Molten metal vs. Molten steel

I keep hearing from people that:

a). When we talk about the molten steel, we don't know that it was steel.

b). There was no molten steel but maybe it was just red hot.

c). It was other metals and not steel.

etc., etc. etc. ad nauseum.

Well, here is the structural engineer (Leslie Robinson) in his own words at a conference for Structural Enginners Association of Utah on October 5th, 2001. Which would be 24 days after 9/11. Read what he had to say.

As of 21 days after the attack, the fires were still burning and molten steel was still running. What concrete that wasn't pulverized into dust will continue to be removed for weeks to come. The structural steel is being removed and shipped by barge to be recycled."

Source: www.seau.org...

Three things about this quote that should jump out at us.

1. He specifically says molten steel. Now, I would imagine that a structural engineer of Leslie Robinson's stature to be able to determine whether it was steel or other metals.

2. He specifically states that the molten steel was still running 21 days later. That's a heck of alot of steel to be running for 21 days. I guess the quotes of "tons of molten steel" really is about right.

3. He states what we already knew. That the structural steel was being barged away for recycling. That was only 21 days later. I guess a thourough analysis wouldn't be prudent to understand what happened?

What do you all think?

Originally posted by Griff
I keep hearing from people that:

a). When we talk about the molten steel, we don't know that it was steel.

b). There was no molten steel but maybe it was just red hot.

These are two mutually exclusive arguments, so hopefully not the same person makes both of them at the same time, or else they'd be contradicting themselves.

The first statement is true enough, but we can form educated opinions, and look at other testimonies and even the molten metal seen coming out of WTC2.

Now, I would imagine that a structural engineer of Leslie Robinson's stature to be able to determine whether it was steel or other metals.

I would hope so, but it's probably more of a metallurgist's field since it's heated.

Another witness said this:

In the first few weeks, sometimes when a worker would pull a steel beam from the wreckage, the end of the beam would be dripping molten steel

www.gcn.com...

Sounds kind of like this:








And another witness said this:

I talked to many contractors and they said they actually saw molten metal trapped, beams had just totally had been melted because of the heat. So this was the kind of heat that was going on when those airplanes hit the upper floors. It was just demolishing heat.

911research.wtc7.net...


These are even more explicit, imo, because there were definitely not talking about structural beams of any other type of metal in those buildings.

This is molten aluminum:



I've never seen it in person to my memory, but I've seen it on the History and Discovery channels often enough and what I've always been led to understand has held up: aluminum does not glow like steel does.

You have to have a dimly-lit room to see molten aluminum glow, and it's still faint compared to steel, and its surface cools back to silvery as soon as it's exposed to the air.

The molten metal falling from WTC2 stayed orange all the way down:

It was steel.

The president of Tully Construction of Flushing, NY, said he saw pools of "literally molten steel" at Ground Zero. Bollyn also cites Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition Inc. (CDI) of Phoenix, MD, as having seen molten steel in the bottoms of elevator shafts "three, four, and five weeks" after the attack.

A report by Waste Age describes New York Sanitation Department workers moving "everything from molten steel beams to human remains." 2

A report on the Government Computer News website quotes Greg Fuchek, vice president of sales for LinksPoint Inc. as stating:
In the first few weeks, sometimes when a worker would pull a steel beam from the wreckage, the end of the beam would be dripping molten steel 3

A Messenger-Inquirer report recounts the experiences of Bronx firefighter "Toolie" O'Toole, who stated that some of the beams lifted from deep within the catacombs of Ground Zero by cranes were "dripping from the molten steel." 4

A transcription of an audio interview of Ground Zero chaplain Herb Trimpe contains the following passage:
...
I talked to many contractors and they said they actually saw molten metal trapped, beams had just totally had been melted because of the heat. 5

A report in the Johns Hopkins Public Health Magazine about recovery work in late October quotes Alison Geyh, Ph.D., as stating:

Fires are still actively burning and the smoke is very intense. In some pockets now being uncovered, they are finding molten steel. 6

A publication by the National Environmental Health Association quotes Ron Burger, a public health advisor at the National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who arrived at Ground Zero on the evening of September 12th. Burger stated:

Feeling the heat, seeing the molten steel, the layers upon layers of ash, like lava, it reminded me of Mt. St. Helen’s and the thousands who fled that disaster. 7
An article in The Newsletter of the Structural Engineers Association of Utah describing an speaking appearance by Leslie Robertson (structural engineer responsible for the design of the World Trade Center) contains this passage:

