New theory explains collapse of Twin Towers- Aluminium and water explosions

[Magda Hassan]

New theory explains collapse of Twin Towers
Photo: Thomas Hinton / Zuma Press / SCANPIX
According to a theory advanced by a SINTEF materials scientist, a mixture of water from sprinkler systems and molten aluminium from melted aircraft hulls created explosions that led to the collapse of the Twin Towers in Manhattan.


Just before the two New York skyscrapers collapsed on September 11, 2001, powerful explosions within the building could be heard, leading many people to believe that overheated steel beams in the building were not the cause of the collapse.
The explosions fed the conspiracy theories that someone had placed explosives inside the towers.


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At an international materials technology conference in San Diego, the audience heard senior scientist Christian Simensen of SINTEF Materials and Chemistry (picture) present an alternative theory based on the physics of materials of what happened in the towers when they were attacked by the aircraft. The SINTEF researcher believes that his theory is much more likely to reflect the actual situation than the official explanation of the collapse.

In the wake of the conference Simensen had an article published in the journal "Aluminium International Today", describing his theory.
Explosive meeting of molten aluminium and water
Simensen believes that it is overwhelmingly likely that the two aircraft were trapped inside an insulating layer of building debris within the skyscrapers. This leads him to believe that it was the aircraft hulls rather than the buildings themselves that absorbed most of the heat from the burning aircraft fuel.
The SINTEF scientist believes that the heat melted the aluminium of the aircraft hulls, and the core of his theory is that molten aluminium then found its way downwards within the buildings through staircases and gaps in the floor and that the flowing aluminium underwent a chemical reaction with water from the sprinklers in the floors below.
"Both scientific experiments and 250 reported disasters suffered by the aluminium industry have shown that the combination of molten aluminium and water releases enormous explosions," says Simensen.


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[TD]Just before the two skyscrapers collapsed on September 11, 2001, powerful explosions within the building could be heard, Photo: Jim Collins / AP / SCANPIX
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"Explosions demolished the towers"Simensen continues: "I regard it as extremely likely that it was these explosions that made the skyscrapers collapse by tearing out part of the internal structure, and that this caused the uppermost floors of the buildings to fall and crush the lower parts. In other words, I believe that these were the explosions that were heard by people in the vicinity and that have since given life to the conspiracy theories that explosives had been placed in the skyscrapers."

Practical use
"Could your theory be used to protect human life and material values if other skyscrapers are ever hit by large aircraft?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact it could. One lesson is that we could develop means of rapidly emptying sprinkler systems in the floors under the point of impact. Another possibility would be to fire in a rocket carrying a fire-retardant that would overlie the aircraft body and prevent the metal alloy from becoming overheated."

Day of unreality
It was in the morning New York time on September 11, 2001, when two Boeing 767 passenger planes flew into the World Trade Center's "Twin Towers" in Manhattan in New York. One hour later, WTC2 collapsed, followed after half an hour by WTC1.
Neighbouring buildings were bombarded by flying debris when the towers collapsed. The 47-storey skyscraper called 7 World Trade Center also caught fire and collapsed several hours later at 17.20.

30 tonnes of aluminium
The official report on the causes of the collapse of the three buildings was drawn up by a commission appointed by the federal government and has since been supported by other publications. The report came to the conclusion that the collapse was caused by heating and failure of structural steel beams in the centre of the buildings.

"I believe that it is overwhelmingly probable that the theories regarding the cause of the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2 are wrong, but that the report very likely came to the correct conclusion as regards WTC7," says Simensen.
"Why should we believe your alternative theory rather than the official explanation?"
"To put it as succinctly as possible: because the federal government commission did not take sufficiently into account the fact that the aircraft brought 30 tonnes of aluminium into each of the two towers."

The collision
"What sort of evidence do you have for the theory that you are putting forward?"
"I base my theory on comparisons I have made with parallel observable phenomena in the world of physics. Let us start with what I think must have happened when the planes struck the two towers. They came in at high speed and at a low angle. The only similar phenomenon that we have any knowledge of is meteors that hit the Earth. What we know is that these drag material with them on their way through the soil layer. The whole surface, including all its pores, is covered by the material that they carry along. The innermost layer melts and turns into a glass coating on the surface of the meteor.
"I believe that similarly, the aircraft must have been covered by fragments of internal walls, ceilings and floors that collapsed around them and that the planes carried along with them as they penetrated the buildings. Much of this material was plaster, a material with extremely poor heat conduction capacity. All this debris probably formed a shield that kept the heat close to the aircraft and protected the rest of the building."


