This claim of extremely high temperatures, much hotter than can be achieved by office fires or the kerosene which was stored in the bottom of Building 7, can be attributed to numerous sources. One comes from professor Jonathan Barnett of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, who analyzed a section of steel from WTC 7 and said that fire would not explain steel members in the debris pile that appear to have been partly evaporated in extraordinarily high temperatures.(3)
Another source can be attributed to civil
engineering professor Abolhassan Astanch-Asl, with the University of California at Berkeley. He spent two weeks at ground zero studying steel from the buildings, one of which was a horizontal I-beam from WTC 7. Professor Astanch-Asl reported that "[p]arts of the flat top of the I, once five-eighths of an inch thick, had vaporized."(4) This phenomenon would require temperatures of 5,182 degrees Fahrenheit.(5)
Temperatures required to melt steel occur around 2,500 degrees F. Jet fuel, which is primarily kerosene, cannot burn much hotter than around 1,500 degrees F. Normal office fires are known to be capable of reaching temperatures of around 1,100 degrees F.(Google) Key to understanding how office fires could not have contributed to the collapse of Building 7, is the fact that steel has a terrific capacity as a heat sink. Heat applied to one section will travel and disperse that heat to whatever other steel it is attached to, necessitating many, many hours to achieve temperatures hot enough to even begin to bend steel, let alone melt it. Never in the history of modern architecture, before or after 9/11, has a steel framed skyscraper collapsed due to fire alone. Moreover, video evidence shows only a few small fires still burning at the time of Building 7's collapse around 5:20 pm on the afternoon of 9/11.
Evidence of extremely high temperatures is corroborated by multiple independent and government reports. In 2004 the RJ Lee Group issued its final report "WTC Dust Signature" in which it stated lead must have become hot enough to volatilize (boil). Their initial report in 2003 explicitly referred to evidence of temperatures "at which lead would have undergone vaporization." For this to happen would require temperatures of 3,180 degrees F.(6)
Another scientific report was published by Brigham Young University Professor Steven Jones and seven other scientists entitled "Extremely High Temperatures during the World Trade Center Destruction." Using dust samples collected right after the collapse of the WTC buildings, they reported finding "an abundance of tiny solidified droplets roughly spherical in shape" which were "iron rich."(7) The formation of iron rich spherules would have required temperatures of 2,800 degrees F, and the fact that they were spherical indicates they could have only been formed while falling through the air.
Using data obtained in a FOIA request, Stephen Jones and his coauthors also learned that the United States Geological Survey "had observed and studied a molybdenum-rich spherule". Molybdenum has an extremely high melting point of 4,753 degrees F. (8) Equally revealing is that although the USGS spent considerable time and study on the discovery of this molybdenum-rich spherule, it was not included in their "Particle Atlas of the World Trade Center Dust."(9)
More evidence of temperatures high enough to boil metal was brought forward by Dr. Thomas A. Cahill at the University of California at Davis. His Delta Group researched the light blue smoke rising from the debris field and discovered extremely small ultra fine metallic aerosols in extraordinarily high concentrations. Dr. Cahill said "Ultra fine particles require extremely high temperatures, namely the boiling point of the metal."(10)
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