We have heard so many views and perspectives about the twin towers. You might think that everything that could be said, has been said? not so!
Sometimes, the bloody obvious is the least obvious of all. I knew this, but somehow it was not at the front of my mind while I pondered the various conspiracy theories. I personally don’t believe they are conspiracy theories – I think the police would call them ‘lines of enquiry’.
I blogged a long time ago that from an engineering perspective aviation fuel cannot achieve the sort of temperatures required to melt steel. We are talking about 2500 degrees centigrade. Even propane doesn’t get you there – you need acetylene gas with oxygen, both compressed. Of course there are other methods but we are talking about fuel here.
So here is a lay explanation that I have not yet seen expounded. A standard car engine, internal combustion engine needs to compress petrol and air mixture by a factor of 10 and ignite it. Diesel on the other hand is more like 50 to 1 to self ignite. OK, so we definitely need to compress the fuel to give it greater volatility. The planes that hit the towers and spilled fuel would be at normal atmospheric pressure – not compressed!
When a car engine burns fuel or any other engine for that matter it requires water, oil and air to maintain a correct temperature. However, in the absence of cooling we don’t end up with a molten mass – the compressed fuel simply cannot reach such high temperatures.
Add to that the fact that engines now are no long cast iron that has a very high meting point – they are aluminium allow that has a very low melting point – and still they don’t melt!!
DO YOU SEE WHERE I AM COMING FROM? IF THE FUEL FROM THE PLANES COULD MELT THICK STEEL, LONG BEFORE THEY GOT THERE AND WITH THEIR ENGINES WHIRRING AROUND – THEY WOULD HAVE MELTED THEIR ENGINES AND THE PLANES WOULD HAVE FALLEN OUT OF THE SKY!
Of course I could be wrong. The twin towers could have been constructed with massive wax beams and signs everywhere telling staff not to smoke too close to the walls in case they brought the whole building down.
Just saying??