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[TD]Christian J. Simensen believes that the planes must have been lying in a sort of basin of material debris in the burning towers. Photo: Thomas Hinton / Zuma Press / SCANPIX[/TD]
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The fire"So you believe that it was the aircraft themselves that became superheated, rather than the buildings?
"Yes I do. The disintegrated aircraft probably came to a stop near the centre of the buildings. The materials along the track of the collision must also have burned. But the really hot zone was where the aircraft came to a stop. I believe that some of the aircraft's fuel tanks must have suffered major damage, but that most of them would have been cut in two when they met the steel beams in the buildings, and that the development of the fire was therefore fairly constant.
"I believe that the planes must have been lying in a sort of basin of material debris, with the floor of the basin two or three storeys below the one that they ploughed into. The entire internal basin must have been heated by the burning fuel. Outside of the basin, the temperature would have been much lower.
"The aluminium alloy of the aircraft hulls, which also contains magnesium, melts at a temperature of 660 oC. Experience gained from the aluminium industry suggests that it may have taken between half and three-quarters of an hour to reach such a temperature. If molten aluminium is heated further to a temperature of 750 oC, it becomes just as liquid as water. I presume that this is what happened within the Twin Towers, and that the molten aluminium then began to run down into the floors below."

The explosions
"What happened then?"
"All the floors in the Twin Towers were equipped with sprinkler systems. All the water above the hot aircraft bodies must have turned to steam. If my theory is correct, tonnes of aluminium ran down through the towers, where the smelt came into contact with a few hundred litres of water. From other disasters and experiments carried out by the aluminium industry, we know that reactions of this sort lead to violent explosions.
"The aluminium would immediately react with the water, with the result of a local rise on temperature of several hundred degrees, in addition to the explosions that were due to the fact that these reactions release hydrogen. Such reactions are particularly powerful when rust or other catalysts are present, which can raise the temperature to more than 1500 ËšC."


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[TD]"Aluminium-water explosions are like dynamite explosions. They were probably powerful enough to blow out an entire section of each building", says Simensen. Photo: Amy Sancetta / AP / SCANPIX
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"The aluminium industry has reported more than 250 aluminium-water explosions since 1980. Alcoa Aluminium carried out an experiment under controlled conditions, in which 20 kilos of aluminium smelt were allowed to react with 20 kilos of water, to which some rust was added. The explosion destroyed the entire laboratory and left a crater 30 metres in diameter.""Many people in New York reported that they had heard explosions just before the buildings collapsed. Film taken of the buildings also showed explosions in the floor below the impacts. Given that the amount of aluminium involved was large in comparison with the quantity of water, and since rust was probably also present, I believe that it is highly likely that the building collapsed as a result of a series of extremely energy-rich aluminium-water explosions."

The collapse
"How could explosions in the centre of a building cause a whole tower to collapse?"
"Aluminium-water explosions are like dynamite explosions. They were probably powerful enough to blow out an entire section of each building. The top section would than fall down on top of the sections that remained below, and the sheer weight of the top floors would be enough to crush the lower part of the building."
The neighbouring building
"What happened in the case of the neighbouring WTC7 building?"
"WTC1 and WTC2 took huge amounts of aviation fuel, fragments of steel and, if my theory is correct, large quantities of molten aluminium when they collapsed. When these materials and everything else fell some three or four hundred metres to the ground, they were squeezed between the upper and lower sections of the towers. This led to the neighbouring buildings being bombarded by hot particles, fuel and probably also aluminium droplets. Both large and small clumps of particles have since been found embedded in the walls of these buildings."

"WTC7 may have taken more of these impacts than the other buildings. At any rate, the building caught fire, which got out of control. In this case, the structural steel may have reached a temperature of more than 1000 oC, over seven hours, and the 13th floor collapsed in the course of a minute. In this case I do agree with the findings of the federal commission. Overheating of steel beams was probably the cause of the collapse."

