Molten metal vs. Molten steel

Originally posted by gottago
Wow.

Eyes wide shut there.

Very simply, to achieve the molten steel still found at WTCs 1, 2 & 7 weeks after they fell requires an absolutely enormous energy source. Enormous.

This to you is not unusual?

What ought to stand out to you is that given the rate of heat loss, with no further heat input, it could not still be molten 3 weeks later.

There had to be an ongoing heat source of high enough temperature to keep the steel molten. Given that it exists, it alone could account for steel being molten.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam

What ought to stand out to you is that given the rate of heat loss, with no further heat input, it could not still be molten 3 weeks later.

There had to be an ongoing heat source of high enough temperature to keep the steel molten. Given that it exists, it alone could account for steel being molten.

Well isn't that just trying to move the problem one step away from the basic point?

The basic point being--molten steel or nearly so, mixed with gallium or melted wiring, meteorite A or B, etc..--that the energy needed to create those conditions and artifacts is simply not to be accounted for by collapse and jet fuel? That it is staggeringly anomalous?

Someone who drops by and says, "what's so unusual about molten steel found weeks later in the basement of a collapsed building?" (well, three, actually) is not to be taken seriously.

Originally posted by gottago

Well isn't that just trying to move the problem one step away from the basic point?

The basic point being--molten steel or nearly so, mixed with gallium or melted wiring, meteorite A or B, etc..--that the energy needed to create those conditions and artifacts is simply not to be accounted for by collapse and jet fuel? That it is staggeringly anomalous?

Someone who drops by and says, "what's so unusual about molten steel found weeks later in the basement of a collapsed building?" (well, three, actually) is not to be taken seriously.

I guess the point I'm making is that if you postulate something exotic like a nuke, even a nuke wouldn't leave molten metal 3 weeks later with no further heat input, in an environment that is randomly insulated at best and has large heat sinks (other beams and metallic debris) dipped into it.

Therefore, there is an ongoing heat source in the rubble. I'm for it being burning organic crap like the desks, any aluminum oxidation reactions and what not, plus I'm wondering if there were gas lines or something else in there, although it seems unlikely they would be left going.

I remember a thread about this before, it was compared to Chernobyl's fires as in there were small radioactive isotopes buried in the rubble that continued to incinerate everything they came into contact with. At Chernobyl they smothered the fires with boron and lead, at the WTC they just drowned the area and it took months.

At Chernobyl, the entire fuel load of the reactor was still in there churning out heat, just melted on the floor and spread around some.

Plus Chernobyl was a graphite moderated reactor, which tends to burn (flame wise, not radiation wise) when it gets hot enough and air is getting in.

Not quite the same thing here.

[edit on 24-6-2007 by Tom Bedlam]

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam

Not quite the same thing here.

yeah agreed, but perhaps this was some type of residual or byproduct of whatever device went boom in very small amounts buried in the rubble. What was at the heart of those hot spots keeping them active? I think we generally agree even thermite wouldn't keep it going that long.

[edit on 24-6-2007 by VicRH]

Originally posted by VicRH
yeah agreed, but perhaps this was some type of residual or byproduct of whatever device went boom in very small amounts buried in the rubble. What was at the heart of those hot spots keeping them active? I think we generally agree even thermite wouldn't keep it going that long.

[edit on 24-6-2007 by VicRH]

Any radioisotope emitting a lot of heat, certainly emitting enough to melt steel, is going to be blindingly radioactive for the most part. You'd be packing firefighters and construction guys out in dump trucks.

I think it's a great, maybe a central question. I'm figuring a big fuel load buried under the rubble, didn't they say it was smoldering for weeks?

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
didn't they say it was smoldering for weeks?

took three months! In late December the last fire was extinguished.

Wouldn't the force that pulverized much of the concrete suffocated the fires? Or was there additional explosions afterward?

Originally posted by VicRH

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
didn't they say it was smoldering for weeks?

took three months! In late December the last fire was extinguished.

Well, that means there was a heat source in there. I'm a bit surprised it was hot enough to melt steel, although aluminum melts pretty easily. Still, you see those photos of the beams yellow hot at one end and black at the other, that's a big-ass temp differential. The beam is obviously conducting the heat away (the black end) yet the temp at the yellow end is pretty high. So if you had that going on in places where the heat sinking was less than in that beam picture, maybe it was hot enough.

Also explains the "where are the desks" question, I'd say.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
I'm a bit surprised it was hot enough to melt steel, although aluminum melts pretty easily. Still, you see those photos of the beams yellow hot at one end and black at the other, that's a big-ass temp differential.

