Red-Gray Chips Tested and Determined Not to Be Thermite

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.  Here's the report; there is active discussion going on at JREF. Main point:

The red/gray chips found in the WTC dust at four sites in New York City are consistent with a carbon steel coated with an epoxy resin that contains primarily iron oxide and kaolin clay pigments.

There is no evidence of individual elemental aluminum particles of any size in the red/gray chips, therefore the red layer of the red/gray chips is not thermite or nano-thermite.

 (Bolding added for emphasis).  Kudos to Chris Mohr for pursuing this matter and to all the folks who contributed funds to the effort.  So far no response from the supermagiconanothermite team of Jones, Ryan or Harritt.

Goodbye Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal

Well, well, it looks like they do have some standards after all. Bentham Publishers has dropped the journal which published the Active Thermitic Materials paper by Harrit and Jones:

There is an Open Physical Chemistry Journal, but the Thermite paper is not located there. If you do a search for Harrit, the paper is shown on their site, but it's a ghost; clicking on the link gives you a 404 error.



But I'll let the Von Trapps have the final word:


Hat Tip: moorea34 at JREF.

Ready for a Laugh?

Guess who exposed himself as the peer-reviewer for Steven Jones' Active Thermitic Materials paper?

No, not Snoopy. That would be deserving of some respect. Instead it's that sack of fecal matter inhabiting the hockey jersey, David L. Griscom. Does that seem like a harsh assessment of such a kindly-looking old phart?

Well, Griscom has earned it and more. In a movement not exactly blessed with sensitivity, he came up with the single-most offensive theory put forth by the Truthers: All the passengers on the four doomed flights are alive and living it up in Tahiti.

I envision a similar 9/11 scheme, but one where the passengers boarded under their true names. Indeed, the seat occupancies on all four aircraft allegedly hijacked on 9/11 were very much lower that industry average (averaging 26% of capacity vis-à-vis 71% for all domestic flights in July 2001). So, here I extend my “all passengers survived” postulate to all four 9/11 “hijacked” flights on the notion that this small number of passengers might have been considered by conspirators as the minimum number for public credulity, while at the same time not exceeding the maximum number of “true believers in the cause” willing to accept long separations from their loved ones (sweetened by handsome Swiss bank accounts).

As I have pointed out in the past, the reason these retards believe that somebody could be persuaded to betray their friends, family and country, is because they themselves would jump at the opportunity, provided the Swiss bank account was handsome enough.

So yes, the guy who "peer-reviewed" Jones' paper is a Troofer moron himself. Professor Jones tries to put a smiley face on it:

The reviewer's name is Prof. David L. Griscom. Among his impressive credentials, Prof. Griscom is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a Fellow of the AAAS.

Well, he's certainly an AAAS-hole, Steven. But even the Troofers have their limits, and in the comments, loosenuke points out:

Does his promotion of theories, for which there's no actual evidence, such as 'all passengers survived' and 'the Pentagon was hit by a fighter jet', affect your opinion of his credibility- why or why not?

And JO911S published a letter by Griscom Feb 07; why didn't you mention this?

I think you previously mentioned that Bentam was given suggestions for reviewers; was Griscom one of the people suggested?

Jones does a little shuffle:

I do not think that Prof. Griscom's studies on 9/11 "compromise" him as a reviewer -- he critiqued the paper critically as a scientist, giving (as he said) the authors twelve pages of comments and questions. This scientific thoroughness is unusual in a review (from my experience) -- very unusual.

I do not know how the editors selected the reviewers, and I do not know the name of the other reviewer.

Never mind that he's a nut; his nuttiness wasn't evident in his review of our paper. And the second part is a dodge; loosenuke didn't ask him how the reviewer was chosen, just whether Jones recommended him. Given that Jones used to point out Griscom as an example of another physics professional for 9-11 "Truth", it's not hard for me to guess the answer to that question.

