Origin of the paint that was found as red-gray chips - any ideas?

[DGM]

A request for help @ The Almond:

1. Could you describe the method / algorithm / assumptions / whatever it takes that you use to do your MC-Sims of XEDS graphs, such that I could copy&paste it into a paper as a footnote or similar?

2. Could you run another XEDS MC-sim for a bulk of A242-steel that has the following composition:
Fe: 71.7%
O: 27.3%
Mn: 0.58%
Cu: 0.22%
C: 0.15%
Cr: 0.07%
This would be oxidized steel with on average the iron oxidation state being Fe₃O₄, and 0.8% Manganese etc in the original steel that get diluted by the extra O. If I assume Fe₂O₃ all the way through, these percentages wouldn't change significantly for my purposes.
I want to check the relative pealk heights of Fe:O, and see if Mn has a chance to rise above noise, Cu and Cr to disappear in noise. The big question mark I have is on Carbon. Figure 6 in Harrit e.al. has small C-peaks, but they appear larger than I would think with C being only a small trace in the steel. But perhaps these lighter elements get real excited?


@ All: I'd love for you to find links and perhaps abstracts or conclusions of essays, papers, blog entries on the web that reviewed Harrit e.al. and found that there was paint, not thermite.


Thanks!

Did you send him a PM?

 

[Oystein]

Did you send him a PM?

I just did, but only after prepared dinner, which is cooking now ^^

 

[Ivan Kminek]

@ All: I'd love for you to find links and perhaps abstracts or conclusions of essays, papers, blog entries on the web that reviewed Harrit e.al. and found that there was paint, not thermite.


Thanks!

Oystein, here is some list of the relevant articles I remember (but you know them as well). My "abstracts" (written basically according to my poor memory) are of course very incomplete and perhaps even misleading in some cases; I have no time to read these articles again now. But you have at least url addresses of these documents here in one place

1) http://www.darksideofgravity.com/marseille_gb.pdf
French physicist and a member of truthers community Frédéric Henry-Couannier analyzed red-gray chips separated with magnet from the WTC dust in the year 2010 (?) using SEM microscopy and XEDS spectroscopy. He found chips with similar composition and look as chips (a) to (d) in Bentham paper. He, however, did not find any round shiny iron rich particles in the chips heated up to 900 °C under air. Chips remained red and only carbon was missing in their XEDS spectra after heating. Henry-Couannier therefore concluded that it is unlikely that chips are thermitic material.

2) http://www.bastison.net/RESSOURCES/Critique_Article_Harrit.pdf
French professor of mechanics Jérôme Quirant wrote a detailed review (in French) of the paper of Harrit et al in the year 2010 (? Morea, pls?). He pointed out (among others) that any aluminum nanoparticles in the fine thermites should be round/spherical and not in the form of platelets. He was one of countless critics who noted that measuring DSC under air couldn’t prove thermitic reaction, when the material under study contains a lot of organic/polymeric stuff. He agreed with Sunstealer that Al/Si material in the chips is probably kaolinite. Currently, he added a note about this JREF thread and our “discovery” of Laclede primer as a probable material of chips (a) to (d).

Another critical articles of Jérôme Quirant are here:
3) http://www.pseudo-sciences.org/spip.php?article1698 (in French)
4) http://www.bastison.net/ALCHIMIE/alchimie.html

5) http://11-settembre.blogspot.com/2009/04/active-thermitic-material-claimed-in.html
Italian scientist Henrico Manieri wrote another detailed critic of paper of Harrit (et al) already in April 2009. He found numerous errors and misinterpretations in the paper and pointed out that MEK chip containing chromium and zinc should be a particle of Tnemec red primer. He suggested that Si/Al compound in the red chips can be vermiculite (probably not true for chips (a) to (d)).

6) http://www.scilogs.de/wblogs/blog/mente-et-malleo/content/about
German mineralogist Gunar Ries wrote another detailed analysis of the Bentham paper in 2010. Among others, he criticized in depth the interpretation of element distribution maps which were used by the authors for the conclusion that aluminum was present in elemental form in the red chips.

Also, clever remarks of dr. Frank Greening mostly on The911Forum should be mentioned, although he did not write any article (?)

(Oystein, I also wrote one article about Bentham paper, it’s here http://kminek.bigbloger.lidovky.cz/c/198562/Kauza-Harrit-a-nanotermit.html. But it is written in Czech and it’s not really analysis, just some attempt to summarize the “state of the art” in June 2011 in some way understandable for laymen - in the form of some "story".)