The way ahead
"Would it be possible to perform scientific experiments that can support your theory?"
"It would certainly be possible to look specifically for solidified droplets of aluminium and aluminium oxide in the walls of the neighbouring buildings. Experiments could also be carried out to find out whether fuel tanks are cut cleanly when they plough through a network of steel beams at a speed of 800 kilometres an hour. We could also test on model scale whether an object that ploughs through a room at extremely high speed becomes covered in debris from collapsed walls, ceilings and floors."

By Svein Tønseth

http://www.sintef.no/home/Press-Room/Res...in-Towers/

[Magda Hassan]

And this from a metals market trade magazine who doesn't quite buy the official line either (my bolding) :

Previous conspiracy theories about the collapse have been debunked by Popular Mechanics and others, who maintain the "fact" that weakened steel beams were the culprit. Although the burning jet fuel was not hot enough to melt steel, it reportedly did the necessary damage: "Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F," senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction told Popular Mechanics. "And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent."Some commenters, however, prefer to remain wary of Simensen's conclusions. One in particular noted that combining iron oxide (rust) with molten aluminum (Fe3O2 + Al = 2Fe + Al2O3) yields a compound called thermite, which is the same substance other theorists have "suspected to have been used in the controlled demolition of the towers."
Whether this new theory puts anything to rest is up for debate. What's certain is that not having closure on the exact cause of the explosions 10 years after 9/11 just like not having a completed memorial museum or Freedom Tower borders on unacceptable.
Taras Berezowsky

http://agmetalminer.com/2011/09/23/new-t...-aluminum/

[Peter Lemkin]

That Aluminum + water 'theory' doesn't hold water [or aluminum]....if he believes it himself, no one else will. I don't believe it could cause any explosion, and if it could, it would be just a local one - and not the sequential explosions we all witnessed and the evidence shows, after the fact. The free-fall speed, lack of resistance, no pancaked floors, and total obliteration of everything into dust, forensic evidence of molten steel and thermitic materials just doesn't allow for anything but carefully pre-planted nanothermite [or similar], IMHO...and acknowledged in increasingly numbers by scientists and researchers.

The official version is just a fairy tale - part of the American mythology to be relegated into the same garbage pile as 'LHO was the lone assassin' - he wasn't lone and he wasn't the assassin. The 911 'hijackers' weren't without foreign and American intelligence connections - likely didn't have much or any role in the events of the day - likely didn't fly the planes [if they were even on them] and the planes didn't bring down the towers nor do the damage to the Pentagon - nor make the little tiny hole at Shanksville. Makes a good movie, but doesn't make it as reality. It was clearly just a covert cover-story for endless war on 'terrror' and an endless series of wars against countries, other peoples, and our own freedoms, at home.

[Ed Jewett]

Government Twists Science of 9/11 Just As With Iraq, the Gulf Oil Spill and Fukushima to Promote Its Policy Objectives

Posted on September 26, 2011 by WashingtonsBlog
Governments Sometimes Twists Science to Promote Policy Objectives

Anyone who paid any attention to the claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the Gulf oil spill or the Fukushima nuclear accident knows that the government often twists science to promote certain policy objectives, such as drumming up support for the invasion of Iraq or becoming a booster for nuclear power and big oil (and thus downplaying the damage from nuclear accidents and oil spills).
President's National Medal of Science winner Lynn Margulis notes that the scientific method is to follow the facts where they lead, to adopt the theory which has the most proof, and to discard theories which are contradicted by the facts.
Margulis says that in the case of 9/11 the government has adopted theories which are backed byvery little evidence, and refused to look at the most likely theory the one backed by overwhelming evidence.
New Theory on Towers' Collapse

Live Science reported last week:

A materials scientist has come up with a more scientific explanation for the mystery booms, and says his model of the Twin Towers collapse leaves no room for conspiracies. "My model explains all the observed features on 11th September: the explosions, molten metal coming out of the window, the time passing between the crash and the collapse, the fact that the explosions took place in a floor below the place it was burning, and the rapid collapse," Christen Simensen of SINTEF, a research organization in Norway, told Life's Little Mysteries.
As detailed in the new issue of Aluminum International Today, Simensen argues that molten aluminum from the airplane bodies chemically reacted with water in the buildings' sprinkler systems, setting off the explosions that felled the Twin Towers.

