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Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
Not at all - it's a crucial lack of understanding. Confusing temperature with heat is like confusing power and energy. It leads to you making incorrect conclusions. "Was exposed to temps" is meaningless unless you know how much energy the temperature source can deliver and over what timeframe the temperatures were present.
Now when you start talking about being exposed to the heat flash of a nuke at close range, you're back into the point I'm trying to make. It doesn't heat it all the way through instantaneously to the same temperature. With a heat flash, you get heat transfer into a beam faster than the beam can transport it, so there's a huge temperature gradient. The surface layers ablate, the "rind" if you will softens but the core may remain cool for several milliseconds, it depends on the steel, its thickness, the energy delivery rate and a host of secondary factors. But the issue is that the outer surface is going to be damaged, and if bent while in that condition the "rind" will become plastic and "ripple" in the bend area. There's a weird annealing pattern you see also with the outer part annealed and grain remaining in the center.
Do you see any steel "splats" on the surface, or saggy melted looking structural steel?
Originally posted by VicRH
I wonder if perhaps whatever the infamous red mercury is then it could be the culprit for persistant heat source, rather than the bomb itself. I have heard different stories as to what red mercury actually is but if it can get a fusion reaction going, who knows what sort of residual it may leave and/or how long it persists.
Prof. S. Jones had a few pictures showing something like that.
Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
Cool photo on the first link - I see yellow but what IS that. I see a light piece of steel lying across the first spot and it's not molten. Is that just light from a fire under the rubble, do you think?
As far as the stuff pouring out, isn't that backup batteries melting down?
Originally posted by VicRH
I think the last image pretty much goes to show there was molten iron before the collapse so it goes to show that atleast some of it wasn't generated by cooking away in the pile.