The 9/11 Forum

Just came across this short artcile on the new testing of the chips and what it could mean for the truth movenment.
http://911debunkers.blogspot.com/2012/0 ... truth.html

Prof Jones has (red-grey) chipped in with his opinion on the new tests here:
http://911blogger.com/news/2012-02-11/r ... s-millette

Dan wrote:Just came across this short artcile on the new testing of the chips and what it could mean for the truth movenment.
http://911debunkers.blogspot.com/2012/0 ... truth.html

Prof Jones has (red-grey) chipped in with his opinion on the new tests here:
http://911blogger.com/news/2012-02-11/r ... s-millette

Thanks! I was aware of the first link, but not the second. Interesting comments there, particularly:

SnowCrash wrote:Milette is being paid $1000 to debunk the nanothermite paper by German JREFer "Oystein". He will complete the assignment as requested and paid for. Personally,. I believe there is not a chance in hell he's going to 'confirm' the findings, but if he does, I think his principals will be very upset.

Given the fact that SnowCrash has thus far debated my civilly here on the 911forum, that we have agreed on number of points elsewhere, but that he abandoned this very thread (see last page) and has not responded to technical reasoning, I am very suprised, but not amused, to find him smearing my reputation like this elsewhere.

ETA: I should add that I actually hope very much that Millette can confirm Harrit e.al's findings, i.e. that Millette finds red-gray chips that match Harrit's particularly chips a-d of figures 2-11. If not, his study will not yield any data for me to work with. But if, and after, Millette confirms the data and existence (and perhaps even abundance) of these chips, I expect him to go into greater depth of analysis and show, using competent methodology and documenting it meticulously, what the chemical bonds of the different materials are:
- the whitish, faceted grains that Harrit already has agreed are hematite
- the platelets that contain Al and Si
- the gray layer
- the organic matrix

I am on record with the following predictions, and stand by them:
- These chips a-d are LaClede standard primer on flaked-off A242 steel (1966 spec)
- The gray layer is largely iron oxides, with possibly some elemental iron, plus small amounts (>0.1%, <1.0%) of manganese and carbon, possibly copper and chromium
- The red layer matrix is a cured epoxy
- The whitish facteded grains are hematite, typically around 150nm large (hematite pigment appear bright red in that size; more orange when smaller, more purple when larger)
- The platelets are aluminium silicate with equal amounts of Al and Si bound with O - that means no elemental Al, and no Al-oxide, and no Si-oxide (except, in the case of the oxides, for very small traces that may be common in natural clay deposits). Possible trace inclusions of other elements common in natural clays such as Ca, K or Na.
- Some of the pigments will be needles of strontium chromate (SrCrO4)

Oystein wrote:Thanks! I was aware of the first link, but not the second. Interesting comments there, particularly:

SnowCrash wrote:Milette is being paid $1000 to debunk the nanothermite paper by German JREFer "Oystein". He will complete the assignment as requested and paid for. Personally,. I believe there is not a chance in hell he's going to 'confirm' the findings, but if he does, I think his principals will be very upset.

Given the fact that SnowCrash has thus far debated my civilly here on the 911forum, that we have agreed on number of points elsewhere, but that he abandoned this very thread (see last page) and has not responded to technical reasoning, I am very suprised, but not amused, to find him smearing my reputation like this elsewhere.

Oystein wrote:

A W Smith wrote:Well Snowcrash is showing as being online over there yet he has not replied to your Jan 29 post yet

Maybe he's still wrapping his head around what I told him

http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p= ... count=1748

This is what I responded to at 911blogger, to which you responded at JREF:

Oystein wrote:and a vile, personal attack, coupled with a clear statement of intent to reject any evidence that doesn't fit his delusions as fraud, by an indivual [sic] I had so far debated civilly, sometimes reaching agreement on other issues, at the 911forum

http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p= ... count=1853

The fact that I didn't reply any further in the thread didn't have anything to do with my being unable to respond, it was the fact that I immediately knew then and there you hadn't even read Tillotson's paper.

Your confirmation-bias induced pushing of Millette even got you this warning by your partner Kminek: (He even literally uses the word 'push')

Ivan Kminek wrote:One note: I think that we have here some kind of "gentlemen agreement" that we should not "interfere" with the work of Jim Millette - at least now, before the release of some results. He can receive a copy of your (our JREF) document, but I think that he should not read it. And we should not push him now to prove some elements or compounds (strontium chromate) somewhere, although it is important for us.

http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p= ... count=1772

You've already crossed the line several times. You know my position on Steven Jones and his work, so don't present me as a religious believer. It's a false accusation.

