9/11 Conspiracy Thread (There can be only one!)

[scott3x]

barium nitrate is not a requirement for an aluminothermic reaction as I pointed out in post#3 above, Jones paper explains this which I linked to in post#5, specifically pages 79-81 here:
http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/JonesWTC911SciMethod.pdf

Yes, but Steven Jones does claim it was thermAte. Correct me if I’m wrong, but a thermate reaction will always give off barium nitrate and aluminum oxide.

You are indeed mistaken . Since you may not believe truthers saying so, here is an official story believer saying so (search for barium nitrate):
http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/1528/33345.aspx

However, Steven Jones seems to believe that the thermate used did indeed have barium nitrate. He states:

Thermate-TH3 is an analog of thermite containing sulfur and barium nitrate, developed by the military for destroying enemy vehicles51.

http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/JonesWTC911SciMethod.pdf, page 81

He continues, saying:

anomalously high concentrations in the WTC dust such as zinc, copper and manganese and barium...

So clearly he is claiming that barium was indeed found. You go on to state that barium is not barium nitrate. Headspin responded saying:

barium is an element, barium nitrate is a compound of elements: barium, nitrogen and oxygen. XEDS was used to examine the microspheres, it detects elements and their amounts, it does not detect compounds as i said in post#11.

You then say:

So even if this is true, basically he can’t prove anything? Reason being; these elements were within the WTC anyway, with or without thermate. If he could have found compounds of barium nitrate and aluminium oxide it would have certainly given his claims a degree of respectability.

If he were being paid by the government to study these things, he might indeed have had the time and the tools to do these things. As it is, this isn't happening. Remember, however, that there were some anomalously high concentrations of certain trace metals, including barium. He ends off by saying:

We are learning more by studying the iron-rich
spheres found in the WTC dust.

Studies that were perhaps cut short when he was put on paid leave, while university officials were apparently examining whether they should terminate him, perhaps because of such studies. He retired before they could make up their minds. More later...

 

[GeoffP]

So he needs to prove that there should have been no barium in the WTC. From where does he collect his samples? How many replicates? And so on. This data needs to be presented.

Anyway: unsurprising they kicked Kenny off the Troofer forum. They prefer Troof to truth, so I can imagine his arrival would have been poorly received.

 

[scott3x]

So he needs to prove that there should have been no barium in the WTC.

No, only that the levels that were there were 'anomalosly high'.

From where does he collect his samples? How many replicates? And so on. This data needs to be presented.

I would imagine he's done it, but I don't have it on hand right now.

Anyway: unsurprising they kicked Kenny off the Troofer forum. They prefer Troof to truth, so I can imagine his arrival would have been poorly received.

They suspended his account for 14 days, because in 1 post he managed to insult people within the forum 3 times (they have a 3 strike rule there). He regularly insults people here too, but so do truthers. Everyone who's been here a while knows that the rule/regulation/recommendation (they don't specify which is which) is a nebulous clause that, if it is ever enforced, is only done so when the admins feel like it.

 

[scott3x]

read the paper and look at the graphs, the XEDS graphs show peaks of aluminum and oxygen, pages 2 and 3 :
http://www.journalof911studies.com/articles/WTCHighTemp2.pdf

Without even reading this, I can confirm to you that aluminium was everywhere in the WTC as it encased the outer beams. And it’s rather obvious that oxygen should be there too.

"The levels of many of the elements are consistent with their presence in building materials, including chromium, magnesium, manganese, aluminum, and barium."
http://www.ehponline.org/members/2002/110p703-714lioy/EHP110p703PDF.PDF

But as seen with Jones’ paper on how Jesus visited America, he is happy to put faith over evidence, and falsify evidence to suit agenda. Very unscientific.

I haven't really looked at his evidence for jesus visiting america, but as I've mentioned before, many people and enormous religions believe things that have little if any evidence. It is for this reason that I believe we should separate his religious views from his articles on 9/11, which have been peer reviewed on the Journal for 9/11 studies site. I haven't seen him use anything but evidence to sustain his 9/11 claims, but if you feel he has written a passage in his writings on the subject where this is not so, by all means bring it to my attention.

Since you made a hilarious statement alluding that all of the dust seen from the collapse was aluminium oxide

i never said such a thing. you need to read post#3 again...

You said there was much observed dust as the building collapsed and this would account for the aluminium oxide which funnily enough, absent in Jones' reports.