 

[leftysergeant]

5) http://11-settembre.blogspot.com/2009/04/active-thermitic-material-claimed-in.html
Italian scientist Henrico Manieri wrote another detailed critic of paper of Harrit (et al) already in April 2009. He found numerous errors and misinterpretations in the paper and pointed out that MEK chip containing chromium and zinc should be a particle of Tnemec red primer. He suggested that Si/Al compound in the red chips can be vermiculite (probably not true for chips (a) to (d)).

Manieri has done some interesting and insightful work on the topic. It is interseting that he notes that the silicate might be vermiculite. There is, as I recall, talc in the Tnemec pigment. It is chemically similar to vermiculite. It did not seem to me, hower, that there was enough magnesium detected in any of the tests to suggest that vermiculite or talc could make up a significant part of that chip.

 

[Ivan Kminek]

Lefty: I think that Manieri mentioned a foamy heat insulation as a source of vermiculite, but I'm not sure.

For now, one correction of my short list (one of my numerous corrections of myself here, to be honest):
The article http://www.pseudo-sciences.org/spip.php?article1698 was not written by Jérôme Quirant, but by Prof. Phillipe Gillard.

 

[leftysergeant]

6) http://www.scilogs.de/wblogs/blog/mente-et-malleo/content/about
German mineralogist Gunar Ries wrote another detailed analysis of the Bentham paper in 2010. Among others, he criticized in depth the interpretation of element distribution maps which were used by the authors for the conclusion that aluminum was present in elemental form in the red chips.

This is a very insightful article. Ries apparently thinks that the methods that Harrit and company use is sadly lacking in a lot of respects. He also clearly thinks very poorly of Bentham's editorial policies.

He also seems clear that it is hard to excuse any scientist's not seeing a clay mineral (Tonmineral) where the thermite gang sees aluminum-coated platelets. I would probably not make heads or tails out of the technical information on X-ray-driven tests even in English, but one thing struck me as an interesting subject to explore here. Gries raises the question as to how dense a "berylium window" was used in some of the testing, as though this could seriously impact how accurate some of the readings might be.

Could this explain why they did not find a clear indication of strontium chromate in the chips that we think most closely resemble La Clede primer?

 

[moorea34]

I see that you follow my productions Yvan

The article you cited ( http://www.pseudo-sciences.org/spip.php?article1698 ) has been written by two french scientist (and not me), experts in energetic materials and explosifs. Their conclusion is that Harrit's paper is very, very bad science...

Recently, I wrote also this article inspired by your excelent work : http://www.pseudo-sciences.org/spip.php?article1810

 

[Ivan Kminek]

Thanks, Morea, your important "production" can't be overlooked. Oystein should know/quote for sure your newest article which is based on our findings here. Do you plan to translate it into English? Google translation is basically readable, but...

Lefty: frankly, I have no time to study the article of Gunar Ries now and those highly technical and specialized topics are anyway rather "over my head". But, someone else (Almond, Sunstealer and Oystein) might comment it (if it hasn't been discussed somewhere here on JREF earlier, which is probable). But, concerning strontium chromate, I understood from Almond's posts that there are some "pathological overlaps" of XEDS signals in such a mixture (Laclede paint) in any experimental arrangement (?).
Here I just add the better working link to the article written by G. Ries.

 

[Sunstealer]

Thanks, Morea, your important "production" can't be overlooked. Oystein should know/quote for sure your newest article which is based on our findings here. Do you plan to translate it into English? Google translation is basically readable, but...

Lefty: frankly, I have no time to study the article of Gunar Ries now and those highly technical and specialized topics are anyway rather "over my head". But, someone else (Almond, Sunstealer and Oystein) might comment it (if it hasn't been discussed somewhere here on JREF earlier, which is probable). But, concerning strontium chromate, I understood from Almond's posts that there are some "pathological overlaps" of XEDS signals in such a mixture (Laclede paint) in any experimental arrangement (?).
Here I just add the better working link to the article written by G. Ries.

I had a brief look using google translate. It only translated half the article. From what I read Ries says that the data indicates aluminosilicates are present. He questions a lot of the methodology used by Harrit et al. He also interestingly says that soaking clay minerals in MEK will cause the effect seen in the paper.

He is a mineralogist who works at an analysing company so I think he knows what he's on about. I expect his analysis of the paper will be hand-waved away by truthers as usual.

 

[Ivan Kminek]

I had a brief look using google translate. It only translated half the article. From what I read Ries says that the data indicates aluminosilicates are present. He questions a lot of the methodology used by Harrit et al. He also interestingly says that soaking clay minerals in MEK will cause the effect seen in the paper.

