Before I get into details about why this work is so poorly done, and why the interpretations of the researchers are so suspect, it is important to state that the thermite argument was put forward by these same researchers years ago, and the idea was fully debunked years ago. See for example here: http://www.911myths.com/WTCTHERM.pdf
A central point of the paper referenced by Moffett is that the presence of ingredients of thermite (e.g., aluminum and iron oxide) is easily explained by, for example, the aluminum cladding on the Towers and the presence of rust (iron oxide). Dr. Moffett's article elaborates on this simple theme:
It is no small coincidence that the major components that the researchers detected in the red and gray chips include iron, aluminum, oxygen, silica, and carbon, since these relate to the primary building materials that the WTC was constructed from. The girders were steel, which rusts to iron oxide, the façade was aluminum, and the floors were concrete. The traces of calcium and sulfur could easily be from wallboard (calcium sulfate), as the authors themselves conclude. ...
X-ray dispersive spectroscopy can tell you what elements are in a sample, but not what molecules those elements are incorporated into. Any sample of dust from the WTC collapse would contain similar amounts of these elements because those are the primary elements that made up the steel superstructure, concrete flooring, aluminum facade and other building materials (not to mention the aluminum fuselage of the aircraft).
Thus, Dr. Moffett represents the nine authors of the paper as bumbling idiots who confuse the presence of elements of thermite in the debris with evidence for thermite itself. Yet, on p.13 the authors state:
The existence of elemental aluminum and iron oxide [in the red portion of the red-gray chips] leads to the obvious hypothesis that the material may contain thermite. However, before concluding that the red material found in the WTC dust is thermitic, further testing would be required. For example, how does the material behave when heated in a sensitive calorimeter? If the material does not react vigorously it may be argued that although ingredients of thermite are present, the material may not really be thermitic.
Because the authors understood the issue, they performed the relevant tests that Dr. Moffett suppressed. Instead, Moffett distorted and trivialized the complex case they made with the following aside:
The researchers also showed that the chips could be ignited, and that they burned at a lower temperature than normal thermite. This is of course not surprising since metals such as aluminum do burn if they are complexed with oxidizing agents, and are heated enough.
But of course what the researchers did was to show not merely that the chips could be ignited at a lower temperature than a known nano-composite thermite, but also that the chips were fiercely exothermic, generated iron microspheres with the XEDS of thermite, and released more energy per gram than known samples of conventional thermite possibly could. Thus, curiously, for some reason, the estimable Dr. Moffett writes as though there were one and only one kind of thermite, even though the paper he pretends to review emphasizes that there are many kinds, including thermitic materials researched by the military for both incendiary and explosive purposes, and it provides citations from mainstream journals to support this claim. Instead, Moffett writes, "It is also important to note that thermite is not explosive, and it is difficult to ignite." I hope that willful ignorance or deliberate deceit will not become a standard at OPEDNEWS.
Couldn't the Rubble Make the Thermite?
Let us return to Dr. Moffett's favorite article that "fully debunked" thermite as the key incendiary/explosive in the destruction of the World Trade Center. Remarkably, that article ultimately attributed the destruction of the Towers to thermite, but claimed that the thermite was manufactured on site by the crash, the fire that melted the aluminum from the planes, and various elements of lime, gypsum, water, and rust from the materials of the buildings with which the aluminum combined to produce intense thermitic reactions that destroyed the Towers. The author, Frank Greening, Ph.D., also speculated that the building materials had kept the ground fires burning for months after the collapses because hot aluminum combined with high pH water -- made high pH by the aluminum grouting! – to produce combustible hydrogen. The author did this without any direct evidence that such was the case. Fascinating!
An essay I wrote on the Kennedy assassination lays out the general strategy and tactic taken by the USG assets and agents assigned to the media cover-up of major domestic covert operations. Instead of following the evidence and pursuing its obvious implications, the agents -- and the voluntarily self-deceived -- ignore or distort the natural implications of the evidence and in its place present an entirely speculative account of what the evidence "conceivably" might mean that is consistent with the official story. Crucially, the import of any piece of evidence is usually isolated from the rich body of other evidence so that the "conceivable" interpretation may seem plausible. The defenders of the official story then demand that the "conspiracy theorists" refute their speculation, usually when there is no means of doing so.
In the case of 911, Dr. Moffett's intellectual compatriot, Frank Greening, offers up a witches brew in which:
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