"Molten Metal" at Ground Zero

[maccy]

A couple more points from stundie in this thread:

I'm aware of what a nano thermite reaction is and I have heard this being used to explain why there was molten metal at the bottom of the rubble, although I'm not a scientist I have always thought this was a ridiculous claim because no plane hit WTC 7, yet there is molten metal underneath there.

For proof off thermal images on WTC7 - Which no plane hit!

http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/rubblefires.html - Sorry I'm using a conspiracy site here, but I just clicked on the 1st image I could fine.

There is also evidence of Thermite before the towers collapse. http://www.explosive911analysis.com See fig 9 & 10. Which again blows the nano thermite reaction out of the water! Along with no plane hitting WTC7!

As it is stundie's wont to claim on other threads that his ideas about molten metal and thermite haven't been addressed, I'm copying all his points to this thread fro further discussion.

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

Argument from personal incredulity.

Maccy was pointing out what Chainsaw and Neil were talking about, I was letting him know I knew what they were talking about.
Agrument from peronal incredulity....Hardly considering I'm not arguing anything at all.

"I'm not a scientist I have always thought this was a ridiculous claim because no plane hit WTC 7, yet there is molten metal underneath there" is making an argument, and one based upon personal incredulity at that.

Argumentum ad ignorantiam ; unless you care to provide a better substantiation of your claim that it is "an absurd theory".

Substaniate my claim....Quite simple!! NO PLANE HIT WTC7, yet there are pools of molten metal found like in the other WTC.

False choice fallacy, aka false dichotemy, aka bifurcation; you claim that there can not be molten metal in the WTC 7 rubble unless a plane hit it. This is patently false. There were fires at the time of the collapse; a plane was not required to be a source of heat.

Maccy's quote made no accusations against you, Neil, or CC; it was a clarification.

So whats this then....

Originally Posted by maccy
I don't think either chainsaw or neil believe that thermite was planted in the towers in order to cut through the core columns.

A clarification? If you interpret it differently, then elucidate as to why.

Straw man

I love making straw man comments.

That certainly seems to be the case.

Then present it in a manner that can be debated clearly; because your opinion doesn't mean squat.

If I argued my points on WTC Collapses it would require another thread and we would be going off the subject and I like to keep to the subject.

Then don't bring it up to begin with.

That is exactly what they are saying; if it can be shown that a nanothermite reaction is a possible explanation, then the onus is on Jones to defend his assertion and in doing so must show evidence that precludes a nanothermite reaction, or how a nanothermite reaction could not have occurred.

Whoever thought a Nano Thermite Reaction could occur, then it is upto them to present the facts. No Prof Jones!

Go reread what I wrote. QED.

Evidence?

Again no plane hit WTC 7, Neils post arguing how it could not have been possible. Sightings of a thermite reaction before the towers collapsed!! Is that good enough for you.

Reread my comments above regarding your plane/wtc7 argument. Additionally, you have failed to prove that your claims of thermite reaction prior to collapse are, in fact, what you claim they are.

http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm

Originally Posted by Arkan_Wolfshade
Specific example where Jones has done so?

Is he not the proponent of a Thermite reaction being used. Something which NIST Ignored. Not sure what you don't understand about that statement.

That is not a glaring mistake or contradiction. He is making an assertion and must substantiate it.

Originally Posted by Arkan_Wolfshade
You are either failing to understand the answers being provided to you, or you are committing Straw man fallacies. Either way, your list is erroneous.

No I am not failing to understand the answers. These are the answers being given. Argumentum ad ignorantiam!!

Do you even understand what an argumentum ad ignoratium fallacy is?

Originally Posted by Arkan_Wolfshade
I'll defer to those more knowledgeable in the relevant areas than I to comment on the veracity of Neil's statements.

Good, lets leave them too it then, but no ones refuted Neils post yet and his argument seem very plausable & water tight, although of course he could be wrong.

You admit to not having sufficient knowledge in the area in question to make a contribution to the thread, yet you also claim that Neil's argument is watertight? Do you see the contradiction here?

 

[Hellbound]

Molten metal:

It's reasonably certain that molten metal was found under the rubble piles. I think we can all agree on that (mostly).

It's not certain that this metal was steel, aluminum, iron, or whatever else. We don't know. To my knowledge, it was never tested. From the available pictures, showing the color of the molten material, it's most likely aluminum, as steel would not be molten at red temperatures, and there weren't significant quantities of other metals present.

So, we have molten aluminum.

Stundie, I'd suggest you start looking up some information on thermodynamics and heat flow. Specifically, learn the difference between, temperature and heat energy, and how values such as the "combustion temperature" of a substance are calculated. I'll offer a short summary, but by all means check into some good physics resources and verify my statements:

Temperature:

Temperature is a measure of the average molecular energy of an object. That sounds confusing, but not really. Heat is the motion/vibration of molecules or atoms in a substance. Temperature relates to the average amount of motion per molecule.

