Lapman:
SJ did send me (and Chainsaw) some EDX spectra that he had not presented at Boston. That would have been in early January. I tried to engage SJ and several of his supporters in a debate on these spectra. We had a few e-mail exchanges but then I sent a long technical commentry on the topic of certain elements such as copper and zinc being present in some microspheres and SJ went all silent on me. That was about 3 weeks ago..... That's all I want to say on this for now.
Has Professor Jones suggested that you write a formal rebuttal?
BTW, he has recently described an unspecified "us" as "beleagured editors", to me. Personally, I would still have preferred a delay to address whatever issues you raised, before publication.
He has, at times, expressed a concern about getting information out before a false flag operation makes that impossible. Thanks to the CIA forcing the issue of the NIE, recently, I think that's of less concern (though ex-CIA Philip Giraldi has informed us that attacking Iran may still be on the agenda).
Anyway,
I will request that you write a formal criticism or rebuttal, and submit it to the Journal. If the Journal won't print it, you can always post it at 911myths.com.
As far as variations in chemical compositions of microspheres goes, I think the following will entertain, and maybe even enlighten.
When I was a kid, I was watching my uncle, an electrical engineer, solder something. A piece of solder - let's call it a mini-sphere - flew through the air and landed on my finger.
I think if that mini-sphere had been examined, it would have had traces of
me on it, in the form of Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, etc.
Spheres flying through all kinds of dust should have all kinds of contaminants. So, I guess the questions that come to mind are: how long can the microspheres stay in liquid form before solidifying (under various assumptions of ambient temperature), how quickly can contaminants diffuse (or even convect) into the interior of the spheres, etc.
BTW, I haven't read the paper yet, so maybe he has gone into this. Hopefully, this weekend.... Even so, I usually stay out of discussions involving chemistry, since I never studied it much, and recall much less.
Finally, IIRC, aluminotherics are used in thermobaric devices. If this is so, can you postulate as to how such an aluminotheric/thermobaric device would be ignited?
I've alway been troubled by the notion of thermite or thermate being widely used as a means of destroying the building, in the sense of melting though columns. The 'collapse' looked quite explosive to me (not in the sense of high explosives), and I've seen exactly one column which was melted through (perhaps during cleanup) so I think it's use as a thermobaric to destroy building elements such as floor panels is more likely (though this argument wouldn't hold for the melted metal falling from the building before collapse, of course.)
If the source of the spheres is aluminotheric/thermobarics, and if the spheres stayed melted long enough to conduct/diffuse contaminants which their own detonation was creating in great quantities, I would think we'd expect a real potpourri of spectra. The question then may be, is the actual data too uniform around certain clusters of contaminant types and concentrations to support this notion?
