FunnyStuff

I feel strongly that whoever owned the tie left behind on the plane was a metallurgist and had some prior parachuting activity. I'm casting a wide net but here's some base level info on a group of men that pass (mostly) intial requirements; metallurgist, army airborne, appropriate age, appropriate height, appropriate complexion. I'm mostly just passing this along for anyone bored with their regular Cooper programing and wants to vet these further. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1X4rGQ10M_Dbo22u1zkQairDOk-YvMiyu?usp=sharing

I believe TK has mentioned the possibility of powdered metallurgy as a source before although I'm not sure he's ever mentioned if that would hint in anyway to DB's industry/role/identity. I will reach out if I can find his email. Two notable things related to both shape and size. A large portion of the titanium based particle images are spherical (including the famous 3 TiSb particles) so that fits the resources you've shared here. However size is not super homogeneous across the data. Looking at particles that are primarily titanium and contain no oxygen we see particles sized from 0.08 millimicrons all the way to 7,175. I wonder if we should see a smaller range of sizes if powdered metallurgy really was to blame for the dirty tie?

Would love to hear anyone's thoughts on powdered metallurgy. Is it a potential source for the metallic element based tie particles? I think it possibly so for the following reasons: 1 - Many of the observable images of the particles containing high contents of rare metals and low to zero oxygen levels appear to be spherical which seems to be a good fit for powdered metals 2 - The primary transfer of these particles is by touch. It's reasonable to conclude this points towards powdered metallurgy since it would likely point to a work environment were metals weren't machined or smelted into shape. Also, in my limited understanding of these powders they look like you're much more likely to pick them up on your skin and not notice them before touching your tie knot. Remember the control tie tested by TK was super clean. Are powdered metals "dirtier"? 3 - Many of the potential alloyed metals particles have a seemingly unecessary amount of metals included in them and others seem to have non-sensical combinations of metals ala the famous three TiSb particles. Is it possible these obscure and unecessary metal combinations are actually just random combinations of powders spilling together or being left on the work bench in microscopic size and swept up together? To me the "metalic dustball" theory for the weird combinations is more explainable with powdered metallurgy but I'm a layman. For those reasons I think it's reasonable to view powdered metallurgy as a source of the oddities on the tie but what I'm not sure of is if this further restricts his work environment or matters at all. Was there a niche industry for powdered metal alloying? Perhaps a geographical hotspot? How many powder metals producers were there? Does the possiblity of powdered metals increase ease of transfer of these metals and increase the pool of potential candidates to salesemen/managers/custodians/etc? I'd like to hear the A-team's thoughts on this especially if someone has already been down this rabbit hole.