But it gets even better. Jones says he doesn't know who the second peer-reviewer was. Not to worry, the next commenter says:

I do know the name of the second Peer Reviewer, who obviously wants to stay anonymous yet. All I can say is that his reputation is undoubtable, too.

Yeah, I'm sure that if Sitting Bull knows him, he must indubitably be another fruitcake.

Mostly About the Bentham Open Chemical/Physics Journal

A terrific bit of debunking here. Note that the Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal only published four papers in 2009. Care to guess their total for 2010? Here's a hint; it's a nice, round number.

A Response to Harrit, Jones, et.al. From Dr Greening

Copied from here, reproduced without permission in the interests of science:

I just sent this e-mail to the authors of the "Active Thermite" paper:

The "Active Thermite" debate, (if there ever was one!), has now sadly reached a state of stasis and stalemate. It basically boils down to this: do you believe Harrit and Jones or not. Or stated another way: Are the red/gray chips definitive evidence that "energetic" nanothermitic agents were pre-planted in the WTC or are these chips explainable in some other, less conspiratorial, way?

To begin to answer this question we need to consider just how unusual, (or not!) these red/gray chips really are. Harrit et al. believe that the red/gray chips are indeed very remarkable - so much so that these authors insist that these chips simply could not be found in dust produced by a "natural" collapse of the Twin Towers. Harrit et al. make this claim mainly because of two characteristics of the chips:

(i) Their alleged engineered "nano-scale" structure

(ii) Their alleged "highly energetic" pyrotechnic properties

With regard to the first of these points it is quite evident that Harrit et al. have based their characterization of the WTC red/gray chips almost entirely by copying the work of scientists at Texas Tech University and the Lawrence Livermore National Labs who have made and patented nano-structured energy-dense materials for use as detonators and pyrotechnic agents. (See the papers and reports of authors such as M. L. Pantoya, T. M. Tillotson, R. L. Simpson, B. J. Clapsaddle and A. E. Gash, as well as Chapter 7 of the book "Energetic Materials" by U. Teipel) It is therefore very significant that these nano-technology materials scientists consistently and repeatedly make use of scanning electron microscopy, X-ray analysis, and DSC to characterize their samples - precisely the techniques used by Harrit et al to characterize their red/gray chips. But in spite of this obvious attempt to convince the scientific community that the WTC red/gray chips are indeed the high-tech creations of dedicated "nano-engineers" toiling away in some clandestine weapons laboratory, these chips are in reality quite low-tech and decidedly micro, as opposed to nano, in scale and structure.

With regard to point (ii) above, Harrit asserts that the chips are fragments of an "energetic material". This claim is mostly based on DSC measurements, but we need to consider: is it supported by experimental evidence? The Harrit paper reports the energy content of the red chips to be in the range 1.5 - 7.5 kJ/g. This is in fact not very "energetic" at all when you consider that common organic materials such as simple hydrocarbons or oxygenated hydrocarbons contain far more energy per gram than the red chips. Thus gasoline releases about 48 kJ/g, and stearic acid, found in plant and animal fats, releases about 40 kJ/g upon combustion. Since carbon, in some as yet unknown chemical state, is also found in the red chips, it is certain that some of the energy content of the red chips is accounted for by this non-thermitic ingredient. In fact, if the chips contained a mere 10 % of graphitic carbon it would account for more than half of their energy content!

Nevertheless, on page 28 of their paper, Harrit et al. offer another reason to believe that the red chips are a highly energetic thermitic material:

". the DSC tests demonstrate the release of high enthalpy, actually exceeding that of pure thermite. Furthermore, the energy is released over a short period of time, shown by the narrowness of the peak in Figure 29."

