It's trivial. None of this expensive testing like you need for lead. One acetylene torch, and FOOM! all the thermite paint will clean itself up. If it doesn't, it wasn't thermite paint.
A Thermite/Thermate Question
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It's trivial. None of this expensive testing like you need for lead. One acetylene torch, and FOOM! all the thermite paint will clean itself up. If it doesn't, it wasn't thermite paint.
ElMondoHummus
0.25 short of being half-witted
Welcome to the forum, Senenmut.
Correct. That was eutectic erosion noted first by Dr. Astaneh-Asl, and later investigated by a team from Worcester Polytechnic. Use the search feature for this forum to locate "eutectic" and, in other searches, the names "Biederman", "Sisson", and "Barnett". That should bring up the threads where this was discussed.
If I remember correctly, that was indeed Dr. Astaneh-Asl's initial impression; recall that the article in question was written in October 2001. However, the author makes an understandable mistake in putting the article together (understandable because it's not only technical and obscure, but also was a distinction not yet clear at the point he wrote the article): He juxtaposes the paragraph mentioning erosion with the paragraph where Astaneh-Asl discusses the column charring. Those are separate phenomenon, and likely also occurred at different times. We believe that's the case that now, but at that time could not possibly have been considered as such except through an unsupported leap of faith. At that time, Astaneh-Asl himself probably thought the erosion occurred during the tower fires, not in the debris piles. However, a study of the evidence indicates that the erosion most likely happened post collapse, in the debris piles. Why? Fires in the towers may not have reached the temperatures necessary for such erosion. On top of that, the beams were exposed to conditions in the rubble pile for far longer (order of days to weeks) than they were exposed to the tower fires (less than 1 hour, most likely).
On the other hand, if the fires did indeed get hot enough, then the erosion could indeed have occurred in the towers. Someone with a better grip on the NIST reports can clarify that for me. But either way, the Worchester group clearly linked the erosion to eutectic reactions, not thermite as Steve Jones and other fantasy peddlers claim, nor from explosives, since the erosion was clearly due to sulfur-mediated eutectic reactions.
A good post in this forum on this topic can be found here:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3472049#post3472049
Let's be careful about taking that paragraph without context. IIRC, Astaneh-Asl has said he is satisfied with the access and amount of evidence gathered; his criticisms lay elsewhere.
Or was that another critic? I'll go look later. I recall it as being Dr. Astaneh-Asl.
I don't remember Bloomberg weighing in on this, but it's irrelevant. The FDNY, NYPD Crime Scene Units, FBI, Port Authority, and other organizations also studied the steel. Recall that NIST may have only been interested in the steel from the collapse and fire zones, but the other teams went over all of it. This is documented on Gravy's 9/11 site.
It is a slightly misleading statement, however. It's true that the steel provides no clues to the criminal investigators, because of 1. Common sense (criminal investigators would have been concentrating on evidence about the hijackers, not about how the building fell), and 2. Technical limitations (NIST pointed out that chemical analysis of the recovered steel would not have indicated anything, and they're right. Conspiracy peddlers hyperventilate over Steven Jones's various findings, but they ignore the fact that those items he discovers are expected to be found there even without thermite or explosives). But that steel provides necessary clues for the structural and fire safety investigation. Which is what NIST conducted (as an aside, this is one of the reasons many of us are frustrated by the conspiracy peddlers framing of their arguments: There was no one, single investigation, but a plethora of them. But you wouldn't understand that from the various rhetorical pleas they make). NIST studied the debris relevant to their mandate: They studied the stuff that was involved in the fire and collapse initiation zones. So of course they didn't study all of it. They weren't supposed to, unless it proved relevant to why the towers fell. It did not, not when you understand that the collapse was inevitable after the fires reached a certain point.
At any rate, the steel was indeed useful, but people have to separate out that it was useful in some ways to one set of investigators, and not useful in another to another set.
Correct. That was eutectic erosion noted first by Dr. Astaneh-Asl, and later investigated by a team from Worcester Polytechnic. Use the search feature for this forum to locate "eutectic" and, in other searches, the names "Biederman", "Sisson", and "Barnett". That should bring up the threads where this was discussed.