No, he didn't. This is what Headspin said:

The process used to analyse the previously molten Iron microspheres was XEDS - this involves firing electons at the tiny wtc dust samples (microspheres). when the electrons hit the sample they will eventually collide with the various atoms in the sample, the atom gets excited and gives off an xray. these x-rays are measured and tell us what element the electron struck, the results of these x-rays are plotted on a graph showing peaks which indicate what ELEMENTS and their AMOUNTS found in the tiny sample. The overall result of the graph produces a chemical signature, like a fingerprint, very specific, showing precisely the elemental content of the sample. Jones work shows the signatures found in the wtc microspheres samples match precisely those of thermite residue samples.

so if you understand the above, it should be obvious why statements like "there is a world of difference between aluminum and aluminum oxide" are bogus.

you may be correct about this, i do not recall accurately, but his papers are published for all to see and scrutinise. I remember him talking about barium in one of his earlier presentations, he may have been talking about the US Geological Survey report which did find barium, or he may have been talking about finding barium in his own samples, I suspect the latter but I am happy to be corrected, either way it does not negate the point above that barium is not a requirement.

Nevertheless he still claims that barium being found in dust is evidence of thermate. Glad to see you agree with me that this is a dubious claim.

He said nothing of the sort. He only said that he didn't remember if the US Geological Survey found the barium or Jones himself did.

 

[GeoffP]

No, only that the levels that were there were 'anomalosly high'.

'Significantly' high?

I'm referring to Jones' analysis, not Jones himself here.

I would imagine he's done it, but I don't have it on hand right now.

So locate it. Bring your proofs if ye are truthful.

They suspended his account for 14 days, because in 1 post he managed to insult people within the forum 3 times (they have a 3 strike rule there). He regularly insults people here too, but so do truthers. Everyone who's been here a while knows that the rule/regulation/recommendation (they don't specify which is which) is a nebulous clause that, if it is ever enforced, is only done so when the admins feel like it.

Do Troofers get banned? Only the obnoxious ones, I bet.

 

[scott3x]

'Significantly' high?

I'm referring to Jones' analysis, not Jones himself here.

The term he used was 'anomalously high'. I'll quote the paragraph where he uses it:

Thermate-TH3 is an analog of thermite containing sulfur and barium nitrate, developed by the military for destroying enemy vehicles51. In general, thermate (as defined here) combines aluminum powder and iron or other metal oxides with sulfur. The thermate reaction proceeds rapidly and is in general faster than basic thermite in cutting through steel due to the presence of sulfur. (Elemental sulfur forms a low-melting-temperature eutectic with iron). Given the mix of trace metals present in anomalously high concentrations in the WTC dust such as zinc, copper and manganese and barium, and the formation of iron-aluminum-rich spherules, I have argued that significant aluminothermic reactions occurred, with likely ingredients to include powders of aluminum, iron oxide, copper oxide, zinc nitrate, sulfur, and potassium permanganate. We are learning more by studying the iron-rich spheres found in the WTC dust.

www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/JonesWTC911SciMethod.pdf, page 27 in pdf document, 81 on page.

From where does he collect his samples? How many replicates? And so on. This data needs to be presented.

I would imagine he's done it, but I don't have it on hand right now.

So locate it. Bring your proofs if ye are truthful.

Being truthful and having proofs for every single counter official story believers have are entirely different things. Unlike certain NIST individuals, I'm not being paid to research these things. But if I come across the information requested, I see now reason why I wouldn't put it up here.

They suspended his account for 14 days, because in 1 post he managed to insult people within the forum 3 times (they have a 3 strike rule there). He regularly insults people here too, but so do truthers. Everyone who's been here a while knows that the rule/regulation/recommendation (they don't specify which is which) is a nebulous clause that, if it is ever enforced, is only done so when the admins feel like it.

Do Troofers get banned? Only the obnoxious ones, I bet.

I haven't done an in depth study on the subject. But feel free to begin one ;-).

 

[scott3x]

First you need to realize a few things before you fall all over yourself to shout “molten steel”. The molten material just so happens to be coming from exactly the point where the plane crashed to a halt. I shouldn’t need to tell you that a plane is made of large amounts of aluminium. You also will notice that this is the area that is greatly affected by fire and heat, thus it’s logical to assume that the aluminium from the plane was heated to the point were it melted.

The temperatures were well within the range of melting aluminium, and at such temperatures, any molten aluminium would not be silver. At 1800 farenheit which is the temperatures NIST describes, any molten aluminium would have been light orange in appearance.

This claim of NIST has been shown to be spurious. 911research.wtc7.net points out their flaw:

Jet fuel burns at 800º to 1500ºF ... Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100ºF ... And at 1800º it is probably at less than 10 percent. Here the article implies that flame temperatures and steel temperatures are synonymous, ignoring the thermal conductivity and thermal mass of steel, which wicks away heat. In actual tests of uninsulated steel structures subjected to prolonged hydrocarbon-fueled fires conducted by Corus Construction Co. the highest recorded steel temperatures were 680ºF.

http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/gopm/index.html

It’s colour and luminosity could also be influenced by contamination from other materials such as glass. It’s very unlikely that it was pure aluminium. The further the molten material falls, you see it dim to the point were you can almost make out that it is silvery in appearance.

