# 9/11 conspiracy theories **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 12, 2010, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817 "2010-04-12T08:36:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2010, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/161 "2010-04-15T22:15:09Z")
[QUOTE= ironbender] I thought Dr. Jones did that. [/QUOTE] [This](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Jones) Dr. Jones? 😛 -XT ---
**Author:** ![ironbender](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ba8739/32.png) [@ironbender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ironbender)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2010, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/162 "2010-04-15T22:28:24Z")
Yes. My understanding is molten aluminum is still silver. Steel won’t melt at 650C (1202F). No office fire is going to be able to melt steel. Eyewittneses saw red, flowing, motlen metal. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2010, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/163 "2010-04-15T22:48:16Z")
> [@palindromemordnilap](#): > > Suspicious, maybe. Conclusive, no. Incompetence can explain a lot. However, the OP asks how anyone can possibly believe the government was involved, and this is the kind of thing that gives rise to those ideas. Here’s the OP: > [@vanotd21](#): > > I was curious to know, what kind of idiotic explanations are out there that give alternate explanations for 9/11? I’m personally horrified that we have idiots such as Charlie Sheen (funny actor on Two and a Half Men) who believe that the collapse of the world trade center was actually a controlled demolition. Any thoughts? How do you account for the glaring discrepancy between what the OP says and what you claim it says? ---
**Author:** ![AndrewL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@AndrewL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndrewL)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2010, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/164 "2010-04-15T22:51:42Z")
> [@ironbender](#): > > My understanding is molten aluminum is still silver. Your understanding is wrong. Molten aluminum can appear to glow red depending on the ambient lighting. This is especially true if the molten aluminum has been mixed with other material such as broken glass or partially burned hydrocarbon material. > [@](#): > > Eyewittneses saw red, flowing, motlen metal. Steel needs to be heated to yellow-white temperatures to flow as a liquid. Red-hot steel is still mostly solid. Any red-hot flowing metal could not have been steel. ---
**Author:** ![Valgard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7feea3/32.png) [@Valgard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valgard)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2010, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/165 "2010-04-15T23:22:49Z")
> [@AndrewL](#): > > Your understanding is wrong. Molten aluminum can appear to glow red depending on the ambient lighting. This is especially true if the molten aluminum has been mixed with other material such as broken glass or partially burned hydrocarbon material. > Steel needs to be heated to yellow-white temperatures to flow as a liquid. Red-hot steel is still mostly solid. Any red-hot flowing metal could not have been steel. When I did a Google Image search for “molten aluminum” one of the first links that appears is actually a response to Steven Jones on this very topic. [http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/aluminum/glowing.html](http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/aluminum/glowing.html) Suffice it to say there are plenty of photos of molten aluminum out there (many having absolutely nothing to do with 9-11) and none of them show it being silvery. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2010, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/166 "2010-04-15T23:24:12Z")
[QUOTE=ironbender] My understanding is molten aluminum is still silver [/QUOTE] What do you base this ‘understanding’ on? > [@](#): > > Steel won’t melt at 650C (1202F). No office fire is going to be able to melt steel. Steel doesn’t need to melt to lose it’s structural strength. I’m unsure why this point is so hard for CTers to grasp. If you heat up a steel beam to 1200F, it’s going to deform…if it does that, then the structure it is supporting is going to fail. No melted steel needed. If you can’t picture it, think of a cake supported by a number of candles. If the candles are solid, they support the cake. Heat them up. Well before they start to melt they are going to reach a temperature where they become soft and lose their structural strength. Cake comes down. In a nut shell, that’s what happened to the WTC buildings. That said, we aren’t taking about any old ‘office fire’ here. We are talking about an office fire started by thousands of pounds of jet fuel, burning uncontrollably, and with the fire suppression system all cut up due to the ‘large jet aircraft flying at several hundred miles per hour cutting through building’ effect. -XT ---
