemistry. That is about 'organic photochemical reactions.
He's no specialist in thermitic compounds, particularly nanothermites. This should be obvious to a fair observer, as he and his team had no experience with such materials, and are speculating based on a couple of papers by Tillotson and Gash. Seriously, those papers are available for you to read.

DSC wasn't proof it was thermite it was proof its energetic

It was proof that the organic material (epoxy) gives off an exotherm. Any 'thermitic material' in the mix didn't contribute much, since there was only a tiny amount of it.

6% where did you get this from

XEDS spectra of red chips.

Do you have a source for the stoichiometric ratio of LANL sol gels ?

'Nanostructured Energetic Materials with Sol-Gel Methods' Gash et al. 2003

Dr millete was not able to identify it as what paint has both a red side and a grey side with nano sized plates connected to each other? It doesn't match the paint primer in the wtc as well , its just a mystery stuff that is unidentified kaolin'' like'' but not the primer paint of the wtc.

This comment seems quite confused, frankly. First off, can you describe what 'the primer paint' of the WTC was? That would help to start with.
Secondly, if Millette's chips are not primer paint, given that they are virtually identical to Harrit's chips - what are they, in your opinion?
Thirdly, you are claiming that Dr Millette could not identify the red and gray layers; in fact you say it's 'unidentified kaolin-like'. But that's not true. Here's what Millette wrote 'The red side contains the elements C,O,Al,Si and Fe with small amounts of other elements such as Ti and Ca. based on the infrared and electron microscopy data, the Fe/O particles are an iron oxide pigment consisting of crystalline grains in the 100-200 nm range and the Al/Si particles are kaolin clay plates that are less than a micrometer thick. There is no evidence of individual elemental aluminum particles detected by PLM, SEM-EDS or TEM-SAED-EDS..'
Note that Harrit et al. did NOT do these extensive tests to find out if the Al was actually elemental. They only did part of that work, then jumped to conclusions - and they've admitted (in 2009) that this further testing was needed to confirm. Why haven't they done it as Millette has done?

Now again, you're attempting to inject doubt in Millette's report where there isn't any; please stop doing that, because you're misrepresenting his findings, as I've shown above. He found Kaolin, he wasn't confused about it. The only one who's confused is you, and probably deliberately so.

Let's continue with Dr Millette's findings '
Small numbers of titanium oxide particles consistent with titanium dioxide pigment and some calcium particles were also found (Appendix F).
'According to the Federation of Societies for Coatings Technology, kaolin (also known as
aluminum silicate or china clay) is a platy or lamellar pigment that is used extensively as
a pigment in many segments of the paint industry.12 It is a natural mineral (kaolinite)
which is found in vast beds in many parts of the world.13 Iron oxide pigments are also
used extensively in paints and coatings.13,14 Both kaolin and iron oxide pigments have
been used in paints and coatings for many years.13,14 Epoxy resins were introduced
into coatings in approximately 194715 and are found in a number of specially designed
protective coatings on metal substrates'

So Dr Millette, contrary to your assertions, has given footnoted references for the use of these specific materials in paint coatings on metal substrates (the gray layer, carbon steel). It's a proven fact that they're commonly used this way, just as it's a proven fact they were used in the WTC towers.

If you can't accept this, you're not into the truth or reality, because all these things fit exactly with reality and the historical record of the WTC towers.

In your haste to discredit any and all of Dr Millette's work, you've inadvertently thrown out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak - you completely deny that these materials are consistent with primer paint. Yet all the evidence speaks to the contrary - they are indeed consistent with primer paint.

If you think it's not paint, then what on earth is it? What else uses this mixture of roughly 80% epoxy with iron oxide, trace pigments, and kaolin clay? Please tell us!! We're dying to know!
Hint: it ain't any form of nanothermite. If you'd read either the Gash or Tillotson papers, you'd know already that they're using entirely different compounds and methods: a sol gel doesn't contain kaolin platelets! If you insist that they do, go and prove it by finding either a sample or a paper describing such. Otherwise it's an appeal to magic - the old 'nanothermite is whatever we imagine it is, so there! You can't prove it doesn't exist, Nananana!'
Sure, for all we know it's powdered unicorn horn mixed with polymer. Since we can't prove unicorns don't exist, that theory is equally valid. See how this game works? It's a childish exercise, but this is supposed to be science, not nonsense.

Harrit et al. got all excited about the idea of sol gel nanothermite, but in their haste, they forgot to check that the red layer of the WTC chips is formulated as a sol gel. It isn't. It's not comprised of a uniform gel with pores containing the oxidant. That's probably why they haven't followed up and compared the chips with examples of sol gel nanothermite, and published the findings. What probably happened is that they started this work and quickly discovered their theory was falsified, but decided not to make this public. Hence their refusal to carry out the publishing they promised they needed to do.
Why else would they sit on their hands for 5 years?
I mean, for crying out loud, AE911Truth has probably raised close to $2 million bucks in that time, yet NOT ONE CENT HAS BEEN DEDICATED TO FURTHER SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF THE DUST? Seriously?
That is beyond pathetic, it's pathological.