Given the fact that the melting point of aluminium is 1220.58 °F (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium), about twice as hot as the steel should have gotten by fires alone in the building, I believe this whole argument is doomed to failure. But I'll give it another push in that direction by showing a video wherein NIST attempts to support their theory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQdkyaO56OY

 

[GeoffP]

The term he used was 'anomalously high'.

So, not significantly so?

 

[scott3x]

So, not significantly so?

Geoff, don't you think that if he didn't think it was significant, he wouldn't mention it?

 

[GeoffP]

I'm a scientist. Anomalous doesn't mean much to me; significance is important. And yes, I think he would.

 

[scott3x]

I think people would be happy to peer review his information if he was even remotely interested in submitting it to the relevant respected journals. When someone questioned him at one of his presentations about where his work has been peer reviewed he dodged the question:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRRfCAaEyLk

He is published on the Journal for 9/11 studies. From their site:

Thank you for visiting The Journal of 9/11 Studies, a peer-reviewed, open-access, electronic-only journal, covering the whole of research related to the events of 11 September, 2001. Many fields of study are represented in the journal, including Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Psychology. All content is freely available online.

http://www.journalof911studies.com/

 

[scott3x]

I'm a scientist.

What's your field of study?

Anomalous doesn't mean much to me; significance is important. And yes, I think he would.

Well, you're free to believe whatever you like.

 

[GeoffP]

What's your field of study?

Genetics. As such, significance is my issue.

 

[shaman_]

This claim of NIST has been shown to be spurious. 911research.wtc7.net points out their flaw:
http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/gopm/index.html

Scott perhaps you could read post 921 before you repeat this again.

I have done some searching and found other tests where the steel temperature was not very far behind the atmosphere temperature.

 

[KennyJC]

You are indeed mistaken . Since you may not believe truthers saying so, here is an official story believer saying so (search for barium nitrate):
http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/1528/33345.aspx

It's not clear from the quote I read whether or not her was talking about thermite or thermate. I want to read from a reliable source that is not from a truther website or some guy on a forum. Wiki would do. Is a thermate reaction possible without barium nitrate being a byproduct?

This is irrelevant anyway since Steven Jones doesn't report finding barium nitrate.

He continues, saying:
anomalously high concentrations in the WTC dust such as zinc, copper and manganese and barium...

So clearly he is claiming that barium was indeed found. You go on to state that barium is not barium nitrate. Headspin responded saying:
barium is an element, barium nitrate is a compound of elements: barium, nitrogen and oxygen. XEDS was used to examine the microspheres, it detects elements and their amounts, it does not detect compounds as i said in post#11.

As usual, I will state that Steven Jones found nothing that wasn't already in the WTC with or without thermate. The fact that Steven Jones could not check for compounds leaves him without evidence.

If he were being paid by the government to study these things, he might indeed have had the time and the tools to do these things. As it is, this isn't happening. Remember, however, that there were some anomalously high concentrations of certain trace metals, including barium. He ends off by saying:

The bottom line is that he didn't find these things he was desperately looking for. The fact he couldn't even tell elements and compounds apart means that he has no business making any of these claims, particularly when all the elements he describes as suspicious had a more mundane explanation for being present.

 

[KennyJC]

Scott, you need to stop putting external sources as quoted text from your hand-holder Headspin and Steven Jones, because it makes it more difficult to reply.

No, he didn't. This is what Headspin said:
The process used to analyse the previously molten Iron microspheres was XEDS - this involves firing electons at the tiny wtc dust samples (microspheres). when the electrons hit the sample they will eventually collide with the various atoms in the sample, the atom gets excited and gives off an xray. these x-rays are measured and tell us what element the electron struck, the results of these x-rays are plotted on a graph showing peaks which indicate what ELEMENTS and their AMOUNTS found in the tiny sample. The overall result of the graph produces a chemical signature, like a fingerprint, very specific, showing precisely the elemental content of the sample. Jones work shows the signatures found in the wtc microspheres samples match precisely those of thermite residue samples.

so if you understand the above, it should be obvious why statements like "there is a world of difference between aluminum and aluminum oxide" are bogus.

I understand that the mere presence of the elements doesn't spell out evidence thermite if you would expect those elements to be there without thermite.

This claim of NIST has been shown to be spurious. 911research.wtc7.net points out their flaw:

Zzzz... you've fallen into the habit of posting urls without giving me excerpts again.

http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/gopm/index.html

Same as above.

