Thank you.
In terms of scholarship,
this paper is no better than the rest of the nonsense produced by the Truth Movement. However, it is better organized, and at least legible, and as such is a much more useful case study for someone genuinely curious about the Scientific Method.
So let's begin. The first obvious problem (not counting the title or the abstract) is the following excerpt from Page 1:
K. Ryan et al. said:
The characteristics of these un-extinguishable fires have not been adequately explained as the results of a normal structure fire, even one accelerated by jet fuel. Conversely, such fires are better explained given the presence of chemical energetic materials, which provide their own fuel and oxidant and are not deterred by water, dust, or chemical suppressants.
Is this true? Has the fire "not been adequately explained?" This assertion is offered without any support at all. In contrast, there are numerous examples of large but slow, contained fires, i.e.
Centralia, both natural and accidental, that resist any effort to fight them and even hundreds of years worth of rain.
The claim of "even one accelerated by jet fuel" is a total red herring. An accelerant is actually a problem in this example, because it leads to more rapid fuel exhaustion. The conditions needed, instead, are abundant fuel, limited airflow, and relative thermal isolation. All of this is obviously present in the basements of the World Trade Center Towers, roughly 20 meters high by 64 meters on a side, and densely packed with tens of thousands of tons of combustible materials, with little access to air.
The "chemical energetic materials" (sic) are not well defined. Is crushed furniture such a material? I would venture so, since wood and paper average 25 MJ / kg of chemical energy release in ordinary fires. So, technically, there's enough deliberate vagueness here to make a semantic argument. If Mr. Ryan means "there was a lot of combustible material," then we really can't argue. We know there was. It was there in the Towers before collapse. No paper is needed, in this case.
But what about thermite, which we all know Mr. Ryan wants to say, but does not? Well, there's two problems with thermite. First of all, thermite is actually less energetic by a large factor -- typically about 4 MJ / kg, perhaps there is some formulation I don't know about that approaches 10 MJ / kg, but certainly nothing close to ordinary combustibles like wood and plastics. Over the long term, thermite is actually less of a fire hazard. We cannot possibly claim thermite was present from the total heat release alone. The only way to infer the existence of thermite is to study the
rate of heat release, and this isn't dependent on the fuel at all (since it is abundant), but rather the supply of oxidizer. Mr. Ryan and company do not even attempt, here or anywhere in the paper, to quantify the amount of oxygen available to the ordinary Pile fires that we know must have been there.
The other problem with thermite is that it tends to burn all at once. Since it needs no supply of oxygen, the rate of burning in a large quantity of the substance is limited only by heat transfer, which involves grain size and mixture with inert contents if any, but is pretty fast. In general, a burn rate of less than 1 cm/s is unlikely -- either the thermite will go out, or it will burn much faster, regardless of its volume. The thermite reaction is characterized by its tendency to
burn completely. So, if it was thermite, why would it still be burning months afterward? And in such enormous quantities?
To summarize, even this seemingly innocent excerpt demonstrates critical errors in Mr. Ryan's thinking:
- Asserted without justification, that the fire behavior was unexpected
- Asserted without justification, that other scientists do not or cannot provide an explanation
- Asserted without evidence, that "chemical energetic materials," meaning in this context thermites, are a better fit to the long duration and resilience of the fire, when in fact the opposite is indicated
Moving on to the next problem:
K. Ryan et al. said:
Explosions followed by white dust clouds, and molten metal at GZ, are of particular interest in this analysis. A white dust cloud is one of the products of the thermite reaction. The white dust in this case is aluminum oxide released from the extremely exothermic reaction between aluminum and iron oxide. The other product of the thermite reaction is molten iron. These facts, coupled with evidence for extremely high temperatures at the WTC, suggest that investigators should examine the potential for such pyrotechnic materials at the WTC.
Here, again, we have numerous totally unsupported assertions.
The "explosions followed by white dust clouds" are, of course, gypsum, concrete, and similar materials ejected by the collapse, and not by a "thermite reaction." It is true that aluminum oxide is white, but it is not true that all white dust clouds are aluminum oxide. This is a transparent
assuming the consequent logical fallacy.
There have been, of course, other analyses of the dust clouds (i.e.
Lioy et al.) and these have found absolutely no unusual aluminum signature. Indeed, it is not aluminum at all, but rather titanium, lead, iron, calcium, silicon that are in high quantities, and each of these is easily traced to specific, mundane materials -- white paint in the case of the titanium, glass for the silicon.
However, even if this was not the case, Mr. Ryan would be remiss in not presenting evidence for his theory that aluminum oxide was dominant. He has not. He also, unsurprisingly, presents no evidence of the "molten metal" that supposedly accompanied these explosions. Instead, what few possible indications of molten metal he has either come from
well before the collapses, as in the WTC 2 "firefall," or
long after the collapses -- there is no indication of molten metal during these "explosions," or for that matter in the other literature examining the dust. Presumably the supposed thermite reaction would not create its two ingredients at totally different times!
And this leads to another problem. The focus of the paper is supposedly on persistent thermite reactions in the Pile. Why are we here treating it like an explosive? Wouldn't explosive behavior preclude much later and slower reactions? Or are these two totally different types of imaginary destructive device, in which case one is not evidence for the other at all, and thus totally superfluous to the paper? The correct answer is, none of the above; instead, Mr. Ryan is simply confused.
Regarding the "extremely high temperatures," again, Mr. Ryan asserts without proof that it can only be explained via his supposed mystery reaction. This is simply not true. The temperatures are consistent with those in underground coal fires, and was explained in this instance by the
DELTA Group, through a simple estimate of the energies and rates of reaction, assuming, again, only normal combustible materials. Thermite, as before, actually hurts. It burns faster, but its energy content is so much less that it actually reduces the total energy -- and it is total energy, not burning rate, that would lead to heightened temperatures weeks after the collapses.
And that's just the Introduction.
Shall I bother continuing? Actually, I think I'd like the opposition to take a crack at the next section. Find the core arguments, isolate those to a few sentences, and see if they are properly supported. I'll be glad to help you walk through it. This could be a highly productive discussion for those of you unfamiliar with science.
ETA: I am, of course, bringing these and the other glaring issues to the attention of the editors. I will not reprint any e-mails I receive, as per JREF Forum policy, but I will keep you apprised of the situation.
Interestingly, of the two editors in chief, one has been on sabbatical since September of last year (prior to the paper's submittal), and the other has apparently published
creationist science papers with affiliates of The Origin of Life Foundation. I have not yet evaluated the latter claim for accuracy, nor does it excuse or explain the poor quality of Mr. Ryan's paper, but it is an interesting coincidence.