It took Chris Mohr to pay Dr Millette a thousand bucks to do the work. Millette has shown that the chips are not any kind of thermite.

Why are you people not holding Harrit and AE911Truth to account for this negligence of due diligence? They have made the claims, but they refuse to take responsibility for the necessary follow up work. It's not like they're not out in the public yapping about nanothermite and controlled demolition - that's all they seem to do in fact... Yap and yap.

Why has no other scientists tried to replicate the experiment ?

Other scientists have done so. They include Marc Basile and FH Couannier. You should read this thread, since your questions are answered already elsewhere.
The experiment has been replicated, but the results have not been. In other words, the results have not been able to be reproduced elsewhere, meaning that you cannot treat them as verified. To ignore this is to be very unscientific, frankly.

Mark Basille is trying to get a blind study of the material so that the scientists who test it don't know where it came from and test it for what it is .
http://www.markbasile.org

That's fine. Funny that AE911Truth, which pulled in $549,000 in 2012, cannot spend a couple of grand to get those tests done on Harrit's dust samples. It doesn't seem like either Harrit or Richard Gage are the least bit interested in further tests, does it?

Besides, think about it for a second: Dr Steven Jones has free access to the BYU labs, they can do some restesting and publish the results, same as they did the first time. It worked in 2009, so why didn't they just perform the tests they said were needed? They didn't identify the organic matrix, and they admitted it.

From the bentham paper after soaking for 55 hours elemental aluminium was found.

That's what they claim, yes. They tried to infer it, but their tests are not conclusive. They said they would perform more conclusive tests, that was almost 5 years ago.....

I tried to find the Millete paper but couldn't find any XEDS spectra or any BSE images of what he was testing exactly. Maybe I had the wrong link could you provide the paper ?

It can be found here
Did you know Dr Millette presented this report to a conference of forensic experts? Too bad Niels Harrit doesn't do this kind of standard scientific presentation. In the years since the 2009 Harrit paper, do you know if any of them has presented to a scientific conference? If so, let us know.
So far I'm not aware they have.
They've made lots of nice youtube videos and done lots of TV and print interviews though.....

c) Maybe there was a protective layer or perhaps it wasn't visible to the eyewitnesses as it was on the steel beams which weren't visible as they were inclosed, I'm not aware of any survivors on the floors of the jets impact.

Maybe there was no thermite there. Use Occam's Razor once in awhile to cut thru the nonsense.
Thermitists often insist that the explosives were located above or below the impact floors - that's the standard excuse for why the explosives wouldn't have been destroyed by the plane impacts and fires. There were lots of survivors on those floors, but they didn't see anything.

The scientific community haven't invited them to any conferences I'm sure they would be very eager to go and present their evidence and have others replicate the results.

Wow, you really like to shift the responsibility off their shoulders, don't you? They are making the claims, it's their job to present. And besides, how do you know they haven't been invited? You're making that up. You don't know.
There is a huge difference between idle speculation (what you've been doing) and facts. You ought to be more careful to discern between the two.

More testing should be done , a lot more , problem is getting the scientific community to do testing or become interested in testing the wtc dust ! No one seems to care ..

It would help if Harrit et al. had submitted the paper to a major chemistry or science journal, instead of Bentham Open. It would help if Harrit et al. would present their hypothesis outside of the truther community - and in the scientific community instead.

But judging from Richard Gage and AE911Truth's success in raising large amounts of money, they're doing just fine without doing real science. So why should they change? Truthers believe them, that's all that really matters, right? Richard Gage was just featured in CBC's recent 'Conspiracy Files' program, broadcast nationally. He wasn't asked even once whether he'd tried to get the allegations presented at a scientific conference; he went on and on about 'freefall speed', 'controlled demolition', 'high tech explosives found in the dust', never bothering to mention that the work has never been replicated, nor endorsed by any forensic organization, demolition industry conference, engineering or architecture body.
But he's on international TV anyway. Just the way he likes it, I suspect.

By undermining everything Dr Millette did, you are helping Richard Gage in his attention-seeking ego trip; you are letting Harrit et al. off the hook. If that's the person you want to be, then so be it. But don't kid yourself that this is a search for the truth, because everytime the truth is shown to you guys you run away as fast as you can.
Thus a paint chip cannot possibly be a paint chip. That must be denied at all costs, even if it's true. That's what you did in your post. And that's why you have a lot of 'splaining to do.

