Gage's next debate

[TheRedWorm]

I've had water all over me every day of my adult life, and I haven't drowned yet.

Keep trying.

Well, that's not very nice.

 

[R.Mackey]

0a.) [...] Tillotson discovered that nanothermites burn faster with an energy density nearly two times as great as thermites, and their higher sensitivity to ignition from heat and static electricity buildup creates hazards.

No, the energy density he found was much less than regular thermite, about 30%. The chemical energy content of regular thermite is about 4 kJ/g, whereas his nanothermite came in at about 1.5 kJ/g.

It's not possible to get more energy out of thermite by using nano-sized particles or any other size for that matter. That's like saying a Twinkie will make you fatter if you grind it up into tiny particles before eating it. Making the particles really small does change other things, like the ignition temperature and flame propagation speed, but it only hurts energy (by exposing more surface area for the aluminum to oxidize and become inert).

I was surprised to discover that Thermite actually produces much less heat than plain old carbon-based burning, even though it produces higher temperatures.

Correct. Few are the Truthers who understand the difference between heat and temperature.

The reason thermite reaches such high temperatures is because it needs no external oxidizer to burn. You can pack the fuel (aluminum) and the oxidizer (iron oxide) in very close proximity, giving you an ideal reaction without any need for mixing or convection from the air. If it were somehow possible to do the same with "regular" materials, say paper, you would also get extremely high temperatures.

This phenomenon is sometimes seen in a regular fire in what is called a flashover. Most of the time a normal hydrocarbon fire reaches only high temperatures, say 700-1000^oC, because the rate of burning -- the rate of energy release -- is limited by the available air, and that air carries away heat with it. That air is also only about 22% oxygen, the remainder being inert nitrogen, which is also heated but does not contribute to the burn. But sometimes you get a mixture of partly burned gases and fresh oxygen that suddenly takes off, and temperatures can spike much, much higher. Even hot enough to melt steel. Temperatures of even 1600^oC are possible, albeit rare, under these conditions. This is also sometimes known as a "backdraft," and it can resemble an explosion in many respects.

So the thermite reaction is hotter because it is more localized, and because it involves fewer inert materials that carry away heat. Simple as that. If you create a similar situation with an "ordinary hydrocarbon," such as kerosene and liquid oxygen, you can reach phenomenally high temperatures (3300 ^oC is seen in rocket engines).

As we know from NIST and from a basic understanding of steel behavior, we really do not need to melt the structural steel in the first place. All we need to do is heat and weaken it. Because of this, thermite is a very, very poor choice. Its low heat content means we would need much more of the stuff, and its high temperature means that once it does react, it's harder to contain the result and thus harder to direct it where we need it. "Nanothermite" makes even less sense because it is lower energy content still, and fabulously expensive besides. The whole idea is utterly insane if you know anything at all about the technology.

3.) Aluminum and iron oxide were found in the dust in Jones’s original study but not aluminum oxide (aluminum with three oxygen molecules attached to it, so it would have its own supply of oxygen). Aluminum oxide would be evidence of thermitic material since thermate is over one-third aluminum oxide. White smoke coming from the burning buildings is seen by some as evidence of aluminum oxide, but hot fires can emit that color smoke for other reasons and the boiling temperature of aluminum oxide is over 5300 degrees.

I believe Drs. Jones and Harrit's data is unable to distinguish between aluminum and aluminum oxide. The electron micrograph shows shapes that are more consistent with aluminum oxide (a remarkably common mineral, and found in many paints) than aluminum, I think. I will defer to the other experts in this regard. But in any case, either finding aluminum or aluminum oxide would be unremarkable. Both minerals are found in abundance in structures.

The white smoke could be anything. The Truthers usually refer to this in terms of the collapse, so the smart money says it's not smoke at all, but merely crushed drywall. If you've ever worked with drywall you have some appreciation for the vast quantities of choking dust it creates when cut, broken, or ground. Claiming it's aluminum oxide, when there are so many other possibilities (not only drywall but actual smoke, or white paint, for starters) is just nuts.

6.) Reason # Kevin Ryan personally told me that they had not adequately tested for flourine in the dust, and more experiments are needed to show this element which could have been used to stablize the silicon. This is something that needs more followup.

Silicon has no role at all in any kind of thermite. It's another inert ingredient which will only make the energy content lower still. There's no good reason whatsoever for it to be there, if the substance is indeed some kind of thermite.

