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

[Ivan Kminek]

Chris: As for potential sources of WTC floor trusses with some primer paint, what about people who had been engaged in the inspection of the heat insulation there?

I's written here that inspections of Roger G. Morse, a consultant in Troy, N.Y. began in 1986 and continued intermittently until June 2000.

His present addresses are here.

I suppose that the inspections were mostly visual, without taking some samples (??), but in some cases (during such a long time), perhaps some samples from floor trusses were scratched off/cut off or so (??). Such samples would have a great advantage in comparison with samples taken after collapses: the primer paint might be well-preserved there.
(And even samples of heat insulation can contain some particles of primer paint, btw)

 

[Ivan Kminek]

Chris: Also, some samples of floor trusses can be hypothetically held by Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY), according to this interesting article.

Anyway, only Jim Millette as a professional engaged in this "new investigation of 9/11" can ask for the samples, I think.

 

[OCaptain]

Why don't we deal with that should it happen?

If Millette is correct in his belief, than it should be easy to put this matter to rest by showing the original Bentham Paper findings are not reproducible.

But no potential debunker wants to challenge the Bentham Paper using the same methodology.

I can only assume they are afraid they might end up with results that reinforce the findings of the Bentham Paper.

MM

Sure, we're afraid because we have so much to lose if the Bentham paper is proven correct.

Is that really what you think??

 

[chrismohr]

Ivan,
Thanks for your leads. Can anyone follow up on this and make the request? Time is tight for me. I have pursued NIST to the Port Authority and just yesterday I emailed the person who manages the WTC remains. I'll keep following through on that. Anyone (Oystein? Ivan?) willing to find out if these possible sources could help? Real LaClede primer from a WTC truss would be very very useful, and Millette will test it if he can find it.

 

[Sunstealer]

Never mind that Millette rules out Tnemec paint.

Here's a thought experiment that even a truther can do.

In front of you is a bowl labelled A - it contains fruit. The fruits are Apple, Orange, Banana.

There is an empty bowl labelled B.

I am going to show you a picture of a fruit and I want you to take all the fruit corresponding with that picture from bowl A and place it in Bowl B.

OK - shows Ergo the picture of an Apple.

Ergo takes all the Apples from bowl A and puts them in Bowl B.

Now Ergo - why do you rule out Bananas being in bowl B?


I still see that no truther will dare answer my question - do you agree with me and the authors of the Harrit et al paper that chips samples a, b, c and d are all the same material?

It's amazing that no truther will even have the honesty, integrity and balls to say yes or no to that question. They fear either answer. BTW this ties in with the Apples scenario above.

 

[ergo]

Ergo:
Just for your information: I am not an anonymous internet debunker. I have used my full name from the very beginning here. I am a polymer chemist working in Czech Academy of Sciences with about 50 peer-reviewed papers in the field (try Google Scholar or better the Web of Science).

And you have no access to a lab ??

 

[DGM]

And you have no access to a lab ??

Haven't really read his work, Have you? (you answered this question with the post).

 

[ergo]

Sigh. So you won't commit to saying a=b=c=d then? The paper concludes this. I conclude this. But you don't.

If not why not?

Sunstealer, I have answered you on this before. I also qualified my opinion on the matter in that same post. Your reply to that was here, and I have yet to finish reading that lengthy post, as it still was not answering why this point (that chips a - d are the same) is significant for your argument, and why you think ATM supporters don't agree with you on that.

If you could summarize your point in a nutshell, (like is done in abstracts) then I could read the rest of your post with more understanding.

 

[Oystein]

Sunstealer, I have answered you on this before. I also qualified my opinion on the matter in that same post. Your reply to that was here, and I have yet to finish reading that lengthy post, as it still was not answering why this point (that chips a - d are the same) is significant for your argument, and why you think ATM supporters don't agree with you on that.

If you could summarize your point in a nutshell, (like is done in abstracts) then I could read the rest of your post with more understanding.