 

[Alienentity]

Millette was financed by a fund raising effort from JREF members. They were so rabid in their desire to debunk Harrit that they threw cash at him to finance his work. To now say that Millette's paymasters specifically tasked him not to replicate or refute the Haritt paper is so much bunk that I'm astonished that you have the cheek to write that. An opportunity for Millette to 'peer review' Harrits work by duplicating his tests, and then move on to other 'vital' tests that were being demanded by JREF -- and he wasn't asked to do that by JREF ?

I leave readers to come to their own conclusion.

Mick is not entirely correct, and neither are you. From this page you can find the following statement about the Millette commission
'A research study has been done in an attempt to replicate key aspects of the 2009 Bentham Open Chemistry and Physics Journal paper on "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe"'

Note the term 'replicate key aspects'. The Millette paper outlines what these were:
'MVA Scientific Consultants was requested by Mr. Chris Mohr of Classical Guide to
scientifically study red/gray chips from WTC dust that matched those presented in a paper by
Harrit et al., 2009,1 which concluded that thermitic material was present in the WTC dust.'
'In order to confirm that the samples chosen had the characteristics of WTC dust, the
samples were examined by stereomicroscope and by polarized light microscopy (PLM)
according to the procedures described in Turner et al., 20054 (Figures 2 and 3). The
analytical procedures used to characterize the red/gray chips were based on the criteria
for the particles of interest in accordance with the recommended guidelines for forensic
identification of explosives5 and the ASTM standard guide for forensic paint analysis
and comparison.6 The criteria for the particles of interest as described by Harrit et al.1
are: small red/gray chips attracted by a magnet and showing an elemental composition
primarily of aluminum, silicon and iron as determined by scanning electron microscopy
and x-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) (Figure 4). The spectrum may
also contain small peaks related to other elements.'

If you had read this, Hitstirrer, you'd see that the protocols were not dictated by any JREF person, or as you put it 'paymasters' (even though there were 9/11 Truthers who contributed money to the study - ah, you didn't know that, did you? LOL).

The task was to find out whether the red/gray chips were thermite. It found they were not. Ultimately the Harrit team's efforts have been surpassed by the Millette study, using methodologies which they themselves agreed were useful and necessary (do I need to quote them again for you?)
So their hypothesis has been falsified by this study, their findings (of thermite) have not been replicated by Millette or even FH Couannier. You should read Couannier's findings, btw. He's a truther too, so if anything he wanted to find explosives or something nefarious, rather than ordinary paint chips.

Lost in all your efforts to discredit and smear Dr Millette is the mystery of the missing WTC primer paint. We know there were 10's of tons of it, as it was painted onto all the structural steel - and there wasn't just one type used, either. We don't know all the specific formulas. But what happened to all of it?
Apparently it vanished into thin air, never to turn up in any dust samples as red/gray chips.

No truther has been able to even approach this subject seriously, yet they have effectively demanded that the primer paint has vanished! What an unpleasant conundrum!

 

[Alienentity]

Can any thermitist explain why Dr Millette shouldn't have used the standard 'criteria
for the particles of interest in accordance with the recommended guidelines for forensic
identification of explosives5 and the ASTM standard guide for forensic paint analysis
and comparison'?

Perhaps they would like to explain why Harrit's team didn't follow these guidelines..
Recommended Guidlelines for Forensic Identification of Intact Explosives and Recommended Guidelines for Forensic Identification of Post-Blast Explosive Residues
and
ASTM E1610-02

 

[Alienentity]

Also, can thermitists please post some examples of DSC plots of epoxies to substantiate their claim that their exotherms are entirely different from those of the red/gray chips?
Thanks in advance for backing up your claims with evidence.

 

[Alienentity]

Hmm, totally not what the red layer of the chips is like. The whole xerogel is iron oxide (oxidant) with elemental Al globules evenly distributed in it.
It's got the ideal stoichiometric mix of Al to Fe2O3 to produce a thermitic reaction.

Notice it isn't mainly epoxy, like the red chips? Notice it doesn't have kaolin clay? The emperor of the thermitists has no clothes. Someone needs to tell the truth to them.

 

[Alienentity]

Here's an example of the kind of nonsense being touted as rebuttal of the Millette study, taken from Take Our World Back (from what? Sanity?)
' Now it's interesting that the Harrit Figure 33 XEDS spectrum for a gray layer in one of these multi-layered chips shows mostly carbon, a little oxygen, but no evidence of iron. Thus, this gray layer is not steel or mill scale. and would be consistent with a "separator material" such as part-oxidized carbon with some hydrogen.'
So according to this, the gray layer is not steel. Ok then. Here's Millette's data, figure 13

No evidence of Iron huh? Sure, whatever you say.

