SCIENTISTS FIND EXPLOSIVES IN WTC DUST

By Matt Sullivan / RCFP

Scientists have detected flecks of undetonated explosives in four samples of dust from the World Trade Center catastrophe. A paper just published in the peer-reviewed Open Chemical Physics Journal describes the findings of nine scientists after 18 months of work.

The paper is titled “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe”. The primary authors are Niels Harrit, professor of chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, and Jeffrey Farrer, professor of Physics at Brigham Young University (BYU), Provo, Utah.

The research was initiated when Dr. Steven Jones, then also at BYU, observed small red/grey chips in the magnetic fraction of dust he was analyzing from the WTC disaster. The scientists studied four independently collected samples of dust. One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC tower, two samples were collected the next day, and a fourth was collected about a week later. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC).

After careful study of the material the scientists concluded that the red component of the bi-layer chips is a high-tech explosive nano-material known as super-thermite. The material is composed of ultra-fine grains of iron oxide intimately mixed with nano-sized aluminum metal in a matrix of silicon and organic compounds. While these chips are very small (typically less than a millimeter) tests show that the material is highly energetic and can be ignited to produce a micro-explosive effect. The observed properties and composition of the thermitic material appears to match the published descriptions of nano-thermite fabricated at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and elsewhere. These high-tech explosives were relatively new at the time of the disaster, with some of the first published descriptions appearing in the literature in the late 1990s.

The scientists begin the paper with an explanation of their motivation for pursuing the research. “The destruction of three skyscrapers (WTC 1, 2 and 7) on September 11, 2001 was an immensely tragic catastrophe that not only impacted thousands of people and families directly, due to injury and loss of life, but also provided the motivation for numerous expensive and radical changes in domestic and foreign policy. For these and other reasons, knowing what really happened that fateful day is of grave importance.” Read the rest...

-flynn