That's the way it should be with lab contamination.
1. The particles of glass (or silica or polymerized glass) are too small to be seen with a TEM. That means the particles could be anywhere from a single molecule on up to hundreds of molecules.
2. The particles are floating around in the nutrients. They either came off the glass walls of the fermenter or they came in the nutrients.
3. A bacterium has no mouth. It absorbs food through its skin (outer membrane).
4. Just like you and I, a bacterium has some ability to know what food it can digest and what it cannot.
5. Glass is not food for a Bacillus anthracis bacterium.
6. The larger particles of glass will not pass through the membrane. But smaller ones can -- if they are small enough.
7. Therefore, there would be a LOT MORE glass particles on the outside of a bacterium than gets inside the bacterium.
8. When a bacterium is about to die and begins to form a spore, just some of the tiny particles that managed to get INSIDE the bacterium will become part of the spore.
9. The "crude powder" in the media letters would have MUCH more glass on the surface of the dead bacteria because of all the glass particles that were too big to be absorbed and got stuck to the outer surfaces.
10. The spore that forms inside the bacterium will have only the smaller particles of glass that got through the mother germ's membrane.
Purification gets rid of all those dead mother germs, dead bactria and all the silica stuck to them. Therefore, it seems perfectly logical that the media powder would show many times as much glass as the purified spores.
I don't know what kind of fantasy you have dreamed up to explain things. Why don't you enlighten us by telling us how many people were involved in the massive conspiracy required to make your fantasy a reality?
TrebleRebel, you know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America’s Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn’t want to go to war, the three most powerful men in America are named “Bush”, “Dick”, and “Colon,” and the guy who is 95% certain a First Grader wrote the anthrax letters as part of a conspiracy thinks he’s the voice of reason.
How come you two aren't telling us your alternate theories about why the media anthrax had more "glass" than the senate anthrax?
ZACKandPOOK, is it because your theories have no basis in science?
TrebelRebel, is it because your theories require that thousands of scientists and FBI agents all be involved in some massive conspiracy?
Inquiring minds want to know.