Mohr R.J. Lee: Part Two

April 23, 2014, update: As noted in another article, Lee´s premise of melting rust-flakes is untenable because even if there was a supply of rust-flakes in the cores of the Towers, they would have been unlikely to burn since they are heat-stable up the the "melting point of over 1,500°C." Lee´s hurricane wind story would therefore have to crank up the hypothetical fire-temperatures at the Towers beyond the 1500C MP, or about 500C above the maximum temperature obtainable in an open air carbon fire.

The previously published Part One of this article reveals that R.J. Lee´s hypothetical "hurricane wind story" - even if proven true - could not account for the observed iron spheres in the WTC dust: Mr. Lee admits the result would be iron-oxide spheres, not iron spheres.

Mr. Lee does not mention this hurricane wind/blast-furnace scenario in his official WTC dust studies, so this story is not an official explanation for the reported molten and vaporized metals. Mr. Lee offers this "hurricane story" in a letter to a member of the JREF forum as a hypothetical explanation for the observed "extreme temperatures". It does not cite any sources so it is not meant to give a factual account of what actually happened. There is no evidence for high winds stoking the WTC fires, and no sources to support the notion that such winds could turn a normal building into a blast furnace.

Rev. Chris Mohr claims in his Skeptic Magazine article that survivors from the Twin Towers reported hurricane winds in the core but he cites no source. There are no reports of any high winds fueling the weak fires at the tops of the Towers, which were the only fires in the Twin Towers. There are no reports of fiery hurricane winds blazing down people in the cores of the Towers, but one survivor from the bottom floors of one Tower heard explosions and felt a wind that had a "hurricane-type force". But this wind was obviously not melting spheres or carrying molten spheres since the witness survived and did not complain about any heat. Maybe the "wind" was thrust from explosives? There was no fire below this witness either (for the wind to fuel), so as Mr. Talboo and I already summed up for Rev. Mohr in the second part of our Harrit vs. Millette essay, this "hurricane narrative" has been thoroughly debunked, even by his friend Oystein on their own forum:

"...an incredible story involving hurricane winds producing the spheres found in the dust collected at the WTC, but skeptics have refuted that fairy-tale. Even Oystein admits it, stating that, to some extent they "made up" a "vivid story", and in another comment he says, "on the science and the details, their story... is almost certainly nonsense."

Chris Mohr has confirmed that he has read the essay quoted above, so it is peculiar that he is still refusing to acknowledge rebuttals to this fairy-tale in light of his own view of himself as an investigative journalist. But, Rev. Mohr does not want to hear that:

  "....[MirageMemories] accuses me of being blind, biased, unwilling to look at anythinhg that challenges MY beliefs! I might mention that I am the one who did not take RJ Lee at his word when he said iron-rich spheres are common in fires. I didn't even accept Crone's Particle Atlas and all the iron-rih shperes it shows."

Finally, Mohr implies in the above quote that said Particle Atlas supports his belief that normal fires create iron spheres, but of course it shows iron-oxide spheres, not iron spheres. The following comment by Oystein demonstrates how the JREF forum helps to spread this kind of non-sense:

"RJ Lee certainly understand that iron-rich microspheres are abundant. common an expected in most kind of ashes, including those from building fires^[1].."

So, how does the JREF forum magically change iron-oxide spheres into iron spheres? Notice that little qualifier (the number 1) in the quote above? I have to give Oystein a nod for actually including the qualifier in the same comment, but unfortunately for Rev. Mohr, none of his forum friends have cared to explain the significance of it:

"[1] The McCrone Particla Atlas, Volume III, Edition Two (Ann Arbor Science Publishers, 1973), which is probably the standard reference.......... (this is mostly scanning a variety of particles shown in the SEM images; O and C were not measured with the 1973 equipment)."

The fact that the equipment did not record the oxygen content prevents the casual reader from realizing that those spheres are iron-oxide spheres like all fly ash spheres - as explained in Part 1 of this article! It is of course Chris Mohr´s prerogative to ignore these shenanigans by his forum friends, but maybe it would be wise to follow Dr. Greening´s example.