When discussing 'The mysterious multiple gray layers', the author continues they 'would be consistent with a "separator material" ' in a LLNL patent. Except that the WTC 'layers' are at least 25 times too thick to conform with this patent and technique.

But instead of throwing these theories out as they are invalidated or contradicted, the thermitists keep them all on the list!!

This is a bizarre additive process, whereby the number of hypotheses increase over time and are ALL presented as some kind of grand something-or-rather which should 'wake up the sheeple' (in truther parlance).

Another tactic used by the pseudo-scientific thermitists is the immediate need to dismiss almost everything from the Millette study, rather than learn from it. So if Harrit et al. say X, and Millette finds Y, then the answer is X, and Millette is wrong. He finds no elemental Al, so he is wrong. Harrit et al. can NEVER, by this measure, be incorrect about anything.
Must be nice to be in this kind of reality-distortion bubble. In that world, NOTHING proposed by thermitists can ever be invalidated!

No wonder this stuff doesn't get presented at scientific conferences - it would be exposed for the bad science that it is.

 

[Jay Howard]

In the same way the exploration of nanomaterials is irrelevant as there is no real evidence that any kind of superthermite was present;

Except the XEDS mapping data which showed both Fe2O3 and elemental Al, the DSC test which demonstrated a sharp exotherm at about 450C and the by-products of this ignition which were iron microspheres very much like the ones found in the WTC dust, yes, except for that, there's "no real evidence" for any kind of thermite/exlosive/incendiary.

It is a willful act of ignorance to try to keep these pieces of evidence from forming a theory in your head. Couple them with the broader unexplained phenomena, (vaporized lead, molten molybdenum, the WPI steel, thermal imaging from NASA showing temps in excess of 1300C weeks later, numerous photos, video and reports of molten metal, blast phenomena, numerous reports of explosions, the vast amount of unaccounted-for microspheres in the dust, the list goes on...) and suddenly it becomes crazy to deny that these events and evidences could be connected.

Put it this way: if a woman's body is found in the woods, clothes ripped and disheveled, and a lab tests for male DNA in her birth canal, it's crazy not to try to look for a rapist/murderer. It's crazy to say, "well, we sent a sample to another lab and had it tested and found no DNA, so therefore, the first lab tests must be wrong. Nothing to see here. She died of exposure." That's just plain crazy. Or complicitous. But it's certainly not logical to deny that these separate pieces of evidence fit nicely into this theory of a murderer/rapist. Why would someone try to deny that in the face of all the evidence?

It is a denial of logic to make sense of all these pieces of evidence as a connected whole. Now, perhaps some of the various high-temp phenomena are NOT connected. That's a possibility. But to deny an investigation outright without even exploring the possibility of a connection between all these phenomena is criminal.

...there are simply some inconclusive tests by the proponents of that hypothesis followed by other conclusive tests showing the hypothesis to be false.

The tests were not only conclusive, they were cross-corroborated. That is, they were tested from a number of different methods which demonstrated the broader question of whether the chips were in fact, thermitic. They found elemental Al, Fe2O3, an unexpectedly low ignition point and IRON MICROSPHERES as a by-product.

Your denial of this does not make it go away. It just shows you have no interest in an honest discussion about this. You're carrying water. It's a lot of work to flow in the opposite direction of facts. I can appreciate that. Nonetheless, your denials of evidence come down to a subjective standard. It's "not good enough for you" in some loosely defined way that the Harrit team tested the chips in various ways and found that the results corroborated the thermite hypothesis.

Even worse, the thermitists actual hypothesis posits that the explosive would have to be painted on, very thinly, onto the steel!

This is some more bet-hedging here. You're basically saying "even if it is experimental nano-thermite, it's not powerful enough to cause the kind of damage seen on 9/11...." Wow! So, even if it IS an experimental explosive/incendiary, you have NO INTEREST in finding out who put it in the buildings? Because you're pretty sure it couldn't have caused the kind of destruction witnessed. Amazing. If there was any doubt you're working (for whatever reason) to make this hypothesis go away, it should now evaporate.

You have no interest in finding out anything new. You are immune to new information--much less putting together a theory from this information.

This proposal is not only untested and unproven,...

How is this proposal not tested? Oh, you mean it wasn't tested to your liking. Or to your favored conclusions.

it simply doesn't exist in the history of demolition!

We agree!

There are mountains of validation required for this theory to be even remotely plausible to a serious and discerning scientific audience.

Remember when there were just the iron microspheres that Jones found and tested? That was when there was sufficient suspicion to look further. Then they found the red-gray chips. Then they examined those chips under a number of high-energy spectroscopy devices, SEM, BSE, tested its reaction to acetone, set it up in a DSC, graphed the results, took the by-products and tested those... A TONNE of work has been done. The results: this stuff is some kind of experimental explosive/incendiary. There is no way around that conclusion except by willful ignorance.

