WTC Dust Study Feb 29, 2012 by Dr. James Millette

[Redwood]

Chris Mohr, Oystein is right.

One mg. of actual, honest-to-god thermite will produce 4 joules of energy, approximately one calorie, the energy needed to raise one gram of water one degree Celsius. It wouldn't damage anything. (And we all know the WTC chips aren't thermite.) Kevin Ryan's backyard-brew nanothermite did nothing to his beaker, other than making a hard-to-clean mess inside. (But it did singe the plastic lid.)

The red WTC chips under an argon atmosphere won't produce any reaction of interest other than to leave behind some messy goo. In air, the combustion of the resin base will produce many times the energy of any hypothetical thermite.

In the spirit of fun, I'd like to see a DSC test of the WTC chips, done both under air and argon. Maybe Kevin Ryan would contribute some of his nanothermite.

I'd also like to see what something like Sherwin-Williams Alumabrite paint would do. Under argon, nothing of interest, but in air, the combustion of the aluminum will produce about 30 kJ/g, about the same as the combustion of the alkyd resin base. Jones, Harrit, et al will be suffering from a severe case of penis envy.

 

[WTC Dust]

I think the Millette study is fine. He concluded that thermite wasn't found, which is fine, if old news. He wasn't able to separate the layered chips. I found that interesting.

One thing I didn't like was the focus: debunking thermite. Thermite debunks itself, so the whole study was a bit of wasted effort in terms of finding out what produced the chips.

It's like almost all the other studies of the WTC dust. "Voila! We have WTC dust with iron chips. Now, let's study the chips." When I want to know about the parts between having a solid building standing there and ending up with this dust that contains all these chips.

 

[Oystein]

Chris Mohr, Oystein is right.

One mg. of actual, honest-to-god thermite will produce 4 joules of energy, approximately one calorie, the energy needed to raise one gram of water one degree Celsius. It wouldn't damage anything. (And we all know the WTC chips aren't thermite.) Kevin Ryan's backyard-brew nanothermite did nothing to his beaker, other than making a hard-to-clean mess inside. (But it did singe the plastic lid.)

The red WTC chips under an argon atmosphere won't produce any reaction of interest other than to leave behind some messy goo. In air, the combustion of the resin base will produce many times the energy of any hypothetical thermite.

In the spirit of fun, I'd like to see a DSC test of the WTC chips, done both under air and argon. Maybe Kevin Ryan would contribute some of his nanothermite.

I'd also like to see what something like Sherwin-Williams Alumabrite paint would do. Under argon, nothing of interest, but in air, the combustion of the aluminum will produce about 30 kJ/g, about the same as the combustion of the alkyd resin base. Jones, Harrit, et al will be suffering from a severe case of penis envy.

Hi Redwood, and welcome to the JREF forums!

Good, substantive first post!

You described the gruesome fierceness of 1mg of thermite.
If only the chips contained that much!

They are mostly organic matrix by volume and weight. Mark Basile has estimated that the red layer ist more than 72% by weight carbon; throw in oxygen and hydrogen to make this carbon into usual organic polymers, and it's 88% by weight organic matrix, and less than 5% by weight thermite.

Now even if we go with a paint formulation such as LaClede (71.5% by weight organic), the organic matrix easily dominates. Epoxy has a density of 1.2 g/cm³, so the red layer, with minerals embedded won't have much more than 1.6 g/cm³.

Nice chips have an area of roughly 1 mm², or 0.01 cm² and a red layer thickness of just 30 µm, or 0.03 mm, or 0.003 cm. So volume of the red layer is 0.0003 cm³. At the density given above, its mass is around 0.0005 g, or 0.5 mg.

Of this, 71.5 - 88% is matrix, and a good deal is useless silica, kaolin, or whatever. Basile would have only <5% thermite, or 0.025mg. Now I think his quantification is actually mistaken. The spectra of chips (a)-(d) would allow for 2.5% of the mass to be aluminium, which you mix 1:3 with iron oxide to get 10% by weight thermite, supposing the aluminium were honest-to-god elemental (which it isn't).
So we are talking about at most 0.05mg of thermite, releasing at most 0.2 Joules / 0.05 calories of energy. Enough to heat 1 mg of water by 50°C.

