Another Scientific Study for 9/11 Truthers to Perform : The FEMA Samples of Melted Steel

Sunday, April 14, 2013
Bilbo's Blog

9/11 Truthers have already performed tests on dust samples from the WTC buildings and published their results in the peer-reviewed paper, Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe. There is controversy about their paper, and chemical engineer Mark Basile is trying to raise $5,000 to do a blind study of the dust in order to try to replicate the results.

Meanwhile, there is another scientific study that is waiting for someone to attempt. In a preliminary study of the WTC collapses, FEMA found two samples of eutectically melted steel, one from WTC 7 and one from either WTC 1 or 2. They performed a metallurgical analysis of the samples and published their results.

In The Great Thermate Debate, civil engineer Jonathan Cole produced some melted steel by means of thermate that looked very much like the FEMA samples. But as far as I know, no one has done a metallurgical analysis of Cole's melted steel, to see if it has the same micro structural appearance and same chemical content as the FEMA samples. I don't know how much such a study would cost, but I think it would be well worth the expense to see if it produced the same results. Such an outcome would strongly indicate the use of thermates in the demolition of the WTC buildings.

Hitler knows what Nano-Thermite in the WTC dust means, JREFers don't

I was looking through the comments on "The Great Thermate Debate" post on 911blogger and came across a hilarious video by Jon Cole that I had never seen before.



I went over to the JREF forum to get their take and found the typical facepalm comments and one asking how nano-thermite could bring down a tower, (a point sliced through like a hot knife through butter by Jon Cole's new video) after which they pull the "debunker" card of suggesting it isn't a real substance anyway.

"ElMondoHummus" writes:

Yes. The excuse is that organics combusting in the chip are what sends the readings above and beyond just pure thermite. And admittedly, if that were true and there was both a thermite redox and a regular burning of the organics present, there would be no way to separate the energy release of one from another. But that does beg the question of why the calorimeter argument was even made, and it does reveal the basic dishonesty of the paper; I find it hard to believe that this was an honest mistake, given that the energy density of a thermite reduction is well known. The energy density was presented as proof that this was an "energetic substance" (which it was), but then conflated with thermite (which was merely alleged).

First off, as the paper notes, "The presence of an organic substance in the red material is expected for super-thermite formulations in order to produce high gas pressures upon ignition and thus make them explosive."

As an April 2000 report by Gash et. al. about the sol-gel process states, "Once dry the (hybrid inorganic/organic energetic composite) material burns very vigorously and rapidly with the evolution of significant amounts of gaseous species."

The fact that the material found in the WTC dust is more energetic and has a lower ignition temperature than a known sample of nano-thermite doesn't mean that it isn't nano-thermite, but rather that it is a very powerful form of nano-thermite!

The commenter also states:

The researchers did not eliminate the possibility that all the heat release was due to organics burning - and on top of that, breezily ignored the fact that the variations in their runs indicated a problem with such a thesis (why so much variation in a substance allegedly designed to be an incendiary?).

As Jim Hoffman has pointed out, "The authors attribute this variation to the fact that the chips had different ratios of active red material to inert gray material." This makes perfect sense and therefore they didn't "breezily ignore" the issue! Furthermore, the fact that the chips create molten-iron spheres is itself evidence of a high temperature chemical reaction, which would not happen if they were just chips of paint as "debunkers" have asserted.

The neverending incredulity of JREFers

After watching Jon Cole's excellent presentation "The Great Thermate Debate", I decided to visit the wretched hive of scum and villiany that is the JREF forum and read the responses from the people who believe that well placed, accurately timed, 4500 degree thermite reactions are unable to bring down a building symmetrically, but scattered, 1400 degree office fires that move around every half an hour or so CAN bring down a building symmetrically.

It never ceases to amaze me how much 'skeptics', who pride themselves on their ability to detect logical fallacies, violate their own rules when it's convenient. Ad-hominem attacks, straw man arguments and appeals to authority are the most common, but when all else fails there's always the argument of personal incredulity...

E.g.: "I can't imagine HOW WTC7 could be covertly demolished, therefore I'm going to deny all the hard forensic evidence that proves that WTC7 WAS covertly demolished"

As the 9/11 truth movement continues to falsify the debunkers' incredulous arguments, as Jon Cole has done in this new video, their responses just become ever more nitpicky.

It seems they are now beginning to accept that a thermite/thermate demolition is possible, but once again the goalposts have been moved, and now we must come up with an even more detailed theory about how demolition crews had such intimate access to the steel, how they coordinated it all, and how they disposed of any evidence of steel thermate cutter cases. Until we do that they are just going to carry on dismissing us. Here's a thought ... how about you support our demands for a criminal investigation so that we'll have the authority to properly investigate and find out the answers to these questions. What part of "We've done the CSI-style science, now we need a criminal investigation" don't you understand?

There's a fallacy commonly employed by creationists in the evolution debate that Michael Shermer calls "the fossil fallacy". Whenever a new transitional fossil is discovered that bridges the gap between two major groups of animals - for example Tiktaalik, the link between fish and amphibians - the creationist response will be "Well now you have two gaps! There's now a gap between fish and Tiktaalik, and a gap between Tiktaalik and amphibians!". So as their questions are answered, it just creates even more doubt in their minds. It's sort of like whack-a-mole, or at least that's what Shermer claims.

What we're seeing from the debunkers is the 9/11 equivalent of Shermer's fossil fallacy.

Oooooh ... that's right, I just compared JREFers to creationists ... they won't be happy! I basically just called Eric Cartman a ginger hippy jew!

And maybe that's it, maybe that's what's driving their thermite denialism. There was an episode of South Park a year or so ago called "Fishsticks", in which Jimmy came up with a joke which became a nationwide sensation, but Cartman genuinuely believed he had something to do with it coz his inflated ego wouldn't let him believe otherwise. And he kept flashing back to the moment with increasingly overblown and fantastical recollections to the point where he convinced himself that not only did he come up with the joke all on his own, but he also slew a dragon and defeated an army of 'jew bots' with powers similar to the Human Torch. The more I read JREF posts, the more I realise their mentality isn't all that different!