Anti-science Salon landed in hot water today for posting an article defending conspiracy theorists, including 9/11 “Truthers.” After much criticism, the piece was yanked with an apology, but Ace of Spades highlights the best part.
Salon:
But unlike with Sandy Hook, 9/11 conspiracy theories flow from a scientific fact: whatever the 9/11 Commission Report might claim, fire generated by burning jet fuel is not hot enough to melt steel.
Ace:
Ahem.
Look, I don’t mean to sound like a smarty-pants here, but here’s a scientific fact this ignoramuses want to check out:
Many solids change suddenly into liquids as they hit their melting point. Water ice, for example.
But water ice is just one kind of solid. There is an entire class of elements — we call these “metals” (and no I’m not trying to be silly– they’re really called “metals”) which change from solid to liquid gradually and gracefully, rather than abruptly.
There is a sharp distinction between water ice and water liquid — the things have entirely different properties. But metals transition slowly as heat as applied. Metals do not suddenly go from a perfect crystalline solid to a perfect amorphous liquid as water does.
Rather, at high temperatures well short of their actual melting point, they slowly begin losing some properties of a solid and start gaining some properties of a liquid.
For example: You can’t bend ice. Ice does not bend. Ice breaks.
But you can bend metal. Metal is deformable, without actually breaking.
This is what happens when you watch Rosie instead of reading a book.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC