Gage's next debate

[Jono]

Indeed. For me it's the little things like people reporting steel beams dripping steel from the end as they are being pulled out of the pile or firefighters saying they saw molten steel running down the channel rail and it was like you were in a foundry or Leslie Robertson saying he saw a little river of steel. But scientists need to hear from a metallurgist who just happened to have his molten metal test kit with him or they will insist it was aluminum or some other metal that melts a temperature that can be attained in a oxygen starved debris pile where the combustibles are mixed up with a much greater amount of non combustibles.

It's virtually impossible for anyone to differentiate a metallic compound's composition, its potential alloys etc, from simply looking at a molten puddle of it. Even Robertson testified to that when asked.
But we know the term "steel" and "metal" often gets mixed up, I can testify to that personally. Therefore I'm forced to regard any non-tested substances, based on anecdotal ocular vision, of what a molten substance is, to be such a mixup.

 

[Jono]

But you wrote, "their infamous Bentham paper when they claim that their red-grey chips react the same way as Tillotson's real nano-thermite, even though their ignition point was about 100K off, and power output off by a factor of 2 to 10."

Is there an easy way to explain what this means to Rev. Layman here?

Well Tillotson used XRD, and argon-atmosphere, Harrit n Jones didn't. Tillotson's nano-thermite was expectedly within the rather small confines of the heat energy of thermite, whereas Jones samples were all over the place and far beyond. Basically, not only did they have an ample example of how to test of nano-thermite (Tillotson), not only did they use his work as a way to bolster their own, they did their own tests and applied their methodology very differently and arrived at completely different results. Ironically, their conclusion was; "Ok, so it's not that stuff, maybe it's that stuff still but only a super-duper mixed version?".

 

[Oystein]

Well Tillotson used XRD, and argon-atmosphere, Harrit n Jones didn't. Tillotson's nano-thermite was expectedly within the rather small confines of the heat energy of thermite, whereas Jones samples were all over the place and far beyond. Basically, not only did they have an ample example of how to test of nano-thermite (Tillotson), not only did they use his work as a way to bolster their own, they did their own tests and applied their methodology very differently and arrived at completely different results. Ironically, their conclusion was; "Ok, so it's not that stuff, maybe it's that stuff still but only a super-duper mixed version?".

Careful. Yes, Tillotson used PXRD, as that is the best and conclusive method, and Harrit's bunch should have done the same, didn't and thus failed.

But Tillotson does not state explicitly in his paper that he used an argon atmosphere. Moorea said he did, but admitted that this was heresay: He kinda remembered that someone he knows dad been told so by Tillotson. It is possibly true, but we don't have a source that we could expect the other side to trust. However, since Tillotson knew already what he put into his DSC (no C, for example), he might have had a good excuse not to use argon. Harrit's bunch on the other hand did not know what they were looking at before the analysis, except that there was some organic matrix, and so they had no excuse, and should most definitely have used an inert atmosphere.

 

[Oystein]

Prof. Jones posted a bunch of stuff at 911Blogger a while back. There's some interesting stuff here:
http://www.patentstorm.us/search.html?q=thermite+demolition&s.x=0&s.y=0&s=s

Which one of those patents proposes nano-thermite to be used as an explosive? Number will do. Thanks.

and here
file:///C:/Users/Chris%20Sarns/Documents/9-11/Thermite/Nano/RSimpson.html
...

We are not User Chris Sarns

 

[funk de fino]

This was posted recently:
9/11 Contradictions: Leslie Robertson and Molten Metal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLCwq3-RzZs

0:26 "But molten means flowing. I've never run across anyone who said that they have seen molten metal."
1:19 "The project was on fire for months. So when we were down at the B1 Level (Basement LEVEL 1) one of the Firefighters said I think you will be interested in this ... and they pulled out the big block of concrete and there was like a little river of steel ... ah flowing

Full video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzu1ODWrXo0&feature=player_embedded#at=3601

I appears to me that like Van Romero who was very open about the towers looking like a CD and then doing a 180, Leslie was very open about molten steel until someone told him to STFU or else.

How long does thermite burn for to make LITTLE river of steel some months later?

 

[Jono]

We are not User Chris Sarns

Lol, a classic isn't it?