**Author:** ![BlakeTyner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@BlakeTyner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlakeTyner)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2010, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/167 "2010-04-15T23:38:19Z")
I use this example in every damn discussion about 9-11 conspiracy theories, but here it is again: You don’t even need FIRE to heat steel enough to cause it to expand and deform. This picture is of a ‘sun kink’ along railroad tracks. These are relatively common in hot weather in the south–trains have speed restrictions in certain locations because of possible sun kinks. This steel was deformed by nothing more than the environment–the sun shining on it. [Link to photo](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3311/3656804235_bba9f4543b.jpg) An office fire with jet fuel as a catalyst would easily create enough heat to bring the buildings down–particularly when you have an airliner blast the fireproofing off of critical structures. Ugh–I can’t believe these theories persist. Let’s be reasonable–is it more likely that Dr. Jones has uncovered the ‘truth’ and that the hundreds of thousands of actual structural engineers and demolition experts are wrong, or that Dr. Jones is a quack? If the NIST report is inaccurate, why hasn’t **anyone ever** published a rebuttal in a scholarly, peer-reviewed engineering journal? The truthers need to stop trying to point out anomalies and get with the drafting of a falsifiable hypothesis. Lacking that… “They are wrong and they are wasting their lives.” ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2010, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/168 "2010-04-15T23:46:34Z")
> [@BlakeTyner](#): > > This steel was deformed by nothing more than the environment–the sun shining on it. There’s also [Sherman’s neckties](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman%27s_neckties). In the American Civil War Sherman’s army used nothing but large campfire’s to soften steel railroad rails to bend them, sometimes around trees. ---
**Author:** ![Ichbin\_Dubist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/51bf81/32.png) [@Ichbin\_Dubist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ichbin_Dubist)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2010, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/169 "2010-04-15T23:50:32Z")
> [@BlakeTyner](#): > > Let’s be reasonable–is it more likely that Dr. Jones has uncovered the ‘truth’ and that the hundreds of thousands of actual structural engineers and demolition experts are wrong, or that Dr. Jones is a quack? I’ve never heard a reasonable explanation of why a conspiracy would plan to fly airplanes into a building and then “demolish” it in a controlled fashion at the same time. If the point was to pin it on Al Qaeda, you’d just do it with a truck bomb like 1993. To do both hoping no one would notice – that’s much weirder than any possibly inconsistencies about flowing metal, late fighter jets, and airplane-shaped holes. ---
**Author:** ![ironbender](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ba8739/32.png) [@ironbender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ironbender)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/170 "2010-04-16T00:13:59Z")
It is clear to me that some of you are not reading my posts. I never said anything about the temperature at which steel will deform. I said molten, as in eye-witnesses saw red, flowing, molten metal. As in melted, liquid steel. You’re not going to get that from any amount of jet fuel and office material burning. I’ve seen videos of molten, liquid aluminum, and it did not look red to me. I guess on 9/11 it can. ---
**Author:** ![ironbender](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ba8739/32.png) [@ironbender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ironbender)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/171 "2010-04-16T00:22:12Z")
Just to add, I’m aware that if you heat it enough, aluminum will be red. However, we know that the 9/11 fires were not that hot. There is no way the fires were hot enough to MELT steel. DEFORM? WARP, BEND sure. But melt? No way. ---
**Author:** ![AndrewL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@AndrewL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndrewL)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/172 "2010-04-16T00:24:39Z")
> [@ironbender](#): > > It is clear to me that some of you are not reading my posts. I never said anything about the temperature at which steel will deform. I said molten, as in eye-witnesses saw red, flowing, molten metal. As in melted, liquid steel. No, you are not reading the responses. The color a material is glowing is directly related to its temperature. Steel which is at red-hot temperature is still too cool to melt. Steel heated enough to be molten glows straw color. Therefore any flowing material glowing red is not steel, because steel is not liquid at that temperature. > [@](#): > > I’ve seen videos of molten, liquid aluminum, and it did not look red to me. I guess on 9/11 it can. I have seen video of molten aluminum that looked silver, and video of molten aluminum glowing red. It depends a lot on the ambient lighting. It also depends a lot on the actual content of the material. Any flowing molten material would be very unlikely to be pure aluminum, and was more likely some mixture of aluminum, copper, glass, gypsum, hydrocarbons, or who knows what else mixed together. ---
