Coincidental Thermite Reactions

a very interesting paper from a seemingly sharp guy....

www.911myths.com...

this is the very first time i have seen an explanation that makes me doubt that bombs were purposely planted in the towers.

apparently molten aluminum is highly volatile, and can result in thermite reactions when in contact with many of the substances available at the impact zone. this is also a 'good' explanation (if not 'satisfactory' to me, yet, i'm hardcore, baby!) of the molten metal in the sublevels.

a chemist is now the required 'expert' to confirm or deny dr. greening's(phd.) conclusions.

beats the hell out of the 'bellows' and the 'pancakes' and the 'zipper' theories.

dr. greening also states that tower seven is a 'problem' because it wasn't hit by an airplane.



[edit on 21-1-2006 by billybob]

greening is a total hackjob and this theory is absurd.

think about it....

he is trying to assert there was a NATURAL controlled demolition!

it's ridiculous.

where are the pools of molten aluminum at the pentagon?

if the aluminum from the plane evaporated or "turned to confetti" at the pentagon it is ridiculous to think that at the wtc it caused thermite reactions in military precision so as to allow a free fall collapse at the wtc.





[edit on 22-1-2006 by Lyte Trizzle]

I read that piece as well, and while it appears reasonable at first, Greening's assuming uniform instant failure of the first floor (including all columns) to collapse and accounts for roughly 150ktons of structural material per tower even though each weighed about 500ktons. Additionally, he's doing guesswork concerning the energy dissipated per floor disassembly (i.e. the "braking" forces) excluding everything but the steel.

That doesn't seem like solid science to me.

[edit]

Btw. tracert www.911myths.com and look into "everyone's internet", their hosting company. Interesting to say the least.

[edit on 22-1-2006 by Lumos]

alrighty, then. cool.

i'm reading some other opinions that pretty much put some of his assumptions back where they ought to be.

one that i had a problem with, right away, was his assumption that only 10% of the concrete was crushed.

however, as i said, i'm no chemist. i brought this article to the attention of ats in hopes of some random wisdom on the probability of coincidental thermite reactions.

it seems that most of the time, when a story defending the official story comes out, it is a complicated, convoluted explanation that gets into microscopic detail, while ignoring the fact that the most important numbers and assumptions of their calculations are SUSPECT to say the least.

amyone work in an aluminum plant? is this coincidental thermite reaction a possibility?

i realise he is saying there was an 'accidental controlled demolition', but the thing is, as i see it, if there WAS one massive explosion on the affected floors, then many engineers would agree that the top would crush the bottom, as described by the official story.

of course, there are already many engineers who are saying that's what happened.

of course, many engineers have also assumed in their calculations that the floors of the tower wer ehovering there of their own free will.

it is heatening to see that although this guy says one and two fell because of 'accidental controlled demolition', lol, he admits that he can't explain diddly squat about seven.

alright, a wee bit of research later, haha, and i find out that greening is most likely another obfuscator.

these violent explosions of molten aluminum are NOT thermite reactions. they are caused by rapidly expanding STEAM. greening gives the impression that freed hydrogen molecules combine with yada yada chemistry, and cites aluminum plant explosions as 'evidence' that this is a well known phenomena.
well, it turns out, the danger isn't a chemical reaction, but rather steam expansion.

which makes greening a LIAR?

That appears somewhat likely...

From my understanding of chemistry, the thermite reaction, a common redox-reaction, is iron oxide + aluminium > iron + aluminium oxide, whereby both reactants are well blended powders to optimize the reaction. The crucial point here is the oxide, which readily provides the necessary oxygen for the quick, violent oxidation of the aluminium, something atmospheric air could not to the desired stoichiometric extent. The difference an adequate oxygen supply makes when it comes to oxidations, e.g. fire, is quite amazing: I've seen metal being literally evaporated by a burning cigar soaked in liquid oxygen.

Briefly put: aluminium and steel alone can't cause spontaneous thermite reactions, it takes oxide, or some other adequate oxygen supply.

Originally posted by Lumos
Btw. tracert www.911myths.com and look into "everyone's internet", their hosting company. Interesting to say the least.

Dude, as soon as I finished reading that article, I strongly suspected it to be put out to test the water for NIST's next big turd.

I've heard that for the WTC7 report, NIST was considering something along the same lines as that paper. Don't ask me how. I'm sure it'll run in as many nonsensical circles as a certain religious text that we're all familiar with.

We've already seen god-knows-how-many gravity theories on how the buildings fell: all variations of pancakes; pancakes and zippers; buckling, bulging, buckling and bulging at the same time (); column failure theories pertaining to the core; to the perimeter; to trusses. And now naturally-occuring thermite. The only problems this one would potentially explain anyway would be the ones relating to the long, hot underground smolder. All the others still exist.