This statement, also repeated in the Abstract to the paper, is simply not correct and shows a complete lack of understanding of DSC by the authors of the paper. Why do I say this? Well, Figure 29 is the DSC trace of a red chip heated from 20 deg C to 700 deg C at 10 deg C/ min and shows an exothermic peak extending from approximately 420 - 470 deg C. Now, as someone who has run many DSC analyses on a wide variety of materials, I know that the height and width of a DSC peak depends on many factors such as the sample-holder, the furnace atmosphere, the sample packing density, etc, but most of all, DSC peak widths depend on the heating rate. Given that the DSC trace of Harrit et al. was acquired at 10 deg C/min and has a FWHM ~ 25 deg C, one can be certain that a different peak width would have been obtained if a different heating rate had been used. Thus DSC peak widths are not indicative of reaction rates. This is amply illustrated by many of the DSC traces and the discussion given in Chapter 5 of the well-known chemistry textbook "Thermal Analysis" by W. Wendlandt.

Finally, I should add that DSC is most effectively used to study reaction rates if it is carried out in isothermal mode using the Avrami-Erofeev equations to analyse the data. This experimental approach allows a rate constant and an activation energy to be calculated for the reaction responsible for an exothermic peak. I am surprised that a Chemistry Professor at a well-respected University appears to be unaware of this simple fact ....

Yes indeed Prof. Harrit, you had the temerity to tell me to take my time and not waste yours, when perhaps I should be telling you to take your time, but not waste mine!

The thread over there is pretty interesting to read. You can see quite clearly that only Greening (Dr G) speaks with confidence and authority; the Truther posters are mostly "Well, what about this, and what about that?" I don't want to knock them, because I get the sense that Metamars, in particular, is making an honest attempt to discuss the issues but clearly doesn't know the science (and let me add that I don't know it either; I can only judge by the way the discussion flows).

I am a bit surprised to learn that Steven Jones swears in his emails; it just seems out of character for someone who is generally soft-spoken and genial.

Note also this key point:

I've already done a calculation, (see my post from a few days ago), of how much heat energy a layer of nano-thermite (such as the one allegedly found by Jones et al) could generate. And, by the way, you have not commented on this calculation as you said you would. Nevertheless, my conclusion was that Jones' chips would do no more than slightly warm a WTC column!

Faced with this, what did Jones claim?

So when I bounced my calculations and conclusions off Jones et al, all he could come up with was the suggestion that there were probably other explosives used in the WTC and the nanothermite chips were maybe just fuses!

Thus, after all the fuss about high-tech nano-thermites, we are back to good-old "bombs in the buildings" as the answer to how the buildings were destroyed.

No kidding; after all that fuss, Jones is claiming that sooper-nano-thermite was just a fuse!

Bentham Editor Resigns over Steven Jones' Paper

Looks like the "peer-review" didn't include the editor:

"They have printed the article without my authorization else, so when you wrote to me, I did not mean that the article was published. I can not accept, and I have written to Bentham, that I withdraw myself from all activities with them, "says Marie-Paule Pileni, which daily is a professor specializing in nanomaterials at the prestigious Université Pierre et Marie Curie in France .

The language sounds a little stilted, but it's translated from the original (Danish).

Update: A translation of the article from Steve S, one of our commenters:

Editor in chief resigns after controversial article on 9/11
28 April 2009
From videnskab.dk ( Danish science news service)

An article on explosives in the World Trace Center was published in a scientific journal without the editor in chief knowing about it. Now she is resigning, she tells Videnskab.dk ([science.denmark])
By Thomas Hoffman (th@videnskab.dk).

It created a great attention, surprise and suspicion when the Open Chemical Physics Journal in April published a scientific article on remains of nanothermite which were found in great amounts in the dust from the WTC.

One those most surprised is apparently the editor in chief of the journal. Professor Marie-Paule Pileni first heard about he article when videnskab.dk wrote to her to ask for her professional assessment of the article’s content. The e-mail got her to immediately close the door to the journal.