If I remember correctly, that was indeed Dr. Astaneh-Asl's initial impression; recall that the article in question was written in October 2001. However, the author makes an understandable mistake in putting the article together (understandable because it's not only technical and obscure, but also was a distinction not yet clear at the point he wrote the article): He juxtaposes the paragraph mentioning erosion with the paragraph where Astaneh-Asl discusses the column charring. Those are separate phenomenon, and likely also occurred at different times. We believe that's the case that now, but at that time could not possibly have been considered as such except through an unsupported leap of faith. At that time, Astaneh-Asl himself probably thought the erosion occurred during the tower fires, not in the debris piles. However, a study of the evidence indicates that the erosion most likely happened post collapse, in the debris piles. Why? Fires in the towers may not have reached the temperatures necessary for such erosion. On top of that, the beams were exposed to conditions in the rubble pile for far longer (order of days to weeks) than they were exposed to the tower fires (less than 1 hour, most likely).
On the other hand, if the fires did indeed get hot enough, then the erosion could indeed have occurred in the towers. Someone with a better grip on the NIST reports can clarify that for me. But either way, the Worchester group clearly linked the erosion to eutectic reactions, not thermite as Steve Jones and other fantasy peddlers claim, nor from explosives, since the erosion was clearly due to sulfur-mediated eutectic reactions.
A good post in this forum on this topic can be found here:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=3472049#post3472049
Let's be careful about taking that paragraph without context. IIRC, Astaneh-Asl has said he is satisfied with the access and amount of evidence gathered; his criticisms lay elsewhere.
Or was that another critic? I'll go look later. I recall it as being Dr. Astaneh-Asl.
I don't remember Bloomberg weighing in on this, but it's irrelevant. The FDNY, NYPD Crime Scene Units, FBI, Port Authority, and other organizations also studied the steel. Recall that NIST may have only been interested in the steel from the collapse and fire zones, but the other teams went over all of it. This is documented on Gravy's 9/11 site.
It is a slightly misleading statement, however. It's true that the steel provides no clues to the criminal investigators, because of 1. Common sense (criminal investigators would have been concentrating on evidence about the hijackers, not about how the building fell), and 2. Technical limitations (NIST pointed out that chemical analysis of the recovered steel would not have indicated anything, and they're right. Conspiracy peddlers hyperventilate over Steven Jones's various findings, but they ignore the fact that those items he discovers are expected to be found there even without thermite or explosives). But that steel provides necessary clues for the structural and fire safety investigation. Which is what NIST conducted (as an aside, this is one of the reasons many of us are frustrated by the conspiracy peddlers framing of their arguments: There was no one, single investigation, but a plethora of them. But you wouldn't understand that from the various rhetorical pleas they make). NIST studied the debris relevant to their mandate: They studied the stuff that was involved in the fire and collapse initiation zones. So of course they didn't study all of it. They weren't supposed to, unless it proved relevant to why the towers fell. It did not, not when you understand that the collapse was inevitable after the fires reached a certain point.
At any rate, the steel was indeed useful, but people have to separate out that it was useful in some ways to one set of investigators, and not useful in another to another set.
Senenmut
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thanks for the welcome!
Dr. Astaneh-Asl got there on sept 19 to conduct research for 2 weeks. So i bet the steel that he saw was from the top of the pile. this steel is a seperate piece of steel from wtc 7. the steel fema analyzed looked "evaporated" as the engineer put it. that was the one analyzed by fema that showed the eutectic mixture attack. so thats two pieces of steel that had been attacked. Ive read the fema report a well as the sission et el describing what they thought caused the attack.
Im not sure if i understand what you said by "juxtaposes the paragraph by the author".
from the article:
One piece Dr. Astaneh-Asl saw was a charred horizontal I-beam from 7 World Trade Center, a 47-story skyscraper that collapsed from fire eight hours after the attacks. The beam, so named because its cross-section looks like a capital I, had clearly endured searing temperatures. Parts of the flat top of the I, once five-eighths of an inch thick, had vaporized.
Less clear was whether the beam had been charred after the collapse, as it lay in the pile of burning rubble, or whether it had been engulfed in the fire that led to the building's collapse, which would provide a more telling clue.
The answer lay in the beam's twisted shape. As weight pushed down, the center portion had buckled outward.
''This tells me it buckled while it was attached to the column,'' not as it fell, Dr. Astaneh-Asl said, adding, ''It had burned first, then buckled.''
