Merged "Iron-rich spheres" - scienctific explanation?

[Oystein]

I would like to remind all people who are talking about RJ Lee's 5.87% "iron microspheres" that this value is the extreme outlier. Several other teams have sampled dust artound GZ within days of the collapses and consistently reported iron contents between 0.5% and 2.5%, with the most extreme samples having a little over 4%.

So what is different about the dust in 130 Liberty? I can think of a few circumstances that may affect the number:

• RJ Lee reported a percantage of a particle type, not an element. If their "iron spheres" are not to be construed as spheres of pure iron but as spheres that contain some iron, then the concentration of the element iron is much lower, and the particles are not thermite residue
• RJ Lee sampled 9 months later, during which time iron working operations on GZ released a steady supply of iron-rich spheres into the air., The EPA measured an average of 5µg/m³ iron in the air at a location not far from the Deutsche Bank building
• RJ Lee sampled from an indoor location that was damaged and open to the elements, facing the iron working site of GZ. Maybe reduced wind speed facilitated increased settlement of iron fumes from the GZ iron work.

As a bare minimum, I would expect all posters here to realize that the dust created during the WTC event did NOT NEARLY contain 6% iron, neither as spehere nor otherwise, but more nearly 1% iron, as plenty of dust analyses very shortly after the event prove.

 

[beachnut]

true

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0429/index.html#Contents

911 truth fails to use the many studies to form conclusions. 911 truth makes up conclusions based on delusional paranoid conspiracy theory rules, make it stupid, then back-in cherry-picked quote-mined statements as support for the most moronic claims in history. 911 truth followers are the personification of failure, supporting lies, hearsay, and fantasy.
I have the apple pie theory all 911 truth followers have the potential to be intellectual giants, living up to the ideals of JREF, using knowledge, logic, and judgement to step up intellectually, lead themselves, think for themselves, climb out of the 911 truth pit of ignorance, join reality, leave failure behind.

Why is 911 truth goal free? Because that makes it easy to achieve nothingness, they win out of the box, making their goals, taking no action, feeding the those who spread lies and push anti-intellectual nonsense and anti-science to new levels of ignorance and failure. The claim of thermite, the search for iron rich spheres is equal to the nosnese of the fantastic manuver of Hani, flt 77, it never happen, there was no super can't do manuver, it was super bad flying skills ending in murder, crashing, the easies manuver in the book. There is no thermite, but I am interested in pure research, learning, education, it gives me something to think about when I am plowing the lower 40, which for me was flying 10 hours overseas, going 4500 miles, managing the aircraft, taking care of my crew, or working in the lab, being the token pilot/engineer for human factor PhDs, part of a team with goals.

Lets learn, and hope 911 truth followers climb out of the pit and join reality before they are lost...

 

[superlogicalthinker]

And how do you propose you determine the difference between those produced by thermite and those produced by ordinary fires?

Ordinary fires can't liquefy iron. Ordinary fires don't get that hot.

Nanothermite does.

Ordinary fires don't vigorously pull iron rich spheres into tear drop shapes.

Nanothermite does.

Wait....how hot did the fires burn in the towers according to credible source? What temp does iron melt at?

 

[superlogicalthinker]

-- It is well known in the field of archaeology that ferromagnetic residues are created and left behind by ordinary wood fires. This fact is used to find fireplaces and evidence of destruction by fire in archaeological site surveys, using magnetometers. The only known ferromagnetic substance found in detectable amounts in wood ash is iron-rich microspheres, according to numerous studies of wood ash. This adds up to strong evidence that iron microspheres are produced in wood fires. I proposed a plausible mechanism for this (including where the iron comes from, and how the spheres are formed by condensation without reaching the melting temperature of bulk iron), back on page 1 of this thread.

Ok...but not 6% of the entire WTC powder Formerly concrete. Also no evidence of fly ash ever used or not used so should be ruled out IMO. Your once again stepping over the fact that they were melted at one time. The spheres got to a degree that any type of fire, be it wood or wood product or coal cannot account for.

-- Coal does not contain iron micro spheres, but coal ash does. Coal burning as commonly practiced does not reach temperatures sufficient to melt bulk iron. This supports the previous point, as the mechanism for production of iron microspheres in coal fires, which is a known and proven phenomenon, would also be expected to occur in wood and wood product (e.g. paper) fires.

Does burning coal melt the iron spheres it produces?? does coal ash have formerly molten spheres it naturally creates? Does it pull the spheres into a tear drop shape?