The most specific imn your answer was this:

...
But are there any chips that don't show Al-Si-Fe peaks ? If not, then my answer is that, based on the chemical signatures, their appearance (morphology) and magnetism, all of Millette's chips and all of Harrit's chips are essentially the same material.
...

Do I understand you correctly when I construe this statement thusly:
1. You are saying that any material that has all of the folling properties, is "essentially" the same material: i.) Has, among others, XEDS peaks for Al, Si and Fe (relative peak height irrelevant) ii.) Looks like a chip, red and gray layer iii.) attracted by a magnet
2. You agree that chips a-d, and the MEK chip, and every chip that Millette looked at that fulfilled the requirements i.) - iii.) are all "essentially" the same material

If that is not so, please clarify!

If that is however a fair rendering of your claim, would you then further agree that, since all these materials are "essentially" the same, that one of these three disjoint possibilities must be true:
A) All chips (chips a-d, MEK chip, Millette chips) are active thermitic material, i.e. manufactured with the intention of making an incendiary or explosive
B) All chips (chips a-d, MEK chip, Millette chips) are paint, and not thermitic
C) All chips (chips a-d, MEK chip, Millette chips) are neither thermitic nor paint


Thanks

 

[ergo]

The most specific imn your answer was this:

Do I understand you correctly when I construe this statement thusly:
1. You are saying that any material that has all of the folling properties, is "essentially" the same material: i.) Has, among others, XEDS peaks for Al, Si and Fe (relative peak height irrelevant) ii.) Looks like a chip, red and gray layer iii.) attracted by a magnet
2. You agree that chips a-d, and the MEK chip, and every chip that Millette looked at that fulfilled the requirements i.) - iii.) are all "essentially" the same material

With my amateur understanding on the matter, I would guess or be willing to agree that this is the case, yes.

If that is however a fair rendering of your claim, would you then further agree that, since all these materials are "essentially" the same, that one of these three disjoint possibilities must be true:
A) All chips (chips a-d, MEK chip, Millette chips) are active thermitic material, i.e. manufactured with the intention of making an incendiary or explosive
B) All chips (chips a-d, MEK chip, Millette chips) are paint, and not thermitic
C) All chips (chips a-d, MEK chip, Millette chips) are neither thermitic nor paint

No, I would not agree. I think there are mixed possibilities. I think it's been shown more than adequately that the red-gray chips are not paint, or certainly not just paint. I think it's possible for some of the chips to be active thermitic and others, because of inconsistent chemical distribution or some other reason, to not be, or to not have enough properties to display thermitic behaviour.

I also think it's possible for the chips to be neither paint nor nanothermite.

 

[Sunstealer]

Sunstealer, I have answered you on this before. I also qualified my opinion on the matter in that same post. Your reply to that was here, and I have yet to finish reading that lengthy post, as it still was not answering why this point (that chips a - d are the same) is significant for your argument, and why you think ATM supporters don't agree with you on that.

If you could summarize your point in a nutshell, (like is done in abstracts) then I could read the rest of your post with more understanding.

Thank you - I was trying to find your specific post months ago. I wanted to show how your correct use of logic can only lead to one conclusion.

Here is the important part.

I'm not sure I'd be able to answer, nor that this is a meaningful question. I see obvious similarities (Al-Si-Fe peaks) and minor differences.

But are there any chips that don't show Al-Si-Fe peaks ? If not, then my answer is that, based on the chemical signatures, their appearance (morphology) and magnetism, all of Millette's chips and all of Harrit's chips are essentially the same material.

This is not surprising because Millette states that he used the SEM EDS spectrum in Fig 7 as a criteria for further examination. (Essentially using the picture of an Apple as criteria to separate Apples from a bowl containing Apples, Oranges and Bananas.)

Millette then goes way, way further and uses methods that are definitive on these very same chips, namely FTIR analysis and TEM-SAED. He uses an additional two independent methods whose results agree with each other to conclusively show exactly what the red layer contains. The material contains kaolin, epoxy and iron oxide pigment. Two of these are not found in thermite but all are found in red paint.

