• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Need Help Debunking WTC Thermal Image Claim

TellyKNeasuss

Illuminator
T
Joined
Oct 4, 2006
Messages
3,784
A third opponent on the Rocky Mountain News forum posted the following satellite images, along with the claim "controlled demolition explosives necessary for the vaporization of the towers will leave a heat residue consistent with the satellite photos, and the molten metal at 1500 degrees for weeks afterward.". Of course he didn't provide a source for the claim. I'm willing to bet that someone here has already debunked this. Without being able to check the source, it's difficult to know whether the simple response that the hot spots could have been fires in the debris pile is sufficient.
 

Attachments

  • 240406thermite3.jpg
    240406thermite3.jpg
    130.6 KB · Views: 11
Last edited:
"Vaporization?" That's a Judy Woodism. It's idiocy. Ask your opponent how much of the towers exceeded 5,100 degrees fahrenheit.

Explosives used in controlled demolitions produce very little heat. Ask your opponent to show a CD where any metal remained hot for more than a few minutes.
 
Last edited:
This claim never made any sense at all.

Consider this: The heat content of burning wood is about 20 MJ / kg. Burning PVC releases a similar amount. Kerosene releases about 43 MJ / kg.

TNT, when detonated, only releases about 4 MJ / kg. It also doesn't like to stay burning for long periods of time. That pesky thermite, which is not really an explosive, also releases about 4 MJ / kg.

There is absolutely no reason to link heat with explosives. Explosives are special because they release energy at once, at high speed, not because of their heat. Given that the debris pile was on fire, replacing ordinary office materials with explosives, pound for pound, would actually remove energy from the system.
 
Explosives leave very little heat. Even thermite is not going to stay hot for weeks. They demonstrated a thermite grenade on a car engine in basic training. Ten minutes later it was cool enough to touch. How much would you need to keep it hot for 6 weeks?
 
One of the great myth of CTists is that explosives contain alot of energy. They don't, really. They are just really good at releasing energy. They are powerful, in other words (using the technical definition of power).

If I remember correctly, a kg of TNT releases an amount of energy roughly equal to a stick of butter.
 
e^n said:
Could you possibly cite the figures used here? I was aware of the difference in amount but I have never been able to find a decently authoritative source when trying to explain how explosives work.
Click to expand...

I was kinda hoping not to, since there are lots of conversion factors and some of the quantities are vague... but it's a reasonable request, so here you go:

Lots of figures here, including gasoline, thermite, and wood. Although they're expressed in Watt-hours per kg, not J / kg; 3600 W-hour = 1 W-second = 1 J.

The heat content of wood varies significantly with species -- some types of wood are not very good in your fireplace. This brief article describes the combustion process and estimates the heat content for pine.

The fire properties of PVC and many other substances are charted here.

Bottom line, anyone seeing heat and trying to infer explosives from that alone is merely exposing their own agenda. There is no reason whatsoever to connect the two in this case.
 
R.Mackey said:
I was kinda hoping not to, since there are lots of conversion factors and some of the quantities are vague... but it's a reasonable request, so here you go:

Bottom line, anyone seeing heat and trying to infer explosives from that alone is merely exposing their own agenda. There is no reason whatsoever to connect the two in this case.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the links, I doubt they will convince the regular truthers but sources for things are always very important.
 
TellyKNeasuss said:
This is hilarious. The images aren't even from satellite data!
Click to expand...

I found the forum and thread you are arguing in for laughs, post this: rtsp://video.pbs.org/americarebuilds/videostories_tours_220.rm?v1st=9355F28D685FF698
 
TellyKNeasuss said:
This is good. It will be interesting to see his explanation of how residual heat from explosives can increase with time.
Click to expand...
Think about the survivors who were trapped for hours in areas that later became very hot.
 
TellyKNeasuss said:
This is good. It will be interesting to see his explanation of how residual heat from explosives can increase with time.
Click to expand...

I posed this same question to a CT on another board who made a similar claim, and he then made an elaborate analogy equating the rubble piles to a delicious hot pocket microwavable snack......which somehow meant 9/11 was an inside job.
 
TellyKNeasuss said:
This is good. It will be interesting to see his explanation of how residual heat from explosives can increase with time.
Click to expand...

here is a slide from a presentation of the DELTA group, though I think it comes up a lot on these boards:

Why was the debris pile so hot,so long?

Energy (est.) (in units of 10^11 joules)

Kinetic energy of falling building 5 (+2.5oC)
Chemical energy of cars in garage 10
Chemical energy of diesel/Con Ed oil 150
Especially under WTC #7
Chemical energy of building combustibles 430
Perhaps 15% burned before the buildings collapsed

The surface and near sub-surface debris pile was hot enough to melt aluminum, make steel red hot, and burned until Dec. 19.

But this is still much cooler than typical sources of very fine particle metals such as power plants, smelters, and diesels.
Click to expand...

just to show how much chemical energy was actually available to fuel those debris fires.

http://delta.ucdavis.edu/WTC%20aersols%20ACS%202003.ppt
 
I couldn't resist also asking him why if the US govt. (NASA) collected data that would prove that the US govt. was behind 9/11 the US govt. would publicly display the data on a US govt. website. The answer to this question might be even more interesting than his answer to why the temperatures occasionally increased.
 
From a practical standpoint... you could point them to any episode of Mythbusters, where they blow stuff up and then pick up the shrapnel immediately afterwards. Explosives don't really make things burn, or make them particularly hot.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom