Large liver, high tolerance. For alcohol, that is, not doubletalk.
I'll be straight by midnight.
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Merged Has this structural engineer been debunked? / Astaneh-Asl "melting of girders"
- Thread starter RedIbis
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Large liver, high tolerance. For alcohol, that is, not doubletalk.
I'll be straight by midnight.
That's what I said. He's using simplified terms to explain things to laypeople.
can you post a copy of the email you sent Sizzler?
Large liver, high tolerance. For alcohol, that is, not doubletalk.
I was going to post in this thread about how damn pointless all this was (it's gotten to the point where the CTers are asking us to debunk material that we mostly agree with, ferredsake!), but I figure now I should also thank R.Mackey for his drunken explanation post. More coherent than a sober truther, and very informative: R.Mackey.
Seriously though, nice pwnage.
Newtons Bit
Penultimate Amazing
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And... can you point out the melty stuff please?
It's not meant to be pwnage!!! May I live to be a hundred and never drink again, if I lie!
It's just that Sizzler in particular is so close to understanding something important, something that will actually help him, and yet... somehow... he still manages to reach the wrong conclusion. What I'm trying to say is, if you know how the investigation was conducted, and you know what's actually in the NIST Report, this isn't "anomalous" at all. It's a feature, not a bug.
Maybe we'll get there anyway. Sizzler, I too would be very interested in hearing what you and Dr. Astaneh-Asl have to talk about. His perspective is valuable and dissenting -- but it's a scientist's dissent, not a nihilist's. This can be illuminating for all of is.
cisco
Muse
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- 709
Well, you're half right.
I'm back, and well on my way to being drunk. I do this for two reasons -- drinking, I mean:
1. The depth of confirmation bias displayed by the Truth Movement makes my head hurt, and alcohol numbs the pain.
Seriously. "Steel melted!" you crow. Not based on a paper, not based on a formal presentation, just a few comments. That's what you've got. You don't know how much steel, where, or why, but you don't care. The only reason you care is because someone (us) said otherwise. Epic Pwnage is in your grasp!
Except you've forgotten that there's an entire wing of the Truth Movement dedicated to repeating the mantra that "NIST recovered no steel that exceeded 250oC!!" Well, that was always false, but I don't have to explain why anymore. You've done it for me! So the next time Kevin Ryan or Tony Szamboti repeats that tired refrain, allow me to refer them to you. Congratulations, you now agree with us.
See, what makes no sense is that you folks come to us arguing both sides of the same coin. "NIST's steel was colder than NIST said." And now "NIST's steel was hotter that NIST said." A normal, rational person might take some time to resolve these contradictory positions before squawking about them, but not you guys!
But I forgive you. I know why you do it -- you come to us with whatever confusions you have because you know we've got the answers. There's no point bringing this up to Steven Jones or Judy Wood or what have you, and you know it. They'll give you some doubletalk and try to accomodate both positions, and you'll learn nothing. We won't, and we don't. It's just too bad you seem locked in a learning cycle forever.
All of this makes me sad. Which brings me to the other reason for inebriation, which is to prove a point:
2. Even to a drunken man, your ideas make no sense.
Earlier tonight, I asked you to answer where Dr. Astaneh-Asl got his steel from. I was going to lead you gradually to an understanding, but it's taking too long and you won't enjoy it anyway, so I'll just say it. He got his steel by setting up shop near the steel recyclers. At the end of the salvage process. There's advantages to doing this, but you need to keep in mind that any steel he got was damaged while standing, damaged as the Pile burned, and subjected to the full chaos of recovery operations. There's no way whatsoever for Dr. Astaneh-Asl to disambiguate between "melting" suffered while the building stood, and "melting" afterwards. He didn't get to see it in place.
But that's not where I wanted to lead you. The real question, the coup de grace, is this: "What happened to the steel after Dr. Astaneh-Asl handled it?" He's talking about all this "melted" and "vaporized" steel -- where is it? Can we see it?
Indeed we can. Class, please open your books to NCSTAR1-3.
The steel that you're talking about was turned over to NIST, where it was examined in detail, and reported on. With pictures. Now, Dr. Astaneh-Asl is a sharp guy, and we can learn a lot from him, but he's not a metallurgist, and he didn't examine the steel thoroughly.
What you're working from are his initial comments. NIST did more, and found that, well, what do you know, it didn't melt after all. Or vaporize. Snicker.