Well if a micro-nuke went off why would we expect anything less? We would expect less had this been conventional explosives or some sort of natural reaction. It would of raised less controversy to begin with. You should consider there were areas even hotter too since there were dozens of reports of molten steel flowing like you would expect at a foundry. From what I gathered sections of the core literally boiled / ablated and there was evidence for that in the dust samples (something to do with the presence of various metals).

Infact I wouldn't be surprised if there was photographic evidence being withheld from the public, i have read reports of investigators taking photos of the molten steel down there yet virtually none of them surfaced, and I don't think the firefighters were just making that story up.

Originally posted by VicRH
Well if a micro-nuke went off why would we expect anything less?

Why would you expect it at all? Consider that the duration of heat production from a nuke is moderately short. During this time, you would have to raise a mass of metal to the melting point, but not vaporize it in the process. That's not all that easily done during a brief spike of energy flux. Not only that, but you'd be heating the air and other materials in the building that WOULD vaporize at that temperature. At that point, you are dealing with Dr Boyle - pv=nrt. The heat would generate overpressure.

Nonetheless, ignoring the problems you'd have with that, now that the magic bomb has gone away, you're left with a mass of metal that is obviously losing heat at a prodigious rate. Steel is pretty heat conductive, and it's obvious in that beam photo that, as you would reasonably expect, the insulating effect of the concrete dust is spotty at best. In short order, the melt would solidify. Certainly it's unexpected to find it still molten after 3 weeks, with no further heat input.

The metal scaffolding at ground zero during the Trinity test was not totally vaporized, nor was it melted. Nor was it uncommon to find bits of fairly intact support structure at the above ground tests.

We would expect less had this been conventional explosives or some sort of natural reaction. It would of raised less controversy to begin with. You should consider there were areas even hotter too since there were dozens of reports of molten steel flowing like you would expect at a foundry. From what I gathered sections of the core literally boiled / ablated and there was evidence for that in the dust samples (something to do with the presence of various metals).

Yet you are running up against the problem of heat. Heat causes gases to expand, and the extremely fast energy input of a nuke causes the overpressure to go through the roof. Yet the building did not explode, the windows didn't even blow out until the collapse started.

[edit on 25-6-2007 by Tom Bedlam]

Originally posted by VicRH
In fact I wouldn't be surprised if there was photographic evidence being withheld from the public, i have read reports of investigators taking photos of the molten steel down there yet virtually none of them surfaced, and I don't think the firefighters were just making that story up.

Well no surprise there as you had two security cordons, the outer one city cops, and the inner one Feds.

A friend of mine worked the Fed cordon and he told of real fights breaking out all the time between the various parties on-site. The Feds wouldn't let anything or anyone go through without clearance. And he's a confirmed truther, btw.

But the real point I want to make is, just look at the photos of ground zero taken from the air:

Those aren't buildings that collapsed, that really is a "ground zero."

Frankly that's as good photographic evidence as you'll ever need--if only you can understand the nature of what you're looking at.

But that's another story.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
...you are running up against the problem of heat. Heat causes gases to expand, and the extremely fast energy input of a nuke causes the overpressure to go through the roof. Yet the building did not explode, the windows didn't even blow out until the collapse started.

TB--

The whole question of what retained those temps in the basements shows something enormously energetic caused and was feeding the inferno. That is clear...

But this part of your post struck me and got me to thinking. I, like everyone who posits mini-nukes, always assumed they used a shaped charge in the sub-basements going up--the widening cone taking out the lower building mass.

But what if it was a shaped charge charge pointing down?

You're right--the windows didn't blow out--but you still have the molten steel, the sublimating, collapsing core, etc.

Blast down, you take out the core at the foundations, and the upper floors of the basements shield the blast effects and trap the heat.

On first glance, rather interesting way to account for a lot of those anomalies.

[clean-up]


[edit on 25-6-2007 by gottago]

I understand what your getting at and you make some good points but it sounds more like your describing an open air blast? Are you considering how strong and dense these structures were?

Even in underground tests the nuke is buried in soil, not thick slabs of concrete and gridworks of steel I-Beams. All that goes a long way to dampen and absorb the effects don't you think?

For example, Storax Sedan: a shallow underground nuclear test by the US, no blinding flash. It was 100kt, 100x or possibly 1000x more powerful than the range we are talking about here. The crater was 390 m (WTC were about 63 m wide). Thats pretty different to an open air blast from what i gather.