He is a mineralogist who works at an analysing company so I think he knows what he's on about. I expect his analysis of the paper will be hand-waved away by truthers as usual.

This analysis of dr. Ries was already "hand-waved" by Harrit himself here (and Oystein has a link to this response in his blog).

 

[Oystein]

Thanks for your references so far!

I want to include several of the better ones in lieu of explaining why we think that Harrit e.al.'s conclusions are invalid. I will certainly reference Quirant and Manieri [ETA]as well as Denis Rancourt[/ETA]. Not sure if Ries is such a good reference, with him rambling on so much about beryllium windows that no one used.

I have Gunnar Ries on my Facebook friends list, but haven't really talked to him much. His article was indeed valuable for me to understand some of the basics of electron- and x-ray spectroscopy, however he does get a couple or so things wrong. Harrit is definitely correct in some his rebuttal of some of Ries's statements, most notably the ability of the XEDS detector to show peaks under 1 keV. Also, Ries is as confused as is Harrit about which chips are the same or different materials. I am fairly certain that there is no kaolinite in Tnemec, as it doesn't (iirc) contain aluminium silicates / clay, so any speculation about Al-Si sheets swelling in MEK is meaningless - they treated a Tnemec chip with MEK, not one with Kaolinte.

By the way, I am in personal contact with Frank Greening, he will be one of the people to review my paper draft. Which reminds me: Ivan, lefty, Moorea, Sunstealer, you may have given me your email address in the past, I am not sure. I wasn't always the most organized in the last 4 months. If you would like to review my draft, which I really want to conclude next week, could you PM me your addy?
Can you recommend someone competent, maybe from "the other side" even, who might be interested to have a look and can be trusted to treat it fairly?
@ Chris Mohr, could I have your also, and have you relay it to Jim Milette - not necessarily for review, but to keep him informed? Also, if you could please alert him to my finding of needle-shaped crystals in the red layer, about 1µm long, that apparently contain elements heavier than Al and Si, but not Fe, that I suspect to be Strontium Chromate - see my long post yesterday? It would be so cool and swell if he could quickly focus his magic beams on any of these if he sees them too and see if theres a good signal for both Sr and Cr and maybe even the correct chemical bindings to O... If we find that, I think that would clinch the LaClede theory.

 

[Ivan Kminek]

Oystein: thank you for your remarks, namely about the critic written by Gunnar Ries (e.g. some mismatch of red chips). But he simply knew less (among others) than we know now.

I'll send you my e-mail again and of course I'd like to "review" this "white paper". At least, I will carefully read it

Concerning other reviewers, I personally think that dr. Greening and some people from here on JREF could be enough (?).

One note: I think that we have here some kind of "gentlemen agreement" that we should not "interfere" with the work of Jim Millette - at least now, before the release of some results. He can receive a copy of your (our JREF) document, but I think that he should not read it. And we should not push him now to prove some elements or compounds (strontium chromate) somewhere, although it is important for us.

Later on (if he really finds some chips corresponding to Laclede paint), his help with the detection of strontium chromate we are expecting in some "fine assortment of red chips" would be indeed great
(But, this is just my current opinion and the real development of "our paint matter" can be different. Perhaps Jim Millette has already found some strontium chromate needles somewhere; or perhaps he has found something surprising even for us).

 

[Oystein]

Oystein: thank you for your remarks, namely about the critic written by Gunnar Ries. But he simply knew less (among others) than we know now.

Gunnar certainly wrote a qualified critique at the time, but it isn't necessary at this point and possibly a distraction.

I'll send you my e-mail again and of course I'd like to "review" this "white paper". At least, I will carefully read it

Concerning other reviewers, I personally think that dr. Greening and some people from here on JREF could be enough (?).

Thanks

One note: I think that we have here some kind of "gentlemen agreement" that we should not "interfere" with the work of Jim Millette - at least now, before the release of some results. He can receive a copy of your (our JREF) document, but I think that he should not read it.

Maybe I got carried away with my new excitement about these "needles", and maybe he would find and identify them even without being told, which would be great. Then again, he already is aware of, and (as I understand it) shares, our special interest in a-d-like chips, so looking at them with a theory that readily provides falsifiable predictions ("verily, verily, I sayeth onto ye, there shall be needles in the matrix, and lo and behold, the keen eyes of the beast shall detect strontium, and the bonds of chromate shall reign within!") isn't the worst of ideas.