7.) There is a lot of controversy surrounding the peer-reviewed status of this article. [...] On the other hand, Steven Jones swears he went through an extensive peer review before this was published.

It should be noted that at least two and probably all of the "peer reviewers" were acknowledged and thanked in the paper itself. This means the reviewers were advocates of the results. This is about the most fundamental perversion of peer review that one can make -- and it explains why such nonsense conclusions were "published" in the first place.

We do not need this data to determine that their conclusions are, in fact, nonsense, but it does explain why the paper wasn't simply rejected and laughed at. Any legitimate journal would have.

8.) Related to Richard’s claims of thermitic dust is Richard’s assertion that the EPA's Erik Swartz found 1,3-diphenylpropane at levels "that dwarfed all others. We've never observed it in any sampling we've ever done" . But Richard edits out the next sentence in the article from the Times Union where this quote appeared, “He also said it was most likely produced by the plastic of tens of thousands of burning computers.” As Richard said, “sol gel uses 1,3 diphenylpropane,” but the scientific method demands that you look for other possible sources, and you certainly don’t want to edit out the fact that your own source tells you, in the very next sentence, that it was probably used to make a computer!

This is a funny one. Before the Bentham paper, there was the Environmentalist paper. In that paper, they claimed that 1,3-DPP was evidence of nanothermite, specifically as a reaction product of the plastic-like gel used to fashion the nanothermite. This whole idea is ludicrous for many reasons, not the least of which is the 1,3-DPP was already explained, and that the levels of 1,3-DPP peaked months after the collapses, so they only made sense if the nanothermite was contained in a time machine!

But with respect to the Bentham paper, they didn't find any 1,3-DPP at all. They called no attention to it whatsoever. This anomaly simply does not fit their new attempted narrative, so Jones and Harrit promptly forgot they'd ever claimed it in the first place.

Gage is either even stupider than we thought, or he's willing to grasp at any straw, no matter how tenuous. The Environmentalist paper's conclusions are incompatible with the Bentham paper. They cannot both be right. But, they can both be wrong!

But he goes on to say, “The energy given off... was shown to be as high as typical high explosives, and the sharp spike in release was an important finding."

Kevin Ryan is right about that. The sharp spike proves there is only one chemical reaction taking place. But we know that one of the things reacting is the organic "contaminant." Since there is only one thing burning, we reasonably conclude from their data that there is no thermitic reaction. If there was, we would see a second peak. It ain't there.

"Our paper gives a number of other reasons why the chips match with nanothermite (e.g. intimate nanoscale mixed aluminum and iron oxide, formation of metallic spheres which match the composition of thermitic spheres).”

There is no evidence provided that burning the chips creates metallic spheres. Even if it was nanothermite, we don't expect it to do this, because the amounts they burned -- those tiny chips -- were insufficient to create a melt and surface tension environment needed for such creation. What they should have gotten are sharp, partial melts of metallic slag.

So what happened? Simple. The metallic spheres were already in their sample, before reaction, and after burning the (inert) spheres simply came loose.

Kevin Ryan has also told me that “The red-gray chips tested do not withstand 650 C, do not have Zinc, and don't dissolve in an organic solvent (but known paint chips do). Other analyses, not yet published, also indicate that the red chips are not paint. I have WTC paint samples and can tell you that, in addition to these facts, the paint looks nothing like the red-gray chips.”

This has been handled endlessly in the other threads. The specific paint used in the WTC does not dissolve in their solvent. Yet the kind of "nanothermite" they speculated about in the Environmentalist paper actually does. They have it quite backwards, as usual.

And even more importantly, it’s time for them to release their thermitic dust samples to any one of these independent labs for testing: RJ Lee, EMRTC, MACE, or NJIT's ACN group. All of them specialize in chemical analysis of dust. They would be objective and independent. These tests can be done for as little as $2000. It’s not enough to run a magnet over the dust and say look, iron! It’s not enough to give the dust samples to yet another 911 Truth insider. As even the most hardened skeptic has told me, “if the dust tested positive for thermitics, that would get my attention.”

This is really the key point. Otherwise, this is just Cold Fusion all over again. In more ways than one.

NIST will continue to say that there is no “chain of custody” proving that the original samples were not tampered with, but I for one would support the subpoenaing of a NIST dust sample for another $2000 test.

There is an inherent danger in this proposition. Suppose NIST does go ahead and gather some samples, runs it through the proper test, and concludes, "it's paint, you morons." Then what?

Then the nutter claim that NIST deliberately took paint samples just to make them look bad.

