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

[Gamolon]

Does it not set your alarm bells ringing when Dr. Millette refuses to run his own heat test that you say goes "straight to the heart of the matter in 20 seconds flat."??

MM

Why did Harrit not run "heat tests" on the red/gray, magnetically attracted paint chips they supposedly separated out from the red/gray, magnetically attracted thermitic chips?

 

[MarkLindeman]

And how do you know this? Or are you simply assuming? It isn't mentioned in Bentham.

Right. The Bentham paper doesn't say anything about distinguishing among kinds of red/gray chips. On the contrary, it says that in 2007, Jones "observed distinctive bi-layered chips, with both a red and a gray layer," subsequently referred to as "the red/gray chips." There is no hint in the text that the "distinctive color" of the red/gray chips studied by Harrit et al. differs from the distinctive color of other red/gray chips, and that the researchers followed a protocol for distinguishing between (among?) these distinctive colors.

It's odd, in a way, that MM doesn't concede this point and retreat to more defensible ground.

Basile's own website - in which he proposes a protocol for an independent study - makes no mention of separation according to the specific hue of red, just magnetic separation then electron microscopy to ensure they're of the red/gray variety.

Actually, what I'm looking at on markbasile.org refers to optical microscopy -- but still no hints on how to separate red from red. It may actually be possible to distinguish various kinds of red/gray chips by optical inspection, although that in itself wouldn't save either the Bentham paper or the thermite hypothesis.

 

[thedopefishlives]

It's odd, in a way, that MM doesn't concede this point and retreat to more defensible ground.

He knows enough to know that the only way to save the Bentham paper is by making up arbitrary rules for why Millette got the chips wrong. By admitting that both Harrit et al. and Millette followed the same rules, he would be admitting that they had the same chips, and he knows this and the logical conclusion this leads to - that the chips described in Harrit et al. really are not thermite at all. His only hope is to cling to the foregone conclusion that Millette must have gotten the wrong chips and tested paint instead of thermite.

 

[kid meatball]

Are you suggesting that the revelation of thermite can only be obtained by igniting it in an inert atmosphere?



MM

Epoxy paint shouldn't ignite in an inert atmosphere, thermite should. I'm sure this has been pointed out to you before.

 

[DGM]

I asked Dr. Harrit when he was in Toronto why they did not perform the DSC (heat testing) in an inert atmosphere. His reply was that they wished to replicate Tillotson's nanothermite DSC test conditions.

This would be fine if they actually knew they had the same material. It's moronic if you are still in the discovery stage. Did he imply he already knew what the material was and only wanted to compare it?

Are you suggesting that the revelation of thermite can only be obtained by igniting it in an inert atmosphere?

It's a way to confirm you have a thermite reaction and not just some organic burning in air. They do admit the chips contain some organic compounds. How did they eliminate their contribution to the DSC results?

What is there about a heat ignition in a normal atmosphere which negates the findings of the 2009 Bentham paper?

News flash. Organic compounds burn in air.

Does it not set your alarm bells ringing when Dr. Millette refuses to run his own heat test that you say goes "straight to the heart of the matter in 20 seconds flat."??

MM

Not really, He's actually competent.

 

[Miragememories]

"News flash. Organic compounds burn in air."

Oh that life should be so simple.

Do Tnemec or LaClede steel primer paint leave a residue containing iron-rich micro-spheroids when "burned in air"?

MM

 

[DGM]

Oh that life should be so simple.

Do Tnemec or LaClede steel primer paint leave a residue containing iron-rich micro-spheroids when "burned in air"?

MM

Which samples in the harrit paper did? Oh, that's right, they forgot to document that.

Another news flash. If you burn anything with iron (rust counts) you can get the same spheres.

Put a match to steel wool sometime (flick a Bic, for that matter).

 

[GlennB]

Are you suggesting that the revelation of thermite can only be obtained by igniting it in an inert atmosphere?

No. I said it was the first thing you do and is definitive. Basile and the Bentham team have studiously avoided that route. Can you suggest why? Tillotson doesn't set the agenda here, as it's B and B that are claiming thermite yet conspicuously failing to do the one very simple and cheap test that could settle the matter.

 

[chrismohr]

Important New Article

Has anyone posted this yet? Much food for thought, direct responses to things said by Ivan, Oystein, Dave Thomas and me:

http://aneta.org/markbasile_org/study/

 

[DGM]

Has anyone posted this yet? Much food for thought, direct responses to things said by Ivan, Oystein, Dave Thomas and me:

http://aneta.org/markbasile_org/study/

I hate to tell you but, there is no "food for thought" in that post.