Also I am more inclinded to think there were several bombs placed throughout the core rather than bombs solely in the basement.

This was obviously fine-tuned for maximal destruction with minimal observable "nuke effects" that would scare the pants off your average Joe.

So yes, undoubtedly several were used. I'd argue several in the basements, very small-yield and carefully placed and calibrated, and a bigger one up top, to blow out the tops of the towers--they never reached earth in one piece, simply disintegrated in mid-fall.

Conventional for the points in-between, where a precise cascading effect was required.

Originally posted by gottago
TB--

The whole question of what retained those temps in the basements shows something enormously energetic caused and was feeding the inferno. That is clear...

It's my belief that there's something pumping a lot of heat into this mass steadily, and the only thing that's coming to mind is burning organic material in the rubble, with air coming up from below. On another thread, someone mentioned subway lines possibly acting as air sources, I don't know how they run there.

But at three weeks, you'd have gone through a lot of fuel. Although as was said, there were fires going for months, so I guess it's possible.

As far as it being all original energy, look at that photo of the beam that's yellow on one end and black on the other again - the black side is too cold to glow, and steel's pretty heat conductive. That area the yellow end was in was losing heat pretty darned fast - surely that wasn't the only beam dipped into it. Had the whole beam been yellow/red I might have been able to assume that it was all insulated. But it's obviously not.

But this part of your post struck me and got me to thinking. I, like everyone who posits mini-nukes, always assumed they used a shaped charge in the sub-basements going up--the widening cone taking out the lower building mass.

But what if it was a shaped charge charge pointing down?

While I think the shaped charge idea helps some on the walls not blowing out, I don't think it addresses the powdering which is being brought up. I'll ask you - do YOU have any photos, history, description or whatnot on other buildings of this size being explosively demolished? I can't find a thing. I spend a few hours looking too. What is it supposed to look like? If the powdering is normal then it's moot and we can ignore it.

You're right--the windows didn't blow out--but you still have the molten steel, the sublimating, collapsing core, etc.

The sublimation thing makes my teeth grind. There is an effect called sublimation, in which molecules leave the surface of a material below the vaporization point. For some materials that don't have a liquid phase on the chart at that pressure, sublimation can be fast, as in the case of solid CO2. For materials that have liquid phases at sealevel, such as steel, sublimation is pretty slow, what it wants to do is melt, boil and vaporize instead. In that case it's like ice cubes evaporating in the freezer - long and drawn out. The sublimation temperature for steel is something like 2000C, it would be glowing.

Also the molten steel - fairly soon after the collapse, as soon as they show the pictures, the steel on the surface was obviously NOT molten. The only areas that it was molten in was in the rubble underneath the building. If it was melted during the blast, surely there would be shapeless globs of it everywhere, but when I look at the photos, all I see is edgy sharp torn up metallic crap typical of other photos of smaller collapses like the ones I posted on the other thread. I don't see rounded globby half melted metal. It's ripped, bent, in little pieces, but not mooshy looking, to use the scientific term.

All the melted stuff comes from way under the rubble.

Thus my argument that it wasn't melted before the collapse, or during the collapse, but that the melt happened eventually under the mass, and it stayed that way due to heat input that was going on constantly for some time.

Originally posted by gottago
This was obviously fine-tuned for maximal destruction with minimal observable "nuke effects" that would scare the pants off your average Joe.

So yes, undoubtedly several were used. I'd argue several in the basements, very small-yield and carefully placed and calibrated, and a bigger one up top, to blow out the tops of the towers--they never reached earth in one piece, simply disintegrated in mid-fall.

Conventional for the points in-between, where a precise cascading effect was required.

This cat is on the ball. Its possible the payload in the basement was delivered on the day of 9/11 via those truck bombs that were reported. Thats just a hunch though.

Originally posted by gottago
This was obviously fine-tuned for maximal destruction with minimal observable "nuke effects" that would scare the pants off your average Joe.

So yes, undoubtedly several were used. I'd argue several in the basements, very small-yield and carefully placed and calibrated, and a bigger one up top, to blow out the tops of the towers--they never reached earth in one piece, simply disintegrated in mid-fall.

Conventional for the points in-between, where a precise cascading effect was required.

I'll sell you on my "thermobaric pipe bomb" idea yet!

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
I'll sell you on my "thermobaric pipe bomb" idea yet!

Can you give me some more detail about this? I've been thinking along these lines lately myself. Any specs or whatever info would be greatful. Thanks.