SnowCrash wrote:...
http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p= ... count=1748

Oystein at JREF wrote:Maybe he's still wrapping his head around what I told him

This is what I responded to at 911blogger,

Can you explain, please, how on earth you get from "Maybe he's still wrapping his head around what I told him " (which was actually meant quite charitably: I was trying to find an excuse for you not responding) to

SnowCrash at 911blogger wrote:Milette is being paid $1000 to debunk the nanothermite paper by German JREFer "Oystein". He will complete the assignment as requested and paid for. Personally,. I believe there is not a chance in hell he's going to 'confirm' the findings, but if he does, I think his principals will be very upset.

????
Or could you at least have the courtesy to correct that statement, leaving out everything that is a lie? Lies are
"Milette is being paid $1000 to debunk the nanothermite paper"
"Milette is being paid $1000 ... by German JREFer Oystein"
"He will complete the assignment as requested"

That is vile character assassination, and I will not let this pass! You take that back!

SnowCrash wrote:to which you responded at JREF:

Oystein wrote:and a vile, personal attack, coupled with a clear statement of intent to reject any evidence that doesn't fit his delusions as fraud, by an indivual [sic] I had so far debated civilly, sometimes reaching agreement on other issues, at the 911forum

http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p= ... count=1853

I stand fully by my characterisation of your mean comment.

SnowCrash wrote:The fact that I didn't reply any further in the thread didn't have anything to do with my being unable to respond, it was the fact that I immediately knew then and there you hadn't even read Tillotson's paper.

Incorrect. I did read Tillotson's paper. If I misrepresented any part of it, you can correct me any time. You haven't corrected me. In a scientific discourse, renders you disagreement meaningless.,

SnowCrash wrote:Your confirmation-bias induced pushing of Millette even got you this warning by your partner Kminek: (He even literally uses the word 'push')

Ivan Kminek wrote:One note: I think that we have here some kind of "gentlemen agreement" that we should not "interfere" with the work of Jim Millette - at least now, before the release of some results. He can receive a copy of your (our JREF) document, but I think that he should not read it. And we should not push him now to prove some elements or compounds (strontium chromate) somewhere, although it is important for us.

http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p= ... count=1772

So? I have a disagreement with Ivan there. You should be happy to see that JREFers can disagree with each other!

However, why are you not also quoting my reply to Ivan? Ivan isn't aware that Jim has actually REQUESTED to see my (still unfinished) paper draft, which will include the topic we had at that moment, presence or absence of SrCrO4 crystals before he starts his work.

SnowCrash wrote:You've already crossed the line several times. You know my position on Steven Jones and his work, so don't present me as a religious believer. It's a false accusation.

You just rolled over the line with a tank.

Sorry, I expect an apology, and a more respectful reply to the scientific issues I raised on the previous page. Everything else only confirms your extreme bias.

Reply to the issues I originally raised in a forthright, sincere manner, respecting the fact that I can detect when you're not doing so.

Even then you won't get an apology. Ever.

You can start with admitting your mistake wrt. criticizing the "time scale" on the DSC, which was duplicated exactly from Tillotson. All your criticisms there apply to Tillotson as well.

I'm not in the mood for another pretentious wall of text which doesn't address the issue, not do I have tolerance for pompous bald-faced lying. We're going to take this one detail at a time. The issue above and that issue only. If I detect a glimmer of intellectual integrity on you I might engage again.

Oh, and JREF lurkers be advised: the notion that the last post wins might pass for an axiom over *there*, but luckily we are not *there*.

And again, for the record, I am not a defender of the "Truth Movement Doctrine" on this, my position is clear: if the material described in the Active Nanothermitic Materials paper is not in fact thermitic, it can only be due to scientific fraud. Something I deem possible given the recent and longer history of Steven Jones' indulgence in pseudoscience.

SnowCrash wrote:Reply to the issues I originally raised in a forthright, sincere manner, respecting the fact that I can detect when you're not doing so.

Even then you won't get an apology. Ever.

