Nyctohylophobia: Thomas Eagar on molten steel

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Thomas Eagar on molten steel

MYTH
Molten steel from the WTC was generated by incendiaries and explosives

Thomas Eagar weighs in on this widely repeated claim, which conspiracy theorist and BYU black sheep Steven E. Jones promotes in a 42-page paper: "Having said that, I think that the best way to refute the molten steel hypothesis is to inform people that molten metal is not the equal of molten steel. I have little doubt that some aluminum from the aircraft melted (about 1100 F for the alloys used and well within the capacity of the fires). As I noted in my article, some had suggested a thermite reaction and I indicated that the brilliant white light from burning Aluminum (about 4000 F) would have been unmistakable, but was not observed. The photos which I have seen by the conspiracy theorists which shows glowing metal, shows a red glow or a red orange glow. This is NOT molten steel. Anyone who has ever seen molten steel even in a small weld puddle knows that it it yellow white in color. As temperature increases we go from red (800-900 F) like a kitchen electric range heater (will not melt aluminum pots) to red orange (1100-1200 F- molten aluminum) to orange (1500-1800) to yellow (2000-2300) to yellow white (2500-2800- molten steel) to white (3000 F and above with increasing light intensity, like a tungsten incandescent light bulb.) If you put the temperatures into common sense colors that people know, then they can go back to Steven jones' photos and anyone can conclude for themselves that the red or red orange glows that they say are molten steel is really just proof that they have never worked around molten metal. Welders, casters plumbers and many other professionals know the colors of molten metals and Prof Jones simply is an uninformed academic, who enjoys the attention that all of you are giving him. I do not care to bask in such 'glory'."

I put a popular photo at the bottom of this post; there is also a photo of molten substance pouring from the WTC prior to its collapse. If you'd like to comment on this post, please don't tell me the substance pouring out is thermite or steel; it's aluminum. How do we know that? There are a few points. It behaves like aluminum (NIST, etc.), and is probably a mix of aluminum and some other stuff. Yes, molten aluminum is silver at low temperatures but the oxygen generators in the plane and other volatiles made the hydrocarbon fires exceed 2000 F. You might counter that aluminum wouldn't have been exposed to these temperatures because it flowed away from the heat source. There are reasons to doubt that; the floor was warped from the 550+ mph jet impact, and a dam was almost certainly created by the shape of the floor and the objects that fell onto it. This is what made the molten aluminum yellow in the video which conspiracy theorists refer to.

Now, the photo below does not show molten steel. The hydrocarbon fires and rubble fires never got hot enough for steel to melt, and if that was melting steel it would be yellow-white to white hot rather than orange to yellow-orange. You might say that thermite/thermate in the Twin Towers raised the temperature to 4000F but if temperatures ever reached that much the aluminum, like Thomas Eagar says above, would be glowing a brilliant white, which it didn't. I don't know what the photo below does show, but I know what it doesn't (molten/melted steel). In this case I put the put the available physical/forensic evidence above anecdotal eyewitness evidence (and yes, I've read the reports cited by proponents of the controlled demolition theory).