 

[ElMondoHummus]

But Tillotson does not state explicitly in his paper that he used an argon atmosphere. Moorea said he did, but admitted that this was heresay: He kinda remembered that someone he knows dad been told so by Tillotson. It is possibly true, but we don't have a source that we could expect the other side to trust. However, since Tillotson knew already what he put into his DSC (no C, for example), he might have had a good excuse not to use argon. Harrit's bunch on the other hand did not know what they were looking at before the analysis, except that there was some organic matrix, and so they had no excuse, and should most definitely have used an inert atmosphere.

I want to emphasize what Oystein says at the end there. The entire DSC data argument is at risk of being submerged so deeply into the forest that all anyone will see is bark, but his statement provides what I think is the necessary perspective on this.

You see, there was some sort of carbon compound in the DSC-sample. This is not in dispute; Jones's and Harrit's own data shows this. And they not only acknowledge it, they cite it as contributing to the energy output.

But that right there is the entire problem: In order to properly determine the energy of the thermite redox itself, you must separate out from mundane carbon combustion the portion that is indeed from a thermite redox. In plain english, the best way to do this is to eliminate the possibility of carbon combustion from occuring to begin with. That way, they know for 100% certain that what they had was a thermite reaction. But they did not do this. That right there invalidates their data because there's no way to tell if all the energy came from that combustion with zero from the redox. Yet, they claim that a portion of it came from the redox anyway despite the fact they had zero data proving this. That's not even being sloppy; that's deliberate handwaving.

Whether Tillotson used inert atmosphere or not is irrelevant; he already knew what he had on hand and was simply characterizing it. Slavish copying of his methodology should not be the driving force behind the Jones/Harrit experiment. Rather, determining what methods best gives accurate data should be^*.

The argument that the towers were not "demolished under argon" is also irrelevant, as well as a handwave. The purpose of the DSC is not to replicate the conditions the towers collapsed under, it is to characterize the material they were studying. To determine the energy of any supposed thermite redox, they needed to isolate things down to where there would only be a thermite redox occuring. Not add possible reactions and variables.

At any rate, I think the point is clear. There's too much excuse-making occuring for the DSC data. The point is that it was sloppy from the start, and that it highlights Jones's and Harrit's poor methodology. What Tillotson may or may not have done is beside the point, and Oystein's emphasis of that is very much worth highlighting.




^*For the record, this right here is why I think Jones/Harrit et. al. are being deliberately deceptive instead of foolishly ignorant. They're copying technique instead of trying to learn what the best methods for characterization are. That's a deliberate choice, and combine that with the subsequent handwave within the original paper claming organic combustion as only being part of the total energy output, and you get something that smells of intentional, knowing deception.

 

[ElMondoHummus]

We are not User Chris Sarns

I think he meant to link to this - http://www.llnl.gov/str/RSimpson.html - but borked it while composing. Chris has never been a careful reader anyway, so this is no surprise.

 

[Christopher7]

Which, if you actually think about it for a moment, makes no sense at all. If the pipe was being pulled out of the pile, then it was cooling; how could steel still be melting off the end?

It was a steel beams, not a pipes.

How could molten steel be running down a channel rail made of steel, without melting the channel rail?

I know you are not as stupid as you are pretending to be. Steel does not melt instantly.The molten steel was no doubt running down the channel rail as they were pulling a beam out of the pile.

Whereas truthers are happy with a garbled witness account or a quote that turns out to have been made up

The statements are clear and you are in denial.

 

[TheRedWorm]

...<snip>...Steel does not melt instantly...<snip>

Why do you need it to be steel, especially in light of your refusal to attempt (indeed, possibly even acknowledge) Trifor's challenge to "Name That Molten Material!"

 

[Dave Rogers]

But you wrote, "their infamous Bentham paper when they claim that their red-grey chips react the same way as Tillotson's real nano-thermite, even though their ignition point was about 100K off, and power output off by a factor of 2 to 10."

Is there an easy way to explain what this means to Rev. Layman here?

I'm not sure Oystein and EMH have really pitched this at the layman level, so if you all don't mind I'll try and give you the step-by-step version.

Harrit and co-workers used a differential scanning calorimeter to measure how much energy their chips produced when they reacted, and at what temperature they reacted. (That's the right tool for the job, because that's exactly what it's intended to do; it slowly heats a sample at a constant rate, and measures how much its temperature differs from what it should be from the heating rate. Any difference must be from the sample itself either releasing or absorbing heat in a chemical reaction.) They then claimed that their results agreed with Tillotson's results from doing the same thing with nanothermite. But there were actually some big differences.