The ignition of the chips has been replicated by Mark Basile. F. Henry-Couanier seems to lean towards Judy Wood in terms of what he thinks happened, so I don't put a lot of faith in his work. Dr. Millette's group was unwilling to test for an ignition point--probably for the same reasons NIST didn't look for explosive residues--because he didn't believe there was any point in looking. The fact that you support the Millette team's decision NOT to ignite the chips stands in stark contrast to your call for the Harrit team's results to be replicated.

The work hasn't even begun, and yet the thermitist cult has turned the idea into an almost religious belief.

Yea, I guess that makes some kind of sense, if by "religion" you mean "scienfically verified phenomena". Or unless you mean exactly the opposite of what you say. And by "the work hasn't even begun" you mean "the hypothesis has been tested by multiple methods and cross-corroborated." Then yes, your statement makes some kind of sense.

There should be absolutely no leeway given to the thermitists, and no 'new investigation', until they have met the expected scientific standards, the burden of proof. It would be dangerously foolish to do otherwise.

How much leeway should the facts be given, despite what label they are given?

Really, I guess you could say I agree there needs to be new investigation - by Jones et al. to properly identify their chips. Why do they continue to avoid this due diligence?

Why are the XEDS maps they made that show a separation between the Al and Si not good enough for you? Did they make them up? Were they mislabeled? Was the machine not calibrated properly? What is your real criticism of the data?

What about the burning of the chips? There is an excellent video above (with Neils Harrit explaining why the chips aren't paint) that has Mark Basile at the end burning both the red-gray chips and known paint chips. They reaction very differently. Most notably, the paint chips produce not flame nor do they make any iron microspheres. They do not have the same appearance upon ignition, nor the same by-products.

Also, it's worth noting that you don't dispute that LeClede and Tnemec are both ceramic coatings (when baked as the Tnemec was). If anyone made paint that lit up like the little chips did, they would be BANKRUPT the moment after the first painter dropped his cigarette. If that little chips flames up and makes molten iron, imagine a bucket of that stuff! It would likely explode--and create a large aerosol cloud of molten metal. People would die. The company who made it would go out of business immediately.

We both know the red-gray chips aren't paint. They weren't made in a paint factory, so there were not "flammability" quality controls on it. If there were, it would've never made it out of the color lab.

And the argument that "it's TOO ENERGETIC to be nano-thermite" do not help your cause. The theory, as it stands (as I'm understanding and presenting it) is that this stuff was highly-engineered in a high-tech lab. It's use was as a thermal bridge. Possibly the idea was that no matter what level the "event" happened on the buildings, this stuff would set in motion a chain reaction of events that would normally need a high-temp reaction to set in motion. Other explosives/incendiaries were probably in play in this theory. But, (now pay heed) I DON'T KNOW how this stuff was actually used. What can be said is that it bridges temps from below a bic lighter to above the melting point of iron. Probably much hotter in abundance. How hot? I do not know. But it ain't paint.

 

[hamishsubedei]

Really? His bio reads 'organic photochemistry and photophysics, including the photophysics of nanostructures and the structural dynamics of photochemical processes'
His PhD is in Mechanistic Photochemistry. That is about 'organic photochemical reactions.
He's no specialist in thermitic compounds, particularly nanothermites. This should be obvious to a fair observer, as he and his team had no experience with such materials, and are speculating based on a couple of papers by Tillotson and Gash. Seriously, those papers are available for you to read.

yea , niels harrit has published 56 peer reviewed and has a masters in chemistry , how many papers have you published, and what are your qualifications.

It was proof that the organic material (epoxy) gives off an exotherm. Any 'thermitic material' in the mix didn't contribute much, since there was only a tiny amount of it.

an epoxy doesn't give off an exotherm like the one seen in the DSC… otherwise all paint would be explosive


XEDS spectra of red chips.from the harrit study ?, it clearly showed the ratio of iron to oxygen and aluminium you would expect.



'Nanostructured Energetic Materials with Sol-Gel Methods' Gash et al. 2003Read the entire report did not find the ratio … thanks .. it was actually interesting

In milletes report is states that the material doesn't match any of the 166 epoxies in the wtc so why are you asking me what it was?
It doesn't contain zinc either so its not paint primer.

 

[hamishsubedei]

And the argument that "it's TOO ENERGETIC to be nano-thermite" do not help your cause.


lol, its not nano thermite because its too explosive

 

[Jazzy]

It is a willful act of ignorance to try to keep these pieces of evidence from forming a theory in your head. Couple them with the broader unexplained phenomena, (vaporized lead, molten molybdenum, the WPI steel, thermal imaging from NASA showing temps in excess of 1300C weeks later, numerous photos, video and reports of molten metal, blast phenomena, numerous reports of explosions, the vast amount of unaccounted-for microspheres in the dust, the list goes on...) and suddenly it becomes crazy to deny that these events and evidences could be connected.

