Why the Harrit Nano-thermite paper has not yet been debunked

[ktesibios]

I have a question.

Didn't the calorimetric experiments with Jones' chips produce a result denominated in J/kg (or energy/mass)?

If so, the fineness of particles can't have any relevance to the energy density of the samples.

1g of aluminum is 1g of aluminum, whether it's ground to particles smaller than a micron, filings from a piece of bar stock, or a pop rivet from my toolbox.

 

[ElMondoHummus]

I have a question.

Didn't the calorimetric experiments with Jones' chips produce a result denominated in J/kg (or energy/mass)?

If so, the fineness of particles can't have any relevance to the energy density of the samples.

1g of aluminum is 1g of aluminum, whether it's ground to particles smaller than a micron, filings from a piece of bar stock, or a pop rivet from my toolbox.

This is correct; the findings indeed noted the energy release as units of energy (kJ) per mass (grams) of substance.

For everybody else reading this (since ktesibios is an old hand here and almost certainly already knows this): The whole problem is that legitimate nanothermite research exists which notes that the nanosizing of the reactants does indeed result in a real-world difference in reaction kinetics and the magnitude of energy released. This of course is due to the fact that the reactants are able to react to a point closer to the stoichiometric ideal, and the nanosizing of particles ends up providing even more "surface" area in aggregate to react with. Which of course helps kinetics.

But the thing that truthers ignore is that there's an ultimate limit to the amount of energy a perfectly stoichiometric iron oxide/aluminum redox releases - thermite's enthalpy of reaction - and this is inviolate. That limit is due to the chemical bonds themselves. Anything short of that is due to whatever real-world imperfections exist that engineering might be able to alleviate, but once you've released up to the energy of formation, you're at the chemical limit, period. And this is utterly, blatantly ignored by 99.99% of the people citing Harrit and Jones (only Metamars among the truthers has grasped this). Harrit and Jones noted energy releases above the 3.9kJ/g limit, but handwaved it away by saying that the excess was from the "organic ingredients" forming the matrix. Thing is, that's such a blatant and stupid attempt to deflect from the fact that the enthalpy figures contraindicates thermite that it turns into pure rubbish: How do you separate out the energy contributed by the supposed thermite from the energy contributed by the organic oxidation? You can't. And they didn't. Yet in spite of that, they make the claim that the energetics show that thermite was present. That's a total fail all around.

You see, it's details like this about the Bentham paper which leads me to dismiss it. People can complain all day about Bentham's practices and be justified, and people can wrangle all night about vanity publications to their hearts desire, but when all that is put aside and the actual content is examined, it falls painfully short. The research has the trappings of science with none of the ability to clarify and establish knowledge. It's cargo-cult science. And merely following the rituals of the scientific process doesn't gain you anything if the data and interpretation of such is bunk.

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Prove Barry Jennings wasn't murdered.

That's not how it works, champ. If it is, then... prove the towers weren't brought down by nano-unicorns.

Who seems to enjoy feeding on death.

The 9/11 Fungus Movement...

 

[T.A.M.]

I have a simple question that any truther that still posts here can answer:

Given there are hundreds of LEGITIMATE, peer reviewed journals in the fields of chemistry and materials sciences, and given that neither the title nor the subsequent paper producedby Jones et al are inflammatory or political in appearance, why do you think this group of "scientists" has been unable to get their paper published in any of these journals.

Think about it...

is the reason:

(A) All of these journals are owned by "the man" and hence will not publish a paper with such revolutionary, damning evidence,

(B) All of these journals are LEGITIMATE journals with REAL scientists behind them, who realize the paper is COMPLETE JUNK, and lacks the critical criteria for it to be considered for publication.

(C) please provide me your thought out, WELL ARTICULATED reason why this supposed ground breaking and supposed "scientifically sound" paper cannot get published by a LEGITIMATE scientific journal?

TAM

 

[triforcharity]

Ah, the classic heads-I-win-tails-you-lose approach. If most of the mass ends up outside the footprint, it was a controlled demolition, because it couldn't have contributed to the collapse. [1] And if most of it ends up inside the footprint, that's what happens in a controlled demolition, so it was a controlled demolition. [2] And for all cases in between, it must still have been a controlled demolition. Priceless.
...Snipped.

Yepo, that is my comic. Horatius inspired of course.

 

[alienentity]

Barry Jennings gave powerful testimony of several loud explosions in WTC7 before the towers collapsed and dead bodies in the WTC7 lobby. That testimony support the CD hypothesis. Get it now?

Yikes! Talk about a derail/deflection. Here's the original scenario I posed:

Originally Posted by alienentity View Post
cmatrix - Consider this simple fact. The Jones/Harrit paper came out in early 2009. So far there has been no noticeable stir created in the highest level academic institutions around the world. This would have been the story of the century, had it any merit, I'm sure we can agree. therefore, we are confronted with 3 possible reasons for the lack of international hue and cry:

1) Qualified scientists just haven't heard of the paper.

2) They've heard of it, looked at it online, and dismissed it as nonsense or irrelevant.

3) They heard of it, looked at it online, realized how profound and true it is, but have kept silent due to academic pressure, NWO henchmen threatening next-of-kin, or that kind of intimidation.

Take your pick. y'know, I wouldn't bet a whole lot of money on #3 if I were you. But then, I don't like to lose bets. Maybe you don't care.

So, from 'noticeable stir created in the highest level academic institutions around the world' you get Barry Jennings?
Hello, McFly? Anybody home?

cmatrix, if you are interested in learning something about Jennings (Which I doubt) see my video.


I don't even touch the ridiculous 'stepped over dead bodies' thing, as it has no relevance to the other observations. However, it is worth noting that Jennings was inconsistent about that observation, so perhaps his recollection was faulty.

Anyway, you still haven't responded in a relevant way to the original scenario. I'm shocked..

 

[alienentity]

I have a question.

Didn't the calorimetric experiments with Jones' chips produce a result denominated in J/kg (or energy/mass)?

If so, the fineness of particles can't have any relevance to the energy density of the samples.

1g of aluminum is 1g of aluminum, whether it's ground to particles smaller than a micron, filings from a piece of bar stock, or a pop rivet from my toolbox.

Not exactly. Ryan Mackey has pointed out that some nanothermites (sol-gels?) actually have even lower ED than garden-variety thermite. See post above 'Nanothermite has about 40% of the energy of ordinary thermite, as reported by Tillotsen et al. (2002)'

 

[rwguinn]

This is correct; the findings indeed noted the energy release as units of energy (kJ) per mass (grams) of substance.

For everybody else reading this (since ktesibios is an old hand here and almost certainly already knows this): The whole problem is that legitimate nanothermite research exists which notes that the nanosizing of the reactants does indeed result in a real-world difference in reaction kinetics and the magnitude of energy released. This of course is due to the fact that the reactants are able to react to a point closer to the stoichiometric ideal, and the nanosizing of particles ends up providing even more "surface" area in aggregate to react with. Which of course helps kinetics.

But the thing that truthers ignore is that there's an ultimate limit to the amount of energy a perfectly stoichiometric iron oxide/aluminum redox releases - thermite's enthalpy of reaction - and this is inviolate. That limit is due to the chemical bonds themselves. Anything short of that is due to whatever real-world imperfections exist that engineering might be able to alleviate, but once you've released up to the energy of formation, you're at the chemical limit, period. And this is utterly, blatantly ignored by 99.99% of the people citing Harrit and Jones (only Metamars among the truthers has grasped this). Harrit and Jones noted energy releases above the 3.9kJ/g limit, but handwaved it away by saying that the excess was from the "organic ingredients" forming the matrix. Thing is, that's such a blatant and stupid attempt to deflect from the fact that the enthalpy figures contraindicates thermite that it turns into pure rubbish: How do you separate out the energy contributed by the supposed thermite from the energy contributed by the organic oxidation? You can't. And they didn't. Yet in spite of that, they make the claim that the energetics show that thermite was present. That's a total fail all around.

