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9/11
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Title: 9/11 - Who Put Thermite In The World Trade Center?
Source: http://www.rense.com/
URL Source: http://www.rense.com/general75/thrm.htm
Published: Feb 1, 2007
Author: Christopher Bollyn, Reporter Sans Fronti
Post Date: 2007-03-11 12:34:41 by robin
Ping List: *9-11*     Subscribe to *9-11*
Keywords: None
Views: 95
Comments: 2

rense.com



9/11 - Who Put Thermite
In The World Trade Center?

by Christopher Bollyn
Reporter Sans Frontières
2-1-7



When a former worker from the World Trade Center came forward recently with crucial and verifiable information about what was really on the 81st floor of the South Tower (WTC 2), he broke up a logjam of unanswered questions about the source of the molten metal seen falling from the tower before its collapse on 9/11.



Based on this important piece of information from a former IT professional who worked with computers in the Twin Towers, I was able to determine that the two airplanes that struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center on 9/11 had directly impacted secure computer rooms in both buildings:
· the first on the 95th floor of the North Tower;
· the second on the 81st floor of the South Tower.
This information raises new questions:
· Were the computer rooms equipped to play a role in the crime?



· Were there homing devices or computers in these rooms that used precision-guidance systems to direct the planes into the towers?
· Did these computer rooms contain pre-placed explosives or forms of Thermite to destroy evidence, create an incendiary spectacle, and weaken the structure prior to the collapses?
EVIDENCE OF THERMITE

Photographic evidence strongly suggests that the secure computer rooms in both towers contained forms of Thermite, which had been pre-placed to destroy evidence and facilitate the collapse of the immense steel-frame towers while creating a deadly pyrotechnic spectacle.
After examining the photographic and physical evidence, Professor Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University has concluded that the yellow and white glowing metal pouring from the east corner of the 81st floor of the South Tower was, most likely, molten iron created by a Thermite reaction.
It could not have been molten aluminum as the federal government's Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers (NIST, 2005) speculates, Jones says, because, among other things, molten aluminum at that temperature would appear silver-grey in daylight conditions.

Having tested pieces of hardened molten metal from the twin towers, Jones found that they were composed primarily of iron, not structural steel. This is positive physical evidence of an aluminothermic reaction, more commonly known as Thermite, having occurred in conjunction with the collapse of the twin towers and WTC 7.
Aluminothermics refers to the intense exothermic (heat producing) reactions that occur when powdered aluminum is mixed with powdered iron oxide and/or other elements and oxides. Copper, potassium permanganate, zinc- and barium nitrate are among the additives Jones has found evidence of in the dust from the World Trade Center.
The Thermite reaction produces an extremely hot reaction (up to 2500 °C or 4500 °F), which creates molten iron and aluminum oxide. The molten iron produced from Thermite is white hot and the aluminum oxide is a white smoke.

EVIDENCE OF SULFIDATION
Thermate is a variant of Thermite that contains additives to enhance certain effects. It may contain pyrotechnic additives, such as barium nitrate, for incendiary purposes.
The addition of barium nitrate increases its thermal effect, creates flame in burning and significantly reduces the ignition temperature.
The addition of 2 percent sulfur to Thermite improves the steel-cutting properties by creating a eutectic that will melt steel at much lower temperatures.

Eutectic comes from the Greek word "eutektos," which means "easily melted." Thermate cuts through steel like "a warm knife through butter," Jones says.
The FEMA-sponsored Building Performance Study of 2002 contains evidence of melted steel caused by sulfidation and oxidation. This is found in the "Limited Metallurgical Examination" written by Professor Jonathan Barnett. The NIST report, however, fails to address the evidence of sulfidation found in the structural steel from the WTC.
Barnett examined two pieces of melted steel: one from the WTC 7, the other from the Twin Towers. About the first piece, Barnett wrote: "The thinning of the steel occurred by a high-temperature corrosion due to the combination of oxidation and sulfidation." This was done by "a eutectic mixture of iron, oxygen, and sulfur that liquefied the steel," he concluded.

