Great post, by the way. It's great to see the physical evidence on the other side.
Going point by point, the heat reached by combustibles in the rubble pile had a good possibility of reaching 1000 C, given that NIST determined that a simple couch set on fire could produce temperatures as high as 1100 C. Temperatures of about 1800 C were observed in the towers for the first ten minutes, and about 1000 C after that until they collapsed. Factoring the oxidation of the heated steel and the insular effect of the debris, it is well within possibility to see molten sulfidated iron in the rubble. In the time between impact and collapse, though, I'm not sure if there was much sulfidated iron at all. This leads us to the molten material seen flowing out of the towers.
The NIST report suggests that the flow may be aluminum mixed with organics and glass, but doesn't actually give an answer in the affirmative. Aluminum, of course, is silver when molten and doesn't glow, whereas iron does glow orange, as observed, but aluminum does have a silvery color when it cools, as the liquid seems to. The color observed could be due to a small flow of aluminum mixed with a great deal of other very hot materials, all on fire. Glass, for example, glows orange when hot. As much as the next person, though, I would like to see an experiment performed on this by an independent scientific group, just to be sure. That is not to say that thermite isn't also a guess as to the identity of the flow.
If thermite was being used to cut supports, why is molten iron flowing from the side of the building at such a rate, and at a single point on the structure? One presumes that the core columns would be the target of such a large amount of thermite/thermate products, or that multiple flows of iron would be observed around the structure, clearly attacking the outside support structure.
The point about the seismic evidence is a good one, but ultimately it comes down to the researcher's word against the seismologists who recorded the data. They claimed any device designed to defeat the structure's columns would cause those same forces to be transmitted to the ground via the columns, causing a telltale spike. The video demonstrating a thermite cutting tool also seems to suggest that the size of the devices in the building would need to be truly massive to have the desired effect, which puts the explosive theory further in doubt.
In the case of WTC7 my earlier points, that the structure's design made it vulnerable to just the sort of progressive collapse that was observed, still stand.
Regarding the dust, I've read that the sphericles observed in the WTC dust can be explained by the iron and sulfur content of the buildings themselves, present in many materials that made up the structures, without resorting to thermite reactions. Concrete, for example, could easily contain such particles. In order that the sphericles be good evidence, it must be shown that their concentration was far too high to be explained by the structural materials, but as far as I can tell thermite is argued based on their mere existence.
Good points, though, as far as they go, and the flow of molten material is, of course, interesting in its own right, but I don't think the evidence points to either thermite or conventional explosives.
|
|
Bookmarks