If it was a 'natural' thermite reaction, wouldn't NIST have picked up on that when they examined the steel? I think these theories are comming to light because somewhere there is evidence of thermite being used and 'they' are putting out plausible explainations before the fact comes out. Any thoughts?

This has now been officially debunked.

Proffessor Jones included it in the latest revision of his paper after my request and has even included footage that I forwarded him during our email exchange.

Dramatic footage reveals salmon-to-yellow-hot molten metal dripping from the South WTC Tower shortly before its collapse:

video.google.com... =cameraplanet+9%2F11.

The yellow color implies a molten-metal temperature of approximately 1000 oC, evidently above that which the dark-smoke hydrocarbon fires in the Towers could produce. If aluminum (e.g., from the plane) had melted, it would melt and flow away from the heat source at its melting point of about 650 oC and thus would not reach the yellow color observed for this molten metal. Thus, molten aluminum is in fact ruled out with high probability. But molten iron with the characteristics seen in this video is consistent with a thermite-reaction attacking the steel columns in the Tower, thus weakening the building just prior to its collapse, since thermite produces molten iron at yellow-to-white hot temperatures. The reader may wish to compare the dripping molten metal observed on the corner of the South Tower just before its collapse with the dripping molten metal from known thermite reactions, shown here:

media.putfile.com...


If some variation of the thermite reaction was indeed used to sever steel beams as strongly suggested by the photos and video above, then along with molten iron, aluminum oxide should be found in unusual abundance and particulate-size in the toxic dust from the collapses of the Towers and WTC 7. We intend to look for these residual end-products, in particular, for iron and entrained aluminum oxide in solidified slag extracted from one of the WTC-molten-metal pools.

Other explanations for the observations are sought, of course. For example, F. Greening has suggested that aluminum from the planes which struck the Towers could melt, and that this aluminum might fall on "rusted steel surfaces inducing violent thermite explosions." [Greening, 2006] So a few students and I did straightforward experiments by melting aluminum and dropping molten aluminum on pre-heated rusted steel surfaces. There were in fact NO "violent thermite" reactions seen. We observed that the temperature of the molten aluminum in contact with the rusty iron simply cooled at about 25 C per minute (using an infrared probe) until the aluminum solidified, so that any thermite reactions between the aluminum and iron oxide must have been minimal and did not compete with radiative and conductive cooling, thus NOT supporting predictions made by Greening. There was no observable damage or even warping of the steel. (See photograph below.) Nor were violent reactions observed when we dropped molten aluminum onto concrete. [Jones, 2006] These experiments lend no support whatever to the notion that molten aluminum in the WTC Towers could have destroyed the enormous steel columns in the cores of the buildings, even if those columns were rusty and somehow subjected to direct contact with molten aluminum. [See Greening, 2006] We also noted that while the steel pan holding the aluminum glowed red hot, the molten aluminum inside retained its silvery color, adding to the evidence that the molten metal dripping from the South Tower shortly before its collapse was NOT molten aluminum-- besides the fact that the salmon-yellow color of the molten metal (video clip above) implies a temperature too high for the dark-smoke hydrocarbon fires burning in the building.



Molten aluminum poured onto rusted steel: no violent reactions observed at all.

Thus, we find substantial evidence supporting the current conjecture that thermite (solid aluminum powder plus Fe2O3, with possible addition of sulfur) was used on the steel columns of the WTC Tower to weaken the huge steel supports, not long before explosives finished the demolition job. Roughly 3, 000 pounds of RDX-grade linear-shaped charges (which could have been pre-positioned by just a few men) would then suffice in each Tower and WTC 7 to cut the supports at key points so that gravity would bring the buildings straight down. The estimate is based on the amount of explosives used in controlled demolitions in the past and the size of the buildings. Radio-initiated firing of the charges is implicated here. Using computer-controlled radio signals, it would be an easy matter to begin the explosive demolition near the point of entry of the planes in the Towers.

source

I have a feeling that Jones is going to be a real pain for all of these guys trying to bolster the official story with add-on theories.

Greening should've taken lessons from NIST: you don't put forth too many assertions that can be easily verified or debunked; you put forward a bunch of unverifiable assertions as the base of your argument instead. That way, real scientist's can't go after NIST even if they wanted.

So much for Greening's natural thermite. Maybe he'll switch "sides" now.

Originally posted by billybob


a chemist is now the required 'expert' to confirm or deny dr. greening's(phd.) conclusions.