Mohr Misunderstanding: R.J Lee Did Not Say Normal Fire Creates Iron Spheres

Notice! Understand the following before you read this article:

1. When Harrit et al. (and truthers) refer to "iron rich" spheres they are talking about spheres that contain a significant amount of pure iron, NOT iron-oxide! A thermite reaction leaves behind molten iron, so its presence after ignition of the red/gray chips is the most important evidence in Harrit´s paper.

2. We know it is possible to get molten metallic spheres with high temperature carbon-fueled fires, BUT those contain iron-oxide, NOT iron!

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Part 1. (02/21/ 2014) Chris Mohr states on the JREF forum:

"MM also quotes RJ Lee, who like many scientists knows that iron-rich spheres can be created in ordinary fires and has said so himself in his original report and in a followup email."

In the above quote, Rev. Mohr is relying on Dave Thomas´s interpretation of R.J. Lee´s letter, as displayed on his own website, where Mr. Thomas tries to make it look as if Mr. Lee agrees that:

A. Normal fire creates molten spheres at typical fire temperatures.
B. The result is iron spheres/iron rich spheres identical to those obtained via thermite reaction.

Mr. Lee´s letter is a bit vague for non-technical readers, but upon close inspection it reveals that Mr. Lee disagrees with both statements above. The pertinent part of the letter is below, with important bits highlighted:

"...The iron is heated red hot or hotter and subjected to hurricane force blast furnace like wind. The iron flakes are liberated as small particles and some iron is vaporized...The formation of iron and other type spheres at temperatures obtainable by the combustion of petroleum or coal based fuels is not a new or unique process. These spheres are the same as iron and alumino‐silicate spheres in the well‐studied fly ash formed from contaminants in coal as it is burned in furnaces." 

Mr. Lee in fact identifies blast-furnace conditions and states that the spheres will be identical to the fly ash spheres found in furnace residues. What is the significance of this in the context of the two statements (marked A. and B.) above? Well:

A. A blast-furnace uses high pressure forced air to double the temperature of the fire - even compared to the hottest building fire. Lee´s hurricane reference is simply meant to infer blast-furnace conditions to explain away evidence for extreme temperatures way above normal building fires. The blast furnace typically operates at 2000C to 2300C (3600F to 4200F).

B. The spheres that R.J Lee refers to are actually oxidized metal like all molten metal obtained via conventional combustion: these are iron-oxide spheres, NOT the iron (or iron-rich) spheres found in the WTC dust and after the ignition of Harrit´s red/gray "thermitic" chips. The fact that Harrit´s spheres contain "substantial elemental iron" (p.21) instead of iron-oxide is why they are cited as thermitic evidence in the paper!

CONCLUSION: RJ Lee actually notes that it would take unusually high temperatures to account for molten metal spheres and he acknowledges that melting via fire results in iron-oxide spheres, not iron spheres. Even if Lee´s hypothetical "hurricane blast-furnce" story were true, it could not account for the observed iron spheres.

In Mohr´s defence, he is still relying on his famously dishonest and incompetent JREF forum friends as his sources. But on the other hand, a self-professed investigative journalist like Rev. Mohr should know that his trust is unfounded, since Dr. Greening publicly ridiculed and abandoned the JREF 9/11 forum in 2007.

Part 2. Chris Mohr has made some YouTube videos and one of them deals with the spherical evidence. In the description of the video, Rev. Mohr complains that his opponents keep saying that he has not showed any matches to the iron spheres that Harrit et al. observe in their paper. Mohr says he disproves them by showing examples of what he calls "iron rich" spheres from a paper called Fly ash characterization by SEM--EDS, but then he cites the abstract which debunks him on the spot:

"The majority of the iron-rich spheres had two components: iron oxide and amorphous alumino-silicate"

Since the paper is of course about the "well studied" fly ash spheres RJ Lee refers to in his letter, the paper clearly states:

"The iron-bearing phases observed, collectively referred to as spinel, were identified as magnetite and hematite." 

Note: magnetite and hematite are the most common forms of iron-oxide. The "iron richness" actually refers to bits of iron-oxide, not iron; these spheres do NOT match the "iron rich" definition that Harrit et al. and truthers refer to. Rev. Mohr goes on to point to

"...an article about iron-rich microspheres (which also have aluminum in them) that were created in a regular incinerator at temperatures under 1800 degrees F. No steel-melting temperatures required! http://suwic.group.shef.ac.uk/posters..."