You see, it's details like this about the Bentham paper which leads me to dismiss it. People can complain all day about Bentham's practices and be justified, and people can wrangle all night about vanity publications to their hearts desire, but when all that is put aside and the actual content is examined, it falls painfully short. The research has the trappings of science with none of the ability to clarify and establish knowledge. It's cargo-cult science. And merely following the rituals of the scientific process doesn't gain you anything if the data and interpretation of such is bunk.

Nah--there's always more. All we gotta do is increase efficiency! (Argument used by some greenies when informed of the limitations of solar energy)[/soapbox]

 

[ElMondoHummus]

I hate to do this, since this is trending close to starting a derail from the discussion of the Bentham paper. But since it's been brought up as a defense of the proposal of explosives, I feel that a rebuttal is still on topic. It's beginning to be tangental, but it's still on topic. Anyway:

Barry Jennings gave powerful testimony of several loud explosions in WTC7 before the towers collapsed...

No. The "loud explosions" were debris from the North Tower impacting. Not explosives.

... and dead bodies in the WTC7 lobby. That testimony support the CD hypothesis. Get it now?

No. Quote from Jennings himself:

Barry Jennings himself disagrees with their interpretation of his words. Barry Jennings told the BBC: "I didn't like the way you know I was portrayed. They portrayed me as seeing dead bodies. I never saw dead bodies"

Dylan Avery is adamant that he didn't take anything out of context. He played The Conspiracy Files a recording of Barry Jennings words: "The fire fighter who took us down kept saying do not look down. And I kept saying why.

"He said do not look down. And we're stepping over people and you know you could feel when you're stepping over people."

However, Barry Jennings told the BBC: "I said it felt like I was stepping over them but I never saw any.
"And you know that's the way they portrayed me and I didn't appreciate that so I told them to pull my interview."

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/conspiracy_files/7434230.stm

The "explosions" were not demolitions; all we need to know to determine that is when Jennings said he heard the noises. It was during the North Tower collapse. And there were no dead bodies in the 7 World Trade lobby. We don't have to take Jenning's BBC interview as the only word, we can also recall that EMS Division Chief John Peruggia double-checked the WTC 7 lobby and found no bodies. In fact, we should remember that one of the main reasons the recovery and cleanup crews managed to finish clearing the WTC 7 section of Ground Zero so quickly was because they knew they didn't have to recover bodies from that area.

 

[Horatius]

The 9/11 Fungus Movement...

Hey, now, that's dirty pool!




Fungus actually serves a useful purpose.

so I told them to pull my interview."

He said PULL IT!!!!111!!!

 

[metamars]

Now, consider the difference in efficiency in packing elemental Al, in both geometries.


If r0 is the radius of the elemental Al sphere, and r1 is the thickness of the Al oxide spherical shell, then the ratio of Al to Al oxide is

(snip)

Corrected calc:

Al : Al-Ox (spherical) =

ro^3 / {r1^3 + 3r0^2r1 + 3r0r1^2 }



let r0 = z*r1 ; normally (alway?), the oxide layer is thinner than the radius of the elemental Al, so z >= 1


Al : Al-Ox (spherical) =

ro^3 / { ( 1 / z^3) * r0^3 + (3 / z) * r0^3 + ( 3 / z^2 ) * r0^3 }


= 1 / { ( 1 / z^3) + (3 / z) + ( 3 / z^2 ) }

Clearly, the 3 / z term is the dominating term in the denominator, since z >= 1


Al: Al-Ox (planar) = ro / r1
= r0 / ( 1 / z) * r0

= 1 / { 1 / z }


Just looking at the dominating term in the denominator of the spherical case, we can see that the former denominator is always at least 3 x as large as the latter denominator (where z > = 1 )

In particular, if z = 1, then the Al: Al-Ox ratio is 1/7 times as much as for the planar case. As a sanity check, take r0 = r1 = 1:


spherical:
Al volume is 4/3 * pi * ( 1 ) ^3 = 4/3 * pi

Al-Ox volume is 4/3 * pi * ( r0 + r1 ) ^3 - 4/3 * pi * ( r0 ) ^3
= 4/3 * pi * {( 2 ) ^3 - (1)^3} = 4/3 * pi * 7

So Al:Al-Ox (spherical) = 1:7

While Al:Al-Ox(planar) = 1:1

 

[R.Mackey]

metamars, your calculation is not only wrong, it's irrelevant.