Millette concludes the material is paint. Millette concludes that the material is NOT thermite.

Therefore, if you conclude, using your method of pattern recognition, (which is the same as mine and the same as the authors of the paper) that samples a, b, c and d in the Harrit et al paper are the same, then you must conclude that the samples Millette analysed that fit the same pattern must also be the same.

Millette shows that his samples are paint and not thermite, therefore it is safe to conclude that samples a, b, c and d are paint and not thermite because they are the same material.

You have indirectly stated that you agree that the samples a, b, c and d in Harrit et al are NOT thermite.

You say a=b=c=d= Millette = paint ≠ thermite.

You have debunked the Harrit et al paper. Welcome to the debunkerville - your NWO cheque is in the mail.

 

[Sunstealer]

With my amateur understanding on the matter, I would guess or be willing to agree that this is the case, yes.




No, I would not agree. I think there are mixed possibilities. I think it's been shown more than adequately that the red-gray chips are not paint, or certainly not just paint. I think it's possible for some of the chips to be active thermitic and others, because of inconsistent chemical distribution or some other reason, to not be, or to not have enough properties to display thermitic behaviour.

I also think it's possible for the chips to be neither paint nor nanothermite.

But you've already agreed that the material is the same based on the fact they have consistent chemical distribution/consistent characteristics/consistent EDS spectra/consistently separated by magnet!

 

[Oystein]

...
No, I would not agree. I think there are mixed possibilities. I think it's been shown more than adequately that the red-gray chips are not paint, or certainly not just paint. I think it's possible for some of the chips to be active thermitic and others, because of inconsistent chemical distribution or some other reason, to not be, or to not have enough properties to display thermitic behaviour.

I also think it's possible for the chips to be neither paint nor nanothermite.

You think it is possible for two specimens to be "essentially the same material", when

• one is thermitic, the other is not
• one is paint, the other is not

???

You have funny semantics for "essentially" and "the same"

 

[ergo]

Millette then goes way, way further and uses methods that are definitive on these very same chips, namely FTIR analysis and TEM-SAED. He uses an additional two independent methods whose results agree with each other to conclusively show exactly what the red layer contains. The material contains kaolin, epoxy and iron oxide pigment. Two of these are not found in thermite but all are found in red paint.

Millette concludes the material is paint. Millette concludes that the material is NOT thermite

Millette states that his findings are consistent with paint. He can't identify what kind of paint. He also states there was no elemental aluminum, while Harrit and Jones's results clearly indicate a separation of the silicon and aluminum in the MEK sample. For you to conclude that "oh, that one chip must be Tnemec then" without testing it is amateur, and until you test it, is a highly tenuous hypothesis.

Moreover the DSC tests showed behaviour completely anomalous to paint.

If Harrit et al's methodology was incomplete - but I don't think it was, since we know they did FTIR and TEM as well - so was Millette's. He didn't test the behaviour of the chips. A test which, when you're looking for energetic materials, would be obviously indicated, as Tillotson and Gash also show.

 

[Sunstealer]

Millette states that his findings are consistent with paint. He can't identify what kind of paint. He also states there was no elemental aluminum, while Harrit and Jones's results clearly indicate a separation of the silicon and aluminum in the MEK sample. For you to conclude that "oh, that one chip must be Tnemec then" without testing it is amateur, and until you test it, is a highly tenuous hypothesis.

Moreover the DSC tests showed behaviour completely anomalous to paint.

If Harrit et al's methodology was incomplete - but I don't think it was, since we know they did FTIR and TEM as well - so was Millette's. He didn't test the behaviour of the chips. A test which, when you're looking for energetic materials, would be obviously indicated, as Tillotson and Gash also show.

You are not addressing the point!

It doesn't matter what specific formulation of paint the material is it just matters that it's paint and not thermite.

I am not talking about the MEK chip. I am talking about chips a, b, c, and d and the corresponding data in Fig 6,7 and 11 from Harrit.

