Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Bush-The Mastermind behind 9/11? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Earl who wrote (5748)	3/20/2004 3:33:27 PM
From: Michelino	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20039

"isn't it scientific principal (sic) to examine all possible explanations." Not quite, the principles are better defined as: Conjecturing "reasonable" hypotheses, conducting experiments or gathering cogent evidence to investigate conclusions, and iterating the process so as to delineate and reproduce results. Science convinces the skeptic. Pseudoscience, even when attracting the zealot, persuades only through ignorance. The bomb theory tilts much more toward the latter. The FEMA documents are of the former. The explanations for "controlled demolitions" immediately deviate into nonsense about jet fuel not being all that explosive, claims that aluminum didn’t melt because temperatures don’t get hot in a fire, pontifications regarding structural integrity that contradict expert advice and anecdotes about who should have become toast. Much of the evidence was on the site for months and was then was hauled elsewhere for examination, primarily in consideration of the dead. (Or so those who moved it believed). Somehow, we are asked to concur: “Here is more proof of tainted analysis.” Then the videos of the collapse are played repeatedly while disciples chant how each successive floor disintegrated in patterns recognizable to only conspiracy cognoscenti. We are expected to watch between the grain over and over until we finally shout with voice of the converted “Yes, I see it!”. But the arguments for “It” further rely on a cultural mythos that assumes demolition experts to be engineering's answer to Einstein as well as the innumerate belief that a crumbling building should really fall over like a tree. Yes, prior to 9/11, we all had seen video clips that show spectacular footage of a building being demolished and heard the voice-over intoning how precisely each charge must be laid and triggered before the da big boom just lets gravity do its work. Yes, a few of us have now realized: there are just so many ways a big building will crumble. Finally the bomb theorists would have us believe that charges were secretly inserted in three massive buildings even though the scale of this operation demands the joint talents of James Bond, Stanley Kubrick and the entire roster of several clandestine organizations (equally balanced between the fictitious and covert realities.) But when dealing with zealotry, just like when arguing about politics, it remains near possible to dissuade converts. For example, I might theorize that within a house fire (no jet fuel! still… temperatures can accelerate to over 1000 degrees F in minutes) people have died because they did not understand that livable temperatures were right near the floor. So if they had crawled they might have lived where, instead, they choose to run. This model of a dichotomy due to thermal distribution easily refutes much of the “why didn’t the inferno kill everybody that didn’t get burned” tenet of the bomb theorists. Yet, I doubt that my preceding statements have caused even one neuron anywhere to fire off in the defense of reason. It is too time-consuming to snap off every branch of the tree of sophistry when each root claim is dismissed using casual thought experiments. You probably believe that this applies to the FEMA analysis. Well, perhaps, we can agree that the official story is certainly weightier. And better written. I have now fought my allotment of one windmill (or dragon!) for the year. I now retire to chase after more conventional, nebulous boogiemen.

To: Don Earl who wrote (5748)	3/20/2004 4:29:10 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Respond to of 20039

WTC STEEL ANOMALY STILL A MYSTERY -- EUTECTIC REACTION Source: WPI -- Worchester Polytechnic Institute Spring, 2002 -- [NOTE: No further update available on this anomaly is available. The further articles in this series fail to address the melted metal issue.] wpi.edu The "Deep Mystery" of Melted Steel There is no indication that any of the fires in the World Trade Center buildings were hot enough to melt the steel framework. Jonathan Barnett, professor of fire protection engineering, has repeatedly reminded the public that steel--which has a melting point of 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1538 C.)--may weaken and bend, but does not melt during an ordinary office fire. Yet metallurgical studies on WTC steel brought back to WPI reveal that a novel phenomenon--called a eutectic reaction--occurred at the surface, causing intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese. Materials science professors Ronald R. Biederman and Richard D. Sisson Jr. confirmed the presence of eutectic formations by examining steel samples under optical and scanning electron microscopes. A preliminary report was published in JOM, the journal of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society. A more detailed analysis comprises Appendix C of the FEMA report. The New York Times called these findings "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation." The significance of the work on a sample from Building 7 and a structural column from one of the twin towers becomes apparent only when one sees these heavy chunks of damaged metal. A one-inch column has been reduced to half-inch thickness. Its edges--which are curled like a paper scroll--have been thinned to almost razor sharpness. Gaping holes--some larger than a silver dollar--let light shine through a formerly solid steel flange. This Swiss cheese appearance shocked all of the fire-wise professors, who expected to see distortion and bending--but not holes. A eutectic compound is a mixture of two or more substances that melts at the lowest temperature of any mixture of its components. Blacksmiths took advantage of this property by welding over fires of sulfur-rich charcoal, which lowers the melting point of iron. In the World Trade Center fire, the presence of oxygen, sulfur and heat caused iron oxide and iron sulfide to form at the surface of structural steel members. This liquid slag corroded through intergranular channels into the body of the metal, causing severe erosion and a loss of structural integrity. "The important questions," says Biederman, "are how much sulfur do you need, and where did it come from? The answer could be as simple--and this is scary- as acid rain." Have environmental pollutants increased the potential for eutectic reactions? "We may have just the inherent conditions in the atmosphere so that a lot of water on a burning building will form sulfuric acid, hydrogen sulfide or hydroxides, and start the eutectic process as the steel heats up," Biederman says. He notes that the sulfur could also have come from contents of the burning buildings, such as rubber or plastics. Another possible culprit is ocean salts, such as sodium sulfate, which is known to catalyze sulfidation reactions on turbine blades of jet engines. "All of these things have to be explored," he says. From a building-safety point of view, the critical question is: Did the eutectic mixture form before the buildings collapsed, or later, as the remains smoldered on the ground. "We have no idea," admits Sisson. "To answer that, we would need to recreate those fires in the FPE labs, and burn fresh steel of known composition for the right time period, with the right environment." He hopes to have the opportunity to collaborate on thermodynamically controlled studies, and to observe the effects of adding sulfur, copper and other elements. The most important lesson, Sisson and Biederman stress, is that fail-safe sprinkler systems are essential to prevent steel from reaching even 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, because phase changes at the 1,300-degree mark compromise a structure's load-bearing capacity. The FEMA report calls for further metallurgic investigations, and Barnett, Biederman and Sisson hope that WPI will obtain NIST funding and access to more samples. They are continuing their microscopic studies on the samples prepared by graduate student Jeremy Bernier and Marco Fontecchio, the 2001–02 Helen E. Stoddard Materials Science and Engineering Fellow. (Next year's Stoddard Fellow, Erin Sullivan, will take up this work as part of her graduate studies.) Publication of their results may clear up some mysteries that have confounded the scientific community.