Greening points out in his paper how he thinks that this could happen while the building was buring with the sheetrock and all.
But then again, has anyone ever tested the theory about how sulfur could arise from sheetrock. I mean lab tested that theory.
as for bloomberg, ive just read this quote here and there. ill see if i can cross reference it.
structural steel from the WTC, wasn't needed as evidence in an investigation, because "these days it can all be done with computer models".
has steel done this in any office fire before?
Dr. Astaneh-Asl got there on sept 19 to conduct research for 2 weeks. So i bet the steel that he saw was from the top of the pile. this steel is a seperate piece of steel from wtc 7. the steel fema analyzed looked "evaporated" as the engineer put it. that was the one analyzed by fema that showed the eutectic mixture attack. so thats two pieces of steel that had been attacked. Ive read the fema report a well as the sission et el describing what they thought caused the attack.
Im not sure if i understand what you said by "juxtaposes the paragraph by the author".
from the article:
One piece Dr. Astaneh-Asl saw was a charred horizontal I-beam from 7 World Trade Center, a 47-story skyscraper that collapsed from fire eight hours after the attacks. The beam, so named because its cross-section looks like a capital I, had clearly endured searing temperatures. Parts of the flat top of the I, once five-eighths of an inch thick, had vaporized.
Less clear was whether the beam had been charred after the collapse, as it lay in the pile of burning rubble, or whether it had been engulfed in the fire that led to the building's collapse, which would provide a more telling clue.
The answer lay in the beam's twisted shape. As weight pushed down, the center portion had buckled outward.
''This tells me it buckled while it was attached to the column,'' not as it fell, Dr. Astaneh-Asl said, adding, ''It had burned first, then buckled.''
Greening points out in his paper how he thinks that this could happen while the building was buring with the sheetrock and all.
But then again, has anyone ever tested the theory about how sulfur could arise from sheetrock. I mean lab tested that theory.
as for bloomberg, ive just read this quote here and there. ill see if i can cross reference it.
structural steel from the WTC, wasn't needed as evidence in an investigation, because "these days it can all be done with computer models".
has steel done this in any office fire before?
GodisEnergy
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The reason for adding Sulphur to thermite is to create a eutetic mixture of molten iron and sulpur this speeds up the Cutting of steel.
When, in the cooling process, the molten mass reaches the eutectic composition, it also reaches the eutectic temperature.
Meteorite.If you look clearly at the photo you see metal wires and all sorts of stuff sticking out of a central blob of solidified metal.The metal pipes sticking out of the blob werent completely melted as it looks like they stuck in there while cooling down.Burnt paper is expected with hot slag.
The reddish colour of the meteroite indicated iron .
This is also backed up by the Engineer Baart vorsanger who examined the meteroite and said it had previously molten iron in it!
TDJ- jones aimed a laser at the red paint,and it exploded .
When, in the cooling process, the molten mass reaches the eutectic composition, it also reaches the eutectic temperature.
Meteorite.If you look clearly at the photo you see metal wires and all sorts of stuff sticking out of a central blob of solidified metal.The metal pipes sticking out of the blob werent completely melted as it looks like they stuck in there while cooling down.Burnt paper is expected with hot slag.
The reddish colour of the meteroite indicated iron .
This is also backed up by the Engineer Baart vorsanger who examined the meteroite and said it had previously molten iron in it!
TDJ- jones aimed a laser at the red paint,and it exploded .
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Welcome to the Forums.
The word "vaporized" is an artifact of the reporter, not from Dr. Astaneh-Asl himself. You can ask him if you like. Reporters don't neccessarily understand the scientific implications of vaporization. The steel in question is, beyond any doubt, an example of eutectic melting, which occurs at temperatures in the 600-900 oC region, and thus cannot be due to thermite. It can, however, happen in an ordinary fire, if the right chemicals are present.
We've had discussions on this point repeatedly, with posters going as far as to e-mail Dr. Astaneh-Asl directly. He is quite adamant in his opinion that the collapses, all of them, were not caused by any covert explosives, incendiaries, or other mystery devices.
NIST treats examples of the eutectic effects in NCSTAR1-3C, particularly section 6.3.4. My comments, in the midst of the last time this was discussed, are here.