Barnett found the same sulfidation in the piece of melted steel from the Twin Towers. "The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion of Samples 1 and 2 are a very unusual event," Barnett wrote. "No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified."
Professor Jones points to Thermate, with 2 percent sulfur, as being the most likely culprit. The oxidation and sulfidation of the steel requires the oxygen and sulfur being "intimately in contact with the metal at high temperature," Jones said.
VISIBLE EVIDENCE OF THERMATE

The molten iron seen falling from the South Tower's eastern corner before it collapsed must have weighed many tons. One cubic meter of iron weighs about 8.5 tons and it certainly looks like several cubic meters poured from the 81st floor shortly before it collapsed. But what could have been the source of so much iron on the 81st floor?
The NIST report gives no answers to this crucial question. In this respect, the NIST report is a good example of studied ignorance. Not only does NIST fail to provide any information about what was on the crucial floors of the South Tower (79, 81, and 82), but they actually suggest that these floors contained normal office materials.
"There were vigorous fires on the east side of the 80th through 83rd floors, especially on the northeast end of the 81st and 82nd floors, where the aircraft had bulldozed the office desks and chairs and added its own combustibles," the NIST report says in its "Account of WTC 2."
From the NIST report the reader gets the impression that these were normal office floors with "desks and chairs," although that was definitely not the case with the 81st floor while the contents of the 82nd and 79th floors remain unknown.

Fuji Bank was the tenant of floors 79-82, yet for some reason the NIST researchers were unable or unwilling to provide any description of the contents of these crucial floors ­ four years after 9/11.
A former Japanese bank employee recently came forward and explained that the 81st floor was an entire floor of server-size computer batteries:
Fuji Bank had reinforced the 81st floor, he said, so the floor could support more weight. The entire floor was then filled with server-size Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) batteries.

These units were bolted to a raised floor about 3 feet above the reinforced 81st floor. "The whole floor was batteries," he said, "huge battery-looking things." They were "all black" and "solid, very heavy" things that had been brought in during the night. They had been put in place during the summer prior to 9/11, he said.
But were they really batteries or were they Thermate?
"It's weird," he said. "They were never turned on."
See: http://www.iamthewitness.com/Bollyn-Fuji-WTC.html

PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE OF THERMATE EXPLOSIONS
Were these batteries the source of the molten iron seen falling from the 81st floor? Was Thermate in these "batteries"? Is there evidence to prove Thermate was used on the 81st floor?
Before addressing these questions, allow me to explain how Thermate may have been used in the crash zones (this is just a speculation for those of you who often ask us to provide a scenario on what may have happened):

The perverse terrorist team that planned the destruction of the Twin Towers apparently used Hollywood expertise to create an incendiary spectacle.
They employed remote control devices and precision guidance systems to fly the planes into the towers at precisely the points where they had pre-placed explosives and Thermate incendiary bombs.
Immediately before the planes, or specially prepared drones, hit the towers, missiles carried beneath the fuselage or wing were fired into the buildings. These missiles, which apparently contained depleted uranium (DU), caused the white flashes seen before the planes hit the towers.

This white flash is evidence of a pyrophoric white-hot uranium penetrator, which bores through everything it hits and creates a super-heated space as it burns at extremely hot temperatures. Asked if a white-hot DU penetrator would set off Thermate, Jones said, "Definitely."
More about the uranium possibility here:
http://www.iamthewitness.com/Bollyn-DU-Missiles.html
The DU penetrator would carry on through the tower unless it were stopped by a core column or some other extremely dense object. In fact, a white-hot burning object with the characteristics of a DU penetrator is clearly seen coming out ahead of the fireball that engulfed the South Tower.

If DU missiles were used, they would have created a super-heated space in which any combustible, such as atomized jet fuel, explosives, or Thermate, would ignite immediately.
While the orange and black fireballs caused by the burning jet fuel are easily recognized in photographs, there is visible evidence of Thermate seen in the dust and smoke ­ the conspicuous white smoke of aluminum oxide.

THE WHITE SMOKE OF WTC 1
On the 95th floor of WTC 1, Marsh & McLennan had a "large walled data center," a secure computer room along the north and east sides of the tower. And that's exactly where the plane hit ­ the north wall of the 95th floor.