The thermite in this preparation couldn't even bring water close to boiling!

 

[Redwood]

Thanks, Oystein! I'm a retired chemist and a "skeptic", but I focussed mainly on Birther conspiracy fantasies until an acquaintance wide-eyedly told me how the Twin Towers and Building 7 were brought down by "nano-thermite". I tried explaining that thermite isn't an explosive, that using thermite to melt the columns would have been wildly impractical and would have left abundant evidence, and that reducing the size of the reacting particles in thermite can't possibly increase its energy, but merely speed up an already vigorous reaction, in the same way that fine-grained black powder for pistols burns more quickly than coarse-grained cannon powder. Alas, it went in one ear and out the other.

 

[LSSBB]

Thanks, Oystein! I'm a retired chemist and a "skeptic", but I focussed mainly on Birther conspiracy fantasies until an acquaintance wide-eyedly told me how the Twin Towers and Building 7 were brought down by "nano-thermite". I tried explaining that thermite isn't an explosive, that using thermite to melt the columns would have been wildly impractical and would have left abundant evidence, and that reducing the size of the reacting particles in thermite can't possibly increase its energy, but merely speed up an already vigorous reaction, in the same way that fine-grained black powder for pistols burns more quickly than coarse-grained cannon powder. Alas, it went in one ear and out the other.

Welcome aboard, Redwood! Round these parts, when you question the properties of therm*te, the Truthers often bring up magical properties for nanothermite in reply, stating we can't know what it does 'cuz it's Super Seekrit.

 

[ergo]

Welcome aboard, Redwood! Round these parts, when you question the properties of therm*te, the Truthers often bring up magical properties for nanothermite in reply, stating we can't know what it does 'cuz it's Super Seekrit.

Yes, Redwood, if you're confused about "nano-thermite" (your use of scare quotes around this suggests you doubt its reality) you can simply ask LSSBB, whose part-time position with the Navy gains him all kinds of top-secret access to the latest in weapons development, especially on the nano scale, which LSSBB had to ask us about (but which we now know was a ruse to throw us off his highly classified trail). He can verify for you that there is no military weapons development occurring using nanoenergetics. This is obvious by the fact that the Navy's weekly communiques to Popular Mechanics, Reader's Digest and People magazine to apprise the American public of the latest high tech weapons technologies contain no mention of nanoenergetics. Therefore, they really don't exist in any significant sense.

 

[cjnewson88]

Alternatively, you could ask ergo, whose full-time position internet trolling from the basement gains him all kinds of supa-seekrit inside knowledge of stupendous power and uses of hush-a-boom-nano-thermite incendiary/supa-high-explosive. As a full time internet dweller, ergo has access to all sorts of classified material none of us could even dream of, including how victims never existed, how the FDNY blew up the trade centers, and how the big bad gubment flew a missile into the pentagon and fooled 130 people to say it was an airliner..

Who needs experts, just ask ergo.

 

[Redwood]

Yes, Redwood, if you're confused about "nano-thermite" (your use of scare quotes around this suggests you doubt its reality) you can simply ask LSSBB, whose part-time position with the Navy gains him all kinds of top-secret access to the latest in weapons development, especially on the nano scale, which LSSBB had to ask us about (but which we now know was a ruse to throw us off his highly classified trail). He can verify for you that there is no military weapons development occurring using nanoenergetics. This is obvious by the fact that the Navy's weekly communiques to Popular Mechanics, Reader's Digest and People magazine to apprise the American public of the latest high tech weapons technologies contain no mention of nanoenergetics. Therefore, they really don't exist in any significant sense.

I used quotes around "nano-thermite", not because I doubt its existence (it's rather prosaic) but because it doesn't have any magic properties that distinguish it from "thermite". It merely reacts faster, and apparently at a lower temperature, but with a lower energy yield, than the coarser-grained variety. It hasn't rocked the military world, or the world outside the military.

 

[Ivan Kminek]

I used quotes around "nano-thermite", not because I doubt its existence (it's rather prosaic) but because it doesn't have any magic properties that distinguish it from "thermite". It merely reacts faster, and apparently at a lower temperature, but with a lower energy yield, than the coarser-grained variety. It hasn't rocked the military world, or the world outside the military.

Hi, Redwood
To be more specific, Ergo is an expert on very, very special nanothermites: those which were used in WTC disguised in red primer paints; e.g. the use of aluminium which looked exactly as kaolinite and had the same chemical composition as kaolinite was very tricky Also, the amount of polymer binder (roughly 70 %) was intentionally high: because of this, nanothermite looked and behaved like paint, but its layer 20-50 microns thick was still able to cut WTC steel columns, as we clearly judge from the spectacularly bright and dazzling flame clearly seen in the famous video of Mark Basile)

 

[grandmastershek]

Exactly, nanothermite is the "The Lord works in mysterious ways" of 9/11 Truth. Its been over 1/2 a decade since Jones first started running from scrutiny with his therm?te nonsense and all truthers have produced is thermite cutting steel nowhere near the specifications of the WTC with a sizable apparatus that no one saw at any time during the 8+ months of clean up.

Who knows, give them another decade and maybe they will unwittingly develop a practical CD process in their quest for the Holy Grail.

 

[ergo]

I used quotes around "nano-thermite", not because I doubt its existence (it's rather prosaic) but because it doesn't have any magic properties that distinguish it from "thermite". It merely reacts faster, and apparently at a lower temperature, but with a lower energy yield, than the coarser-grained variety. It hasn't rocked the military world, or the world outside the military.

This is incorrect. You don't appear to have even a wikipedia level of knowledge on the subject.

 

[phunk]

This is incorrect. You don't appear to have even a wikipedia level of knowledge on the subject.

Which part is incorrect?

 

[chrismohr]

This is incorrect. You don't appear to have even a wikipedia level of knowledge on the subject.

C'mon Ergo, take the high road. You in essence called him ignorant instead of explaining why you think he's wrong. I know you take a lot of hits here but rather than responding in kind you'd look a lot classier if you just explained why you disagree.

 

[Senenmut]

Hi MM and Senenmut,
I'm not sure who Hw is, but I am certainly willing to admit that I am gnorant of the crucible issue. It first came up for me when talking to an actual scientist at a lab that does DSC testing. At this point though, it looks like you are right if indeed you are claiming that a tiny amount of thermitic material would not generate 4500 degree temperatures and therefore would not melt the alumina crucible which can withstand 3200 F degree temperatures. It's possible that the guy I was talking to was not aware of the small sample size I was asking him to heat up. However, it is still true that the tungsten (or whatever it was he said) material is used for crucibles holding materials that a tester thinks may produce extreme temperatures, and a special lab is needed to do such a test.

Which brings be to Senenmut's generous offer. We have the name of a lab that can do tests on materials that may be incendiaries and/or bombs. The cost of their tests will be considerably higher. The lab guy I talked to who recommended them has refused to risk his equipment to test the red-gray chips. There are also people at that lab who have the expertise to analyze the DSC tests already done by Jones et al in the Bentham paper. Personally, I believe that may yield more information. I would suggest there is a good chance that a replication of the DSC testing in the Bentham paper will yield a similar collection of four data sets of wildly ranging energy outputs that Jones et al study found. It would be helpful for a specialized expert to render a scientific opinion on the data we have.