It isn't known if this effect is common in large structure fires, and all the examples we have appear to have taken place after collapse. I believe there is a small but non-zero additional hazard presented by this effect, which is not being followed up on as far as I know. But no great mystery. The phenomenology absolutely rules out thermite.
Senenmut
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hey man, i was wondering if you have seen this meteorite as well. it looks similar but different. i cant decide if someone made it to look like the one you posted or if it is a different one altogether. the wood that it is held up on is different. look close and you can see differences.
Senenmut
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did he deny using "vaporized"???? i can see if he did use vaporize to describe the steel because of this other engineer using "evaporated" to describe the steel in the fema report.
from a nyt article-
A combination of an uncontrolled fire and the structural damage might have been able to bring the building down, some engineers said. But that would not explain steel members in the debris pile that appear to have been partly evaporated in extraordinarily high temperatures, Dr. Barnett said.
could one of greenings theories be right about the sulfur (drywall) attacking the steel before collapse be right. since dr. Astaneh-Asl thinks the steel was attacked before the steel member fell?? and considering he was there a week after it happened, the steel he saw was probably from the top of the pile.
''This tells me it buckled while it was attached to the column,'' not as it fell, Dr. Astaneh-Asl said, adding, ''It had burned first, then buckled.''
this was before they started using the eutectic mixture phrase. to me, these engineers are using very strong language to describe the steel.
Why don't you ask him and see if he "denies" it?
The other article you quote is the infamous James Glanz article. Dr. Barnett did not say "evaporated." Just like the other case, if you actually ask the researchers, they will tell you the temperatures they are talking about. It is sub-1000oC. Steel doesn't melt at that temperature, and it is not even close to its vaporization temperature.
In short, you are basing your position on two careless words injected by reporters. You aren't the first. If you want to know the truth, talk to the people they were reporting on. See if they support melted steel (not melted eutectics, which is what they do support) or evaporated steel.
If you can't verify this claim, it is wrong. End of story.
Read the reference I gave you in NIST. It did burn first, then buckle, but the temperature at which it buckled was not remarkable, and nowhere near melting.
There is no mystery here. You have all the tools you need to prove it to yourself.
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Senenmut
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did he deny using the word "evaporated"???? they might tell me what u stated but the inital reaction was "vaporized" and "evaporated". I havent seen anywhere that these guys have denied the words.
so let me make sure you agree with what dr. Astaneh-Asl said by:
''This tells me it buckled while it was attached to the column,'' not as it fell, Dr. Astaneh-Asl said, adding, ''It had burned first, then buckled.''
Senenmut
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to rmackey-
from what ive seen-
NCSTAR1-3C, particularly section 6.3.4. that you have linked deals with-
The analysis focused on the WTC 1 and WTC 2. Although no steel was recovered from WTC 7, a 47-story building that also collapsed on September 11, properties for steel used in its construction were estimated based on literature and contemporaneous documents.
lets deal with wtc 7 for now!!
from what ive seen-
NCSTAR1-3C, particularly section 6.3.4. that you have linked deals with-
The analysis focused on the WTC 1 and WTC 2. Although no steel was recovered from WTC 7, a 47-story building that also collapsed on September 11, properties for steel used in its construction were estimated based on literature and contemporaneous documents.
lets deal with wtc 7 for now!!
I'm guessing English isn't your first language. Do you see the problem with what you're saying?
To save time, I will tell you that he also didn't deny using the words "disintegrated," "vanished," "turned to mush," or "grew little wings and flew away on its own." That's because nobody asked him.
Why will you not ask him, if this matters to you? Or more relevantly, why will you not read their papers? They publish, you know.
Go to the source, or go home. We're done here.
Yes. It was exposed to fire, and afterwards it buckled. Everyone in the world agrees with this.
ETA: Regarding your later comment, all the steel that Dr. Astaneh-Asl saw -- every single bit of it -- was from WTC 1 and 2. Not from WTC 7. If you want to talk WTC 7, go talk to Drs. Barnett and Sisson, and stop mystifying Dr. Astaneh-Asl's comments.
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leftysergeant
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No. It's concrete. Look at the straight lines. It would not form straight line if it were molten and pouring over uneven layers of other materials. There are better pictures showing that there are layers of floor pans squished between the layers of concrete.
No, it isn't possible. Some of the paper is not even carbonized. You can read the printing on it.