The plane struck the North Tower right in the middle of the north face. The nose of the plane struck the 130th perimeter column at the 96th floor slab and something, perhaps the nose landing gear, carried on right through the middle of the building and severed three columns on the south side of the tower.
An image caught on video immediately after the plane struck the tower shows a huge fireball engulfing the north face of the building where the plane hit. But from the east side of the tower a suspicious huge white dust cloud is emerging that looks like an exploding bale of cotton
It is pure white and shows no signs of burning jet fuel. This white dust is emerging from the east wall of the tower, from the level and side occupied by the computer room.
Photo below: One frame from the Naudet video. You can watch the high-resolution video by renting the DVD called 9/11, the Filmmakers' Commemorative Edition

Professor Jones, when shown this photo, said, "It looks very much like aluminum oxide dust." The white smoke is clearly coming out of the east side of the building and is also seen behind the orange and sooty cloud that is rising on the north side of the tower.
It is very clear that two very different materials are exploding in the crash area: jet fuel and some form of Thermate, which is producing the telltale white smoke.

The NIST report does not mention the white smoke or dust seen coming out of the north tower and attributes these clouds to 10,000 gallons of burning fuel mixed with dust:
Atomized jet fuel is highly flammable (similar to kerosene), so both the hot debris and the numerous pieces of electrical and electronic gear in the offices were more than sufficient as ignition sources.
A surge of combusting fuel rapidly filled the floors, mixing with dust from the pulverized walls and floor slabs.

The pressure created by the heated gases forced the ignited mist out the entrance gash and blown-out windows on the east and south sides of the tower.
The resulting fireballs could be seen for miles, precipitating many 911 calls.
Isn't it odd that the explosion, which was supposedly caused by jet fuel combusting in the middle of the building, did not affect the western façade as it had the eastern?
Why did the east side of the building react so differently from the west side? And why is the smoke coming from the east side such a bright white and completely lacking any of the characteristics of burning jet fuel?

Is this where Thermate incendiary devices had been placed ­ in the computer room of Marsh & McLennan? If Thermate bombs had been pre-placed in the 95th floor computer room, who put them there?
Certainly Marsh & McLennan must know or have records of who had access to that room and what was in it. This information needs to be revealed.
Photo below: The North Tower before the South Tower has been hit by a plane.

Notice the stream of white smoke coming from one side of the North Tower, but the rest of the smoke is black.
These images can be found at:
http://www.rengel.net/wtc_images/index.php

WHITE SMOKE FROM WTC 2
The bright orange and black fireballs that erupted from the South Tower are indelibly seared in the memory of the modern world. But here again, there was a conspicuous white cloud that is not easily explained by the burning jet fuel.

Again, the NIST report points only to burning jet fuel:
Within about one half of a second, dust and debris flew out of windows on the east and north faces.
Several small fireballs of atomized jet fuel burst from windows on the east face of the 81st and 82nd floors, coalescing into a single, large fireball that spanned the entire face.
A tenth of a second later, fire appeared in the dust clouds ejected from the south face of the 79th, 81st, and 82nd floors.

Photo below: The plane entered at the left side of this picture and exited along the right side.
As with all photos that show this fireball at the South Tower, the cloud of smoke that shot out of the entrance hole is mostly gray and white, with very little soot.
If you have Hufschmid's book Painful Questions, this photo is on page 88
"The fireballs burned for 10 seconds, extending almost 200 feet out from the north, east, and south faces," NIST reports. "Having consumed the aerosol fuel, the flames then receded."

From the south face of WTC 2, the "dust clouds" that emerged look nothing like combusting jet fuel. They look much more like the white smoke of Thermate than burning kerosene.
The massive aircraft and its estimated 9,100 gallons of fuel hit the south face of the South Tower at 540 mph and carried on through the east and north sides. But what is exploding out of the south side of the tower a fraction of a second later?
The huge whitish cloud of dust that comes from the south face has orange flame within it but has none of the dark orange and black colors seen in the jet fuel fireballs that emerged from the north and east sides of the tower.
This white dust lacks any visible evidence of burning kerosene but was expelled from the tower at least 250 feet. What was the force pushing it out if no jet fuel is seen in it or behind it?