Heat Energy:

Energy is the ability to do work, and can come in many forms. Specifically, we're talking about the energy from the heat it contains. Where temperature measures the average speed of molecules, heat is the sum of all the speeds of each individual molecule.

Combustion Temperature:

This is the temperature a material burns at in open air.

So what's the difference? What does all this mean?

Heat and temperature:
Think about baking a cake in the oven. The cake bakes at, say 450 degrees. When it's done, you stick your hand in to get the cake out. If you touch the metal pan, heated to 450 degrees, it'll burn you. If you touch the cake, also at 450 degrees, you can possibly touch it for a few seconds before it burns. The entire time, your hand is surrounded by air that's at 450 degrees.

This example deals with a value of materials called specific heat, but it also illustrates the difference between temperature and heat. The pan, cake, and air in the oven are all at the same temperature...but the pan contains more heat energy than the cake, which in turn contains more than the air. The pan also transmits the heat better; but I do not want to confuse the issue here.

Now, all heat is energy. Temperature, however, is not directly a measure of energy. The temperature of a substance, together with its specific heat and volume, can be used to determine energy. SO energy is the total, while temperature is the average.

So, where does combustion temperature fit in?

Combustion temperature is, specifically, the maximum temperature in open air. This is not the highest temperature this substance can produce from being burned, however...and that is where you make a mistake in your reasoning. The combustion temperature is the temperature at which the amount of heat energy that is being lost by transmission to the air around the burning material matches the amount of energy being produced by the combustion reaction.

Now, let's put this together. How could you increase the combustion temperature of an object? We know that, at combustion temperature, the heat produced equals the heat lost. So, we have two ways to get a higher temperature. You are only considering the first: changing fuels. If you use a fuel that produces more combustion energy (or, more specifically, produces heat energy faster. In physics, the rate of energy production per unit time is termed power). So if we used, say, thermite, with a combustion temperature in the thousands, we could raise the temperature produced.

But there is another way, and it's a way that's been used for thousands of years. Reduce the rate of heat lost to the surroundings. This is the principle behind any wood-burning stove, for example, of forced-air kilns, or even traditional kilns. This is why forges in the Middle Ages were able to heat iron to the point of being malleable using wood fires. Just as a side note, pure iron has a higher melting temperature than steel, so the fact that metal can be forged is proof that even steel can be weakened by wood fires. So, if we produce our fire in an insulated area, the heat energy produced can't escape, and the temperature rises. Even a slow-burning fire can raise the temperatures to an extreme level, given enough time. As has been stated, the molten metal was found months later...plenty of time for a slow-burning fire, insulated by huge piles of rubble, to raise a temperature significantly.

It's likely that the majority of the molten metal was melted by slow-burning, well-insulated rubble fires; and that the major component of that molten metal was aluminum (which made up the vast majority of metal in the towers). The exception to this is the molten material seen falling out of a window shortly after impact, which was likely parts of the aluminum aircraft skin melted by the intense (but short-duration) jet fuel fire (again, the metal is identified by the color it produces. For more information on heat and color, try Googling "black body radiation").

For further evidence, google for "melted metal house fire" and you'll find several references to normal fires that melted metal. Examples:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2293203,00.html

He added that the temperature inside the studios would have reached between 500C - 1000C during the fire which is hot enough to melt metal, leading to fears that the valves may be damaged beyond repair.

http://www.centuryhouse.org/bigfire.html From 1895:

The melted metal from the church bell was broken up into fragments and carried off by relic hunters.

http://www.assocfire.com/article4.html This one is interesting because it shows that normal house fires quite commonly melt copper, and that melted steel was mistakenly identified in a HUGE number of cases.

Much has been written and taught about the significance of melted or decomposed metal and melted or crazed glass, as these indicators apply to black holes. The question is, just how valid are these indicators?

Melted copper, either pipes or wires, was present in 84% of the structures examined. To our surprise, melted steel was identified in 98% of the structures examined. Since we know that steel has a higher melting temperature than copper, it was not at all clear why this should be so. To explore this question, we obtained some bedsprings upon which to experiment. The springs were exposed to temperatures ranging from 1,300 to 2,500ºF, and then examined metallurgically. Additionally, four bedsprings from an isolated black hole (in another state) were also examined. The results were surprising. What we learned was that, while a bedspring may give the appearance of melting, it may be only heavily oxidized. Bedsprings which have been exposed to temperatures of 1,500ºF for any length of time are subject to deterioration which appears to be melting, but is not. The metallurgical evaluation is explained in the Fire Technology article, and in somewhat more detail, the evaluation is described in a recently published article in The National Fire and Arson Report. (2) The bottom line with melted steel is that you can’t determine whether it has melted by visual examination alone. In order to make a determination that a piece of steel has melted, a microscopic metallurgical evaluation is required.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache...ed+metal+house+fire&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=15 This is the Google cache, as the original require login. Remember, there are electrical systems, chemicals, and other materials in the building as well. IN this case, the melted metal was first due to a faulty flourescent light.