All these have reasonable explanations which have already been mentioned without any challenge from you.

You merely wait a period of time, and carry on as if you haven't received them.

This is not proper debate at all, but something foreign to the very spirit of this site.

 

[Mick West]

This is not proper debate at all, but something foreign to the very spirit of this site.

The latter pages have degenerated into something of a ramble, but still contain useful information. Pity nobody will ever read it.

 

[hamishsubedei]

yea its quite good, I think we should all donate some money to basille.org so a truly independent test can be done on the red grey chips. Either harrit and co are guilty of fraud or millete, harrits clearly shows elemental aluminium , millete doesn't.

 

[Alienentity]

niels harrit has published 56 peer reviewed and has a masters in chemistry , how many papers have you published, and what are your qualifications.

Nice try at deflection. How many papers on nano composite materials has Niels Harrit published? Please let us know.

an epoxy doesn't give off an exotherm like the one seen in the DSC… otherwise all paint would be explosive

Please prove that claim by comparing to other DSC exotherms. Oh, you can't.
The DSC can't show you whether something is explosive or not. That's not what it does. This is a common thermitist misunderstanding.

It just gives you the decomp of the material as it's heated. You haven't got a clue what you're talking about.

In milletes report is states that the material doesn't match any of the 166 epoxies in the wtc so why are you asking me what it was?
It doesn't contain zinc either so its not paint primer.

This is just mad raving now. There were not 166 epoxies used, Millette was just trying to cross reference with the known Tnemec formulations.
You're not even trying to understand the subject.

You thermitists have a terrible situation now - you deny that there are any paint chips at all - everything has now become nanothermite to you.
But that means that neither Millette's or FH Couannier's 'nanothermite' is really nanothermite, so the most likely reality is that Harrit's is not nanothermite either.

It's not hard to see why your hypothesis is getting no traction in the scientific world; it's not sensible or scientific. You say no zinc = no paint.
We say if there's no elemental Al, especially only trace amounts if at all, then no thermite.

One of us is wrong. But we know for a fact there was paint in the WTC. The odds are very much in my favour. I'm not worried at all about upcoming tests - but you should be.

 

[qed]

@Alienentity

@Hitstirrer provided evidence that Aluminium is rare in free form.

Could it have oxidised in the fire?

 

[hamishsubedei]

Nice try at deflection. How many papers on nano composite materials has Niels Harrit published? Please let us know.


Please prove that claim by comparing to other DSC exotherms. Oh, you can't.
The DSC can't show you whether something is explosive or not. That's not what it does. This is a common thermitist misunderstanding.

It just gives you the decomp of the material as it's heated. You haven't got a clue what you're talking about.


This is just mad raving now. There were not 166 epoxies used, Millette was just trying to cross reference with the known Tnemec formulations.
You're not even trying to understand the subject.

You thermitists have a terrible situation now - you deny that there are any paint chips at all - everything has now become nanothermite to you.
But that means that neither Millette's or FH Couannier's 'nanothermite' is really nanothermite, so the most likely reality is that Harrit's is not nanothermite either.

It's not hard to see why your hypothesis is getting no traction in the scientific world; it's not sensible or scientific. You say no zinc = no paint.
We say if there's no elemental Al, especially only trace amounts if at all, then no thermite.

One of us is wrong. But we know for a fact there was paint in the WTC. The odds are very much in my favour. I'm not worried at all about upcoming tests - but you should be.

and how many papers do you have published ? or millete ?
What are your qualifications?

Strong peaks in the DSC mean energy is released at a faster rate, a faster rate means more explosive, I was going to show a DSC of epoxies as I saw one the other day but Ill have to find the link again.
Millete admitted himself that the stuff doesn't match the primer paint in the wtc, so what is it ?
Even if nanothermite wasn't there we thermitists aren't in a bad situation as there is evidence for conventional thermite.
I think more tests will prove elemental aluminium is there its just a matter of getting someone unbiased an with the right tools and who heats it to 430c to show a clearly obvious thermitic reaction, iron spheres are formed .

Why would you not expect zinc to be in paint.

 

[Alienentity]

Except the XEDS mapping data which showed both Fe2O3 and elemental Al,

That's their claim, it has not been reproduced, rather it has been falsified. It is indeed a willful act of ignorance to ignore the work of Dr Millette in this instance.

the DSC test which demonstrated a sharp exotherm at about 450C

No matter how many times you write it, it still isn't true: a DSC is done at a very slow rate, you're not burning anything. You can't tell if something is thermitic from a DSC test. Sorry, you just can't. But you keep right on believing, it's reassuring to me since it means your hypothesis is wrong and there wasn't a giant overarching conspiracy using super secret materials to blow up the towers. I sleep better knowing that it's just a hardcore fringe of thermitists who are going to keep tilting at that particular windmill, no matter what.

