Tony Szamboti
Active Member
I just replicated the steel wool experiment with a butane lighter, and found that hydrocarbon fire can actually melt steel.
This does not suggest the towers were made of steel wool. It simply demonstrates that small pieces of iron produced by rusting and friction can turn into microspheres at normal fire temperatures.
The fact that Dave Thomas found Fe-rich iron microspheres in his trash barrel or that you could produce them by burning steel wool, are both far from proofs showing how they were produced in the WTC dust.
We know they were abundant in the WTC dust. They were also found in that same dust with a abundant substance (red/gray chips) that produced iron microspheres in abundance when ignited in a calorimeter.
I am reminded of an analogy where a man is found dead with birdshot all through his body and a shotgun is found nearby. Someone then mentions that birdshot is the same size as a BB. That might be true, but there is no logic to say the man was shot with a BB gun and it is much more likely he was shot with the shotgun found near the scene.
By the way, hydrocarbon fire cannot melt the steel when it has any size or mass beyond that of steel wool. Standard sized steel structural items, such as those used in buildings, would not melt with hydrocarbon fire.
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