As one looks up at the three fireballs emerging from the explosion that occurred at the crash level of the South Tower, it is clear to see, from the color of the flame and soot, that the jet fuel is primarily in the front of the fireball. The further one looks to the rear, toward the point of entry, the less evidence one sees of burning kerosene.
When the South Tower begins to collapse, huge amounts of white smoke are pushed from the tower. Furthermore, prior to every documented flow of molten metal, NIST observed puffs of dust. The photographic and physical evidence proves that Thermate was used in the destruction of the towers and strongly suggests that it had been pre-placed on the floors that the planes hit.
If Arab terrorists did not pre-position Thermate in the secure computer rooms and throughout the Twin Towers and WTC 7, who did?
Finding what was on these crucial floors and who had access to these floors and secure computer rooms will help identify the real culprits of 9/11.

Photo below: The plane entered the South Tower from this side of this building. There is not much soot in a fireball at the entrance hole.

Photo below: This shows the exit hole where some plane parts flew out. This fireball looks more like a sooty, hydrocarbon fire.

Photo below: The South Tower. The plane entered at the left, and exited at the right. A stream of white smoke is mixing with the black smoke. What could create that white smoke?
(9 images)

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#1. To: robin (#0)

Christopher Bollyn is dishonest. He and Steven Jones are leading you astray robin with disinformation and lies. Let's take a look at the claim made in your source that "After examining the photographic and physical evidence, Professor Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University has concluded that the yellow and white glowing metal pouring from the east corner of the 81st floor of the South Tower was, most likely, molten iron created by a Thermite reaction. It could not have been molten aluminum as the federal government's Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers (NIST, 2005) speculates, Jones says, because, among other things, molten aluminum at that temperature would appear silver-grey in daylight conditions."

In other sources, Jones is quoted saying "In the videos of the molten metal falling from WTC2 just prior to its collapse, it appears consistently orange, not just orange in spots and certainly not silvery."

This is untrue. If you watch this video,

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2991254740145858863&q=cameraplanet+9%2F11,

you will see silver color in the stream of material once it gets away from the window. This occurs from 12 seconds in the video to 33 seconds in the video. It is especially clear at about 32 seconds. You'll also see it from 57 seconds to a 67 seconds. And from 74 to 75 seconds, material can be seen pouring from the corner of the tower and that material is very clearly silver, not orange. So Steven Jones is demonstrably lying. Why would you trust such a liar? Why trust Bollyn who has also lied about the seismic data and quotes by seismologists?

You be better off trusting someone like Dr Greening ... someone with a PHD in chemistry who actually might understand the chemistry of aluminum, sulfur, water and such ... compared to a guy who has been studying sub-atomic particles and another quack theory (cold-fusion) for the past 30 years. Here:

http://www.911myths.com/WTCTHERM.pdf

http://www.911myths.com/html/traces_of_thermate_at_the_wtc.html

http://www.911myths.com/html/other_contributions.html

**********

Sorry robin, but with regards to allegations about molten steel, molten aluminum and temperatures at the WTC, you'd be better off reading and understanding this:

***************

http://911myths.com/html/wtc_molten_steel.html

The story...

Molten steel was discovered in the basements of the collapsed WTC. Fire couldn't raise the temperature high enough to melt steel, but explosives, particularly thermite, could.

As Lisa Giuliani put it:

--------------

The existence of these burning pools of molten steel were confirmed by:

- Mark Lorieux of Controlled Demolition, Inc
- Peter Tully, President of Tully Construction
- and the American Free Press newspaper

Please explain where these molten pools of steel came from, because hydrocarbon fires are not going to burn in an oxygen-starved environment as these underground fires did.
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/03/312837.shtml

---------------

Our take...

So we have three sources? Maybe not. Let's go back to a more complete telling of the story.

----------------

Peter Tully, president of Tully Construction of Flushing, New York, told AFP that he saw pools of "literally molten steel" at the World Trade Center. Tully was contracted on September 11 to remove the debris from the site.