Given the fact that the melting point of aluminium is 1220.58 °F (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium), about twice as hot as the steel should have gotten by fires alone in the building, I believe this whole argument is doomed to failure. But I'll give it another push in that direction by showing a video wherein NIST attempts to support their theory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQdkyaO56OY

I'd like to know the context here - something truthers are not always willing to provide. Did this NIST experiment work previously? Did it work afterwards? Was this just a single failed attempt? The fact that they are doing it for the cameras tells me that they would have known from previous experiments that it worked.

He is published on the Journal for 9/11 studies. From their site:

Ahhh. So basically he is published and peer-reviewed on conspiracy theory websites, but no respected scientific journal? Everyone on a conspiracy theory website is going to agree with him regardless. He has to try and convince experts in the relevant fields who are skeptical of his claims. The scientific process is without bias, so how about he shows some courage of his convictions and submit it to the relevant sources?

I shouldn't have to tell you why that just won't do it. That's like saying biologists write papers supporting creationism and are 'published' on a creationist website.

 

[scott3x]

Genetics. As such, significance is my issue.

Geneticists concentrate on 'significant genes' right? Those 2 words in quotes bring lots of hits on google anyway. But semantics aside, I have seen nothing that would lead me to believe that Steven Jones would bring up anything that he felt was not significant.

 

[scott3x]

LOL... this proves (if it hasn’t been proven already) that you are a complete ignorant dumbass. Did you even read the full document? He describes steel being twisted and warped and that this could have only been possible if:

“That could only happen if you get steel yellow hot or white hot—perhaps around 2,000 degrees.”

So I think we can effectively rule out that he made any claims about molten steel.

Sometimes I wonder if you're incapable of refraining from personal attacks. Anyway, it's clear that you haven't read the document thoroughly. He said (and I quote):

Here, it most likely reached about 1,000 to 1,500 degrees. And that is enough to collapse them, so they collapsed. So the word "melting" should not be used for girders, because there was no melting of girders. I saw melting of girders in World Trade Center.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june07/overpass_05-10.html

I have never argued that the WTC buildings didn't reach those temperatures and neither has any serious 9/11 truther that I know. I have only argued that the fires in the WTC buildings couldn't have done it, and many experts hold this view as I have already stated.

 

[scott3x]

One huge obstacle you have to overcome is explaining how it would even be possible to demolish a building with thermate. Here’s what NIST has to say about the of thermite/thermate being used to demolish the towers:

"Separate from the WTC towers investigation, NIST researchers estimated that at least 0.13 pounds of thermite would be required to heat each pound of a steel section to approximately 700 degrees Celsius (the temperature at which steel weakens substantially). Therefore, while a thermite reaction can cut through large steel columns, many thousands of pounds of thermite would need to have been placed inconspicuously ahead of time, remotely ignited, and somehow held in direct contact with the surface of hundreds of massive structural components to weaken the building. This makes it an unlikely substance for achieving a controlled demolition.

Analysis of the WTC steel for the elements in thermite/thermate would not necessarily have been conclusive. The metal compounds also would have been present in the construction materials making up the WTC towers, and sulfur is present [approx. 19% by weight] in the gypsum wallboard that was prevalent in the interior partitions."

I'll ask the loose change forum regarding this.

Here is what demolition expert Brent Blanchard had to say about the matter:

"Dr. Jones acknowledges that his investigation is still in the research phase and that questions regarding the viability of his theory remain unanswered. For example, it is unknown how thermite’s destructive process could have been applied and initiated simultaneously on so many beams – in several buildings – undetected and/or under such extreme conditions. It is also unusual that no demolition personnel at any level noticed telltale signs of thermite’s degenerative “fingerprint” on any beams during the eight months of debris removal."

Again, I'll ask the loose change forum concerning this.

All truthers need to do to debunk this is to get a chunk of steel similar to the consistency and thickness of any of the supporting beams Steven Jones claims were cut by thermite/thermate in the WTC, then stand it up vertically and cut the beam horizontally using only thermite/thermate without it being directly applied by hand.

If the beam can be cut quickly and accurately by thermite/thermate use, then that would give his claims some credibility.

Once more, I'll ask the loose change crew.

 

[Ganymede]

These kind of comments make me laugh out loud. "You're too good, you know the real answers to all my stupid points. You must be...a government agent!" What an idiot.



Bitch, it's the parking cam vid. The same fucking video that the Troofers used to like to point to and say "that couldn't be a plane!" which clearly fucking is. I repeat: what an idiot. "It's a missile!" Yeah, a two-hundred foot missile. Sure. Mocked up to look like an airplane? Idiot.

REPORTED!!!!