The aluminum develops an oxide layer about 5 nm thick. It is a fairly straightforward thing to prove that the ratio of oxide to pure aluminum is minimized for spherical particles. Until you get that result, you're doing it wrong...

But, again, this doesn't matter! The theoretical maximum for thermite -- thermite with no aluminum oxide, or at least where the radius of the aluminum particles is >> 5 nm, has an energy density no higher than about 4 MJ/kg. That's it. There is no trick of geometry, no shape, no smallness or largeness or anything that will ever get you above that number.

But, somehow, some of Dr. Jones's samples are double that. Hmm.

Besides, I don't have to do any math in the first place to prove what I said because it has been observed. I misremembered the year of the article I was quoting -- it was actually 2001 -- so, to make up for that, here's the full cite, and key excerpts. The paper is:

T. M. Tillotson, A. E. Gash, R. L. Simpson, L. W. Hrubesh, J. H. Satcher Jr., and J. F. Poco, "Nanostructured Energetic Materials Using Sol-Gel Methodologies," Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids, Vol. 285, pp. 338-345, 2001.

Integration of the exothermic peak in Fig. 3 resulted in a heat of reaction value of 1.5 kJ/g. This is significantly lower than the theoretical value of 3.9 kJ/g. One potential explanation involves the aluminum fuel itself. We know from HRTEM analysis that the UFG Al used in this sample has an oxide coating of ~5 nm. With 30 nm diameter Al this oxide coating repressents a large amount of the mass of the sample. In fact, a simple calculation, based on the volume of the oxide coating, indicates that the UFG aluminum used is actually 70% Al₂O₃ weight.

See? I'm not making this up. It's fact. Any calculation or argument that contradicts fact is fantasy.

By the way, if you actually read the paper, you will see numerous things that contradict Dr. Jones, and many more that make its application as a destructive agent in the World Trade Center about as impractical as it gets. Dr. Jones has read it, yet blunders on anyway, knowing that his readers don't question him. I doubt if more than a handful of other Truthers have read it. As usual.

Carry on if you must, but this argument was over before it began.

 

[Crazytimes]

How hilarious the claim that Jennings was murdered right after the interview with that dousche Dylan. Have the hit men not found Dylan yet ?

Funny that a truther would claim something with no evidence.

 

[cmatrix]

I'll state the question again, and you can dodge it again:
What are the two layers then? No guessing allowed - what are they?
What is the contribution of each layer in your alleged nanothermite?

You don't know, because Jones et al. don't know either. That is the point. You pretend to have information that you don't. Very simple.

I and Harrit et al. do know because they wrote the paper and I can read. As the paper clearly says the red layer is nano-thermite and the gray layer is mainly iron oxide. They don't really know what the gray layer is except that it doesn't contribute to the reaction. They posit it might be what the red layer was attached to. Geez the phrase tempest in a teapot really comes to mind here.

Covered by Mackey's response. Expect another denial and/or dodge from you.

Yes I admit it. I have this problem of denying completely spurious arguments.

Ouch! Conflating a known high explosive with no proof. You really are bad at this. The actual test would be confirming an explosive without an air supply.
For example, a stick of dynamite could still operate underwater.
Try that with your red/gray chips.

You claimed the chips were not shown to be nano-thermite because they were ignited in air and not an inert atmosphere. That is like saying a stick of dynamite is not an explosive if lit in air but not water. The badness is not with me.

Another fail. Several scientists with actual experience in nano materials (Ola Nilson, for example) have criticized the methodology on exactly those grounds.
You think that was my idea? Nope. It came from materials scientists like those. Call them crackpots, but you're making yourself out to be even worse than that.
Reminds me of the truther who referred to 'NIST retards'. Very sad.