--

By contrast, iron microspheres of the type found, composed of iron oxides, are inconsistent with the thermite theory of either thermite reaction product or structural steel melted by thermite being turned into droplets by mechanical agitation. Thermite residue is reduced iron (the thermite reaction is exactly the reduction of iron oxide into elemental iron) and any structural steel melted by thermite would also be reduced iron. Iron oxide would be found as a layer on the surface, with pure iron inside. This is not observed.

That's because all those pieces went to china really fast and were destroyed.

There is no mystery about the presence of the microspheres (only some uncertainty on how much of them were pre-existing contaminants from various sources and how many came from the fire) and their presence does not support any proposed thermite hypothesis.

The RJ Lee Group was crystal clear in stating " iron and lead were melted during the WTC Event, producing spherical metallic particles"
The bi product of a thermitic reaction is molten iron spherical metallic particles.

The thermite/ CD hypothisis is the most logical one out there.

 

[superlogicalthinker]

I would like to remind all people who are talking about RJ Lee's 5.87% "iron microspheres" that this value is the extreme outlier. Several other teams have sampled dust artound GZ within days of the collapses and consistently reported iron contents between 0.5% and 2.5%, with the most extreme samples having a little over 4%.

BS. Show those "teams" you speak of.

 

[NoahFence]

Sorry SLT - all this talk about Fly ash, 6% iron spheres, all that crap, is irrelevant.

19 terrorists did 9/11. It is the most widely witnessed event in HUMAN HISTORY.

You're wrong. Get a new hobby, junior.

 

[superlogicalthinker]

But I have not seen any response to this post from SLT or MM or others. I challenge you to look carefully at what he says and acknowledge or carefully rebut what he has written. It is clear enough for a layperson like me to understand.

Sintering Atmospheres:

The operation is almost invariably carried out under a protective atmosphere, because of the large surface areas involved, and at temperatures between 60and 90% of the melting-point of the particular metal or alloys.
I can't find anything on sintering concrete. Mostly refers to alloys and metals. But nevertheless it is a "powder"
http://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1725#_Definition_of_Sintering

But 60% 0f 2750 is 1650F. (steel)
And 60% of let's be generous 3300F is 1980F (concrete)

Chris, you are very clear in one of your videos that there were NO temperatures on USGS survey over 1300F.

Remember this from above statement: " is almost invariably carried out under a protective atmosphere" which I take as under the debris pile. We can all agree this probably happened in the rubble.

This argument has been debunked.

 

[Ivan Kminek]

Unfortunately, it's not such a simple matter as reporting a few percentages. The methods I use for analyzing dust, dirt, ash and debris focuses on individual analysis of particles in the SEM using X-ray EDS. I can estimate relative abundances within a statistical class (based on multivariate agglomerative nesting of the derived compositional data) on a particle basis. But if you hand the same sample to a wet chemist for processing, she'll come up with a completely different relative abundance (by weight) for iron.

We then run into the biggest problem of all: I'm aware of no studies which place even broad statistical estimates on those values. Baseline studies are useful for determining if you require some other process to explain an excess of iron microspheres. My typical baseline for an urban dust (a randomly sampled control taken from an unperturbed surface) is about 0.1% to 0.5%. This is easy enough to test, simply go to an urban center and collect some dust samples. Generally, researchers sample off of car windshields, storefront windows, door knobs and other flat surfaces upon which dust is likely to settle.

The baseline, however, doesn't account for any of the variables that could produce many more of said spheres. Two burning buildings may produce completely different ash clouds depending on the nature of the building materials and the fires themselves. Frankly, it's a wildly uncontrollable experiment.

If I were given a sample that contained 5% iron microspheres, I would look for another source of the iron microspheres beyond simple urban contamination. My typical abundance for iron rich microspheres in fly ash is anywhere from 0.3% to 4%, depending on the type of ash, the nature of the coal power plant, and whether or not it was magnetically separated out. In unprocessed ashes, I've found abundances from 0.1% to 10%, the latter coming from a waste industrial furnace.

That leads me to another point, when looking for another source, I would be completely satisfied if someone told me that two of the tallest skyscrapers in Manhattan were on fire for hours and then collapsed, spewing dust and ash all over downtown. "Yep," I would say, "That explains it." Pigments, inks, toner cartridges, colorants, dyes, paints, when they combust, they will leave behind the iron microspheres that were originally there, but the iron microspheres now make up a significant portion of the ash. We then have heat, abrasion, and the collapse mechanics, all of which are capable of liberating or producing more of these spheres. These spheres, by the way, are produced at temperatures far below the melting point of bulk iron.