When each jet cut its way into a building, it took with it parts of walls and ceilings, Simensen said. Steel bars in those walls would have gashed its fuel tanks, which would have caught fire. With the plane positioned somewhere in the middle of the building, blanketed in debris and with no route for heat to escape, the temperature would have rapidly escalated, reaching 660 degrees Celsius (1,220 degrees Fahrenheit), the melting point of aluminum of which there was 30 tons in each plane fuselage within an hour. The molten aluminum would then have heated up further to between 800 and 850 C (1,470 and 1,560 F).
"Then molten aluminum becomes [as liquid as] water and has so much heat that it will flow through cracks in the floor and down to the next floor," Simensen explained in an email. There was an automatic sprinkler system installed in each ceiling, and it was filled with water. "When huge amount of molten aluminum gets in contact with water, a fierce exothermic reaction will take place, enormous amount of hydrogen is formed and the temperature is locally raised to 1,200 to 1,500 C," or 2,200 to 2,700 F.
Chaos rapidly ensues: "A series of explosions will take place and a whole floor will be blown to pieces," he wrote. "Then the top part of the building will fall on the bottom part, and the tower will collapse within seconds." This is what Simensen believes happened in the two World Trade Center towers.
This isn't obscure chemistry, Simensen says; the U.S. Aluminum Association has recorded 250 accidental molten aluminum/water explosions worldwide since 1980. "Alcoa in Pittsburgh [the worldwide leader in aluminum production] has done a series of such explosions in special laboratory in order to understand what can prevent such explosions and what are the most dangerous situations," he wrote. "For instance they let 30 kilograms [66 pounds] of aluminum react with 20 liters [5.3 gallons] of water, which resulted in a large hole 30 meters [98 feet] in diameter, and nothing left of the laboratory."

Why Do We Need a New Theory?

Simensen's theory has received wide-spread media attention.
Most of the coverage focuses on the theory having the potential to explain the explosions and sudden collapse of the Twin Towers, and thus to debunk the conspiracy theories that the Twin Towers and World Trade Center Building 7 were brought down by controlled demolition.
But this means that the official explanation for why the trade centers collapsed on 9/11 is inadequate … and doesn't take into account the explosions or sudden collapse of the 3 buildings. In other words, the very fact that there is such a buzz about this theory shows that many don't believe the "official" explanation really explains the collapse of the 3 buildings.
The New Theory Contradicts the "Official" Explanation

The "official" explanation assumes that the aluminum from the airplanes which crashed into the Twin Towers formed hundreds of thousands of shotgun-like blasts, pointed in all directions, to which sheared off all the fireproofing in a broad section on several floors.
That would have to happen quickly before the metal was heated. Instead, Simensen's theory hinges on the assumption that the aluminum from the planes cascaded down all at once causing explosions when it hit water.
Not the First Novel Theory

As I noted in 2008, this is not the first novel theory about the collapse:

First it was the "new phenomenon" of "thermal expansion".
Now, Sergei Dudarev, of the UK Atomic Energy Agency, says the Twin Towers collapsed due to "unusual magnetic forces".
Specifically, as described by the BBC, Mr. Dudarev argues that:

"The peak in this pliability is at 911.5C, but begins at much lower temperatures, at around 500C (932F) - a temperature often reached during building fires.
The steel backbone of the Twin Towers was probably exposed to temperatures close to this, when insulating panels meant to protect the buildings' structural frame were dislodged by the impacts of the hijacked planes.
The roaring fire mid-way up the building heated the steel struts, and once temperatures rose above 500C the structure became elastic, and collapsed under the force of the floors above."

Is he right?
Well, as noted in Appendix A of The World Trade Center Building Performance Study:

In the mid-1990s British Steel and the Building Research Establishment performed a series of six experiments at Cardington to investigate the behavior of steel-framed buildings. These experiments were conducted in a simulated, eight-story building. Secondary steel beams were not protected. Despite the temperature of the steel beams reaching 800-900 C (1,500-1,700 F) in three of the tests (well above the traditionally assumed critical temperature of 600 C (1,100 F), no collapse was observed in any of the six experiments.

