http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Scientists_f... A team of nine scientists have unearthed startling data from dust gathered in the days and weeks after the World Trade Center towers collapsed on 9/11. They discovered that scattered throughout the dust samples were red and gray chips of 'active thermitic material', or an un-reacted pyrotechnic explosive.
Thermite is used in steel welding, fireworks shows, and hand grenades. It is the combination of a metal powder and a metal oxide which produce a reaction known for extremely high temperatures focused in a very small area for a short period of time. The 'active thermitic material' discovered in the World Trade Center dust was a combination of elemental aluminum and iron oxide, and is a form of thermite known as 'nano-structured super-thermite'.
“These observations reminded us of nano-thermite fabricated at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and elsewhere; available papers describe this material as an intimate mixture of UFG
aluminum and iron oxide in nano-thermite composites to form pyrotechnics or explosives. Commercially available thermite behaves as an incendiary when ignited, but when the ingredients are ultra-fine grain and are intimately mixed, this 'nano-thermite' reacts very rapidly, even explosively, and is sometimes referred to as 'super-thermite',” the report explains.
The full article in The Open Chemical Physics Journal can be found here:
http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content....