It's all the typical misapplication of chemistry.

The Harrit paper has failed. The funny part is, "debunkers" had nothing to do with it. The best way to "debunk" that paper is to read it. (It helps if you also trust their data).

 

[pgimeno]

Where's the b...alumina?

But here's a thing - my formal study of inorganic chemistry and physics ended in 1969 when I went to Uni to study biology. But, back then, if you'd asked me to devise an experiment to determine whether a sample might or might not contain thermite I (and every chemist on the planet, I'd guess) would have got straight to the heart of the matter in 20 seconds flat. I'd have proposed heating the sample to thermite's ignition point in an inert atmosphere.

I respectfully disagree about the ignition temperature, given that different mixes and grain sizes can have different ignition temperatures. The method that Tillotson and Gash used can serve as a reference here in determining if a thermite reaction has occurred. They didn't heat the mix to (conventional) thermite's ignition point (they did use an inert atmosphere though). But what they did do in order to be sure that the reaction that happened was a thermite reaction was to look at the post-ignition residue. They found BOTH metallic iron and aluminium oxide, as evidenced by their PXRD analysis.

The Bentham team completely failed to reproduce that result: no aluminium oxide was found, and no pure iron, and the iron oxide particles that were there at the beginning were clearly still there after the reaction, as seen in the micrographs. Yet incomprehensibly they still claimed the material was thermite.

Millette's goal was to analyze chips with the same composition as chips a-d in the Bentham paper, as these were the only ones properly characterized throughout the paper out of all the possible chips you can run into given the separation method. He didn't need to do any heating tests as he found there was no free aluminium, and that ruled out thermite.

 

[DGM]

Let me give an example as to how this article is junk.

The authors also know that the active red/gray chips are as powerful as one known variant of super-thermite, because they compare the exothermic DSC curves to the result in a paper on a sol-gel nano-thermite:

So "powerful" in-fact that it surpasses the theoretic limit of a thermite reaction. They knew this and explained it must have been because of some organic contaminants. Odd they didn't eliminate this variable by reacting the chips in an inert environment.

I suppose this sort of thing happens when you know what you have and don't really need to prove it.

ETA: I think the author of this article spends more lines playing up the qualifications of the "scientist" than anything else.

BTW, Donate more money so they can do the work they already said they did.

 

[GlennB]

I respectfully disagree about the ignition temperature, given that different mixes and grain sizes can have different ignition temperatures.

Sure, and I was "" this far from going back to edit that post and add "well beyond". It's not a real issue when designing an experiment. You don't go to the bordeline here, you take care to play safe.

 

[MarkLindeman]

Important Faintly Alarming New Article

FIFY. This interminable, rambling, ax-grinding screed as good as shrieks, "Cranks!" Really they should pay you to restate their arguments as reasonably as possible. I suspect that if they asked nicely, you would do it pro bono, not that I think you should, nor that they will.

I guess I can try. The heart of the argument seems to be that Harrit et al. believe that heating their chips produced iron-rich microspheres, and that (plus the energy released) evinces some form of thermite. It doesn't seem to me that Harrit et al. provide much support for either part of that claim.

When I try to parse exactly why Harrit et al. think they've found some form of thermite, and what independent warrant they offer for those criteria, I don't find much. Of course a scientist with appropriate training might be able to set me straight, but I've seen no sign of that. Did Talboo and Zugam bury it in the entrails?

Absent that (never mind any intelligible hypothesis of how this substance might have been used to bring down the towers), I don't see much point in parsing T&Z's attempted smackdowns of divers JREFers. The goalposts are over there.

 

[chrismohr]

Has anyone posted this yet? Much food for thought, direct responses to things said by Ivan, Oystein, Dave Thomas and me:

http://aneta.org/markbasile_org/study/

I dunno, I'm still confused about what I'm supposedly confused about. The value of this article is that it summarizes well the objections to the Millette dust study.

In the meantime tho, I have offered to Mark Basile and the entire 2009 dust study crew to try to broker some kind of way for there to be "buyin" in advance on both sides for a protocol for Basile's new study. I'm no scientist but I can help find people who are. For that matter, at this point I can help find more WTC dust. No response. Very frustrating.