What you call a "fact" there is an error in judgement

SnowCrash wrote:You can start with admitting your mistake wrt. criticizing the "time scale" on the DSC, which was duplicated exactly from Tillotson. All your criticisms there apply to Tillotson as well.

You apparently don't understand what DSC traces can show and what they cannot show. Read my last post on the previous page again:
active-thermitic-material-in-wtc-dust-t150-135.html#p18806
"1. The (supposedly) narrowness of the peaks is not indicative of a super high burn rate - neither in Tillotson nor in Harrit."
There you have exactly what you are demanding: I am applying the same argument to both authors' DSC traces.

However, this does not amount to a criticism of Tillotson, because Tillotson doesn't even claim that a "narrow" peak (in his case: roughly 160°C wide - which corresponds to 16 minutes!) is indicative of high reaction speed. The DSC controlls the heat flow. The sample is not free to burn to completion at its own temperature.

Tillotson goes on to explain explicitly that they had NOT yet determined the burn rates. That it only appears like their nanothermite burns faster than conventional thermite.

SnowCrash wrote:I'm not in the mood for another pretentious wall of text which doesn't address the issue, not do I have tolerance for pompous bald-faced lying.

I am pretty pissed at your continued bad faith and vileness.
So this is how the 911forum oldtimers treat others? Call them liars? I think you are doing this site a disservice.

SnowCrash wrote:We're going to take this one detail at a time. The issue above and that issue only. If I detect a glimmer of intellectual integrity on you I might engage again.

The issue of DSC time scale? I already "admitted" (in quote marks, because I never denied it) that both used the same heating rate, which translates to same time scale. I wrote "Tillotson used the same method and heating rate"
And I continued: "...and got very different results: A very different ingition point (100°C higher than Farrer), and less power and less energy per mass unit. The fact that Farrer's data is different is the key here!" That was the second point I made.

The Tillotson graph is markedly different from the Harrit graph.

That includes a different "duration" of the exotherm peak. However, this duration is NOT indicative of burn rate! The duration in both experiments, Tillotson and Harrit, is on the order of 10 minutes, because that is how DSC's work; while in "the wild open", of course a tiny chip of epoxy paint as well as a tiny chip of nanothermite will burn in a matter of seconds, or fractions of a second.

SnowCrash wrote:And again, for the record, I am not a defender of the "Truth Movement Doctrine" on this, my position is clear: if the material described in the Active Nanothermitic Materials paper is not in fact thermitic, it can only be due to scientific fraud. Something I deem possible given the recent and longer history of Steven Jones' indulgence in pseudoscience.

The fraud very probably is neither in the dust samples and specimens nor in the data produced from it. The proof that there is no fraud in these is the simple fact that the data is best interpreted at chips of various paints on steel - a very mundane and totally expected find.

If there is fraud, it's in the forced interpretation and conclusions. Perhaps also in the choice of some data points selected for presentation in the paper (they must have run a lot more tests on a lot more chips). But fraud isn't necessary. Extreme confirmation bias explains the same.


There is the contentious issue of "iron-rich microspheres". Jones, Harrit and their fans like to contend that such spheres can ONLY be formed when temperatures reach 1500°C or thereabouts. This is almost certainly wrong.
In the DSC, they ran temps to a maximum of 700°C, if I remember correctly (or whatever the max is for their DSC equipment). DSCs controll temperature on the pedestal. They slowly heat the specimen, but also cool it if necessary. The power output was too low to overwhelm an ordinary DSC. If the DSC had failed to control the exothermic reaction, the chip would have burned to completion long before 10 minutes had passed, and the spike would have been cut off early. In summary, an experienced DSC operator will tell you that these four chips never reached a temperature above 700°C. Yet, Farrer and Jones claim that they formed "iron-rich microspheres".
There are now at least 3 possibilites:
a) these spheres were in there already before the DSC test. The authors deny this, but we can't check this, as we have zero pre-DSC data on these four specimens.
b) Iron-rich spheres can form as a result of the combustion of an organic matrix with some metal oxides in them at temperatures no higher than 700°C
c) Farrer and Jones committes fraud with a false claim that such spheres formed.