NIST instead does report on "melting," i.e. eutectic action, concluding it happened in the Pile fire and is not relevant in terms of understanding the collapses. Take a look for yourself. We already know this happens, because of Dr. Barnett and Dr. Biederman's work. No mysteries here except to the uneducated and misinformed. Your team.
The only way for your ideas to make sense is if Dr. Astaneh-Asl's steel was different from the NIST steel. It isn't so. He didn't smuggle it home in a suitcase. Nor did NIST decide, in its evil power, to hide some of it so it could spin some alternate story, daring Dr. Astaneh-Asl to call them on it. Why would they? The temperatures involved in melting are actually not implausible, nor incompatible with the core NIST hypothesis. Vaporizing, well yeah, that's a poser, but that doesn't work for anybody's theory, except the space-beamers and nuke-huggers...
Did this happen? Did NIST bury evidence? Why not ask him? Check this out, all you have to do is get Dr. Astaneh-Asl to say "those fiends! They stole the evidence! I had it in my hands!!" Ask him.
He won't. You know how I know? Because he's read NIST cover to cover, like me, and he's been very critical of it. But he's never said that. Dr. Greening presented some of Dr. Astaneh-Asl's objections, and they bear some examination. He believes, possibly, the NIST Report was structured to deemphasize design flaws in the original structure. This could be true.
"Melting" and vaporizing steel, not true.
If even a drunken man can follow this path of reasoning, you should have no trouble with it at all. Impress me.
First post I've ever nominated.
ElMondoHummus
0.25 short of being half-witted
Large liver, high tolerance. For alcohol, that is, not doubletalk.
Jesus... seek help man...
No, I'm not saying you're an alcoholic... the help can come in the form, for example, of a drinking buddy. Or a bartender. Or at least someone to buy the next round... no matter what, just don't drink alone. Too sad a thing to contemplate.
Anyway, I digress. Serious question now: What effect do you think the burning piles had on recovered steel components? We're no longer necessarily discussing whatever Dr. Astaneh-Asl saw, but we're not excluding it either. Again, some measurements revealed debris pile temperatures reaching 2,800 degrees F (source:
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL MEDICINE, "Firefighter Safety and Health Issues at the World Trade Center Site", Sept. 6, 2002, no direct link (sorry!
)). Yes, of course that doesn't mean the entire pile was that hot; people worked on top of it after all. But there were at least areas that were at ridiculously high temperatures.
Anyway, if the steel girders that Dr. Astaneh-Asl saw were at least partially buried before recovered by NIST, it's in the range of possibilities that there was some effect above any eutectic reactions. Not that you can separate the two; it's all the same steel in the same environment. All I'm trying to get in here is the fact that some steel must have been affected by the heat in the burning debris piles, especially in the hottest piles given the top end temp measured by Bechtel's SH&E in the link above.
ETA: It disturbs me that your avatar's and Cisco's both have sombreros on. Does that mean I'll have to search for one myself?
Hey! There's an idea for Cinco de Mayo this year! We all don avatars with Sombreros! I call dibs on the Bugs Bunny bullfighting one!
That's it. I'm going to bed. Night all!
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Clearly the plate in the foreground at the top left is half-melted and glowing yellow-hot. It has somehow remained in that state for at least several hours if not days, despite being up in the open air with nothing insulating it or heating it. Clearly, the only explanation is magic.
Respectfully,
Myriad
cisco
Muse
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Haven't you read Dale Carnegie? If you write someone more important than yourself and expect a response you have to start out with a compliment!
Ok, I'm half-kidding but it couldn't have hurt
. Let us know if/when he gets back to you.Jesus... seek help man...
No, I'm not saying you're an alcoholic... the help can come in the form, for example, of a drinking buddy. Or a bartender. Or at least someone to buy the next round... no matter what, just don't drink alone. Too sad a thing to contemplate.
No worries. I started with nice Tempranillo from the catacombs, shared with two co-workers. Rarely do I drink alone, but sometimes the need is too great...
Sombrero is easy, it's the poncho that counts. Firearm's a nice touch too.
Thanks for posting that, seems simple enough to answer.
Haven't you read Dale Carnegie? If you write someone more important than yourself and expect a response you have to start out with a compliment!
Ok, I'm half-kidding but it couldn't have hurt
Yeah I hear yeah, I'm at work so I just winged it.
I see his e-mail was posted on 9-11 blogger so I assume he has a few others in there like that. Perhaps I'll get a group e-mail.
Matthew Best
Penultimate Amazing
Er, why?