**Author:** ![BlakeTyner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@BlakeTyner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlakeTyner)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/173 "2010-04-16T00:29:24Z")
> [@ironbender](#): > > It is clear to me that some of you are not reading my posts. I never said anything about the temperature at which steel will deform. I said molten, as in eye-witnesses saw red, flowing, molten metal. As in melted, liquid steel. > > You’re not going to get that from any amount of jet fuel and office material burning. > > I’ve seen videos of molten, liquid aluminum, and it did not look red to me. I guess on 9/11 it can. This has already been dealt with. Liquid aluminum can and does look red–the photographic and video evidence provided in this very thread illustrates that. Furthermore, you’re conflating. Molten metal =/= molten steel. The World Trade Center was full of metal, including lots of copper and aluminum (and of course, the planes that crashed into them were made of metal, too.) Those metals melt at lower temperatures than steel. The eyewitnesses _think_ they saw molten metal of some unknown type. Unless someone took a sample and had it analyzed by an independent, reputable lab, they would have no way of knowing what material they saw. Beyond that, eyewitnesses have reported little gray men with big eyes abducting them from their beds and taking them aboard their intergalactic motherships. **Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.** Show me the results of the laboratory test on this molten liquid that confirm that it was, in fact, steel. If you can’t do that, then you don’t have evidence. Continuing to harp on the topic of ‘melted steel’ is useless when you can’t even prove that it _was_ melted steel. At the end of the day, you have this: _Some_ people _reported_ that they saw what _appeared to be_ molten steel. ---
**Author:** ![BlakeTyner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@BlakeTyner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlakeTyner)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/174 "2010-04-16T00:33:14Z")
> [@ironbender](#): > > Just to add, I’m aware that if you heat it enough, aluminum will be red. However, we know that the 9/11 fires were not that hot. > > There is no way the fires were hot enough to MELT steel. DEFORM? WARP, BEND sure. But melt? No way. Fine. The point is: **There was no melted steel at the World Trade Center.** ---
**Author:** ![ironbender](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ba8739/32.png) [@ironbender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ironbender)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/175 "2010-04-16T00:34:26Z")
> [@Ichbin\_Dubist](#): > > I’ve never heard a reasonable explanation of why a conspiracy would plan to fly airplanes into a building and then “demolish” it in a controlled fashion at the same time. If the point was to pin it on Al Qaeda, you’d just do it with a truck bomb like 1993. To do both hoping no one would notice – that’s much weirder than any possibly inconsistencies about flowing metal, late fighter jets, and airplane-shaped holes. There was no way a truck bomb would destroy those buildings. The whole thing was meant for TV. It was mind warfare, that was the point. They knew the visual display would most likely be enough to keep people from questioning. Most of the other stuff is misdirection. I believed too, before I found out about the de-facto stand down of our forces on that day. Then I knew I had to take a second look. ---
**Author:** ![BlakeTyner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@BlakeTyner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlakeTyner)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/176 "2010-04-16T00:52:46Z")
Again, that’s a claim that has no proof–the military wasn’t even aware of anything amiss until after the WTC had been hit. Even then, in the post-Cold War peace, there were only a total of 14 alert aircraft in the U.S. As much as we’d like to believe that NORAD was capable of tracking all airplanes inside U.S. airspace individually, and have the ability to scramble an intercept at the exact moment a plane deviated from its assigned course or altitude, prior to 9-11 there was no reason to have that capability. The threat we were worried about was from the outside, not the inside. Regardless, the military reaction on 9-11 is actually pretty consistent with a remotely similar event–Payne Stewart’s flight. When air traffic controllers lost radio contact with Stewart’s Learjet, they didn’t contact the military for 24 minutes. Even then, the plane that was sent _was already in the air_ and didn’t reach Stewart’s Learjet for 76 minutes. No. There needs to be no stand down order–the 83-112 minutes of lost contact on 9-11 are consistent with the state of American military readiness on that date. ---
**Author:** ![ironbender](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ba8739/32.png) [@ironbender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ironbender)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/177 "2010-04-16T00:53:22Z")
Copper melts 1984 F. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/178 "2010-04-16T00:53:35Z")
> [@ironbender](#): > > The whole thing was meant for TV. Oh, come on, now! You’re just tossing stuff out there for the sheer fun of it. The whole thing was meant to kill people. Your posts on this subect are rapidly beginning to resemble **lekatt** ’s posts on NDE. Evidence is not just a convenience. You have zero evidence for any of your assertions in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![ironbender](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ba8739/32.png) [@ironbender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ironbender)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/179 "2010-04-16T00:57:36Z")
[molten steel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SteelMill_interior.jpg)Fine. Red-Yellow. I didn’t mean blood red. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2010, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817/180 "2010-04-16T00:58:52Z")
> [@ironbender](#): > > Copper melts 1984 What does it do to other dystopian novels? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9-11-conspiracy-theories/535817.md?page=10)