My money is on b)

I took some time in recent days and documented in my blog 3 points about the original red-gray-chip studies by Harrit e.al. and Mark Basile:


1. Why red-gray chips aren't all the same
Abstract:

Oystein wrote:Ever since Harrit e.al.'s paper "Active Thermitic Material discovered" (ATM, [1]) was published in April 2009, the world of 9/11 debaters (a small world, by the way) was split into two camps:

• 9/11 Truthers who believe all the chips are super-secret high-tech military-grade beast of extremely energetic nano-thermite. Note the stress on „all the chips“
• Skeptics who see that the chips are not all the same, are not thermitic, but very probably different kinds of paint instead.

In this post I will show that one particular chip in ATM, the one they soaked in MEK and present in Fig. 12-18, cannot possibly the same kind of material as the four chips they present in Fig. 2-11. Assuming that both represent the same material is preposterous. The most benign explanation for why the authors make that assumption is wishful thinking. We can rule out simple error or that they overlooked something, because it has been pointed out to them more than once in the past that the chips are different. A less benign, but perhaps more probable explanation would be outright fraud.

2. Another primer at the WTC: LaClede Standard Primer
Abstract:

Oystein wrote:There was not only one steel primer used on WTC tower structural steels, but at least one other primer:

LaClede Standard Primer is a zinc-free paint formulation with which the floor joists of the twin towers were painted.

The painted area of these LaClede-painted floor joists in both towers was roughly 600,000 m² while Tnemec is only known to have been specified for about 400,000 m² of perimeter column surface. For the rest of the structural steel – core columns, hat truss and others, a total of 300,000 m² the primer used isn't known.

Claims that Niels Harrit proved that some red-gray chips in the WTC dust are not WTC primer are basing this claim on the FALSE assumption that Tnemec was the only primer used. In fact, I will show that the chips that Harrit proved to not be Tnemec look very much like LaClede Standard Primer.

3. How Mark Basile confirms that red-gray chips are not thermitic
Abstract:

Oystein wrote:Mark Basile has presented his analysis of red-gray chips he found in dust collected in lower Manhattan very shortly after the collapse of the World Trade towers on 2001/09/11 [1]. He concludes that his experiments confirm a similar but more comprehensive study published by Harrit e.al. [2]. Harrit e.al. have in turn accepted Basile's findings as confirmation of their conclusions: That the red-gray chips are thermitic in nature.

I will show that this conclusion is not warranted in any way. Instead, Basile's favorite specimen is organic by nature, with at most 1.3%, but perhaps 0%, of the heat of reaction coming from a thermite reaction, the balacnce, 98.7%-100%, from ordinary organic hydrocarbon combustion.

If this result is a “confirmation” of Harrit e.al., as 9/11 Truthers like to point out, then clearly this puts in grave doubt the affirmation that Harrit's chips were of thermitic nature.

My latest blog post How Mark Basile confirms that red-gray chips are not thermitic takes care of this post by SnowCrash:

SnowCrash wrote:...
The material Jones, Basile, and others ignited is not paint unless paint is thermitic or Jones and his peers fabricated their data.

It's that simple. You simply cannot take Jones' paper and pretend it does not support the conclusion that the materials were thermitic.

I have shown that 99-100% of the energy released from Mark Basile's chip comes from hydrocarbon combustion, not from a thermitic reaction. This on account of hydrocarbons making up at least 87.8% of Basile's red layer as per his own quantification of the XEDS data, and thermite at most 4.74%, making hydrocarbon >18x more plentiful by weight than thermite, while at the same time hydrocarbons' energy densities are at least 4x the energy density of thermite.

Since Harrit; Jones and all these guys agree that Basile "confirms" their results, I guess that would confirm that all of the red gray chips are dominated by hydrocarbon combustion, not by a thermitic reaction.

SnowCrash wrote:I've been over this with endless processions of debunkers, and none of them had the intellectual honesty to admit it, to my great disappointment.

I think this is because you were wrong all along: Nothing in the data of Harrit or Basile points to anything thermitic, all of it points to pigments in organic matrix.

SnowCrash wrote:Realize that if you want to "debunk" his paper, then you have to accept the fact that they fabricated their data or the paint used in the WTC is extremely hazardous material with properties similar to nanothermite. You simply don't have any other options available to you.

No, the data has always been remarkably clean. It just has been presented in a convoluted and incomplete fashion and interpreted incompetently, with bias and blindness being the guiding lights.

SnowCrash wrote:I normally don't take such an absolutist stance, but I will do so here, because it's warranted. ...

You shouldn't have taken an absolutist stance even here.