Thank you very much, Almond, such posts are what we need here so much.

Myriad, the term "sintering" (of concrete) was for what I was looking when trying to realize how concrete may behave at some high temperatures. Quite possible

"SuperLogicalCriticalThinker": We have explained you here that iron levels as high as 5-6 % are very strong arguments against the thermite theory, at least in sense that with such high figures, it's even less possible to prove it. I'm now lazy to go back through this thread, but such a high number corresponds to ca 25 000 tons of iron. Even you should admit that only very small portion of this iron can originate from thermitic reaction. Or not? Still some basic problems with critical thinking? In fact, you should wish much lower iron levels in the dust, to get the slightest chance to prove your beloved thermite.
Btw, when you will call to NYPD museum, don't tell those people that you are basically trying to collect proofs that they are accomplices of the by far the worst crime in the human history (using some artifacts stored in their own exhibitioń). Not recommended Otherwise, any new info about these "meteorites" or guns embedded in some concrete is welcome.

 

[Christopher7]

Here's what else the RJ Lee Report said....
Quote:
Considering the high temperatures reached during the destruction of
the WTC, the following three types of combustion products would be
expected to be present in WTC Dust. These products are:
• Vesicular carbonaceous particles primarily from plastics
• Iron-rich spheres from iron-bearing building components or contents
• High temperature aluminosilicate from building materials
Why would they say that?

If they are THAT incompetent that they don't know that iron microspheres can apparently only point to super nano thermite, yet they don't even think its suspicious but rather that its "expected", then how can you use anything they say as some kind of authority on the subject?

On the other hand, we have this from Christopher7:

This is a very definitive statement:
"iron and lead were melted during the WTC Event, producing spherical metallic particles."
Who are you to say that the RJ Lee Group is wrong?

The RJ Lee Group is not incompetent as you suggest and you are far from being qualified to call them incompetent.

The quote you posted is just a conformation of what they said in the quote I posted.

Note that they said "Considering the high temperatures" i.e. 2800[FONT=&quot]°[/FONT][FONT=&quot]F [/FONT]to melt iron. Perhaps they did not think this was a problem because the "experts" were saying that jet fuel melted the steel.
http://911review.com/coverup/fantasy/melting.html

But the bottom line is: Iron melted during the WTC event.

And by "event" they mean the collapse because the dust was deposited by the dust cloud from the collapses.

Any microspheres from cutting torches did not have the mechanism to deposit them in and on top of the building like the dust clouds from the collapses.

 

[beachnut]

Ordinary fires can't liquefy iron. Ordinary fires don't get that hot.

Nanothermite does.

Ordinary fires don't vigorously pull iron rich spheres into tear drop shapes.

Nanothermite does.

Wait....how hot did the fires burn in the towers according to credible source? What temp does iron melt at?

No nano-thermite products found at the WTC on the steel. Your efforts prove gullibility. You mean steel? lol YOU R DEBUNKED, 10 years ago.

Please apply for a Pulitzer Prize for your nano-effort-proof, what you know is true. Darn, you have delusional nonsense you googled and assembled into a new level of 911 truth stupid junk, cherry-picking reports based on samples taken after WTC clean up. The true composition of dust from the WTC, is more complicated and diverse than your 6 percert (5.87 percent) iron, and the iron is not pure, but don't let that stop you. Are some of the iron rich tiny balls steel? Why do they have glass in them - any clues on what glass is made of? When are you going to college?

When will you publish your google work of super 911 truth nonsense? After you prove your point (???), how does 77 and 93 fit in your inside job fantasy based on nano-thermite iron spheres manifesto.

Where does the tear drop shape come from? What are you talking about?
http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll116/tjkb/111ironoxidefromjonespaper.jpg
Do you do math? Like geometry, do you know what tear drop is?

Can you cherry pick some stuff from this work to support your work?
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0429/index.html#Contents

No big deal (big oops), but googling a web site does not make an expert on sintering (big failure, because you posted proof you are wrong). But keep up the google U, it is hilarious the stuff you come up with, the failed logic is reaching levels rarely seen after 10 solid years of 911 truth failure, I was wondering how 911 truth could make a bigger joke out of 911 truth; wonder no more. Are you going to apply for a Pulitzer for your work on iron rich spheres? Tear drop spheres? Does your effort prove an inside job? That would earn a Pulitzer. What is your goal besides spreading lies and disrespecting those who died on 911? Will you publish a paper? Did your teacher let you use google references for your papers in college?

 

[Oystein]

The RJ Lee Group is not incompetent as you suggest and you are far from being qualified to call them incompetent.

