September 11 – The New Pearl Harbor

[William Seger]

19. Flail!

> The debris pile at Ground Zero was always tremendously hot. Thermal measurements taken by helicopter each day showed underground temperatures ranging from 400ºF to more than 2,800ºF.

Well, I see a lot of "truther" sites quoting that, but it doesn't agree with what the USGS actually reported:

AVIRIS images obtained from an airplane flying over the WTC complex were processed to indicate thermal hot spots, shown as bright red, orange, and yellow spots on the images to the left. The dark areas are shadows of buildings and other structures. The numbers show the original locations of Towers 1 and 2 in the WTC complex. The September 16, 2001 image (left) reveals a number of thermal hot spots in the region where the WTC buildings collapsed. Analysis of these data indicated temperatures greater than 800°F (orange pixels), with some areas reaching over 1300°F (yellow pixels).

They took images on the 18th and 23rd that showed the hotspots cooling, with only one hotspot over 1300°F on the 18th and only two over 600°F on the 23rd.

http://911encyclopedia.com/wiki/index.php/World_Trade_Center_Hot_Spots
(The link is a "truther" site but it has a nice table of the hotspots found on the three days.)

> also this...
> 1. Researchers have found iron spheres in the WTC dust. Note emphasis on iron.

> 2. Spheres in fly ash that have some form of iron in them are extremely rare, and fly ash "iron" spheres are actually iron-oxide spheres. Note emphasis on oxide. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016236106001906

> Therefore, fly ash does not explain the iron spheres found in the WTC dust. Carbon-fueled furnaces leave oxides, in this case iron-oxide. Fire is a form of oxidation = There must have been some other source for the iron spheres.

Emphasizing "iron" doesn't change the fact that Harrit's microsphere were "iron-rich" but they did contain oxygen -- look at his spectra and read the text. How do they compare to fly ash microspheres or similar sources? Sorry, you won't find that in Harrit's paper because they didn't do that test.

You seem to be missing the point, though, which is that there are MANY possible sources of the microspheres besides fly ash, and even if you want to exclude any that were produced in hydrocarbon fires, that doesn't exclude the ones from the welding when the building was erected, or as I mentioned from brake pads and clutches, or from many other possibilities. The point is that Harrit & Co. are claiming that the presence microspheres is a signature of thermitic burning, when in fact they are a very common form of a very common element. To make such a claim, at the very least they would need to show something unique about thermite microspheres, and they have not even attempted to do so.

Sorry, but "iron-rich" doesn't begin to cut it when what you really want to "conclude" is that the presence of microspheres proves a deliberate controlled demolition. Thanks to independent analysis that I'm sure you're aware of, we now know that Harrit's chips are dead ringers for the rustproofing paint applied to the WTC floor joists. That should make a reasonable person suspicious of Harrit's paper when it fails to actually prove that the chips actually underwent a thermitic reaction or that they even contained the elemental aluminum necessary for a thermitic reaction, because they simply did not do the tests that would have actually proved either of those things. (Nor have they corrected that deficiency in the years since the paper, even though they have now been told exactly what tests need to be done.) Instead, they try to infer it from indirect evidence that might or might not have other explanations -- no way to tell from such poorly conducted research.

> 3. The red-gray chips ignite and leave iron spheres. Again, there is elemental iron in those spheres.

> Thermite leaves elemental iron. Researchers have found red-gray chips in the dust that ignite and form iron spheres, this is in fact why those people claim the chips are a form of thermite! So-far, this is the only explanation for the observed iron spheres in the dust.

Yeah, well, chocolate and shit both leave brown stains, but that doesn't mean that chocolate is shit; a little more testing would be required. Even if we accept the claim that iron microspheres were produced (even though another "truther" was unable to reproduce them), one important question Harrit's paper leaves unanswered (because he apparently didn't even attempt to find out what kind of paint was used) is, does the rustproofing paint used on the WTC joists and commonly used elsewhere for decades also produce iron microspheres when it burns? And if so, is it really from a thermitic reaction? And even if it is, SO WHAT? Would that really support the conclusion of the paper? Unintended thermitic reactions occur in many situations where iron oxide and aluminum get together, but one of the things we know from Harrit's paper is that the chips have less energy density than paper. How much damage would you expect to inflict on WTC columns if you wallpapered them and then set the wallpaper on fire?

But hey, wildbill, thanks for taking the time to type an actual response for a change.