Tully called Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI) of Phoenix, Maryland, for consultation about removing the debris. CDI calls itself "the innovator and global leader in the controlled demolition and implosion of structures."

Loizeaux, who cleaned up the bombed Federal Building in Oklahoma City, arrived on the WTC site two days later and wrote the clean-up plan for the entire operation.

AFP asked Loizeaux about the report of molten steel on the site. "Yes," he said, "hot spots of molten steel in the basements." These incredibly hot areas were found "at the bottoms of the elevator shafts of the main towers, down seven [basement] levels," Loizeaux said. The molten steel was found "three, four, and five weeks later, when the rubble was being removed," Loizeaux said. He said molten steel was also found at 7 WTC, which collapsed mysteriously in the late afternoon.

Construction steel has an extremely high melting point of about 2,800° Fahrenheit (1535° Celsius). Asked what could have caused such extreme heat, Tully said, "Think of the jet fuel."
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/bollyn2.htm

--------------------

Okay, so we have two sources here, Tully and Loizeaux, who were then reported in the third (American Free Press). Or do we? Note that Tully is the one claiming he saw the steel, and the article then says he called Loizeaux. So it Loizeaux simply repeating what he's heard from Tully? That would make sense, and it appears to be confirmed by this claimed email from Loizeaux:

--------------------

Here is what he wrote to me today at 10:38 PST:

Mr. Bryan:

I didn't personally see molten steel at the World Trade Center site. It was reported to me by contractors we had been working with. Molten steel was encountered primarily during excavation of debris around the South Tower when large hydraulic excavators were digging trenches 2 to 4 meters deep into the compacted/burning debris pile. There are both video tape and still photos of the molten steel being "dipped" out by the buckets of excavators. I'm not sure where you can get a copy.

Sorry I cannot provide personal confirmation.

Regards,
==========================

Mark Loizeaux, President
CONTROLLED DEMOLITION, INC.
2737 Merryman's Mill Road
Phoenix, Maryland USA 21131
Tel: 1-410-667-6610
Fax: 1-410-667-6624

http://www.controlled-demolition.com
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.alien.visitors/msg/dfef90067070254e?dmode=source

-----------------------

If accurate, the source has now moved from Loizeaux back to contractors, but there’s no information here on how the substance was identified as “molten steel”, or who might have performed the analysis to figure it out.

There’s another complication in terms of the WTC debris temperatures, according to NASA analyses made on September 16th and 23rd.

---------------------

Initial analysis of these data revealed a number of thermal hot spots on September 16 in the region where the buildings collapsed 5 days earlier. Analysis of the data indicates temperatures greater than 800 degrees F. Over 3 dozen hot spots appear in the core zone. By September 23, only 4, or possibly 5, hot spots are apparent, with temperatures cooler than those on September 16.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0405/ofr-01-0405.html

---------------------

Over 800 degrees F is hot, but not nearly hot enough. A more speculative view on the paper suggests maximum temperatures of 1341 degrees F ( http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0429/thermal.r09.html ), but that's still well below the “about 2,800° Fahrenheit” we need to get "literally molten steel".

The get-out here is that NASA could only see surface temperatures, obviously. And they took their first measurements on the 16th, so temperatures could have been even higher before then. Keep in mind that the hotspots had reduced significantly by the 23rd, though, and excavators wouldn’t have been digging anywhere close to the basement levels until some time after that.

Other accounts suggest the temperatures needn’t have been that high to produce noticeable and dramatic effects.

-----------------

However, Clark doesn't know how deep into the pile AVIRIS could see. The infrared data certainly revealed surface temperatures, yet the smoldering piles below the surface may have remained at much higher temperatures. "In mid-October, in the evening," said Thomas A. Cahill, a retired professor of physics and atmospheric science at the University of California, Davis, "when they would pull out a steel beam, the lower part would be glowing dull red, which indicates a temperature on the order of 500 to 600 °C. And we know that people were turning over pieces of concrete in December that would flash into fire--which requires about 300 °C. So the surface of the pile cooled rather rapidly, but the bulk of the pile stayed hot all the way to December."
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/NCW/8142aerosols.html

--------------------

Perhaps aware of these problems, some people use other accounts to support the "molten steel" idea. Let's look at a few of those.