The fire originated in a fluorescent light fixture in the storeroom. One end of the fixture melted, and molten metal dripped onto the boxes, igniting them. Damage to the building, valued at $6.2 million, and to its contents, valued at $1 million, was estimated at $5,000 and $45,000, respectively. There were no injuries.

http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061017/NEWS01/610170366/1007

Behind him as he spoke were black, crisped doors, lovely arched windows with the panes knocked out, melted garage shelves, a soccer ball, an antique dresser, melted metal shelves, blackened work gloves and his daughter Haley's burnt school notebook. "We got her schoolwork out so she could take it to school."

 

[gumboot]

For the record,

In the video from the PBS doco "Rebuilding America" a digger is shown withdrawing a steel beam from the rubble. The steel beam is NEAR MOLTEN - that is to say it's about "salmon" colour, and a bit dribbly at the end, but mostly a solid piece.

It is almost certainly steel, it is definately not aluminium, and it is most certainly INCREDIBLY hot.

This is solid evidence of extensive fires in the WTC at the time of collapse - fires that were buried in the collapse and continued to burn slowly, maintaining heat, underground. As fires will do.

It is not a narrow molten-steel cut, from something like thermite. It is an ENTIRE beam glowing yellow.

molten or near-molten steel at GZ 6 weeks after 9/11 is conclusive evidence of extensive fires in the WTC at the time of collapse.
It is in no way evidence of CD.

-Gumboot

 

[R.Mackey]

For the record,

In the video from the PBS doco "Rebuilding America" a digger is shown withdrawing a steel beam from the rubble. The steel beam is NEAR MOLTEN - that is to say it's about "salmon" colour, and a bit dribbly at the end, but mostly a solid piece.

It is almost certainly steel, it is definately not aluminium, and it is most certainly INCREDIBLY hot.

molten or near-molten steel at GZ 6 weeks after 9/11 is conclusive evidence of extensive fires in the WTC at the time of collapse.
It is in no way evidence of CD.

Wow. I didn't know about that.

It bears repeating that the chemical energy stored in the Towers themselves -- even discounting underground fuel lines -- was unimaginably vast, equal to over 100 times the energy released in the collapses themselves.

Enough energy to melt metal, possibly including steel? You betcha.

How much thermite would it take to even equal this amount of energy? Oh, about 7 x 10⁷ mol of the Fe (III) variant at optimum efficiency, or 10,000 tons.

Even Steven Jones should be able to find that. If it was real, that is.

 

[Crazy Chainsaw]

I wish to state Although I respect Neil an his prospective, he did use an obvious fallacy to make a point.

It is entirely possible to have pools of shiny silver liquid aluminum that have no oxide once you skim them, and it will not burn, but interestingly look at what happens if you heat a mixture of 50/50 Mg/Al. Note the oxide layer does nothing in this case to stop oxidization (this is a total aside and has nothing to do with anything).

Unless you are superman you can not move at a speed where it is possible to remove the oxide coating, without it reforming and protecting the metal, all you can do is remove the buildup of Oxides.
Because the formation of new oxides takes only micro seconds, you would literally have to move at hundreds of meters per second to scrape the oxide off of aluminum without it reforming, in an oxygen atmosphere it is that reactive. The shininess of the material is irrelevant to that. As far as I know only sono chemical reactions, and high speed impacts can do that.
The Magnesium, argument is also flawed, because the magnesium is not as well protected and produces temperatures that super heat he Al, causing both to react.
Everything that Neil has said, backs up my arguments, and makes them stronger, I think the difference is I have been researching the exact mechanism that triggers the oxidation reactions, while he has been researching fuels and fires in general.
Neil's points were already known to me before the discussion began, as I have talked with several metallurgical engineers on this very subject.
I agree with Neil on the kerosene fuels there, in that there is no debate, and I never said that kerosene fuels would not produce those temperatures, in fact I depend on them to.
Nist, however did find evidence of Oxidized Aluminum, and the white flashes that accompany them, All I was trying to show is there may in fact be many ways that Aluminum or other reactive metals would have reacted in the fires, given the physics involved.
Since Dr. Steven Jones ruled them out completely with flawed experiments.
The situations are just to complex for easy assumptions, or experiments that can not possibly recreate the conditions to explain.
Spraying water on a pan of molten aluminum trying to get a hydrogen reaction in a furnace is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.
NO matter what the pressure the oxide will hardened as well as the metal under it. But if you take aluminum suspend a grating directly over the water line of a pan of water, and drop molten aluminum into the water the Aluminum going though the grid breaks the oxide layer, causing an oxidizing reaction, and releasing hydrogen.

Neil this is not ment as an attack simply a statement of what I believe, and have learned based on experiments and converstations with engineers, and Metullergical experts. I think you have a lot to add exspecially with your research back ground and I do whole heartedly welcome you to the Jerf Forum.

PS. If I am wrong in any of this please point out my fallacy, we learn best when people point out where we are wrong.
Thanks.