About the last quoted sentence: I remember that Chris asked me if I could write up the LaClede theory because Jim wanted to read it before doing the study

 

[Oystein]

Ah cool, Harrit's reply to Ries contains a quote I had been looking for:
http://mysteries-magazin.com/index.php?op=news&func=news&id=5252

There is no doubt that the iron mineral is hematite, but we didn’t know for sure at the time of writing the paper. Later, we have obtained TEM diffraction evidence for the identity of the iron mineral, but in my opinion, this result alone does not merit a new publication.

The quote I had been looking for was the first sentence, that Harrit agrees we have hematite.

The second sentence is even more very intersting: Apparently, Harrit e.al. have done TEM diffraction after publication (april 2009) - did they ever publish any results??

 

[Africanus]

Ah cool, Harrit's reply to Ries contains a quote I had been looking for:
http://mysteries-magazin.com/index.php?op=news&func=news&id=5252

The quote I had been looking for was the first sentence, that Harrit agrees we have hematite.

The second sentence is even more very intersting: Apparently, Harrit e.al. have done TEM diffraction after publication (april 2009) - did they ever publish any results??

It doesn't cast a positive light on Harrit and his coworkers. They publish a paper although they haven't identified the crucial material.

ETA: According the Beryllium window: I think you miss the point of Ries critic, Oystein. He criticizes that the experimental setup is not specified in detail.

 

[Oystein]

It doesn't cast a positive light on Harrit and his coworkers. They publish a paper although they haven't identified the crucial material.

Absolutely. We know that these fine nine scientists who feature as authors of this gem had been working on those chips for over a year, and among them nobody identified the second most mundane (after silica) mineral on the planet, despite having its two main elements on the table. That's abysmally incompetent. To this date I have not seen any one of them admit that the other common crystal there is clay.

ETA: According the Beryllium window: I think you miss the point of Ries critic, Oystein. He criticizes that the experimental setup is not specified in detail.

Oh, the paper is full to the brim with such omissions. (I wouldn't mind a nomination for the language compepithom for this one )

It would do if he just said it once. But Ries assumes, falsely, that a Beryllium window was in the way and goes on to toss out half of the data, when maybe scribbling a question mark on the margin and otherwise assuming good faith would have been more prudent. As it turns out, Gunnar was just wrong.

 

[alienentity]

Note to Chris Mohr: I PM'd you just now. Thanks for offering to send your opera to me!

/OT

 

[alienentity]

I had a brief look using google translate. It only translated half the article. From what I read Ries says that the data indicates aluminosilicates are present. He questions a lot of the methodology used by Harrit et al. He also interestingly says that soaking clay minerals in MEK will cause the effect seen in the paper.

He is a mineralogist who works at an analysing company so I think he knows what he's on about. I expect his analysis of the paper will be hand-waved away by truthers as usual.

For those who haven't done it already here is a translated page:

 

[Oystein]

I see that you follow my productions Yvan

The article you cited ( http://www.pseudo-sciences.org/spip.php?article1698 ) has been written by two french scientist (and not me), experts in energetic materials and explosifs. Their conclusion is that Harrit's paper is very, very bad science...

Excellent, thanks!
I had it translated by Google and really learned a few things, particularly that bit about how a DSC controls temperature and that the DSC graphs produced by Harrit e.al. don't allow the conlcusion that any temperature above 700°C was reached troughout the experiment. So any iron-rich sphere must have been created under 700°C
http://translate.google.de/translat.../www.pseudo-sciences.org/spip.php?article1698

 

[atavisms]

paint is not highly energetic or leave the chemical signature of a thermitic reaction (including iron spheres) when ignited.. There are images of red gray chips only partially ignited that show the iron as well.
They are an advance engineered thermtic material. without any doubts.
http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/thermitics_made_simple.html

what (besides absurd attempts at 'debunking' not backed in science of any kind) would ever make you think they were paint chips? (even without the chips (or whether or not it really matters that the tests done by Harrit et al didnt use a vacuum chamber.
the evidence for demolition in wtc 1 2 & 7 is over the top overwhelming, just from mainstream sources. The FEMA BPAT alone..the videos and debris, field, the dna reports and 1000 missing human beings.. the 100 day fires, etc etc...not to mention all the other shenanigans that so blatantly point to cover-ups by FEMA , the 9-11 commission and NIST.
The only person not knowing what Im talking about is someone who hasn't looked carefully. Who gets all their information from mainstream sources,, and is so used to having the dots connected for him/her on TV that s/he just won't look. After all, how can such an absurd thing be true.
Hitler really knew what he was talking about when he said the bigger the lie the easier it is to hide.