First of all, Harrit's sample, as they knew, included some other carbon-based material, which might burn in air. If they'd done the experiments in argon, which doesn't react with carbon, then the carbon-based material woudn't have burned, and wouldn't have released any energy. But they did the experiments in air, so they may have got two reactions instead of one: the carbon-based material burning, and the thermite reaction. Both of these contributed to the energy they measured, and so they can't tell how much came from a thermite reaction and how much from simple burning.

Secondly, Tillotson measured how much energy is released from a given amount of nanothermite. When you compare the size of the pieces Harrit was analysing and work out how much energy they should have released, they actually released between two and ten times too much. There's no possible way that much energy could have come from a thermite reaction, so we know for certain that some of it must have come from simple burning. However, burning releases a lot more energy than a thermite reaction - more than twenty times as much as nanothermite - so it's perfectly possible that all the energy came from burning.

Finally, Harrit's samples reacted at a lower temperature than Tillotson's. That suggests that the reaction Harrit saw wasn't the same reaction that Tillotson saw. It also suggests that there was only one reaction, because Harrit's DSC trace only showed one peak.

Putting all this together, we know that Harrit's samples produced energy from simple burning of carbon-based substances, we strongly suspect that there was only one reaction going on, we strongly suspect that reaction was a different reaction to the one Tillotson saw, we know that a thermite reaction couldn't have produced the amount of energy Harrit measured, and we know that simple burning in air could easily have produced the amount of energy Harrit measured. The only conclusion that makes sense is that Harrit's samples had some carbon-based material in them - like, for example, the binder in paint - that simply burned in the surrounding air, and that there was never a thermite reaction at all.

What Harrit could have done, though, is carry out the experiments in an argon atmosphere, so that no burning could take place. Any energy released, if he did that, would have to come from some other reaction, and thermite would be the most likely candidate. That would have been very strong evidence of a thermite reaction, whereas at the moment all we have is weak evidence against one. And that's why Harrit's response when it was suggested he should do that - "WTC was not demolished under argon" - is so horrifyingly, monumentally stupid. It suggests that he doesn't understand the most basic principles of the experiment he's tried to do.

The other possibility would be that he did repeat the experiments under argon, didn't see any energy released, and doesn't want to admit it. But that would be quite a serious accusation, and I have no reason to believe there would be any substance to it.

Dave

 

[Christopher7]

Why do you need it to be steel, especially in light of your refusal to attempt (indeed, possibly even acknowledge) Trifor's challenge to "Name That Molten Material!"

Why do you need it not to be steel?

It was not aluminum or lead because those metals glow silvery in daylight and anyone would notice that. The NIST claim that organic material mixed with molten aluminum is baseless speculation. There is no known case of that happening and no scientific data to support it.

There is no reason to doubt that it was steel or iron, other than personal incredulity. The RJ Lee Group report clearly states that iron melted during the WTC event. They also said that lead was vaporized during the collapse because it condensed on the fibers found throughout the building including places where only the dust cloud from the collapses went. So temperatures in excess of 2800^oF and 3180^oF are firmly established. People here try to double talk around that, thinking up endless reasons to interpret the data differently, but it's just word games.

The RJ Lee Group is an unbiased, independent, highly qualified organization and refusal to accept that they confirmed these extreme temperatures is just denial of scientific forensic evidence because you can't accept the ramifications.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Why do you need it not to be steel?

We don't. We only require it to be possibly not steel. Once the possibility is established that there are other compositions for this material, then the major premise of the alternative interpretation is demonstrated to be invalid, and the truther chain of reasoning - if there were a complete one, which is not actually the case - collapses.

Dave

 

[Christopher7]

We don't. We only require it to be possibly not steel. Once the possibility is established that there are other compositions for this material, then the major premise of the alternative interpretation is demonstrated to be invalid

No, temperatures high enough to melt iron are confirmed by the RJ Lee report which means that the molten metal could be iron. The possibility that the molten metal is something other than steel/iron means that there is a possibility that the molten whatever is not the byproduct of a thermite reaction. However, there is still the possibility that it is molten iron and the byproduct of a thermite reaction.