As of 21 days after the attack, the fires were still burning and molten steel was still running. 8

Molten Aluminum does not glow when heated, stainless steel will glow when heated however. There would be no other metal but steel being used when they refer to structural steel. There may be aluminum here and there, and stainless here and there, but the majority of any structure to a building is going to be steel. Aluminum is not strong enough, and there would be no need for stainless for interior structure. There are different grades of Steel, depending on what other elements are mixed with Iron, to establish a certain strength, elasticity etc. different elements etc, but still considered steel, so I think when they say molten steel that is precisely what it is.

Originally posted by bsbray11

I've never seen it in person to my memory, but I've seen it on the History and Discovery channels often enough and what I've always been led to understand has held up: aluminum does not glow like steel does.

You have to have a dimly-lit room to see molten aluminum glow, and it's still faint compared to steel, and its surface cools back to silvery as soon as it's exposed to the air.

The molten metal falling from WTC2 stayed orange all the way down:

I have seen these pictures and that's where I like to question...that piece of heavy equipment..if that beam or whatever is at 1,700- 2,500 degrees, what kind of effect on the hydrolics would that have?

Does aluminum change color if mixed with carpet, gypsum, computer equipment, plastics, glass, concrete, etc etc?

Originally posted by CaptainObvious
I have seen these pictures and that's where I like to question...that piece of heavy equipment..if that beam or whatever is at 1,700- 2,500 degrees, what kind of effect on the hydrolics would that have?

It was not picked up by the excavator, but attached to the material that was being picked up. Thus no contact, no real danger.

I suspect that no one would actually try to dig into molten steel, because that would be stupid. One or two of the accounts above describe molten material hanging off the end of a beam that was pulled up.

Does aluminum change color if mixed with carpet, gypsum, computer equipment, plastics, glass, concrete, etc etc?

No, and the actual science behind the reason metals glow in the first place indicates this, something like Planck's black body radiation law:

en.wikipedia.org...

NIST's assertion of organics changing the light emission is confused, has no studies behind it to confirm it, and the only test anyone has attempted contradicted it.

BSB:

The only way I can imagine contaminants making the thing look different WRT color would be if they were hot enough to emit gases that were excited enough to radiate visible transition photons.

The temperature of molten steel is hot enough to work, but I don't think you get visible transitions in solids at that temperature. You'd have to have enough outgassing in the 1000C range to see - which probably didn't happen.

Think flame testing of metallic salts - it could work to slightly change the perceived BBR colors but I doubt it.

At 21 days post-event, and with beams dipped into the pools acting as heat sinks, I think it's pretty evident that this metal isn't still molten from residual heat from whatever caused the collapse. There's a heat source under there, and I'm betting that the "fires" that are still going on are one source.

Ok, there are some picture of some pretty hot steel beams there. I wonder where they were being removed from? One of the towers or one of the smaller buildings near by.

Looks to me like there was kind of a kiln effect in work there. A good hot fire in an insulated area with limited oxygen.

Originally posted by JIMC5499
Looks to me like there was kind of a kiln effect in work there. A good hot fire in an insulated area with limited oxygen.

I could see that if it was at one spot. The reports of molten steel are from all 3 WTC sites. What are the odds that an office fire driven collapse could naturally make a kiln effect? Not just once, but at all three sites with three very different variables in the basements of those buildings.

What I mean is that the basements of WTC 1 & 2 were not identical. And were VERY much different from the basements of WTC 7. What are the odds of natural kiln effects happening at ALL three VERY different locations?

I'd have to say pretty darn high.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
The only way I can imagine contaminants making the thing look different WRT color would be if they were hot enough to emit gases that were excited enough to radiate visible transition photons.

The temperature of molten steel is hot enough to work, but I don't think you get visible transitions in solids at that temperature.

The problem is not the appearance of the steel but the fact that it's so hot in the first place, so this wouldn't establish anything terribly important even if it were true (and I don't think it would be a likely situation, either, or any other theory that resorts to so many materials just happening to be laying around together to produce the correct results in this one place -- the only corner that happened to be damaged by a flight impact). It would be a moot point anyway, and in fact I'd sooner believe that the molten flow out of WTC2 was iron, and not steel, in which case it wouldn't even really relate to the hot spots in the debris piles.

Originally posted by JIMC5499
Ok, there are some picture of some pretty hot steel beams there. I wonder where they were being removed from?

The areas that were under the towers before they fell.

Looks to me like there was kind of a kiln effect in work there. A good hot fire in an insulated area with limited oxygen.

Limiting the oxygen just limits the heat you're putting out, unless the fire you're talking about doesn't need oxygen, or at least doesn't need an "outside" source of oxygen, like the air. If this is what you're suggesting then I'd be more likely to agree. In a typical furnace, I think pre-heated oxygen is pumped in to feed the fire.

You say they look "pretty hot", would you not agree that it's by definition molten? Molten in this case meaning at least, "Brilliantly glowing, from or as if from intense heat"? (click) If not worse, because we have not seen everything, and we have further witness accounts of steel flowing like lava or as it would in a foundry.


For further reference, these are from about a month after 9/11, from a study carried out at least partially by a group of geologists working with clean-up personnel at the Ground Zero site:




Read the caption, too. The whole diagram is showing, according to itself, the location of molten steel hot spots after 9/11, over time.


Think about the immense area this graph really represents! All of this heat being several times greater than what could have been happening thousands of feet in the air, before the towers fell.

And the heat existed immediately after the collapses, and then only died out over a period of months. It was its hottest immediately afterwards, in other words, suggesting a direct relationship with something that happened during the collapses.


The original PDF is here: www.geo.hunter.cuny.edu...

[edit on 5-6-2007 by bsbray11]

The molten metal flowing out of the 81st floor of the South Tower just before it was destroyed was not steel but lead from the casings of many racks of lead batteries stored on that very floor. They had been stored there as backup to the computers used by Fuji Bank in case of a power failure. The journalist Christopher Bollyn revealed this originally:
www.iamthewitness.com...
But, influenced by the work of Prof. Steven Jones, he drew what I believe was the wrong conclusion, namely, that the batteries were dummies, filled with thermate that, once released from the damaged and melting batteries, attacked the steel in the reinforced floors heated by the raging fires. This idea is absurd because storing such a large quantity of thermate on one floor would have been pointless for weakening the tower. Confined to that floor, it would have been unable to melt parts of iron columns and steel girders many floors further down. No. What I suggest actually happened was simply that the numerous racks of lead batteries on the 81st floor (see photo of typical racks in Bollyn's article) melted (melting point of lead = 327.5 degrees Centigrade) onto the floor, which was not only reinforced to support the considerable weight of the batteries but raised above the original level, according to Bollyn's informant, an ex-Fuji bank employee. The pool of molten lead then flowed out through the windows.

People should ask themselves this: what was the chance of molten metal flowing out of the very floor hit by Flight 175, given that the fires could not have been hot enough to melt steel? This outflowing of molten metal did not occur on any other floor, so the reason why it happened had to do with what was stored on that floor and nowhere else. If thermate cutter charges had been elsewhere on that floor, as Steven Jones' theory suggests, molten metal would have flowed out from other parts of the same floor heated by the fires. Instead, it was confined to the one corner of the tower.

The argument between Jones and Judy Wood over whether aluminium can glow at high temperatures in sunlight is, I believe, irrelevant because it stems from the wrong identification of the metal.

All I have seen is some very hot metal, I have seen nothing to verify the so called pools of molten metal. If the pieces in these pictures are being removed from around a "pool of molten metal", I would expect to see some sort of a glow from the pool itself.

JIMC, there are multiples of testimonies relating that some metal was flowing like lava, or steel in a foundry, at Ground Zero, particularly underground and deep in the pits. Then we have a diagram from a team of geologists at the site, showing where the molten steel (their words, not mine) was located, so clean-up personnel would be better prepared for what was ahead of them.

What I want to ask you, is this: do you believe there was some kind of melted metal substance flowing like lava underneath the WTC in all the places that have been described by witnesses and other data? Or do you think these testimonies are wrong? And how do you decide what testimonies to believe at face value and which to declare wrong, aside from what you already believe and naturally look to reinforce?

They said molten steel was in all of the locations shown by their diagram, so was this geological team mistaken in identifying a metal, or was there really not anything molten in any of those places at all? What are they really showing, JIMC?