Well, DUH! It was in a damp and hot environment for several weeks. That makes iron rust. The water spreads it around. At any rate, the color of this picture has been manipulated, apparently by twoofers.
I have no idea who Vorsanger is, but I have reason to question his intelligence and integrity. He is either lying or a bigger idiot than Jones. (Alex or Steve, actually.)
So would most paints that I know of. Have you ever welded painted steel?
ElMondoHummus
0.25 short of being half-witted
That's fine. I'll explain.
The author of the article put the paragraph mentioning "vaporized" metal immediately before the one mentioning charred and twisted metal. This leads the reader to believe that all that occurred before the towers collapsed:
NYTimes said:
"... (B)urned first, then buckled". Or in other words, the charring occurred prior to the collapse, since that's when the bucking happened. And because the prior paragraph mentioned the "vaporization", then ran straight to the paragraphs about charring and buckling, we're led to believe that they all happened pre-collapse.
Thing is, we know now that this was not actually established back then. But, it was a reasonable hypothesis to draw, so the article drew it.
What's the problem then? Well, the eutectic reaction almost certainly did not occur prior to collapse. The evidence points at it happening in the rubble piles afterwards. How? As said before, the pre-collapse conditions did not lend themselves to such a reaction. But the post-collapse ones did. Recall the excerpt from the NIST report that Mackey provided in his link:
NCSTAR1-3 said:
The temperatures associated with the buckling event were not high enough for a eutectic reaction to occur. Ergo, that erosion happened in the rubble pile fires afterwards. Why harp on this? Because conspiracy peddlers keep pointing to this story's observation about the "vaporization" as proof of their thermite fantasies. It's not. It can't be. Ignoring the fact that it's a completely different reaction than a thermite one, the erosion did not occur at a point where it would be useful for the conspiracy fantasy because it almost certainly occurred well after the towers collapse. The Worchester study clearly established the "vaporization" as actually being a eutectic erosion of the metal, and the NIST study clearly describes the conditions prior to collapse. And those conditions are not ones that can lead to eutectic reactions.
The evidence and post-event studies (plural) demonstrate that the "vaporization" - which is a misnomer, BTW - is a separate event from the charring and buckling. Yet, the New York Times article - written, by the way, in October 2001, well before the evidence gathering was complete, let alone the studies using that evidence - links them. Mistakenly so. That's what I meant when I indicated that the juxtaposition of the paragraphs was misleading. It may have been a reasonable construction in October of 2001, but now, in November of 2008, we know that the corrosion shouldn't be linked directly to pre-collapse conditions.
Does that make sense?
leftysergeant
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I cannot find the source right now, but I recall one report mentioning that some of the etched metal was "curled up like a scroll." This would be more consistant with a post-collapse event. Had the eroded contidition of the metal led to collapse, it just seems to me that it would should more of a kinking or bending effect. Curling, to me, would suggest a phenomenon like a bi-metalic strip. The chemical reaction may have altered the structure of the steel on one side so that it expanded differently from the heat.
Slayhamlet
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There are better pictures in this thread, including a closeup of the "meteorite" here. It's clearly not solidified metal.
GodisEnergy
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The reason for adding Sulphur to thermite is to create a eutetic mixture of molten iron and sulpur this speeds up the Cutting of steel as it reduces the melting temperature required of iron .
When, in the cooling process, the molten mass reaches the eutectic composition, it also reaches the eutectic temperature
When, in the cooling process, the molten mass reaches the eutectic composition, it also reaches the eutectic temperature
twinstead
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Yea, yea, yea whatever. So. What do you think of Jones's 'meteorite'?
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GodisEnergy
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well it turns out 'twoofies' didnt change the colour of the meterite oxidation did,
It does look like rust is forming on the silvery central metal looking material.Can rust form on concrete or can iron form onto concrete unless its molten?
this is the 'liar' you compared to alex jones by the way ,he says its molten steel to.
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/molten-steel-found-in-ruins-of-world-trade-center/1524185349
It does look like rust is forming on the silvery central metal looking material.Can rust form on concrete or can iron form onto concrete unless its molten?
this is the 'liar' you compared to alex jones by the way ,he says its molten steel to.
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/molten-steel-found-in-ruins-of-world-trade-center/1524185349