You yourself have concluded that a=b=c=d. So has Harrit. So have we. If you conclude that then you must conclude that Millette also has samples that are the same material as a,b,c, and d.

Are you now saying that the samples a-d are not the same? If so why? Show why they are not the same.

You are trying to say they are the same but not the same.

N.B. DSC testing is moot because a=b=c=d=millette=paint.

 

[ergo]

Sunstealer, I'm not sure what you're not understanding. You asked me if I thought all the chips were essentially the same. I said I thought that is a very reasonable conclusion. I include the MEK chip in that assumption. The MEK chip showed a clear separation of the silicon from the aluminum. Because I think that that chip is the same as the others, it makes me wonder why Millette didn't find that same result. However, because Harrit and Jones tests showed that the behaviour of the chips is not consistent with paint and Millette didn't even try to test this, I give more weight to Harrit et al's findings.

 

[thedopefishlives]

Sunstealer, I'm not sure what you're not understanding. You asked me if I thought all the chips were essentially the same. I said I thought that is a very reasonable conclusion. I include the MEK chip in that assumption. The MEK chip showed a clear separation of the silicon from the aluminum. Because I think that that chip is the same as the others, it makes me wonder why Millette didn't find that same result. However, because Harrit and Jones tests showed that the behaviour of the chips is not consistent with paint and Millette didn't even try to test this, I give more weight to Harrit et al's findings.

Millette didn't HAVE to test the "behaviour of the chips". He examined them with more reliable means and determined that they were paint. What part of this are you still not getting? Harrit et al. claimed that they ran similar tests, but they never released the data. Why do you think that is?

 

[Sunstealer]

Sunstealer, I'm not sure what you're not understanding. I think I've said pretty clearly that Millette did not go far enough in his analysis. Harrit and Jones did more tests than Millette did, and they also tested the behaviour of the chips.

No you are not clear at all, infact you are trying to deflect from your own conclusion that the material is not thermite.

Millette went way, way further than Harrit and Jones.

Why does the number of tests matter? Surely the right tests matter!

Millette used testing methods and machinery that definitively tell everybody exactly what the materials in the red chips are. He showed conclusively that the red layer contains epoxy, kaolin and iron oxide pigment. He also concludes the gray layer is oxidised steel (Harrit and Jones had no idea what the gray layer was).

You can perform 1000 tests, but if none of those methods are the right ones to use then they are pointless. Again if you read my posts from 3 1/2 years ago on the paper you will see that I criticise the testing methods as being inadequate, unambiguous and predictably inconclusive.

Why do you need to go further than proof?

If you think the FTIR data and the TEM-SAED from Millette does not show kaolin and epoxy then show your reasoning.

 

[ergo]

Millette didn't HAVE to test the "behaviour of the chips". He examined them with more reliable means and determined that they were paint. What part of this are you still not getting?

No, he didn't. When you're looking for energetic materials you obviously want to test the behaviour of the chips. Millette didn't do this.

Harrit et al. claimed that they ran similar tests, but they never released the data. Why do you think that is?

I think it's because in scientific publishing there are space limitations, and you have to make decisions about what findings you're going to present, and you'll probably choose the ones that you think are the most relevant and irrefutable.

As to why they haven't published their FTIR and TEM results somewhere else, I don't know. I wish they would, if it would help clarify the matter.

 

[ergo]

Millette used testing methods and machinery that definitively tell everybody exactly what the materials in the red chips are. He showed conclusively that the red layer contains epoxy, kaolin and iron oxide pigment. He also concludes the gray layer is oxidised steel (Harrit and Jones had no idea what the gray layer was). . .

Why do you need to go further than proof?

If you read a few posts above, I wouldn't be surprised if there is some kind of organic matrix in the mix. I think Harrit et al also acknowledge this.

So what new information does Millette bring? Nothing, as far I can see. Moreoever he didn't test the behaviour of the chips, instead stopping at his conclusion of paint - but without identifying what paint, since it's not Tnemec. Harrit et al did all the tests that Millette did and more.