This is like insisting that a zoologist capture their own Bigfoot and run DNA tests on it before accepting that there is no such thing as Bigfoot. It's unsatisfiable. It's a classic call to perfection. Don't play that game.

Drs. Jones and Harrit claim to have samples that are nanothermite. If this is true, those are the samples that we test. That will prove right away whether they've stumbled upon the most idiotic conspiracy of all time, or whether they're simply nuts. And, as before, they will never, ever allow anyone to do this. The reason should be obvious.

 

[chrismohr]

C7 quote: Synthesis and Characterization of Mixed Metal Oxide Nanocomposite Energetic Materials

"We have developed a new method of making nanostructured energetic materials, specifically explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics, using sol-gel chemistry. A novel sol-gel approach has proven successful in preparing metal oxide/silicon oxide nanocomposites in which the metal oxide is the major component. By introducing a fuel metal, such as aluminum, into the metal oxide/silicon oxide matrix, energetic materials based on thermite reactions can be fabricated. Two of the metal oxides are tungsten trioxide and iron(III) oxide, both of which are of interest in the field of energetic materials. In addition, due to the large availability of organically functionalized silanes, the silicon oxide phase can be used as a unique way of introducing organic additives into the bulk metal oxide materials. These organic additives can cause the generation of gas upon ignition of the materials, therefore resulting in a composite material that can perform pressure/volume work."
https://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/307362.pdf

This directly contradicts the assertion that thermite reaction doesn't create gas, thereopre it is not very explosive.. Comments anyone?

Yes Chris7 there are whistleblowers, as in people who tried to warn the government about the terrorists and were blown off. Government complicity or incompetence? I won't speculate, my debate is about controlled demolition. The closest I know of is Kevin Ryan, who I've met. Fired from his job, but it was not a job where he had direct knowledge of CD. I'm talking about a hard-core whistleblower, someone who said, yes, I strapped radio receivers and explosives in the Twin Towers during the elevator repairs.

 

[R.Mackey]

These organic additives can cause the generation of gas upon ignition of the materials, therefore resulting in a composite material that can perform pressure/volume work."
https://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/307362.pdf

This directly contradicts the assertion that thermite reaction doesn't create gas, thereopre it is not very explosive.. Comments anyone?

No, this does not contradict the assertion that the thermite reaction doesn't generate gas. This is a secondary reaction -- a flash to gas phase of an inert material, like using the thermite to run a boiler and create steam. I did comment on it before. This kind of arrangement cannot create a shock wave, any more than a steam boiler can detonate. It can burst, but only with much lower energy.

The application being studied here is microthrusters for spacecraft. These are, by definition, not explosive. What you want is a very stable, very well-controlled gas generator. You would react some of this in a tiny pressure chamber with a nozzle, and use the result to generate thrust. That is what is meant by "pressure/volume work."

Hence, not explosive. No thruster, no matter how strong, is going to cut through steel!

The effect claimed to destroy steel beams and girders, on the other hand, requires a pressure wave, i.e. a detonation. Detonation is impossible with nanothermites. This is a desirable trait for spacecraft attitude control, but it is a deal-breaker for demolition.

 

[triforcharity]

ETA:
Fires do not go back on once they have burned out or been put out.

Yes, they do, quite often.

http://www.wftv.com/news/15975938/detail.html

http://listserv.palmbayflorida.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind1102&L=POLICE_DEPARTMENT&P=3170

Now, what were you saying? Fires don't flare back up?

 

[triforcharity]

That link talks about a water jet which has nothing to do with the debris pile "fires" lasting for months.

Wow, way to miss the point completly Chris. No wonder the collapse of 7WTC confuses you.

Do you want me to explain the technology to you and why the fire at GZ was very difficult to fight? I can if need be.

 

[triforcharity]

Burning cars would burn out in a matter of hours.

LOL!! Your knowledge of fires and firefighting operations is absolutely nonexistant.

 

[Christopher7]

C7 quote: Synthesis and Characterization of Mixed Metal Oxide Nanocomposite Energetic Materials

"We have developed a new method of making nanostructured energetic materials, specifically explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics, using sol-gel chemistry. A novel sol-gel approach has proven successful in preparing metal oxide/silicon oxide nanocomposites in which the metal oxide is the major component. By introducing a fuel metal, such as aluminum, into the metal oxide/silicon oxide matrix, energetic materials based on thermite reactions can be fabricated. Two of the metal oxides are tungsten trioxide and iron(III) oxide, both of which are of interest in the field of energetic materials. In addition, due to the large availability of organically functionalized silanes, the silicon oxide phase can be used as a unique way of introducing organic additives into the bulk metal oxide materials. These organic additives can cause the generation of gas upon ignition of the materials, therefore resulting in a composite material that can perform pressure/volume work."
https://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/307362.pdf

This directly contradicts the assertion that thermite reaction doesn't create gas, thereopre it is not very explosive.. Comments anyone?