Nilson said no such thing. He made only some minor comments. Some Jones corrected some he agreed with. Why doesn't Nilson bring up the oxygen point? Because he is a competent scientist not a JREFer.

Wow. That's just lame. You guys go on and on about military nanothermite, yet you know diddly-squat about it. I asked you something specific, and you don't understand the question? Very, very lame. My question again:
'What is the energy density of sol-gel nanothermite? Please provide citations, no guessing allowed.'

The relevance is obviously that cmatrix and his ilk hand-wave critics questions on the organic binder by claiming that it is used to enhance the explosive effect. So, with that in mind, how does the binder affect the energy density of nanothermite? And just what is the typical ED of nanothermite anyway?
Of course they can't answer this, as they'd have to actually know something about the chemistry, which they don't.

Fail for you again cmatrix

OK...you do notice that no competent scientists, like Nilson for example, make a big deal about energy density. Why? Because there is absolutely no point in doing so. You are afraid to explain what your point is because you know if you do it will be ripped to shreds. So are you frightened of me or are you going to get to the point?

Which building of the WTC? You can't just make stuff up. That doesn't cut it.

Gee maybe try reading the paper. The Delessio sample was mainly if not all from the North tower. The other samples would conceivably include dust from all three buildings.

Except for the really important info, which you don't have. That's why you're making the rest up based on truther assumptions.

What "really important info"? The energy density? Ha Ha.

And responding to the total lack of evidence to show that the mythical red chips could actually do what Jones says they can:


Who said the claims are limited to the paper? Jones and Harrit are quoted from here to Timbuktu saying that nanothermite was probably painted on, so they need to demonstrate that it isn't just more empty speculation.

I guess you didn't notice this thread is about the Harrit paper. I will not participate in any sophomoric attempts to misdirect discussion.

Unless you don't require anything by empty speculation. If that's your standard, I feel sorry for you. For me, and most other rational people, we call it B.S.

Like I said, call us when you guys have demonstrated your mythical material painted on and melting or destroying steel columns. Until then, thanks for coming out, we'll call you.

The Harrit paper shows nano-thermite, a sophisticated (US) military explosive, if the WTC dust. So far, no hand-waving, discussion hijacking JREFie has been able to refute this fact. Call me when you do.

 

[R.Mackey]

cmatrix, I asked you some questions. You didn't answer. Twice.

You can't, of course.

 

[triforcharity]

How do you PROVE an incorrect argument?? I am still a little foggy on this......

 

[cmatrix]

cmatrix, you've come in here with the typical truther attitude that you're defying us to disprove your beliefs to your satisfaction, and that if we can't, you've won something. This is an ultimately unproductive and worthless starting point. I would explain further, but Horatius has already done so, and far more eloquently than I could hope to.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5021659#post5021659

Read, and (hopefully) understand.

Dave

I do understand Dave but its not me with the problem. Horatius eloquently explains that JREFies are highly irrational true believers that will never let go of their cast in concrete belief system. See JREFies are not skeptics thery're just under the delusion that they are. Instead of questioning and withholding belief they mindlessly believe anything unusual is bunk. What you don't understand and probably never will is that some of us are not here to convince you of anything. We are here to expose your irrational nature to those gullible enough to believe your unbelievably illogical and misleading arguments.

 

[cmatrix]

Only in your mind. Good luck with that, lil guy.

You saying this is fake:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQY-ksiuwKU

 

[triforcharity]

Illogical?? How illogical is it to believe that people who have hated us for years, and have attempted to kill us, and have on previous occaasions ( Kenya, Tanzania,
USS Cole, WTC 1993 etc) exploited a flaw in our system and hijacked some planes, and flew them into a few buildings??

I think that seems much more plausable than ANYTHING that the truth movement has put forth.

 

[cmatrix]

Barry Jennings wasn't a crackpot supporter, sorry.



"Do I think our government would do something like that to its own people? No, I honestly don't believe that."

Get it now?

I never said Jennings believed 9/11 was an inside job. I said he gave testimony that he heard multiple explosions and stepped over dead people in the lobby. Testimony that supports CD regardless of his own beliefs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQY-ksiuwKU