Matt said:
I have personally seen large metal columns melt in fires that didn't even contain jet fuel at all. I work in one of Australia's main defence buildings and i happen to know that there is a great deal of difference between a bomb hitting a structure, and a commercial airline hitting a structure.
Are you looking at aluminum metal columns or are you looking at steel column?
May be you are looking at thermite source of heating and not jet fuel.
Or may be you are looking at blast furnace type of system?
The temperature that can be attained is dependent on both the amount and the rate of combustion as well as the supporting media of oxygen, and the amount of diluent inert gas (in this gas Nitrogen of the air). It is just like oxy-acetylene flame, with the proper adjusted flame, you can attain very high temperature.
In the case of the 9/11 tower, black smoke implied insufficient oxygen burning, and this will be very difficult for even the fuel or the furniture to burn to reach the temperature that can soften (not even talking about melting) the steel, that is lowering the yield point of the steel by a rise in temperature.
See professor Jones explanation:
http://www.infowars.com/articles/sept11/prof_jones_refutes_official_911_story.htm
http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html
It is important to note that initiating the thermite reaction requires temperatures well above those achieved by burning jet fuel or office materials -- which is an advantage of using thermite charges over conventional monomolecular explosives such as TNT, RDX and PETN. Below is a photograph of an experiment performed by the author and colleagues at BYU in which a sample of thermite was heated to orange-hot temperature (about 1700 oF
). We demonstrated that the thermite reaction would not ignite at this high temperature. Later, the thermite reaction was triggered by burning a magnesium strip in contact with the thermite. An electrical superthermite "match" could have been used and remotely triggered via radio signal.
"Superthermites" use tiny particles of aluminum known as "nanoaluminum" (<120 nanometers) in order to increase their reactivity. Explosive superthermites are formed by mixing nanoaluminum powder with fine metal oxide particles such as micron-scale iron oxide dust.
"Researchers can greatly increase the power of weapons by adding materials known as superthermites that combine nanometals such as nanoaluminum with metal oxides such as iron oxide, according to Steven Son, a project leader in the Explosives Science and Technology group at Los Alamos. "The advantage (of using nanometals) is in how fast you can get their energy out," Son says. Son says that the chemical reactions of superthermites are faster and therefore release greater amounts of energy more rapidly... Son, who has been working on nanoenergetics for more than three years, says that scientists can engineer nanoaluminum powders with different particle sizes to vary the energy release rates. This enables the material to be used in many applications, including underwater explosive devices
However, researchers aren't permitted to discuss what practical military applications may come from this research." (Gartner, January 2005)
Based on these and other discoveries, the possible use of incendiary thermites and explosive superthermites on 9/11 should be investigated immediately and vigorously.
