Starting 6:00, Farrer talks about the particles that they consistently found in the red layers. Fig. 2-11 of their paper shows them. There are basically two types of particles abundantly present:
1. "One appeared very bright under BSE microscopy" (6:14), "about 100 nm in size", "these were iron oxide phases"
2. "plate-like particles" (7:09), "have higher Al and Si peaks"
He concludes: "Red layer is not a naturally occurring material". Well, right. What could it be? Thermite? Let's see! (tbc)
1. iron oxide particles: Farrer believes that 100 nm grains of irion oxide are very sophisticated materials developed in a laboratory (8:20). Nothing could be further from the truth: Any textbook on inorganix pigments tells you that red iron oxide pigments are 100-200 nm small, and have been synthesized for a hundred years. Nanosize is achieved by mere grinding, uniform size by sieving. It's cheap and low tech, and you expect to find many tons of paints with 100 nm iron oxide in the towers.
2. The "plate-like particles" with "higher Al and Si peaks", depicted in Fig 11 a) of the paper, also have a high O-peak, in fact, O is the highest peak: That Al and Si is already fully oxidized!
It follows directly that these plates do not form part of a thermite preparation – These plates are not elemental Al! They are a compound, of which Al is only about 28% by weight. The chips would contain too little Al even if it were elemental – which it clearly isn't.
Farrer doesn't know his stuff.
Good interview.
Starting 6:00, Farrer talks about the particles that they consistently found in the red layers. Fig. 2-11 of their paper shows them. There are basically two types of particles abundantly present:
1. "One appeared very bright under BSE microscopy" (6:14), "about 100 nm in size", "these were iron oxide phases"
2. "plate-like particles" (7:09), "have higher Al and Si peaks"
He concludes: "Red layer is not a naturally occurring material". Well, right. What could it be? Thermite? Let's see! (tbc)
1. iron oxide particles: Farrer believes that 100 nm grains of irion oxide are very sophisticated materials developed in a laboratory (8:20). Nothing could be further from the truth: Any textbook on inorganix pigments tells you that red iron oxide pigments are 100-200 nm small, and have been synthesized for a hundred years. Nanosize is achieved by mere grinding, uniform size by sieving. It's cheap and low tech, and you expect to find many tons of paints with 100 nm iron oxide in the towers.
2. The "plate-like particles" with "higher Al and Si peaks", depicted in Fig 11 a) of the paper, also have a high O-peak, in fact, O is the highest peak: That Al and Si is already fully oxidized!
It follows directly that these plates do not form part of a thermite preparation – These plates are not elemental Al! They are a compound, of which Al is only about 28% by weight. The chips would contain too little Al even if it were elemental – which it clearly isn't.
Farrer doesn't know his stuff.