1. He was talking about deformed steel due to intense fire in the WTC in connection with fast moving objects and not about "iron-sulfur eutectic".
"Thanks to cooperation of the HSNE recycling plant, I have been able to study the steel from the WTC before recycling. I have identified and saved some components of the structures
that appear to have been subjected to intense fire or impact of fast moving objects."
http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/guardian2/wtc/astaneh-wtc.htm
Bio, go look at the images he's referring to in the link you offer. Astaneh-Asl is not even talking about the eutectic melting or melting at all in that quote; he's discussing beams that have been distorted due to mechanical force or burnt severely, not melted. You're trying to refute Dave Rodger's post by using a statement that doesn't even refer steel that's suffered any sort of melting or erosion.
2. He said: "If you remember the Salvador Dali paintings with the clocks that are kind of melted--it's kind of like that." He added, "That could only happen
if you get steel yellow hot or white hot--perhaps around 2,000 degrees."
2000 degrees is an understatement, because yellow glowing steel is around 1200 degrees C hot and white glowing steel is around 1400 degrees C hot.
http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/4227/colorheatchartcrabclawag4.jpg
You cannot reach these temperatures with smouldering fire, and the fire in the Twins was not hotter than 1000 degrees C and only a short time that hot.
On the contrary, that temperature was well exceeded in the debris pile, measuring up to 1500+ degrees C in some spots (2800 degrees F). So it is
- A mistake to characterize the debris pile as merely "smoldering", as the measurements of the fire demonstrate, and
- A mistake to claim the fires in the debris pile (I assume that's what you meant in your reference, as the tower conflagerations themselves were far from being "smouldering fires") could not reach the temperatures necessary to explain the appearance of the steel in the picture you post.
On top of all of that, you need to go back and reread the threads where it's demonstrated why it's faulty to do color analysis on photographs without basic information on calibration, if it's film the color bias of the film, if it's digital or video capture, the white-point setting of the camera, let alone issues such as the gamma of the monitor you're viewing the image on... It's faulty logic to try to do color analysis to determine the temperature of an item unless you're actually in the presence of the item. Take a look at this table:
http://www.sizes.com/materls/colors_of_heated_metals.htm
Note the differences in estimation of the temperature between the sources. Those differences exist
even though the issue is in-person observation of the metal, not photographic analysis. The link itself comes out and notes the presence of error in estimation from visual analysis:
The verbal descriptions given by Howe2 and White and Taylor3 have been omitted and their temperatures placed with the verbal description in the Holcomb Steel data that was closest to theirs. The variation demonstrates how unreliable this method is even in the hands of careful observers.
Emphasis added.
The point is that the truther assertion that imagery color analysis reveals the temperature of metallic objects recovered from the debris pile is faulty, and is not scientific as it does not take into account the margin of error present in such analysis.
Now, onto Astaneh-Asl's quote: You are not taking into account the fact that Astaneh-Asl was not viewing the steel members prior to the tower collapse (nobody could; they were too busy evacuating), nor at Ground Zero, but at the dump sites after the steel had been sitting in the rubble piles for a while. The very piles that, as noted above, reached 1500 degrees C in some spots. So sure, I have no doubt that the steel he is referring to when he makes his Dali/clock quote did indeed have that appearance. I'm even willing to accept that it might have reached 2000 degrees, although I'd like to see more arguments and/or evidence supporting that before I accept it fully. But I'm not willing to accept that it is indicative of any conditions in the towers themselves because it obviously occurred in the rubble piles. Therefore, there is nothing suspicious about the condition of the metal. If it reached 2000 degrees - that's not proven, by the way, that's just an initial estimation on Astaneh-Asl's part - then it did so in the rubble pile, and the conditions
there were responsible for the appearance. Either way, you pointing out the condition of the metal in the piles in no way contradicts any of the previous narratives, not of the one NIST presents in the NCSTAR reports, or of any other aspect of what you continue to call the "Official Story". It is not contradicted at all by your argument.
