scott3x said:
And they're perfectly correct in this. The problem is that molten metal was seen before and after the WTC collapse; since the fires couldn't have done it...
The only place molten metal was observed was the basement of WTC 6, and that was because there was target ammunition stored there (not surprising really).
Not by a long shot. Here's another blurb that accompanies a video recording of one fairly well known example:
Seconds before the WTC South Tower collapse, tons of molten metal was seen pouring out of the building. What caused large quantities of molten ferrous metal to be in the WTC South Tower? One answer could be Thermite. Thermite is used in controlled demolition and high temperature molten iron is formed as a by-product
And the video ietself:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3408887492231274773
There's also much more evidence of molten metal, as made clear in 9/11 Research's article
Molten Metal.
scott3x said:
but it goes on with some far fetched story about it probably being molten aluminum, which scientists such as Steven Jones have categorically disproved.
I'm calling bull-shit on this.
I'm calling bullshit, because the only way to positively rule one metal out over any other is with a sample.
Or so you believe. You may want to read Steven Jones' paper "Revisiting 9/11/2001 --Applying the Scientific Method"; For those who so dislike "truther" websites, you can even download it from NIST's website now:
http://wtc.nist.gov/media/JonesWTC911SciMethod.pdf
He starts on page 16; by page 17, he brings up 4 possibilities to explain the molten metal, the second one being the one that NIST went with. They are:
1. Perhaps the structural steel in the buildings melted nad is flowing out.
2. Perhaps it is molten aluminum from the aircraft that melted and is flowing out, perhaps with added organics from burning office materials.
3. A mix of the two (above) including office materials, etc.
4. Molten metals (e.g., molten iron) produced by highly exothermic chemical reactions (e.g., aluminothermic/thermite reactions)
He then does experiments to determine which one holds up. From his work, it's clear that the only one that holds up to testing is #4. But don't take my word for it; read it yourself.
It could, for example, have been lead from the UPS's. And before you pull "But molten lead doesn't glow like that, see", while this statement is correct, it's a red herring. Metals glow like that because of black body radiation, and any metal at 900°C is still going to glow approximately the same colour, irrespective of it's composition.
Even NIST doesn't go for your lead hypothesis. As to any metal, it doesn't work with aluminum, atleast. Steven Jones explains why, beginning on page 17 of the aforementioned paper:
To test the second hypothesis, we performed experiments with molten aluminum. We melted aluminum alloy in a steel pan and poured out the aluminum. It appeared silvery, not glowing orange as observed at the South Tower. We then heated the steel pan until it was glowing yellow-hot and poured out the aluminum, and the flowing aluminum was still observably silvery. How do you get aluminum to 1000 °C (orange-hot temperature) if the aluminum is liquid and free to flow, unless there’s a big pan in the building to hold the aluminum while you heat it past its melting point?
The reason why hot flowing aluminum appears silvery is very understandable. Simple metals incandesce when you heat them up, and orange hot represents a temperature of about 1000 °C. Aluminum alloy melts at roughly 600 °C. We heated the steel pan and saw the pan glow yellow-orange. However, the melted aluminum contains many free electrons and will therefore reflect more light. Aluminum also has a low emissivity, meaning that the aluminum is glowing/incandescing but only very faintly. In daylight conditions, the liquid appears silvery due to the high reflectivity particularly when poured out. The glowing liquid flowing from the South Tower could not be aluminum because it does not appear silvery -- rather, it has an “orange glow” (in NIST’s words and by observation also).
Also, aluminum is very difficult to ignite. We found that out by directing an oxyacetylene torch onto molten aluminum – and it oxidized but did not ignite with an “unusual flame” – no flame from the aluminum was seen at all.
NIST in a fact sheet in August 2006 stated:
“NIST concluded that the source of the molten material [observed flowing out of WTC2 before its collapse] was aluminum alloys from the aircraft, since these are known to melt between 475 °C and 640 °C (depending on the particular alloy), well below the expected temperatures (about 1,000 °C) in the vicinity of the fires.
“Aluminum is not expected to ignite at normal fire temperatures and there is no visual indication that the material flowing from the tower was burning.
“Pure liquid aluminum would be expected to appear silvery.”
“However, the molten metal was very likely mixed with large amounts of hot, partially burned, solid organic materials (e.g., furniture, carpets, partitions and computers) which can display an orange glow, much like logs burning in a fireplace. The apparent color also would have been affected by slag formation on the surface.”
I read the word “can” in the NIST report and as a scientist wanted to perform experiments. Why didn’t NIST do the experiments before making that statement (or did they)? Did they even try to mix aluminum with organics and pour the mixture out (like the flowing material at the South Tower) to show that it not only “can” but “will” emit an “orange glow”? We decided to perform the experiment ourselves.
The very next day after reading the NIST fact sheet in August 2006, a colleague and I performed experiments with aluminum mixed with organic materials, mostly wood chips. The flow was silvery and simply did not resemble the orange liquid which poured from the south tower. The organics burned quickly when added to the molten aluminum. The ash floated on top of the aluminum liquid.
A young physics professor told me that he couldn’t believe NIST would not have done the experiment to see if this worked – that one “can” get an “orange glow” by adding organic ash to aluminum. So we did another set of experiments and he joined the effort. This time we used wood ash from my wood-burning stove, pieces of carpet, plastic chips, later glass, and melted it all together with molten aluminum. [By the way, my wood-burning stove is made of steel and I don’t worry a bit that it will melt!] The young physicist doggedly stirred and stirred the mix with a long-bladed screwdriver. He tried to mix the organics in with the molten aluminum, but they would not mix in! It’s like oil and water, the organics tend to float and separate from the molten aluminum. And then in the end we poured the concoction out and the flow still looked silvery. He agreed with that because he saw it. Silvery, not orange. So much for the NIST Fact Sheet30 which states that “the molten metal was very likely mixed with large amounts of hot, partially burned, solid organic materials (e.g., furniture, carpets, partitions and computers) which can display an orange glow.”
If NIST can tell us how to do this trick, we will do the experiment again to test their suggestion. Meanwhile, we have observed that the organics float to the surface but do not make a uniform orange glow. Conclusion: poured out molten aluminum looks silvery (even if heated to the point where iron glows yellow/orange) and does not give the orange glow seen at the South Tower in the flowing material (even when mixed with organic materials).
If you don't like lead from the UPS's, there's always the Babbit metal in the elevators.
I'm sure many people could come up with various theories that neither the government or the truth movement supports. However, if neither side is going for it, you may consider that there's probably good reason for it.