 

[Miragememories]

"I dunno, I'm still confused about what I'm supposedly confused about. The value of this article is that it summarizes well the objections to the Millette dust study.

http://aneta.org/markbasile_org/study/

In the meantime though, I have offered to Mark Basile and the entire 2009 dust study crew to try to broker some kind of way for there to be "buyin" in advance on both sides for a protocol for Basile's new study.

I'm no scientist but I can help find people who are.

For that matter, at this point I can help find more WTC dust.

No response.

Very frustrating."

Yes it is very frustrating---and so unnecessary.

Speaking of finding people, you found the lab guy aka Dr. Millette.

I know you consider Dr. Millette to be a nice person Chris, but for the $1,000 bucks we paid him (for part of a research presentation on 9/11 WTC dust he was mostly going to do anyway), don't you think he could spend a few seconds heating his no longer needed 9/11 WTC red chip selections?

Only then will he acknowledge that he tested the wrong chips and maybe go back and make proper selections.

If the only thing to be discovered is the truth, what is the problem?

MM

 

[DGM]

If the only thing to be discovered is the truth, what is the problem?

MM

I agree.

Why do you think the Harrit team is holding back the evidence that could prove their case?

We don't need another study. Just release the data they said they already have. Why are you not fighting for this?

 

[tsig]

Over a year before the 2009 Bentham paper was published, Mark Basile made the discovery that certain 9/11 WTC dust chips consistently ignited at ~430C and produced iron-rich micro-spheroids in their residue.

His initial research of selecting, cataloging, photographing, heat testing, residue examining, and referral back to catalog notes and photo images, became more focused when he discovered that some chips showed remarkable thermitic behaviour.

At some point it became clear that the chips which ignited at ~430C and produced iron-rich micro-spheroids in their residue, were "readily discernible by eye due to their distinctive color.".

We know that chemist Mark Basile shared his findings with other scientists performing research on the 9/11 WTC dust.

They shared a common agreement about what they had observed and it became part of the 2009 Bentham paper.

MM

[qimg]http://imageshack.us/a/img836/2848/822p.png[/qimg]


What is your problem?

I guess the Bentham paper could have said; "get a bag of 9/11 WTC dust and you'll find red chips like those highlighted in our paper----somewhere."

Filtering to isolate good samples is not an unusual event in research.

A magnet makes it possible to eliminate the need to analyze "the bulk of the dust."

The quote also notes a distinctive color for the red chips which is "readily discernible by eye due to their distinctive color".

Both the 2009 Bentham paper and the 2012 Millette study provide color images of their highlighted 9/11 WTC dust red chip selections.

The difference between the reference Bentham images (4 individual photos with consistent color balance) and the Millette image, is "readily discernible by eye due to their distinctive color."




Maybe you should do some homework before you publicly voice your unsupported thoughts.

Working independently on the 9/11 WTC dust for over a year before the 2009 Bentham paper was published, chemical engineer Mark Basile talked of testing 100's of thermitic red/gray chips and is credited as being the original discoverer of the iron-rich post-ignition residue.

MM

Oh that life should be so simple.

Do Tnemec or LaClede steel primer paint leave a residue containing iron-rich micro-spheroids when "burned in air"?

MM

So iron-rich micro-spheroids are the signature product of thermite?

 

[tsig]

Has anyone posted this yet? Much food for thought, direct responses to things said by Ivan, Oystein, Dave Thomas and me:

http://aneta.org/markbasile_org/study/

Plenty of witnesses, including first-responders, have testified that explosions were seen and heard. The rubble of the towers confirms their testimonies with the tell-tale signs of spent thermitic materials

Seems to be a direct foot shot since thermite doesn't explode.

 

[MarkLindeman]

I dunno, I'm still confused about what I'm supposedly confused about. The value of this article is that it summarizes well the objections to the Millette dust study.

Chris, you're a classy guy.

The problem in a nutshell is that certain people can object to the Millette dust study until the End of Days without getting any closer to understanding the physical evidence, never mind proving the case for nanothermite.

Plenty of witnesses, including first-responders, have testified that explosions were seen and heard. The rubble of the towers confirms their testimonies with the tell-tale signs of spent thermitic materials

Seems to be a direct foot shot since thermite doesn't explode.

I think their case is that *thermite (super/nano) can be engineered to be explosive, and/or to trigger other explosives. So I'd score it a wild miss but not a direct foot shot. Either way, one would want to take the gun away.