 

[Oystein]

Hi Oystein,

I read the nano report but honestly I'm running out of time and as you all know, I absorb new science info slowly. I think I'll have to give up fully understanding this paper within the next 6 days and get back to writing up Building 7.

But you wrote, "their infamous Bentham paper when they claim that their red-grey chips react the same way as Tillotson's real nano-thermite, even though their ignition point was about 100K off, and power output off by a factor of 2 to 10."

Is there an easy way to explain what this means to Rev. Layman here?

Sorry I didn't see your reply earlier.
Dave gave this a try. Here is another take, this time using the original graphs from the Bentham paper:


(Figure 19)


(Figure 29)


Figure 19 is the "raw" data of the DSC experiments they did with the four red-grey chip samples (labeled a-d elsewhere in the paper).
The first thing to notice here is that the results differ among the four samples: The height of the peaks ranges from about 10 W/g to about 23.5 W/g (that is power per mass unit, or energy release per second per gramm). The peaks occur at temperatures ranging from about 445°C down to about 420°C.

Figure 29 repeats the graph for one of the samples, the blue line in fig. 19. Notice that they picked the sample with the lowest power output and the highest ignition temperature among the four samples! One could and should question why they picked this line and not, for example, the black plot with the highest peak at lowest temperature!
Now this blue line is compared to the line that Tillotson plotted for his sample of real nano-thermite.
Notice that Tillotson's sample peaked not anywhere near the temperature range above (420-445°C), but rather at about 540°C nearly 100°C higher than the highest value among Harrit's samples! Notice, too, that the height of Tillotson's peak isn't anywhere near the power range above (10-23.5 W/g), but only about 5 W/g, or half the power of the least powerful Harrit-sample, and only about 20% of the most powerful Harrit-sample.

I think any layman can see from these discrepancies that these materials are not the same. Yet this is exactly what Harrit e.al. conclude!

This is like comparing 4 leaves from one tree and 1 leave from another tree: The 4 are 10 to 23 cm long and have hues of green ranging from medium to dark, the 1 control sample is 5 cm long and light green. Every child would correctly conclude that these are most likely leaves from two different tree species, but Harrit would conclude it is the same tree, possibly an unknown high-tech breed.

 

[000063]

No, temperatures high enough to melt iron are confirmed by the RJ Lee report which means that the molten metal could be iron. The possibility that the molten metal is something other than steel/iron means that there is a possibility that the molten whatever is not the byproduct of a thermite reaction. However, there is still the possibility that it is molten iron and the byproduct of a thermite reaction.

Assuming that to be true, one cannot base an argument on one of multiple possible explanations. Either it's been proven, or it hasn't. I may have a cheeseburger for lunch or I may have a garden salad, but you can't start lecturing me about my eating choices before you even know which.

 

[Dave Rogers]

The possibility that the molten metal is something other than steel/iron means that there is a possibility that the molten whatever is not the byproduct of a thermite reaction.

Exactly! The truther argument is that the molten metal cannot possibly be anything other than iron/steel, and is therefore proof that a thermite reaction took place. The response is that there are other possibilities, and it is not therefore proof of a thermite reaction.

However, there is still the possibility that it is molten iron and the byproduct of a thermite reaction.

Happily conceded that the possibility that this material is not iron or steel does not exclude the possibility that a thermite reaction occurred. In fact, even a definite proof that the material was not iron or steel would not exclude that possibility. However, since all evidence of a thermite reaction has been found to be equally unconvincing, there is no reason to suppose that one occurred.

Dave

 

[Oystein]

I'm not sure Oystein and EMH have really pitched this at the layman level, so if you all don't mind I'll try and give you the step-by-step version.

Hi Dave,
overall a good reply, but allow me to nitpick some details, so Chris Mohr won't get grilled on these:

...
Secondly, Tillotson measured how much energy is released from a given amount of nanothermite. When you compare the size of the pieces Harrit was analysing and work out how much energy they should have released, they actually released between two and ten times too much.

