Small chips in World Trade Center dust identified as undetonated explosive
By Peter Duveen
PETER'S NEW YORK, April 4, 2009--A group of researchers says it has
positively identified residues of undetonated explosives in dust
samples collected soon after the collapses of three World Trade Center
buildings on September 11, 2001. The positive outcome of tests carried
out in painstaking detail appears to contradict the assertions by U.S.
government experts that explosives were not used to take the buildings
down.
The scientists examined small red and
gray chips in four dust samples independently collected in the days and
weeks after planes impacted the famous twin towers of the World Trade
Center. The red portions of these chips were found to be primarily
composed of iron oxide and metallic aluminum in a substrate of material
made of silicon, oxygen, carbon and possibly hydrogen. A common
incendiary called thermite relies on the reaction between iron oxide
and metallic aluminum to achieve temperatures high enough to melt
steel. The oxygen is transferred to the aluminum, reducing the iron to
its metallic state in what is called an oxidation-reduction reaction.
It is this incendiary, in an explosive form called "super thermite,"
that the scientists believe they have identified in the dust.
Using advanced techniques of chemical
and physical identification, the scientists were able to determine the
chemical identities of the components of the chips. When supplied with
sufficient heat, the chips, which ranged in size from two tenths of a
millimeter to three millimeters across, would ignite and explode, the
researchers found. Byproducts of this reaction included iron spherules
that are formed only when iron has vaporized and forms spherical
droplets, which solidify upon cooling. These same iron spherules were
present in World Trade Center dust, the scientists found. They
established that commercially available thermite, when ignited, forms
the same type of iron spherules. The scientists have thus claimed, in a
peer-reviewed article published this month in The Open Chemical Physics Journal,
that undetonated thermite, an incendiary or explosive, depending on how
it is formulated, is present in significant quantities in World Trade
Center dust. In a 25-page report, which goes into great detail about
the composition of the chips, the scientists conclude that "the red
layer of the red/gray chips we have discovered in the WTC dust is
active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and
is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material."
The discovery of what amounts to
unexploded ordinance related to the collapse of the World Trade Center
complex bolsters the case government critics have made that 9-11 was an
"inside job" engineered by U.S. intelligence agencies and/or other
factions within the government. Among the first to use the term "inside
job" in connection with 9-11 was columnist Robert Novak only two days
after the event, but more lately, the term has been adopted by a broad
range of investigators. Critics of the government's explanation of that
day--that 19 Arab "terrorists" divided into four teams, commandeered
what the government claims were four aircraft that were subsequently
flown into each of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, the
Pentagon, and a field in rural Pennsylvania--insist that the
government's story does not hold up under scrutiny. They point to the
failure of the government to release crucial information that would
substantiate or refute its version of the events. The government
storyline was eventually incorporated into the 9-11 Commission Report
released in 2004, a document which was later shown to incorporate major
errors and omissions relating to the events it describes.
Government investigations and reports
focusing on the collapse of the three largest World Trade Center
buildings on 9-11 did not include forensic studies of the debris that
would have positively identified the presence of incendiaries or
explosive materials or their byproducts. Sponsored by the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the reports contend that
impacts of fuel-laden commercial airliners and the accompanying damage
from those impacts were sufficient to explain the buildings'
destruction, and that forensic tests were not and did not need to be
conducted . Critics contend that the reports cover up the government's
role, and say the manner in which the buildings fell--almost straight
down and at free-fall or close to free-fall speed--could only have been
effected by the sytematic detonation of explosives planted throughout
the buildings.
Research into the possible use of
thermite to bring down the Twin Towers was most vigorously championed
in recent years by Steven E. Jones, one of the paper's co-authors and
at one time a physics professor at Brigham Young University (BYU). His
outspoken views prompted the university to force Jones into early
retirement in 2006, although it appears that the university has since
been instrumental in making available research tools that enabled Jones
and other researchers to establish the existence of unexploded thermite
in the World Trade Center dust. Two of the authors, Jeffrey Farrer and
Daniel Farnsworth, are identified as current members of BYU's
Department of Physics and Astronomy. The other authors are Neils H.
Harrit of the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen;
Kevin Ryan of the 9/11 Working Group of Bloomington, Bloomington,
Indiana; Frank M. Legge of Logical Systems Consulting, Perth,
Australia; Gregg Roberts of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth,
Berkeley, California; James R. Gourley of the International Center for
9/11 Studies, Dallas, Texas; and Bradley R. Larsen of S&J
Scientific Co. of Provo, Utah, a firm with which Prof. Jones is also
connected.
The government remains steadfast in
its adherence to its explanation of the events of 9-11, incorporating
it into its foreign policy objectives under the banner of an
international "war on terror," which for the most part targets
populations it has branded as Islamic terrorists. Critics of the
government's version contend that, with a history of violent covert
operations, a wide range of high tech weaponry at its disposal, and
geopolitical mandates that required a seminal event such as 9-11 for
their implementation, the U.S. government had ample motivation and
means to carry out the complex set of attacks, using the hijacking
storyline as its cover.
The government has not yet issued a statement reacting to the contents of the paper.
The paper, Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust From the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe, may be accessed at http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM.
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