--------------------

Dr. Keith Eaton toured Ground Zero and stated in The Structural Engineer , "They showed us many fascinating slides [Eaton] continued, ranging from molten metal which was still red hot weeks after the event, to 4-inch thick steel plates sheared and bent in the disaster." (Structural Engineer , September 3, 2002, p. 6;.)

--------------------

The observation of molten metal at Ground Zero was emphasized publicly by Leslie Robertson, the structural engineer responsible for the design of the World Trade Center Towers, who reported that "As of 21 days after the attack, the fires were still burning and molten steel was still running." (Williams, 2001, p. 3.)

--------------------

Sarah Atlas was part of New Jersey's Task Force One Urban Search and Rescue and was one of the first on the scene at Ground Zero with her canine partner Anna. She reported in Penn Arts and Sciences , summer 2002, "'Nobody's going to be alive.' Fires burned and molten steel flowed in the pile of ruins still settling beneath her feet." (Penn, 2002.)

--------------------

Dr. Allison Geyh was one of a team of public health investigators from Johns Hopkins who visited the WTC site after 9-11. She reported in the Late Fall 2001 issue of Magazine of Johns Hopkins Public Health, "In some pockets now being uncovered they are finding molten steel.
http://www.reopen911.org/womaninhole.htm

---------------------

Eaton's quote refers to "molten metal", not steel. The use of “glowing red” suggests he may not mean it’s liquid metal, either.

The "Leslie Robertson" quote comes second-hand from James Williams, SEAU President, in an account of a Robertson presentation ( http://www.seau.org/SEAUNews-2001-10.pdf ). We emailed Roberston to find out if it was accuate, and his brief reply arrived quickly:

----------------------

I've no recollection of having made any such statements...nor was I in a position to have the required knowledge.
Details here

----------------------

http://911myths.com/html/leslie_robertson.html only talk of “molten metal”, not steel. It’s possible to construct a case that Robertson mentioned “molten steel” in the lecture, but forgot it later, and Williams wrote “molten steel” rather than metal because, ah, he just did. But short of some evidence to support that, this quote doesn’t appear to have much substance.

The Sarah Atlas story also appears to be use “molten steel” for dramatic effect, rather than anything else. How could she possibly know for sure that “molten steel flowed in the pile of ruins still settling beneath her feet"? We checked with the author, and he said this information would have been a quote from someone, but he doesn’t remember who (and none of the possible subjects would really qualify as an expert witness).

We recently discovered another pointer to the use of “molten steel”, too. A message on the LibertyPost forum referred to a now defunct site called http://WTCGodsHouse.com, where a WTC construction worker published a potentially relevant photo ( http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=30926 ). Could this be true? The site is dead, but there’s a copy in the WayBack machine, and the front page has this guys credentials:

------------------------

My name is Frank Silecchia. I am one of the many WTC Ground Zero workers who was devastated by what I saw and encountered after the Twin Towers collasped. http://web.archive.org/web/20020608142217/http://www.wtcgodshouse.com/

------------------------

Proceed to the photos section ( http://web.archive.org/web/20020609005905/www.wtcgodshouse.com/photos.html ) and you’ll find something captioned “this is a picture of Tower #1 ..2 months later, molten steel”. Which looks like this.

Now maybe it’s just us, but we have some problems with that.

First, there’s no proof here other than the caption of when and where this was taken.

Second, whatever’s glowing red here clearly isn’t isn’t “molten” in the sense of “melted”.There may possibly be something dripping off one end, but we don’t know what that is.

Third, there seems an odd lack of conduction amongst the materials being picked up. We can see that the excavator has picked up a considerable amount of nearby material that presumably was very close to the same heat source, and it looks like glowing metal, but it’s completely black. There’s no orange -- bright red -- dull red transition across the materials, it’s just a straight orange to black. Steel isn’t a good conductor of heat, it’s true, but is that enough to explain the photo?