And Underwriters Laboratories tested the steel components at the Twin Towers and found they could withstand fires for hours without failure:

"NIST contracted with Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. to conduct tests to obtain information on the fire endurance of trusses like those in the WTC towers…. All four test specimens sustained the maximum design load for approximately 2 hours without collapsing… The Investigation Team was cautious about using these results directly in the formulation of collapse hypotheses. In addition to the scaling issues raised by the test results, the fires in the towers on September 11, and the resulting exposure of the floor systems, were substantially different from the conditions in the test furnaces. Nonetheless, the [empirical test] results established that this type of assembly was capable of sustaining a large gravity load, without collapsing, for a substantial period of time relative to the duration of the fires in any given location on September 11." (NIST, 2005, p. 140).

Other fire tests have also failed to cause failures, collapses or "unusual magnetic forces" at high temperatures.
[And no previous office fires - even ones which burned much hotter and much longer - caused the collapse of a modern steel-framed building]
The 2005 Madrid skyscraper fire "reached 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 F), said Javier Sanz, head of Madrid firefighter" (see pictures here), and lasted some 20 hours. Indeed, the fires in the Twin Towers were much cooler than many office fires, as indicated by the color of the flames and the black smoke pouring out of the windows.
As Steve Watson notes:

We have previously pointed to the innumerable number of buildingsthat have suffered roaring fires across the majority of their floors for hours and remained standing. Seemingly the steel beams in these buildings were not subjected to the same "unusual magnetic forces".Furthermore, a far more extensive fire occurred in WTC 1 itself, prior to enhanced fireproofing of the building, on February 13, 1975. The fire burned at much higher temperatures for three hours and spread over six floors, including 65% of the 11th floor and the building core, yet it caused no significant damage to the steel structure and no trusses had to be replaced. There were no "unusual magnetic forces" present on that day.***

Furthermore, referring to the collapses, the original NIST report concludedthat the existing condition of the fireproofing prior to aircraft impact and the fireproofing thickness on the WTC floor system did not play a significant role'".

Any "thermal expansion" at the World Trade Center was not a new phenomenon, but something that building designers and fire safety engineers have taken into account for decades if not hundreds of years.
Likewise, any "magnetic forces" at the WTC should have been less severe than those present in fire safety tests and actual office building fires, which have never before led to complete collapses. Indeed, despite the apparently advanced science which Mr. Dudarev hints at, he actually admits this is nothing new:

"He said blacksmiths had exploited this property for hundreds of years".22*

Is the New Theory Right?

So the previous "novel" theories didn't pan out. But what about Simensen's new theory?
Initially, Simensen admits that the new theory doesn't explain the destruction of World Trade Center building 7, which wasn't hit by an airplane and which suffered only minor fires before mysteriously falling on 9/11.
And the above-quoted Live Science article notes:

Simensen's new collapse model has not gained immediate acceptance by proponents of earlier models.
"Occam's Razor says that the simplest explanation is usually the best," said Thomas Eagar, a materials scientist at MIT who has also studied the fall of the towers. "I do not see any merit to this new, more-complex explanation.
***
Eagar also objects to the notion that the aluminum, if it did melt, would definitely have reacted with the water it encountered. Most of the time when water is sprayed on molten aluminum, "there is no explosion because the water turns to steam and excludes the oxygen, preventing the growth of the combustion," he said.
***
Roughly 1,600 architects and structural engineers across the country, who have banded together in a group called "Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth," say it does not fully account for the buildings' collapses. With so many people looking for answers, Simensen's alternative theory is likely to receive further attention and study.