There is one thing misleading here, and one thing erroneous:
- Misleading: Yes, in the end, the DSC raw data was converted to energy/mass unit (Joules per gram). On page 19 of the Harrit-paper, the energy yields are given as "1.5, 3, 6 and 7.5 kJ/g, respectively". Tillotson's sample yielded 1.5 g/J (page 342 in Journal of Non-Crytsalline Solids 285 (2001)). So the energy yields of Harrit's samples exceeded Tillotson's by a factor of 1, 2, 4 and 5. However, the graphs plot power per gram versus temperature, not energy. Power is energy per second. Energy yield is computed from the power curve through some sort of integration.
- Erroneous: I made a simple error earlier when I said the peaks are too high by a factor of 2 to 10 - but the highest peak is only two high by a factor of slightly less than 5. You quoted my error, here is the correction

There's no possible way that much energy could have come from a thermite reaction, so we know for certain that some of it must have come from simple burning. However, burning releases a lot more energy than a thermite reaction - more than twenty times as much as nanothermite - so it's perfectly possible that all the energy came from burning.

That "twenty" times as much is dependent on the nature of the organic matrix and the proportion inert components (there is silicium in the samples); 20 may be a high estimate. Generally, organic compounds release a lot more energy than thermite does - anywhere from 8kJ/g (mixed things like paper or body tissue) to 40kJ/g (fuels and some plastics), so your factor could be as low as 5, or as high as 25. Roughly.

Finally, Harrit's samples reacted at a lower temperature than Tillotson's. That suggests that the reaction Harrit saw wasn't the same reaction that Tillotson saw. It also suggests that there was only one reaction, because Harrit's DSC trace only showed one peak.

I put this out as a question earlier, if a mix of two compounds that ignite at different temperatures would in all cases generate 2 peaks, and iirc correctly, it wasn't rules out that when the first compound ignites, it may pretty much instantaneously ignite the other, too, on account of it burning hot. So one peak does not automatically mean only one compound reacting exothermically.

...
What Harrit could have done, though, is carry out the experiments in an argon atmosphere, so that no burning could take place. Any energy released, if he did that, would have to come from some other reaction, and thermite would be the most likely candidate. That would have been very strong evidence of a thermite reaction, whereas at the moment all we have is weak evidence against one.
...

Non sequitur. As we still don't know which compounds were in the samples, and have good reason to doubt that there was any elemental aluminium, and since there is no other plausible reason to assume that any appreciable amounts of thermite could have been around Ground Zero, thermite would NOT be a likely candidate at all! The DSC is simply not a method to identify compounds in a specimen mixed of several compounds, it is only a method to establish one or two particular properties of the specimen. Any number of reactions could take place even in the absence of oxygene in the environment.

 

[The Almond]

Fly ash contains iron oxide. The RJ Lee Group knows the difference between iron and iron oxide and the spheres found in the dust were iron, NOT iron oxide. If they were iron oxide, they would have been labeled iron oxide. Figure 21 is labeled "spherical iron particle".

You're cute. You do understand how silly you looked while denying the very obvious, very clear presence of iron oxide in the spectrum you showed. Why bother doing it again?

 

[The Almond]

SLIDE IRON MICROSPHERE IN FLY ASH Another possible source of iron-rich microspheres is fly ash in concrete. At the time of our debate I could not find proof of this assertion, but here it is. This is a photo and accompanying spectrum of an iron-rich microsphere in Tolk fly ash I obtained from a dust expert who has collected 400,000 dust samples from fly ash alone. This particle is an iron oxide of some type, but the particle also contains small amounts of calcium, silicon and aluminum.

Face: Since we're dealing with iron oxides, iron hydroxides, and iron eutectics, the assumption that "iron rich" spheres must come from fire temperatures capable of melting pure iron is invalid.

Hi Chris, I think you've done an excellent job so far with your summaries. If I might be permitted to add some thoughts on this section, I think I could help you improve it.

You should mention that iron oxide microspheres are in a lot of materials, including paints, pigments and construction materials. A fire does not necessarily produce all of the spheres found in the dust, but it does an excellent job of concentrating them. Basically, in a fire, any carbonaceous material is going to combust in the presence of oxygen. Materials that have high metal content and most metal oxides like silicon dioxide (i.e. sand), aluminum oxide and calcium oxide (i.e. lime) don't combust. When something burns, these non-combustible materials are all that are left over.

This all goes to the point that thermite is not the only way to produce iron microspheres. Gage is implying, by his argument, that iron oxide microspheres can only be created by thermite reactions (a reaction which supposedly will melt steel). That is patently false, and the RJ Lee report clearly indicates that the presence of iron microspheres in a post fire, post collapse dust is quite normal.