The quote you posted is just a conformation of what they said in the quote I posted.

Note that they said "Considering the high temperatures" i.e. 2800[FONT=&quot]°[/FONT][FONT=&quot]F [/FONT]to melt iron.
Perhaps they did not think this was a problem because the "experts" were saying that jet fuel melted the steel.
http://911review.com/coverup/fantasy/melting.html

But the bottom line is: Iron melted during the WTC event.

Could you please point out where they explain that they meant "2800°F" and that "iron melted"? I think you made that up. Here's your quote from the RJ Lee report in context:

Fires that were a part of the WTC Event produced combustion-modified products that traveled with other components of WTC Dust. Considering the high temperatures reached during the destruction of the WTC, the following three types of combustion products would be expected to be present in WTC Dust. These products are:
• Vesicular carbonaceous particles primarily from plastics
• Iron-rich spheres from iron-bearing building components or contents
• High temperature aluminosilicate from building materials

Any microspheres from cutting torches did not have the mechanism to deposit them in and on top of the building like the dust clouds from the collapses.

That is incorrect. The EPA measured the iron content of the air at a location near 130 Liberty St (a bit further away from GZ) to be, on average, 5µg/m³. A team of the UC Davis found iron content in the aerosol further away from GZ to be much lower. Another study by OSHA that focussed on people working directly on GZ found that the iron content of aerosols was markedly increased in the immediate vicinity of iron workers compared to non-iron workers. These results, taken together indicate that
a) Iron workers did indeed release iron-rich material into the air
b) That iron content was still measurably increased by the time air had crossed Liberty Street
c) The iron portion of the aerosols decreases with distance, indicating that it settles quickly, possibly due to high density and/or particle shape (spherical).

As RJ Lee explains, "1,500 windows were broken; and the Building was exposed to the elements". It is reasonable to assume that the air in these exposed offices was constantly replenished with ambient air that contained, on average, 5µg/m³ of iron from GZ. If we assume that the decreased velocity of air ("wind speed") inside the buildings would allow for iron aerosols to fall out and settle into the dust within one hour, we can compute that during 9 months, about 80mg iron per m² would have accumulated in the dust. Since the RJ Lee group found, on average, 8,620mg/m² dust on the office floors, close to 1% of that dust would be accumulated iron-rich particles from the cutting-up of debris. (This number would of course have to get adjusted if the spheres settle quicker or slower, and if the iron content of the aerosols at 130 Liberty was higher or lower than at the location one block farther away where the EPA measured 5µg/m³)

 

[Fly Poster]

"Last edited by Ivan Kminek; Today at 09:11"

[truther] proof that you are part of the NWO conspiracy [/truther]

 

[Christopher7]

Could you please point out where they explain that they meant "2800°F" and that "iron melted"?

"iron and lead were melted during the WTC Event, producing spherical metallic particles."


Any microspheres from cutting torches did not have the mechanism to deposit them in and on top of the building like the dust clouds from the collapses.

RJ Lee Group report 2004
Pg 4 [pdf pg 5]
The pressure differential was caused by the onrush of the WTC Dust cloud that was created by the collapse of the WTC Towers with a low pressure inside Building components and high pressure outside. A huge pressure difference was created that caused large quantities of dust laden air to move through unplanned pathways. Individual components or devices with internal spaces effectively acted like a vacuum cleaner pulling the dust into them with great force.

Pg 6
As a result of microscopic and chemical analysis of the components of the WTC Dust, it was determined that the average level of contaminants were present in direct proportion to one another throughout the Building,

Pg 12
The presence of lead oxide on the surface of mineral wool indicate the existence of extremely high temperatures during the collapse which caused metallic lead to volatilize, oxidize, and finally condense on the surface of the mineral wool.

 

[BasqueArch]

Re thermxte here’s what we know so far:

(1) Oystein’s calculations show that many tons of thermxte would be needed to produce the amount of iron microspheres it is claimed were the result of the use of thermxte.

(2) Powdered thermxte: A number of experiments, including one by Cole show that structural steel immersed in thermxte does not damage these and therefore cannot produce weakening of the structure, melt steel, or produce iron microspheres.

(3) Painted on sol-gel thermxte: There’s not enough energy for a thin layer of T-paint to heat structural steel sufficient to weaken the structure, melt steel, or produce iron microspheres.

