Creative Speculation
In reply to the discussion: The Great Thermite Debate... [View all]William Seger
(11,031 posts)There are any number of possible sources of the sulfur, and since Cole only ran his experiment with a single setup and only for a 24-hour fire, he hasn't really ruled out any of them. If you want to believe thermate is the most plausible explanation unless someone can find the exact source of the sulfur and the exact conditions that produced the "eutectic corrosion," then suit yourself. But if that's best reason you can give for why thermite is the most plausible explanation, then pointing out that your logic is flawed is sufficient. As of yet, you haven't even demonstrated that thermate can duplicate the effect, and since thermate produces slag, I seriously doubt that you ever will. The device that Cole (allegedly) cut the small beams with didn't produce that result: His cuts looked (suspiciously?) like torch cuts, which investigators would not likely have missed in the debris if enough columns had been cut to bring down the buildings. Which also brings up the point that if the "eutectic corrosion" was the cause of the collapses, then it should have been found all over the place in the debris, not just those two samples.
> and how come NIST's core steel samples only show heating to 250 C
(A) That's explained in the report (limited samples); and (B) it's not really relevant to the NIST theory, which is viscoplastic creep of the floor joists and buckling of the perimeter columns.