So thank you for reconfirming your avoidance of reality.

and the by-products of this ignition which were iron microspheres very much like the ones found in the WTC dust,

Ignition? Did you say ignition? What was the peak temperature then? Did anyone measure it? Uhm, no they didn't.
And since (unlike any thermite known to man) the material of the red layer is about 80% epoxy resin, that's what provided the energy. You can't get around it - just look at the XEDS of the red layer and see for yourself: it's the carbon, stupid. It was identified as epoxy by Dr Millette using FTIR, something Harrit promised to publish but never did (because it probably falsifies their claims, so they're hoping y'all will let 'em off the hook).
And the spheres? Why is there Calcium and Titatanium in it? To make it look nice? Gee, it's just a coincidence that paints use titanium, calcium carbonate, and silicate in their pigment mixtures.

But oh no, it can't be paint, never ever. LOL

Such deep denial you guys are in, truly spectacular. Notice also that, compared with the original XEDS, there's a similar amount of Al and Si as there was before, but most of the C has been removed? Gee, I wonder what was burning? It wasn't the Al, that's for sure - it's still there, in fact it looks like Al/Si mixture along with other impurities.
And since the red layer is attached to a giant piece of partly oxidized iron (the gray layer), how does Harrit know that some of the Fe wasn't transferred during heating?

Oh, right, they never tested for that. Just assumed it wasn't.

The tests were not only conclusive, they were cross-corroborated.

Sorry, science doesn't work that way. The Harrit claims have never been replicated, even by other truthers. They are not confirmed in a standard scientific way, no.

Your denial of this does not make it go away. It just shows you have no interest in an honest discussion about this.

I can't make crazy people sane, no. You're right. You will continue to believe in stuff that never happened.

Why are the XEDS maps they made that show a separation between the Al and Si not good enough for you?

Likely a testing error, or contamination. It has not been replicated. So far it hasn't stood the basic scientific standard of corroboration by other scientists working independently.

Also, it's worth noting that you don't dispute that LeClede and Tnemec are both ceramic coatings (when baked as the Tnemec was).

Nonsense. The pigment in LaClede is to stop corrosion. The job of fire protection was given to SFRM, and sprinkler systems, as in all other steel construction of late.
Ordinary latex paint is flammable, it decomposes at an even lower temperature than epoxy primer. But gypsum wallboard is not supposed to be flammable, so it can't do much to fuel a fire. Neither can 25 microns of primer paint.

This is not difficult to understand. You seem to be labouring under a number of misapprehensions regarding these materials.

We both know the red-gray chips aren't paint.

No, we don't. You think they aren't, but that doesn't matter to reality.

And the argument that "it's TOO ENERGETIC to be nano-thermite" do not help your cause. The theory, as it stands (as I'm understanding and presenting it) is that this stuff was highly-engineered in a high-tech lab. It's use was as a thermal bridge. Possibly the idea was that no matter what level the "event" happened on the buildings, this stuff would set in motion a chain reaction of events that would normally need a high-temp reaction to set in motion. Other explosives/incendiaries were probably in play in this theory. But, (now pay heed) I DON'T KNOW how this stuff was actually used. What can be said is that it bridges temps from below a bic lighter to above the melting point of iron. Probably much hotter in abundance. How hot? I do not know. But it ain't paint.

Groan, what a ridiculous and elaborate theory based on supposition and no hard facts. Please go write a spy novel or something if your overactive imagination won't give you rest.
Seriously, this is just one tiny step from being full-on raving lunacy. It reminds me of no-planers - you can show them a picture of a jet crashing into the towers, and they refuse to accept that it happened, instead it becomes some ridiculously elaborate theory with no hard facts. I've seen it too many times to think it's a fluke: it's a requirement for you to buy into these conspiracy theories.

I can't help you with that. But again I'm reassured that it takes an absolute commitment to avoid the obvious in order to believe that the buildings didn't come down due to fire and plane impacts. In a way I admire the commitment, but I just completely disagree with all of you: From the mini-nuke guys, the no-planers, the no-hijackers, the no-hot-fires to the thermite/nanothermite, to the Directed Energy Weapons people. All of you collectively and individually. I reject all your theories as incorrect, for different reasons, but for the same reason: they all deny obvious facts.
You deny paint chips, they deny whatever else can be denied. Whatever.

 

[hamishsubedei]

When Dr Farrer burned epoxy paint in the DSC, it gave a very broad thermal trace, NOT at all like the spiked exothermic DSC peak in our Fig 19. This is one of the many tests he did to check things.