And fourth, we know there were underground fires at the site for some time. How hot could they get? Depends on the materials and the supply of oxygen, but in some cases the temperatures can be surprisingly high:

-----------------

Australia is the home of one of the world's few naturally burning coal seams... The fire temperature reaches temperatures of 1,700°C deep beneath the ground.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/enviro/EnviroRepublish_786127.htm

-------------------

Coal fires produce higher temperatures than we’d expect from the debris pile, but then Steve Jones suggests we only need 845°C to 1,040°C to explain our glowing steel. Could that be produced with the materials available, and oxygen filtering in from above, or from the subways connected to the WTC basement level?

There’s a clue in the results of this fire test intended to simulate conditions in a timber frame building:

------------------

Peak temperatures in the living area of the fire flat reached approximately 1000°C and remained at this level until the test was stopped at 64 minutes...

Despite average atmosphere temperatures in excess of 900°C for 30 minutes...

http://www.mace.manchester.ac.uk/project/research/structures/strucfire/CaseStudy/Timber/default.htm

------------------

The Structural Fire Engineering department of the University of Manchester tells us that adding plastics to the mix can make things hotter still:

-------------------

The standard fires do not always represent the most severe fire conditions. Structural members having been designed to standard fires may fail to survive in real fires. For example, the modern offices tend to contain large quantities of hydrocarbon fuels in decoration, furniture, computers and electric devices, in forms of polymers, plastics, artificial leathers and laminates etc. Consequently, the fire becomes more severe than the conventional standard fire.
BAC - here is the source

----------------------

Office fires can be severe, then. What temperatures are achievable? The same page details four different fire types, and shows their temperature range over time.

----------------------

Figure 1 shows the various nominal fire curves for comparison. It can be seen that, over a period of 2 hours, the hydrocarbon fire is the most severe followed by the standard fire, with the external fire being the least severe fire although the slow heating fire represents the lowest temperature up to 30 minutes. It is noteworthy that for standard and smouldering fires, the temperature continuously increases with increasing time. For the external fire, the temperature remains constant at 680°C after approximate 22 minutes. Whereas for the hydrocarbon fires, the temperatures remain constant at 1100°C and 1120°C after approximate 40 minutes.
(BAC - here is the source)

------------------------

Note that the hydrocarbon fire passed 1000 degrees Centrigrade (1832°F) very quickly, and even the smouldering fire reached this point over time.

An article by two Arup Fire engineers tells a similar story, pointing out that under some conditions fires can reach much higher temperatures than indicated by the standard curve. Here’s the chart they use:


Source

This shows that temperature increases with fire load (that is, more fuel). And they point out that reduced ventilation doesn’t necessarily have the result you’d expect:

The well ventilated compartments experienced lower temperatures and fires of shorter duration.

Less ventilation means more severe fires? This obviously only works up to a point -- reduce the oxygen supply too much and the fire will die down -- but it does illustrate that the relationship between ventilation and temperature isn’t a simple one.

Another study offers more confirmation of the temperatures that can be reached in fires, and their effect on steel. BRE (Building Research Establishment) carried out a project based around "the development and validation of a CFD-based engineering methodology for evaluating thermal action on steel and composite structures" a few years ago. They build a fire compartment, used various loads (either wood, or wood with plastic) and reported peak temperatures:

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As can be seen in the above table, peak measured temperatures exceeded 1300°C in five tests, this measurement being supported by the observation of total heat fluxes of up to 350 kW/m2 and velocities of over 15m/s.

These values are somewhat higher than those observed in typical full-scale compartment fire tests and can be attributed in part to the highly insulating walls, the inclusion of plastic in the fuel and the short residence times (due to high flow rates).
http://projects.bre.co.uk/FRSdiv/ecsc/

----------------------

Again, ordinary fuels with a little plastic, and the right conditions, yielded high temperatures. And this applied even to the steel itself, where the maximum temperature record in four tests proved to be 1220, 1301, 1245 and 1196 °C (that’s a peak of 2372 °F).

Do these temperatures exist in special conditions only? No. A National Fire and Arson Report article from 1992 details the tests done on four steel mattress springs from a normal fire, which appeared to be partly melted:

-----------------------

The apparently melted ends of each of the four springs were cut off and mounted in a metallurgical mounting medium, polished, etched, and examined at up to 500x. Three of the four springs exhibited a decarburized ferrite microstructure, with oxidation on the top surface. Such a microstructure is typical of steel exposed to temperatures in the range of 1800°F [982 °C].

