[QUOTE=mnemosyne]
My hockey-blog nitwits are at it again, this time with “explain how FIRE BURNED METAL for the first time in history! Huh? Fire can’t melt METAL!” I’m so tempted to recommend they hop back to the Iron Age and see if they can work it out for themselves.
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I don’t remember whether it was on National Geographic’s or Discovery, but there was a 2 hour special where they had a bunch of 9/11 Truthers on and some engineer types, and they were addressing a lot of the myths. One of them was the whole ‘metal can’t "melt’ at the temperatures possible from jet fuel’. They filled a big pit with jet fuel, put a structural steel beam over it, loaded it with weight equivalent to what the loading of one of the actual load bearing beams in the towers, then lit the jet fuel. It didn’t even take 5 minutes before the beam failed, and eventually twisted into a pretzel. The idiot Truthers were hemming and hawing about how the beam was naked (conveniently forgetting the air plane that would have slammed into the structure, clearing off the fire proofing), but they sounded like idiots. I recommend having them watch the show the next time they want to babble something about how metal won’t ‘melt’ from the temperatures involved in this event…and remind them that the beams don’t actually HAVE to ‘melt’, they simply have to deform a little bit and lose a little bit of structural support. Once one of the major load bearing beams for a floor starts to sag the entire structure starts to move, and then it’s all about potential energy and that gravity stuff…
Well, actually they said both. That was actually a copy-pasted quote. Their “argument” had to do with the heat of fires not being able to weaken structural steel.
And yet you linked to a video in which metal burns. Thermite is made up of, in part, aluminum. Burns awfully well, doesn’t it?
Of course metals can burn. Most metals will burn, I should think. Titanium is qute infamous in metalworking for its propensity to burn - or, more precisely, for the fact that once it catches fire it’s very, very hard to put out. In fact, titanium in normal air can’t be melted, because it will burn before it melts.
Iron will burn, too, but it isn’t easy. The iron that made the skeleton of the WTC did not burn, or even melt; it simply lost strength to heat. Iron will lose its strength long before it melts.
A horseshoe is better. You never melt the fucking thing, you just heat a metal bar over a fire and bend it into shape.
During the Civil War, the standard way to destroy railroads was to gather up the wooden ties, toss on the metal rails, and start a fire. The heat would warp the rails to unusability.
Blacksmiths must use thermite. It’s the only way that metal could possibly be weakened enough to be bent or shaped. Apparently, metal cannot be weakened by fire enough to bend under the weight of several stories of a skyscraper unless some explosives or thermite is applied.
The original plan was to plant a half-completed Death Star under one of Saddam’s palaces, but the truther’s sterling work in exposing the truth about 9/11 scared them into abandoning that plan. If it wasn’t for those gallant truthers, willing to risk merciless anal probing at the hands of government agents, the US would have invaded Iran, North Korea, Canada and Belgium by now. Pimply teenagers of the world, we salute you!
I believe that there should be no link from the 9/11 article to the 9/11 conspiracy theories article and for a very persuasive reason - 9/11 must lead one to 9/11 conspiracy theories, not vice versa. This is an example of the relevance paradox.
Why are there sections on conspiracy theories in the JFK Assassination article and the Moon Landings article, then? In the Moon Landings case, the section is sceptical, saying that the hoax theories are readily disproved, so I don’t see why the 9/11 article can’t adopt a similar tone - “there are some whack-job but nevertheless quite widespread conspiracy theories out there, and if you want to read about them here’s a link”.
Saw one of the better shows on the forensics of what happened to each building on 9/11, including some very interesting details on the Pentagon that I didn’t know previously, and also a lot of good info on Tower 7. The show was called ‘9/11: The Towers and the Pentagon’ and was on either Science or Military Channel (don’t remember which one), and is a must see for anyone interested in what really happened wrt how and why the buildings collapsed. Anyone wanting to take on the various nutball CTer types should start with this show as a must see, IMHO.