But this is another article that actually refers to fly ash spheres from an incinerator, not iron spheres. The "under 1800F" is also actually "over 1800F," and that temperature seems to refer to the "flue gas" exhaust temperature, not the fire temperature.

Update 3/11/2014: Note that in the Fly ash paper, the iron-oxide appears like contaminants within the spheres, which means those specks may not have melted, although it is possible since the furnace operates at over 1400C. The discovery of an iron-phase in a sphere from lower temperatures would suggest the sphere is some other compound (with a lower m.p.), and that it has specks of solid iron-oxide within it.

A follow-up article: http://911debunkers.blogspot.com/2014/03/mohr-rj-lee-part-2.html

CSI´s Dave Thomas: Thermodynamic Size Effect Fraud

Updated April 21/2014.

Dave Thomas is a well known pseudo-skeptic at the JREF 9/11 forum, being the president of  New Mexicans for Science and Reason and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).

I recently wrote an article about Mr. Thomas´ YouTube pseudo-science and his amusing failures to form iron spheres by burning steel wool and paint. The latter "spheres from paint" video was supposed to be a triumphant response to an essay that debunked his earlier "steel wool" video, but instead it demonstrated another invalid and unpublishable experiment. Mr. Thomas also posts false conclusions without resorting to YouTube, as his NMSR webpage makes evident: 

The answer to the mystery of the microspheres - "Iron melts only at temperatures far higher than possible in normal fires, so how could microspheres have possibly been formed on 9/11?" – is simply that very small metal particles have much lower melting points than their bulk material counterparts (around 900 o C for iron nanoparticles, as opposed to 1535 o C for bulk iron). This is called the "thermodynamic size effect."

Since Dave Thomas confirmed in his "spheres from paint" video that he knows the pertinent part of our essay, he has no excuse for ignoring the fact that it also debunks the above statement:

Dave Thomas has proclaimed that the notion of melting-point depression explains the molten state of the spheres, because nano-sized particles can have a lower melting-point. But this phenomenon only applies to particles that are much smaller than the iron particles in the chips and the observed spheres...

Update: Dave´s colleague on the JREF forum has pointed out that there was no commercial supply of iron particles that small in 2001, so Dave´s suggestion on his NMSR web that the WTC buildings had potential sources all over the place is patently absurd:

"The towers contained thousands of computers and electric gadgets. Wires and filaments and meshes from electronics, as well as thin rust flakes and other small iron particles, could all have easily been made into microspheres during the WTC conflagration."

An honest researcher would have displayed sources to back up his theory to begin with. There may have been some "thin rust flakes" present at the WTC, but a rust flake is "...nonreactive with most chemicals and is heat-stable up to its melting point of over 1,500°C." So rust flakes are not only unlikely to ignite in a fire, they are unaffected by the "thermodynamic size effect". This is very unfortunate because this is yet another debunking of RJ Lee´s rust-flake story, which Dave also displays on his page.

The "thermodynamic size effect" only applies to particles that are smaller than 50 nanometers and is not significant until the particle size drops well below 25 nm, so implying that only 900° C is needed without providing some evidence for the presence of iron particles below 25 nm is a blatant display of dishonesty. Harrit´s paper does in fact describe the rhombic shaped iron grains present in the red/gray chips as "consistently 100 nm in size". No-one has even proposed a hypothesis for the possible presence of iron or iron-oxide grains smaller than 25 nm in neither the red nor gray layer of the chips - or any other WTC material - let alone physically identified even a single grain that small. This is why Dave Thomas is stuck making flatulent YouTube videos instead of publishing in reviewed journals. 

 

Figure 1. A normalized melting curve for gold as a function of nanoparticle diameter. The bulk melting temperature and melting temperature of the particle are denoted TMB and TM respectively. Experimental melting curves for near spherical metal nanoparticles exhibit a similarly shaped curve. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melting-point_depression

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FAQ: Who was Responsible for the Controlled Demolition of the WTC Skyscrapers?