One of the wire ends exhibited a ferrite microstructure with oxidation on the top surface and incipient melting at the grain boundaries. This particular wire end had attained temperatures of between 2100°F [1148 °C] and 2200°F [1204 °C]. This wire end had, in fact, just begun to melt, which is what we would expect if there was melting further down the wire.
http://www.atslab.com/fire/PDF/MeltedSteel.pdf

-----------------------

It doesn’t require special materials for a fire to approach 1000°C, then. And in this final case, one steel spring sample could have attained temperatures as high as 1204 °C. Whether the conditions in the debris pile would allow it is another matter, but beware people who dismiss this out of hand: no-one knows for sure.

None of this proves anything, of course, but it is interesting. Especially because, if this is an accurate photo of what someone was describing as “molten steel” then it’s clearly different from the entirely “liquid steel” that some people imagine.

There’s some support for this use of “molten” elsewhere.

------------------------

NYDS played a major role in debris removal — everything from molten steel beams to human remains — running trucks back and forth between Ground Zero and Fresh Kills landfill, which was reopened to accommodate the debris.
http://wasteage.com/mag/waste_dday_ny_sanitation/

------------------------

A “molten” steel beam? If it’s a steel beam, then it’s not “molten” in the sense of being liquid metal. Does he just mean steel that appeared deformed, or was glowing when first removed from the debris pile?

Back to the Allison Geyh story, there's no explanation of how a public health investigator is going to identify molten steel. Is she just reporting second-hand accounts that we’ve discovered already, perhaps from Peter Tully? We emailed to ask, and it turns out that Geyh saw no molten steel herself, and is only repeating what she heard from someone else:

------------------------

I personally saw open fires, glowing and twisted I-beams. I was told, but do not remember by whom, that the workers were finding molten steel.
From here

------------------------

Of course you could argue that there are too many stories to be “explained away”, that there’s no way fire alone could account for all these reports. But if so, what about these?

--------------------------

Underground it was still so hot that molten metal dripped down the sides of the wall from Building 6. (Kenneth Holden, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Design and Construction)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/congress/9-11_commission/030401-holden.htm

---------------------------

RICH GARLOCK: Going below, it was smoky and really hot. We had rescue teams with meters for oxygen and carbon dioxide. They also had temperature monitors. Here WTC 6 is over my head. The debris past the columns was red-hot, molten, running.
http://www.pbs.org/americarebuilds/engineering/engineering_debris_06.html

---------------------------

Only “molten metal” and debris, but if that phrase is good enough in Keith Eaton’s testimony, why not here? Does this show that thermite was planted in Building 6, too? Or could it be that the fire was enough, after all?

To finish, none of these stories prove there was molten (as in liquid) steel at the WTC. There's no evidence temperatures were hot enough to produce that (whatever the energy source), and some of the stories claiming "molten steel" have built-in implausibilities. There was certainly glowing metal, but this only indicates temperatures within the range of a fire.

****************

You see folks?

There is always more to a story than the conspiracy crowd would have you believe.

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-03-11   18:35:26 ET  (4 images) Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: robin, ALL (#0)

EVIDENCE OF SULFIDATION

You want to understand the role of sulfur at the WTC, robin? You'd be better served reading what a chemist says rather than a hack journalist and a physicist who spent the last 30 years studying sub-atomic particle reactions and cold fusion.

Here: http://www.911myths.com/Sulfur.pdf

And just for the record Professor Jonathan Barnett doesn't for one minute think that bombs or thermate had ANYTHING to do with the collapse of the WTC towers. Even if Bollyn would dishonestly like you to think that he does.

I can't believe anyone would be foolish enough to believe Bollyn at this point, after all the dishonesty he has resorted to in his many articles. Perhaps you should also believe that a giant energy beam from space destroyed the WTC towers ... because Bollyn at one time wrote an article to that effect too.

I'm really having to struggle to keep from laughing ...

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-03-11   18:44:18 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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