Moreover, while Simensen talks about explosions at or below the level of the planes, there is credible eyewitness testimony of explosives well above the floor hit by the planes:

• The Chief of NY Fire Department (Citywide Tour Commander) said "there was what appeared to be at first an explosion. It appeared at the very top, simultaneously from all four sides, materials shot out horizontally. And then there seemed to be a momentary delay before you could see the beginning of the collapse" (page 4)
  

• A police officer stated "you would hear a loud boom go off at the top of tower one. As the building continued to burn and emergency equipment kept on responding stirring up the dust and debris in the streets. After approximately 15 minutes suddenly there was another loud boom at the upper floors, then there was a series of smaller explosions which appeared to go completely around the building at the upper floors. And another loud earth-shattering blast with a large fire ball which blew out more debris and at that point everyone began to run north on West Broad Street." (page 5, which is page 2 of a hand-written memorandum)(
  

• The Chief of the NY Fire Department (Citywide Tour Commander) said "there was what appeared to be at first an explosion. It appeared at the very top, simultaneously from all four sides, materials shot out horizontally. And then there seemed to be a momentary delay before you could see the beginning of the collapse" (page 4)
  

• A paramedic captain stated "somewhere around the middle of the world trade center there was this orange and red flash coming out initially it was just one flash then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode the popping sound and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then red flash came out of the building and then it would just go all around the building on both sides as far as could see these popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger going both up and down and then all around the building"
  

Simensen's theory can't explain these explosions.
(In addition, several eyewitnesses report hearing explosions at the base of the building before the planes hit. See this and this. See hundreds of additional eyewitness statements of explosions well away from the area of the planes' impact here and here).
In addition, scientists say that the lower section of the Twin Towers was designed to support several times the weight of the upper block, that the upper section of the North Tower did not, in fact, crush the lower portion, and that the crushing theory is even more improbable with the South Tower.
And peer-reviewed scientific papers claim that extremely high-tech, military-grade explosive materials known as nano-thermate were found in the rubble and dust from the World Trade Center. See this andthis. If true, Simensen's proposed aluminum-water reaction cannot account for the existence of such materials.
Michael Rivero argues:

"The reaction [Simensen] is talking about is one in which hot aluminum will steal' oxygen from water, leaving hydrogen gas. There are two problems with this theory, of course.

The first is the hydrogen gas is very light and floats upward even faster than helium. The ruins of the World Trade Towers were porous' and as the smoke trails prove, there was a strong wind from the side. This means that hydrogen could not collect together anywhere in any amounts enough to cause an explosion, certainly not down in the basements, where some explosions were reported.
Second, even under the most ideal of circumstances of perfect mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, impossible in the natural atmosphere and under those conditions, hydrogen may burn fast but does not detonate. Recall the destruction of the Hindenburg. Huge fire, no bang.'
So this latest official explanation' is a desperate attempt to reconcile eyewitness reports and video recordings of explosions (like the one that initiates the collapse of building 7) with the rapidly collapsing official story.
***
Finally, given that aluminum is a rather common building material, why have we not seen such water and aluminum explosions before or since 9-11?"

And officials admit that the fires in the Twin Towers were not very hot, and yet dozens of firemen, structural engineers and emergency responders say that they saw molten steel in the rubble of the World Trade Center for months after 9/11, even though it was sprayed with enormous quantities of water. Steel melts at a much higher temperature than aluminum, and the government admits that the fires were not hot enough to have melted the steel (and a professor emeritus of physics has shown thatthe collapse of the buildings could not have melted the steel).
So how does a government spokesman explain the molten steel? He denies its existence:


This shows once again that the government and its defenders are twisting the science around 9/11 to meet policy rather than scientific objectives.The introduction of novel theory after novel theory to explain what many top structural engineers,mechanical engineers, architects and physicists say can only be a controlled demolition shows the desperation of the government to explain away the most probable hypothesis.
And see this.

Note: This essay is not necessarily arguing that controlled demolition brought down 3 buildings on 9/11. It is, however, arguing that just as with Iraq, the Gulf oil spill, and Fukushima, wild-eyed scientific theories are being promoted which have no basis in fact, and the most likely hypotheses are not being examined by the government.


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[Jeffrey Orling]

I don't believe this engineer's thesis is correct. But he does raise the notion that the collapse of all three towers was ITSELF a very energetic event and involved the crushing and pulverization of virtually all the building materials and contents except the much heavier steel sections.

A gravity driven collapse would involve the release of enormous amounts of heat from the mechanical grinding of the concrete. What was created was a collection of all sorts of finely ground materials... iron, aluminum, sulfur, copper iron oxide and so forth... all mixed with some water and lots of heat.