(4) Thermxte in a container: Cole’s experiment shows that the only means to damage the structural steel is to contain the thermxte in a device attached to the steel that focuses the heat through a slit. The slit in this steel container itself melts, and the container survives. Another tube device, open at one end burns a hole in the structural steel.. None of these devices were found in the debris.
The slag and damage around the burnt area next to these devices would remain as a suspicious clue of this use. Cole's experiments did not produce "pools of molten steel", only an amount equal to the size of the slit cut in the steel. No suspicious devices, telltale damage or slag was found by first responders or the engineers that inspected the WTC steel. No triggering devices were found.

(5) Niels Harrit stated that “some thermite has been used for melting the steel beams” and that also “Tons! Hundreds of tons! Many, many, many tons!” of conventional explosives were still used to demo the Towers.
http://rt.com/usa/news/did-nano-thermite-take-down-the-wtc/

“Some thermite” implies quantities insufficient to produce the “rivers of molten steel” still flowing weeks after the collapses, and the quantities of iron microspheres claimed were the sole result of thermxte use.

Conclusion: None of these thermxte applications (2) - (4) caused weakening of the structure, produced molten steel or iron microspheres.

 

[Christopher7]

BasqueArch
You guys are very good at thinking up reasons why it couldn't be but your imagination only works in one direction - desire to deny.

Jon went out in his back yard and invented a thermate cutter. It's just a basic device to demonstrate the principle. You can't make judgments based on it.

If thermite devices were used for cutting and then kicker explosives were used, they would splatter much of the molten iron and account for the abundance of spheres. This is just one possibility. The "I can't figure out how they did it, therefore it did not happen." is a very threadbare and worthless argument.

 

[BasqueArch]

Re percentage of iron in the dust.
The problem for most of these studies is that the percentage units of iron in the dust samples are not specified - by weight, size, quantity, volume?

For example 5 % of iron by weight on the earth's crust (5-30 miles deep) at ~150 lbs per cubic foot = 7.5 lbs pcf of iron. This amount is not found near the surface of the earth, but deeper.

6% of iron in the dust samples at ~5 lbs per cubic foot (I haven't found this value stated in the studies - fibrous fireproofing, insulation, ceiling acoustic tiles, concrete, gypsum dust, entrapped air) = 0.3 lbs pcf or 25 times less concentrated than that found on earth's crust.
The 5% vs the 6% are not equal measures.

 

[Christopher7]

Re percentage of iron in the dust.
The problem for most of these studies is that the percentage units of iron in the dust samples are not specified - by weight, size, quantity, volume?

For example 5 % of iron by weight on the earth's crust (5-30 miles deep) at ~150 lbs per cubic foot = 7.5 lbs pcf of iron. This amount is not found near the surface of the earth, but deeper.

6% of iron in the dust samples at ~5 lbs per cubic foot (I haven't found this value stated in the studies - fibrous fireproofing, insulation, ceiling acoustic tiles, concrete, gypsum dust, entrapped air) = 0.3 lbs pcf or 25 times less concentrated than that found on earth's crust.
The 5% vs the 6% are not equal measures.

That's all kinda esoteric and not really worth anything.

The whole point of the spheres is that the iron melted during the WTC event and were deposited by the dust cloud in places other dust does not go.

 

[BasqueArch]

BasqueArch
You guys are very good at thinking up reasons why it couldn't be but your imagination only works in one direction - desire to deny.

You desire to deny fire and damage caused the collapses. I provide evidence, you don't.

Jon went out in his back yard and invented a thermate cutter. It's just a basic device to demonstrate the principle. You can't make judgments based on it.

Ok then neither can he, but you and he do. Let's have one standard here. See my sig.

If thermite devices were used for cutting and then kicker explosives were used, they would splatter much of the molten iron and account for the abundance of spheres. This is just one possibility. The "I can't figure out how they did it, therefore it did not happen." is a very threadbare and worthless argument.

This is not a possibility as I described above. Can you think of others?
The "I can't figure out how they did it, therefore it happened." violates reason.

 

[BasqueArch]

That's all kinda esoteric and not really worth anything.

To you.

The whole point of the spheres is that the iron melted during the WTC event and were deposited by the dust cloud in places other dust does not go.

I prove that thermite methods could not have done it.
This point of the spheres relates to the "all kinda esoteric and not really worth anything" post you commented on.
You haven't provided evidence powdered, painted, thermxte devices weakened the structure, produced rivers of molten steel or iron spheres.

 

[Christopher7]

You desire to deny fire and damage caused the collapses. I provide evidence, you don't.

False, I presented proof of temperatures that office fires cannot attain and you have only given your opinion.

This is not a possibility as I described above.

IYO This is all speculation, not evidence.