“I resign as the editor in chief”, was the abrupt answer in an email to videnskab.dk

PRINTED WITHOUT PERMISSION
A telephone call reveals that editor in chief Marie-Paule Pileni had never been informed that the article was going to be published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, which is published by the journal giant Bentham Science Publishers.

“They have printed the article without my permission, so when you wrote to me, I did not know that the article had appeared. I cannot accept this, and therefore I have written to Bentham that I resign from all activities with them”, explains Marie Paule Pileni, who is professor with a specialty in nanomaterials at the renowned Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in France.

She feels not only stabbed in the back, but is puzzled that the article on dust analysis following the terror attack on the U.S. on 11 September 2001 could at all have found its way to the Open Chemical Physics Journal.

“I cannot accept that this topic is published in my journal. The article has nothing to do with physical chemistry or chemical physics, and I could well believe that there is a political viewpoint behind its publication. If anyone had asked me, I would say that the article should never have been published in this journal. Period.” Concludes the former editor in chief.

FAILING GRADES TO THE JOURANL
The editor-in-chief’s dramatic departure gives critics additional reason to doubt the article’s conclusions, but Marie-Paule Pileni points out that because the topic lies outside her field of expertise, she cannot judge whether the article in itself is good or bad.

Nevertheless, the publication gets her to give the Open Chemical Physics Journal failing grades.

“I was in fact in doubt about them before, because I had on several occasions asked about information about the journal without having heard from them. It does not appear on the list of international journals, and that is a bad sign. Now I can see that it is because it is a bad journal”, says Marie-Paule Pileni and continues:

“There are no references to the Open Chemical Physics Journal in other articles. I have two colleagues who contributed to publishing an article which was not cited anyplace either. If no one reads it, it is a bad journal, and there is not use for it”, is the harsh verdict.

The professor informs us that a few years ago she was invited to be editor in chief of a journal which would open new possibilities for new researchers and because she supports the idea of open access journals where the articles are accessible to everyone, she said, “Yes” thank you.

“It is important to allow people to try and gain success, but one should not be allowed to do everything, and all this is certainly a bunch of nonsense. I try to be a serious researcher, and I will not have my name connected with this kind of thing,” concludes Marie-Paule Pileni.

DOES NOT CHANGE THE INVESTIGATION
The editor-in-chief’s decision is viewed as regrettable by the Danish chemist Niels Harrit, who is one of the authors to the controversial article on nanothermite in the dust from the WTC.

“It surprises me, of course, and it is regrettable, if it discredits our work. But her departure doesn’t change our conclusions, for it is a purely personnel related thing she his angry about. I still believe that we have carried out chemical physics, and if there is something wrong with our study, she is welcome to criticize us for it,” says Niels Harrit, Associate Professor at the Institute of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen.

It is Niels Harrit’s coauthor Steven Jones who was in charge of contact to Bentham, and therefore the Danish researcher is presently not aware which responsible assistant editor the group has been communicating with.

However, he does know the names of the two researchers –so-called referees—who have reviewed he article, but he will not give their names because they ‘are in principle anonymous’.

DANE WITHDREW FROM THE JOURNAL
Niels Harrit’s superior at the University of Copenhagen, Nils O. Andersen has himself participated in the pool of researchers who could be selected as editor, on an article which should be published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal. He has recently chosen to resign from the journals Editorial Advisory Board.

He informs videnskab.dk that the decision has nothing to do with Niels Harrit’s article, and that he otherwise did not achieve having any experiences with the journals, so that he cannot shed further light on how the journal operates.

“Open access is an exciting development, and as a principle the idea should be tried out for there is no reason for the commercial publishers to earn money from our work. But professionally, the journal lay at the margin of my expertise, and as I had said No to be editor of two articles, I decided that I would not use my time on anything else.”, explains Nils O. Andersen, dean of the faculty of Natural Sciences and editor of the European Physical Journal D.

It has not yet been possible to get any comment from Bentham Science Publishers.

Thanks, Steve!