It's likely that the heat was so intense that it was able to ignite exothermic reactions, such as Iron Oxide and Aluminum which is essentially thermite. This chemical soup filled up the sub basements and became *the pile* where the reactions continued without the need of oxygen. The heat was so great and the mass of the pile so large... hundreds of thousands of tons that it remained for months... with many of the steel beams acting like heat sinks.

NIST should have studied the chemistry of the pulverized contents and tested to see if it could produced exothermic reactions. I don't recall any explanations given to explain the long lasting temperature of the *pile*. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that the reaction of aluminum and iron oxide was a result of the collapse not a cause of it. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that the heat of the *pile* and the heat which drove those massive billowing clouds which propagated from the site were the result of the collapse... the heat of friction from the mechanical grinding to fine grains particulates of hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete and contents in about 10 seconds.

Kevin Ryan recently posted a video where he does a backyard chemistry lab experiment to create thermite. It seems that the collapse was not unlike what he had done. Of course, this wasn't a uniform precise process with calibrated quantities of chemicals... but it might explain some of what we witnessed (heat residue).

If the plane did provide enormous heat to the columns of the structure it wasn't enough to melt the core columns or weaken them instantly because both towers stood after the planes slammed into them. Perhaps this heat did contribute to the progressive failure of the core which took between an hour and two. That explanation bears closer scrutiny because the towers' destruction were either initiated in an *instant* or it was a progression of column failures which reached a point and then the remaining core was so weakened it could no longer support the floors/structure above and it let go in an *instant*.

I tend to favor a progression of *weakening* of the core. This is the same as loss of reserve strength or a progressive lowering of the factor of safety... from column destruction or column weakening from heat. And we don't what was actually going on inside the core... aside from fires from the fuel and the office contents... both of which don't appear to have enough energy to sufficiently weaken the columns... in such as short period of time. I don't rule out some other weakening / destructive process including explosives or incendiaries or the *chemistry* referred to by this scientist.

[Charles Drago]

A gravity driven collapse would involve the release of enormous amounts of heat from the mechanical grinding of the concrete. What was created was a collection of all sorts of finely ground materials... iron, aluminum, sulfur, copper iron oxide and so forth... all mixed with some water and lots of heat.

It's likely that the heat was so intense that it was able to ignite exothermic reactions, such as Iron Oxide and Aluminum which is essentially thermite.

I think I'm following you, Jeffrey.

So if the "mechanical grinding of the concrete" were responsible for the ignition of exothermic reactions, how do we account for the molten material (suggestive to some of being thermite-driven) spilling from at least one of the towers prior to its collapse and the alleged consequent heating?

[Albert Doyle]

The melting point of aluminum is 1220f.

[Jeffrey Orling]

Charles,

I can only raise the following points about the liquid seen pouring from the south tower's 80th floor NE corner.

1. The visual evidence is not conclusive as to what it is. It is taken from camera positions a quarter of a mile away.

2. The color balance of the camera/media is not /was not controlled. This renders and reading of temperature from color extremely unreliable.

3. The optics have to be considered. This includes the relationship between the sun - its elevation and the angle between the sun's rays, the liquid and the camera. It includes the time of day as there is more scattering and color distortion of the atmosphere in the early AM when the sun's light passes through more atmosphere... hence the red sunsets! This include diffraction etc. I am attaching a photo where water looks like copper!

4. There likely were some *impurities* in whatever was pouring from that corner. Why would it be "pure" when there was so much destruction on that corner?

5. There were reported huge back up lead acid battery power supplies located at that corner. No reason to not consider that the acid and the lead were involved and had ignited when the batteries arced. Electrical arcs produce very very high temps.

6. Shouldn't we consider that this was from an exit wound where a jet engine came flying out? Couldn't that have something to do with what was going on in that corner on that floor?

7. And finally if the liquid was related to an *engineered device* to attack the structure... why only one of 880 corners.. floor 80 NE corner?

I don't think anyone can determine from those videos what was pouring out of the towers... iron, lead, copper, aluminum or a combination. Those seeing this as evidence of thermite are wanting to see it as liquid iron or steel and not basing this observation on valid science.

Jeffrey