Hey Billybob. We have a member here, melatonin, whom i have talked with in the origins forum. He's a chemist and i believe he already has or is about to have his PhD. I'm sure he'd take a look at it for you and give an opinion.

Sure...have melatonin look into it.

But it has already been debunked with live experiments from a current experienced professor of physics from BYU.

Since there were no other metals in the Twin Towers that could melt at the temperatures present in WTC 1 & 2 during 9-11 – i.e. less than 800 C, it must be concluded that molten aluminum was produced in significant quantities from the melting of airframe debris in a least one Twin Tower (WTC 2).

www.911myths.com...

The debunkers are debunking the bunk!

So why doesn't Greening test his hypothesis himself?

All it would take is for him to use crushed instead of solid materials like Jones used.

I think the answer as to why he doesn't test it is obvious but I have emailed him to see how he will reply to such a challenge.

More later.

i really like this stephen jones guy.
and you guys, of course.

and 'janedoe'. i started a new thread, because it's a seperate focus...janedoe's billiard balls.

the thing is, if there is any merit to this argument(which i feel there is a lot of), then the whole thickness of columns, and fire temperatures arguments are pretty much moot.

OK, I've been asked to add something here. But just a quick note I only have a BSc (hons) in chemistry (1994) but did study/work in it from the age of 16 to 26yrs via part-time education whilst in full-time work (in R&D) and have a bit of knowledge of surface chemistry. The PhD I'm doing is actually in cognitive/clinical neuroscience.

Aluminium is highly reactive, however, in its anodised form takes a lot of energy to intiate a reaction (activation energy). So in the Iron (III) oxide reaction with aluminium powder usually needs a spark such as ignited magnesium. When this occurs, the reaction is violent and rapid.

So what I think the pictures above show is an attempt to illustrate how molten aluminium does not react with rusty iron.

Seems convincing, but aluminium oxidises very, very quickly (remember it is highly reactive) and generally the surface of molten aluminium will contain a lot of aluminium oxide. Just pouring the molten aluminium through the air, as illustrated above, will cause an oxide layer to form rapidly hindering any reaction at the surface. This causes problems with attempts to analyse the properties of molten aluminium in research.

But I make no claims about the 9-11 issue, except maybe to state - I would expect the circumstances to have readily supplied the activiation required for a thermite reaction (i.e. analogous to ignited magnesium).


[edit on 23-2-2006 by melatonin]

And you expect us to believe that this 'rare' aluminum reaction occurred 3 times on 9/11 ? And the reaction just happened to cause the all the vertical support structures to fail precisiely at the same time to induce a symetrical collapse ?

But wait even if this 'rare' aluminum reaction occurred in the upper floors ...... what caused the failure of the vertical columns below the impact areas ? Pancake theory would have taken much longer.

Originally posted by inobmaz
And you expect us to believe that this 'rare' aluminum reaction occurred 3 times on 9/11 ? And the reaction just happened to cause the all the vertical support structures to fail precisiely at the same time to induce a symetrical collapse ?

But wait even if this 'rare' aluminum reaction occurred in the upper floors ...... what caused the failure of the vertical columns below the impact areas ? Pancake theory would have taken much longer.

If that was at me.... believe what you want, I was just talking about the illustrated demonstration above and reactivity of Al...

The fact the guy even did the experiment standing next to the reaction shows he knew the oxide layer would form rapidly and no reaction would occur.

[edit on 23-2-2006 by melatonin]

But guys, this rapid oxidation will always occur in air, that's why thermite is already a blend of Fe2O3 and Al in the first place. Wouldn't any molten aluminium be exposed to atmospheric oxygen before it ever came in contact with structural steel in our case here?

Originally posted by melatonin
So in the Iron (III) oxide reaction with aluminium powder usually needs a spark such as ignited magnesium. When this occurs, the reaction is violent and rapid.

How could temperatures have been reached to ignite any magnesium that may have been in the building? Or to heat any other metal to a required temp, since it sounds like you would need a fairly high temperature to spark anything major.

Seems convincing, but aluminium oxidises very, very quickly (remember it is highly reactive) and generally the surface of molten aluminium will contain a lot of aluminium oxide. Just pouring the molten aluminium through the air, as illustrated above, will cause an oxide layer to form rapidly hindering any reaction at the surface. This causes problems with attempts to analyse the properties of molten aluminium in research.

How would this not be another problem with Greening's paper?

The whole thing is ridiculous anyway. For Greening to even present this case, he's first of all leaving out a lot of serious physics problems with the collapse according to pancake theory. The only thing he's attempting to help is NIST's inability to show how the collapses could have even initiated.