You say that the exothermic peaks we observed in the DSC (our Figure 19) could be due to burning of epoxy paint. Not according to our experiments -- that is, when Dr Farrer burned epoxy paint in the DSC, it gave a very broad thermal trace, NOT at all like the spiked exothermic DSC peaks in Fig 19. Igniting paint in the same DSC is one of many tests performed to double-check our experiments, and I urge you to do similar tests.

http://911blogger.com/news/2012-09-08/letter-regarding-redgray-chip-analyses

 

[hamishsubedei]

We did TEM analysis also, years ago now, but we did not see any titanium in the red/gray chips! (Referring specifically to the clean-surface chips; see Figs. 6 and 7 in our published paper.) More and more, it appears that Millette was simply not looking at the same material that we studied.

Table 1. Composition of Primer Paint on the World Trade Center Towers according to T. F. Sramek16
Pigment Iron Oxide 35.9%
Zinc Yellow (Zinc Chromate13) 20.3%
Tnemec pigment (proprietary composition) 33.7%
Diatomaceous silica 10.1%
Vehicle Soya alkyd resin solids 16.5%
Hard Resin 2.8%
Raw Linseed Oil 35.1%
Bodied Linseed Oil 6.4%
Suspension agents 2.2%
Driers and antiskin 4.8%
Thinners 32.3%

Doesn't contain zinc so is not the wtc primer paint …
So its not primer paint either then where did this paint come from ?

 

[Jazzy]

Doesn't contain zinc so is not the wtc primer paint … So its not primer paint either then where did this paint come from?

• It was just one chip from gazillions of chips of paint in the dust.

• Perhaps it came from a splash of primer paint used on a single modified component of a tower. Perhaps it came from the undercoat of a veteran child's toy on someone's bookshelf.

• Not all of the towers was covered in the same primer paint.

• Zinc chromate is not a necessary constituent of red oxide primer paint.

• To be sure of the provenance of WTC dust one would have to take and test many samples from many sources.

• The provenance of the WTC dust samples has not itself been properly verified.

• Your list of constituent percentages adds up to 200.1 % !!!

Pick any or all… LOL

 

[Hitstirrer]

Perhaps it came from the undercoat of a veteran child's toy on someone's bookshelf.

I see that your vivid imagination is still working well.

 

[Pete Tar]

Are you saying that is so beyond the realm of possibility it's akin to unhinged fantasy?
Or is it an actual plausible possibility? Why do you object to it?

 

[Hitstirrer]

Are you saying that is so beyond the realm of possibility it's akin to unhinged fantasy?
Or is it an actual plausible possibility? Why do you object to it?

I don't object to it at all.

I just leave it to open minded readers to weigh up the possibilities suggested by Jazzy's imagination. He imagines that someone in the tower had a very old childs toy on his bookshelf. That it was torn to shreds and then tiny particles from that one tiny toy was evenly distributed amongst thousands of tons of dust, and then also happened to distribute themselves so well that fragments of that individual toy were collected in five different parts of Manhattan.

And that they were the very five samples then happened to be the ones presented to researchers to study. Of course Jazzy could also now imagine that someone in the towers was in fact a collector of antique metal toys and had thousands on display in his office. Exactly how far would this reasoning need to go in order to satisfy the co-incidence of fragments of such toys being scattered for miles across Manhattan.

As I say, I leave it to readers to decide --to quote you again -- "Are you saying that is so beyond the realm of possibility it's akin to unhinged fantasy?" Or your other quote -- " Or is it an actual plausible possibility? "

Personally, I think that Jazzys imagined toy being responsible for anything to do with the subject under discussion is implausible. Product of a vivid imagination as I said.

 

[Jazzy]

Well, I would agree with Hitstirrer if the same source arrived in five separate locations.

My main point was that hamishsubedei's sample percentage adds up to 200.1% which makes it ridiculous.

The latent point is that the material can only be primer paint. The poor provenance, with the material's plenitude, is the guarantee of it.

The "toy primer" idea was an attempt to free up the poor thinking around this idea.

 

[qed]

FYI. @hamishsubedei meant to quote

Table 1. Composition of Primer Paint on the World Trade Center Towers according to T. F. Sramek16

Pigment

• Iron Oxide 35.9%
• Zinc Yellow (Zinc Chromate13) 20.3%
• Tnemec pigment (proprietary composition) 33.7%
• Diatomaceous silica 10.1%

Vehicle

• Soya alkyd resin solids 16.5%
• Hard Resin 2.8%
• Raw Linseed Oil 35.1%
• Bodied Linseed Oil 6.4%
• Suspension agents 2.2%
• Driers and antiskin 4.8%
• Thinners 32.3%

 

[Jazzy]

Maybe the WTC builders were ripped off with their "zinc yellow". What actually IS "Tnemec pigment", I wonder?