There is no contradiction. The organic material creates the gas.
Mackey is still talking thru his hat. He is ignoring the crux of the above quote so I enlarged it for him.

Yes Chris7 there are whistleblowers, as in people who tried to warn the government about the terrorists and were blown off. Government complicity or incompetence? I won't speculate, my debate is about controlled demolition. The closest I know of is Kevin Ryan, who I've met. Fired from his job, but it was not a job where he had direct knowledge of CD. I'm talking about a hard-core whistleblower, someone who said, yes, I strapped radio receivers and explosives in the Twin Towers during the elevator repairs.

That is so asinine. No one is going to come forward and confess to being part of a mass murder.

 

[Grassy Knowlington]

There is no contradiction. The organic material creates the gas.
Mackey is still talking thru his hat. He is ignoring the crux of the above quote so I enlarged it for him.

That is so asinine. No one is going to come forward and confess to being part of a mass murder.

I'm no chemist but the paper concludes:

These energetic nanocomposites have potential applications as pyrotechnics and propellants.

To quote from Wikipedia:

Pyrotechnics is the science of using materials capable of undergoing self-contained and self-sustained exothermic chemical reactions for the production of heat, light, gas, smoke and/or sound. Pyrotechnics include not only the manufacture of fireworks but items such as safety matches, oxygen candles, explosive bolts and fasteners, and components of the automotive airbag.

I would have thought if the authors' conclusions included potential application to explosives this would have been stated rather than pyrotechnics and propellants.

But, like I said, I'm not a chemist.

 

[Christopher7]

Yes, they do, quite often.

http://www.wftv.com/news/15975938/detail.html

http://listserv.palmbayflorida.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind1102&L=POLICE_DEPARTMENT&P=3170

Now, what were you saying? Fires don't flare back up?

The fires you posted are no comparison. Firefighters did not leave the ground zero fire and a great deal of water was being constantly being applied.

ETA: Do you really think that cars can burn for months?

 

[Christopher7]

I would have thought if the authors' conclusions included potential application to explosives this would have been stated rather than pyrotechnics and propellants.

They did state it.

"We have developed a new method of making nanostructured energetic materials, specifically explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics, using sol-gel chemistry.

The rest of the paragraph explains how they make nanocomposites explosive. Keep reading it until you understand.

 

[Grassy Knowlington]

They did state it.

"We have developed a new method of making nanostructured energetic materials, specifically explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics, using sol-gel chemistry.

The rest of the paragraph explains how they make nanocomposites explosive. Keep reading it until you understand.

Did you read the whole paper?

 

[Dave Rogers]

There is only one other possibility, copper, which melts at 1980^oF.

Nope. Aluminium is a metal, and the entire outside of the building was covered with it. There was, inevitably, abundant aluminium in the rubble pile. An uninformed observer, with absolutely no idea what molten steel looks like, could easily see molten aluminium and think it was molten steel.

Incorrect. Temperatures in excess of 3180^oF are confirmed by the RJ Lee Group.

Please post a quote from the RJ Lee group where they specifically claim that temperatures in excess of 3180ºF were observed, rather than some other quote from which you infer that claim.

Dave

 

[000063]

Keep trying.

I will certainly continue to bathe daily.

 

[Dave Rogers]

How can a smoldering debris pile burn for months when millions of gallons of water have been applied?

What's your source for the volume of water applied to the rubble pile, and is it anything more than a wild guess? But the answer, obviously, is that the heat generated by the combustion in the pile is more than sufficient to boil off all the water supplied. That's a fairly easy calculation to do, which I'll leave up to you; if you can't do it, you might consider the possibility that having no idea what you're talking about is not a strong arguing position.

Dave

 

[000063]

Ryan Mackey is talking thru his hat.

Nano-thermite is a military incendiary/explosive and its capabilities are classified so there is no way Mr. Mackey could know what the possibilities are.

Which means that no Truther can know what the possibilities are, either, which means that all the talk of the capabilities of nano-thermite, such as it being turned into a compound that can be sprayed on columns, is unsupported sophistry.