Anyway, if you really want to go forward on this DSC analysis, I can ask. Generally I try not to say too much about my opinions on the matter, and I say that in in any event, I don't want my opinions to color your conclusions anyway. The less extraneous material they have, the better. In the case of James Millette, basically I told him about the Bentham paper, and asked if he could do an independent analysis of the WTC dust. I didn't tell him how to do his job, and as much as possible tried to take his lead about information I fed him ("Do you want this or that?"). Many of my questions were trying to get reassurance that he would give honest answers to my question about thermitics in the dust.

Similarly, with this new lab, whether we end up asking for a full set of tests again or just an analysis of what we already have in the Bentham paper, I would say, here's a paper with DSC analysis of the red-gray chips. We can provide the chips, can you either 1) do another DSC analysis and see if it matches the results of the Bentham study and/or or 2) look at the Bentham paper and analyze what they have done and give us any conclusions (or lack of conclusions) you can give based on this data?

just let me know what the lab says and what options they give us.

 

[grandmastershek]

Everyone knows Redwood is wrong. He's contradicting Ergo's holy faith. Therefore, its incorrect.

 

[Redwood]

This is incorrect. You don't appear to have even a wikipedia level of knowledge on the subject.

Which part is incorrect? That it reacts faster? Or that it initiates at a lower temperature? Or that its actual energy yield is lower than standard thermite?

Modulating to the tonic key of this thread, if it's imperative that Dr. Millette conduct DSC on the red chips, don't you think it's at least as imperative that Jones and Harrit re-do their DSC tests, and DO IT RIGHT (under an inert atmosphere) this time? They failed to control their variables the first time. They didn't eliminate combustion of the organic matrix, which would not occur under an inert atmosphere, from their test.

They've had three years to correct what is, at best, a blockhead mistake. A proper re-do could could be done in a single day. I don't know if Jones is still welcome at BYU, but I can't see why Harrit couldn't get access to a DSC as part of his emeritus privileges.

Jones said on 12-15-07 in Boston that he had sent a dust sample to an independent lab for testing. (It's at the 50 minute mark of the Google video.) Don't you think it's time that he released the results of the independent lab? Almost 5 years have passed. What is he holding back?

 

[Oystein]

...Jones said on 12-15-07 in Boston that he had sent a dust sample to an independent lab for testing. ... What is he holding back?

Easy: All the data that would reveal him and his collaborators as frauds.

That's not the only data he is holding back. The Harrit e.al. paper states clearly that they HAVE done FTIR tests, and WILL publish them elsewhere. Nothing of the sort has happened.

Later in 2009, both Harrit and Jones have stated that Farrer HAS done TEM tests and that they WILL publish the results. Nothing of the sort has happened.

I have several times read that Basile WILL publish results of the "independet" tests in did in 2009 or 2010. Nothing of the sort has happened.


They all have their pants full of dung because they know they have their own refutations in their hands.

 

[chrismohr]

just let me know what the lab says and what options they give us.

Since it's your nickel, which interests you more at this time... specialized DSC testing or an independent analysis of the Harrit/Jones et al DSC tests?

 

[Senenmut]

Since it's your nickel, which interests you more at this time... specialized DSC testing or an independent analysis of the Harrit/Jones et al DSC tests?

give us a quote on both but i would like to proceed with the specialized dsc testing.

 

[beachnut]

Ironic you can debunk thermite on face value when everyone can debunk steel turning into dust and foam because it is a claim more insane than Jones can make.

I agree, no study was needed to know Jones made up thermite out of insanity or political bias, four years after 911. The paper is an attempt by Jones and other idiots to back in thermite. It has fooled a lot more people than your fantasy, steel turning to dust and foam.

I think the Millette study is fine. He concluded that thermite wasn't found, which is fine, if old news. He wasn't able to separate the layered chips. I found that interesting.

One thing I didn't like was the focus: debunking thermite. Thermite debunks itself, so the whole study was a bit of wasted effort in terms of finding out what produced the chips.

It's like almost all the other studies of the WTC dust. "Voila! We have WTC dust with iron chips. Now, let's study the chips." When I want to know about the parts between having a solid building standing there and ending up with this dust that contains all these chips.