Just respond to his email with your contact details as he has requested.
Just respond to his email with your contact details as he has requested.
Well, if he says the steel was literally melted, I'm going to use that to promote conspiracy. I have to tell him my intentions. If I tell him that, he won't respond to me.
I have to be honest.
Perhaps Mackey or Dr. Greening could e-mail him.
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
Can I recommend a url to everyone in this thread who doesn't already know the definition of the word "Eutectic"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutectic_point
Approached without confirmation bias, this concept may aid understanding of the issues in this thread.
One of the metallisations I used to use for contacting semiconductors was a gallium-indium eutectic. Gallium and indium are both solids at room temperature (at least, gallium is solid at the temperature of most rooms in this part of the world), but by pressing pieces of the two together they would form a liquid without any obvious increase in temperature. Stirring round a mixture of small pieces of both would liquefy the whole lot. That's what happens with eutectics; they have much lower melting points than their components.
And this is why this whole argument is irrelevant: the truth movement claims that melted steel indicates higher temperatures in the rubble pile than could have been achieved by a normal fire, indicating the presence of thermite; but melting of a sulphur-steel eutectic is well within the temperature range of normal fires, and eutectic melting is what has actually been observed. In fact, the observation that steel flanges were thinned to razor-sharp edges is clear proof that a eutectic was formed, because short of some kind of moulding process there is no way to form a sharp edge by bulk melting because surface tension will round off the surface. Therefore, no proof of high temperatures, and no proof of thermite. Let me remind the truth movement that the aim of your movement is to produce evidence that the investigations into 9-11 have not resulted in a full understanding of who was responsible and in what ways; it's not to prove that there was some form of melting of steel at GZ. That's why you're not called the 9-11 melted steel movement.
Dave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutectic_point
Approached without confirmation bias, this concept may aid understanding of the issues in this thread.
One of the metallisations I used to use for contacting semiconductors was a gallium-indium eutectic. Gallium and indium are both solids at room temperature (at least, gallium is solid at the temperature of most rooms in this part of the world), but by pressing pieces of the two together they would form a liquid without any obvious increase in temperature. Stirring round a mixture of small pieces of both would liquefy the whole lot. That's what happens with eutectics; they have much lower melting points than their components.
And this is why this whole argument is irrelevant: the truth movement claims that melted steel indicates higher temperatures in the rubble pile than could have been achieved by a normal fire, indicating the presence of thermite; but melting of a sulphur-steel eutectic is well within the temperature range of normal fires, and eutectic melting is what has actually been observed. In fact, the observation that steel flanges were thinned to razor-sharp edges is clear proof that a eutectic was formed, because short of some kind of moulding process there is no way to form a sharp edge by bulk melting because surface tension will round off the surface. Therefore, no proof of high temperatures, and no proof of thermite. Let me remind the truth movement that the aim of your movement is to produce evidence that the investigations into 9-11 have not resulted in a full understanding of who was responsible and in what ways; it's not to prove that there was some form of melting of steel at GZ. That's why you're not called the 9-11 melted steel movement.
Dave
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
I don't think that's a good idea, Sizzler. His e-mail can be summarised in two words, and the second one is "off".
Dave
leftysergeant
Penultimate Amazing
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For one thing, the color in this image seems to have been manipulated. This has a (probably deliberate) effect of distorting relief, perhaps adding it where it should not be. It appears to me that whoever edited it meant us to think that metal had melted out of one of the rivet holes in the plate at the top of the perimeter column section.
Turning our attention to the right edge of this object, it is clear that the semi-circular features along the margin of the steel are uniformly placed. Those that are completely open on one side are almost perfectly round. But notice that there is one hole that is not torn out. It is rather elongated horziontally.
Basicly, this looks like the result of the photographed piece of metal's being ripped loose from that next to it, with one bolt failing before it could further damage the structural element. It is really more supportive of a progressive collapse theory. I have, several times stated that the build-up of dbris inside the building forced the columns outward, but not with explosive force.. This ripping of the illustrated joint is consistant with there having been a relatively gradual increase in pressure. That the end of the metal element, with its bolt holes torn out show that not much dispalcement was needed to separate this element from that to which it was joined..
BTW, the question was raised as to where the sulphuric acid could have come from to cause the eutectic melting. It came from emergency lighting systems with lead/acid batteries, and from vehicles burning in and around the area. Some may have been produced on site in the fires in the pile. Rubber has a rather high sulphur content, you might well recall.