Thanks for demolishing your own argument!

 

[Dave Rogers]

Chris, just a few comments on the latest installment.

SECOND SLIDE OF KNOWN NANOTHERMITE. Then they superimposed the blue line, the least energetic dust sample, to the known nanothermite sample from the Tillotson paper, claiming the energy reaction was close to a match. But it is not. The World Trade Center dust sample had to be heated 100 degrees Centigrade higher to generate the reaction, and then the reaction itself was stronger by a factor of two. And this is the closest match of the four samples. One sample released five times as much energy as the known nanothermites.

Minor error there: the WTC dust sample reacted about 100ºC lower than Tillotson's nanothermite sample, rather than higher - it's the blue line in fig. 29 in Oystein's post #1195. Since regular thermite is well known to need high temperatures to ignite (a blowtorch is a preferred method), whereas carbon-containing material doesn't (every Ray Bradbury fan knows that paper ignites at 451ºF), a lower ignition temperature is yet another feature that tends to suggest simple burning rather than a thermite reaction.

One chemist told me “It suggests that he doesn't understand the most basic principles of the experiment he's tried to do.”

If that was me, I'm a physicist, not a chemist. No big thing, it's no worse than saying someone's a Giants fan when he really supports the Jets.

And finally:

Use this debate to strengthen your pre-existing beliefs and you will be a statistic confirming the 1979 attitude polarization study. So I challenge you to do independent research, and find original source information not associated with either side.

Well spoken, sir. Damned well spoken.

Dave

 

[Christopher7]

Nope. Aluminium is a metal, and the entire outside of the building was covered with it. There was, inevitably, abundant aluminium in the rubble pile. An uninformed observer, with absolutely no idea what molten steel looks like, could easily see molten aluminium and think it was molten steel.

Bull.

Anyone seeing a silvery molten metal would not describe it as molten steel and these people were not uninformed observers.

Please post a quote from the RJ Lee group where they specifically claim that temperatures in excess of 3180ºF were observed, rather than some other quote from which you infer that claim.

You ask for what you know does not exist in a lame attempt to deny the obvious.

Many of the materials, such as lead[FONT=&quot], cadmium, mercury and various organic compounds,vaporized and then condensed during the WTC Event.

[/FONT] The presence of lead oxide on the surface of mineral wool indicate the existence of extremely high temperatures during the collapse which caused metallic lead to volatilize, oxidize, and finally condense on the surface of the mineral wool.

The dust in the below gash sector relative to the top of the Building is 10 times higher than the average concentration at the top whereas the lead and other metals are comparable to each other in the two sectors.

You are also ignoring this:
iron . . . . melted during the WTC event, producing spherical metallic particles.

 

[Christopher7]

Did you read the whole paper?

Yes

monomolecular materials can have much greater power than composite energetic materials. A major limitation with these materials is the total energy density achievable. Therefore, it is desirable to combine the excellent thermodynamics of composite energetic materials with the rapid kinetics of the monomolecular energetic materials. One possible way to do this is to mix the components of composite energetic materials on a size scale which will limit the effects of mass transport on the reactants, thus providing kinetics similar to those obtained in monomolecular energetic materials.

We have previously prepared pyrotechnic and explosive composites based on thermite reactions whose fuel and oxidizer constituents are intimately mixed on the nanometer-sized scale

ETA: There are two papers. The above quote is from the 2005 paper.
https://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/318263.pdf

 

[Christopher7]

What's your source for the volume of water applied to the rubble pile, and is it anything more than a wild guess? But the answer, obviously, is that the heat generated by the combustion in the pile is more than sufficient to boil off all the water supplied. That's a fairly easy calculation to do, which I'll leave up to you; if you can't do it, you might consider the possibility that having no idea what you're talking about is not a strong arguing position.

Dave

Speak for yourself. If you did not know that millions of gallons of water were applied then you haven't done any research at all.

"After the WTC buildings collapsed, fire fighting and rescue operations continued. The fires at ground zero were smoldering for months after the attack (41). It was determined that 3 million gallons of water were hosed on site in the fire-fighting efforts between 9/11 and 9/21
In addition, there were two episodes of rain during the same 10-day period: on 9/14 and 9/20,21 (18), totaling 0.9 million gallons of water in the Bathtub area. Considering the neighboring areas, we take 1 million gallons from the rain. Therefore, a total of 4 million gallons of water percolated through the debris in the first 10 days and collected at the bottom of the Bathtub."
https://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/241096.pdf