[edit on 5-6-2007 by bsbray11]

I have read an e-mail from the boss of Controlled Demolitions Inc, one of the four companies contracted to clear up Ground Zero, in which he said that he did not PERSONALLY see any pools of molten metal at Ground Zero. His well-known remarks were misunderstood. They were based upon what some of his contractors had supposedly told him. So this story about underground molten metal is based upon hearsay from anonymous sources. I put no weight in them.

In any structure fire there will always be hotspots in the rubble/debris. A small 1000sq ft. house can flare back up 1-3 days later depending on the fire, the location of hotspots...many factors.

A kiln is made mostly from concrete mixture known as firebricks. I think we can all agree that if hotspots exist that given the scale and depth of debris that the Towers would have larger hotspots and given the material it may have acted like a kiln.

Blacksmiths that smelt their on metal for casting can melt steel with charcol brickets depending on how they build their foundry. I have watched a guy melt a circular saw sawblade in a fire made from logs and sticks and had a hand cranked blower. His fire container was just an regular steel 55 gallon barrel. he started his fire with a newspaper and a Bic lighter. That was exotic as it got. He made a halfway decent homemade knife and sold it to the guy that gave him the sawblade for $10 for his labor. It took about 45 minutes total.

I can see that pools of molten steel could have easily happened at the towers. With heat transferance over time buried under all that concrete acting like a kiln. When they finally cooled, they would make intersting shapes. I can even see the so called "meteorites" being formed this way.

As for the famous photo of the fire fighters supposedly gazing down into a hole at molten metal, I have seen a version of it in which the light coming up from the hole is white, not orange-yellow. This indicates that what was happening was that they were huddled around a hole, shining their lanterns to illuminate it as they searched for bodies at night. The white illumination in the original photo must have been altered to create the false scenario that the fire fighters were gazing into a pool of molten metal. That's hardly plausible because the photo shows them to be so close to it that the furnace-like heat would have burnt the skin off their faces! There are lots of such photos and film footage that have been edited by government cointelpros to create false trails for the 9/11 truth movement, such as the 'no planes' theory. The naive, however, get duped, especially those desperately searching for evidence that thermate was used in the towers.

Originally posted by Ahabstar
In any structure fire there will always be hotspots in the rubble/debris. A small 1000sq ft. house can flare back up 1-3 days later depending on the fire, the location of hotspots...many factors.

A kiln is made mostly from concrete mixture known as firebricks. I think we can all agree that if hotspots exist that given the scale and depth of debris that the Towers would have larger hotspots and given the material it may have acted like a kiln.

Blacksmiths that smelt their on metal for casting can melt steel with charcol brickets depending on how they build their foundry. I have watched a guy melt a circular saw sawblade in a fire made from logs and sticks and had a hand cranked blower. His fire container was just an regular steel 55 gallon barrel. he started his fire with a newspaper and a Bic lighter. That was exotic as it got. He made a halfway decent homemade knife and sold it to the guy that gave him the sawblade for $10 for his labor. It took about 45 minutes total.

I can see that pools of molten steel could have easily happened at the towers. With heat transferance over time buried under all that concrete acting like a kiln. When they finally cooled, they would make intersting shapes. I can even see the so called "meteorites" being formed this way.

No chance. Your blacksmith still needs a blower. Steel melts at around 1370 degrees Centigrade - far too hot for any kerosene-fuelled fires in a building to achieve. Ask any fire fighter and he will tell you: steel girders in a building on fire do NOT melt.

Mentioned a hand cranked blower. Never said building on fire created melted steel...Honestly subjective and selective reading does not make good fact finding when presenting a counterpoint.

BSB:

Immediately after the collapse you also have the most fuel -

But I can't seriously see from an engineering standpoint how a pool of molten metal could remain molten for that long of a time without significant heat input.

Especially in the cases where other large steel members were "dipped in it at one end" and serve as additional heat radiating surface - sort of like a big heat sink. Maybe if it was perfectly insulated, but with the heat imaging showing the thermal hot spots that doesn't seem to be possible either, does it?

I won't argue with there being small pools of molten METAL. I have seen nothing to prove that these were pools of STEEL. Some of the pictures here have shown hot steel. My brother-in-law was looking at the picture of the claw removing the beams and said that he sees stuff like that all of the time at work when they use an Oxygen Lance to cut large beams.Oxygen Lance