Written by AE911Truth Staff
Tuesday, 04 March 2014 21:02

World Trade Center demolitionArguably, no question surrounding 9/11 arouses more intense interest than this one. An investigation of 9/11 will certainly not be complete until we know who perpetrated the crimes and until they are brought to justice.

Crime scene investigators know that,

“Physical evidence cannot be wrong; it cannot perjure itself; it cannot be wholly absent. Only its interpretation can err.” (Paul Kirk, Crime Investigation)

Gathering and studying the physical evidence, then, is the crucial first step. The fact that the crime scene was disturbed and that evidence was hastily removed and destroyed has created challenges for investigators. Fortunately, evidence such as eyewitness accounts of explosions, the discovery of nano-thermite in the debris, and photographic evidence of molten steel in the rubble, revealed the effects of controlled demolitions and disproved the official story that three WTC high-rises were brought down by office fires and jet plane crashes.

So who committed the crimes of 9/11? Does the evidence still point to al Qaeda as claimed in the official story? If not, then who would have had the means, motive, opportunity, and the capability to perpetrate the crime? Who would have access to high tech nanothermite? Who would have had access through security to plant the incendiaries and/or explosives? Who would have the capability to cover up the crime via destruction of evidence and the creation of falsified building reports? Who would have the capability to censor almost all of the corporate mainstream media to keep the truth from coming out? These are the questions that free-thinking journalists and criminal investigators should be asking and reporting on….. but are not.

Many in the 9/11 truth movement are convinced that 9/11 was a false flag operation, a manufactured event devised by a group within the U.S. government, with the goal of turning popular opinion against Muslims, who were to be held responsible for the destruction. The ultimate goal, many believe, was to enlist popular support for wars in Muslim countries, to enact legislation such as the Patriot Act and executive orders such as the National Defense Authorization Act in order to curtail civil liberties, and vastly increase the Defense budget. This group maintains that the events of 9/11 could only have been perpetrated by factions within the U.S. government and industry. They make arguments based on motive, access, and means to carry out the crime. Some study the written and oral history of U.S. covert operations and point to suspects within the U.S. government and business community who have had connections to covert operations over the past several decades. They look for a web of associations between and among these powerful elites. They may attempt to construct plausible scenarios to explain how the crime could have taken place and how it was carried out without detection or interference from our international and domestic security agencies.

Others believe it is highly unlikely that members of the U.S. government would have, or could have, been behind the killing of almost 3,000 innocent people, mostly U.S. citizens. They find it hard to believe that there are Americans who would do such things, and even if there were, how their actions could have escaped detection, since events of this complexity would have required a significant number of collaborators, any of whom might have spoken out or confessed. Noam Chomsky is among those holding this view.

AE911Truth does not research or speculate on these issues. We do not have a political agenda. Our mission is to educate professionals, the public, and those in media and government about the evidence – and to support the pursuit of justice. We do anticipate that any search for truth would ultimately uncover who planned and who carried out the crime committed against an entire country that day. A real investigation would be empowered to obtain sworn testimony and the release of evidence; it would offer immunity in exchange for such testimony;  it would examine all of the evidence and use the scientific method in pursuit of truth.

In the meantime, AE911 Truth concentrates on challenging the official story with scientific forensic evidence, eyewitness testimony, and video documentation. It offers in-depth reports and the opinion of its experts concerning the pursuit of justice. AE911 Truth also pursues legal action against agencies such as NIST in order to hold them accountable and to create momentum toward a real investigation of 9/11.

Articles Written for AE911Truth.org by Debunking the Debunkers Blog Contributors:

• ALERT: US State Department Cannot Afford Professional Advice on WTC Destruction
• Debunking the REAL 9/11 Myths: Why Popular Mechanics Can't Face Up to Reality
• FAQ # 2: What about the planes that slammed into the Twin Towers? Wouldn’t they have disturbed the demolition devices?
• FAQ #4-Sounds of Explosions?
• FAQ #6: Why does AE911Truth Represent Only a Small Percentage of Architects and Engineers?
• FAQ #8: What Is Nanothermite? Could It Have Been Used To Demolish The WTC Skyscrapers?