Science: Heat Beyond Measure

The new torch looked like an ordinary oxyacetylene cutter, but its bright white flame (burning powdered aluminum in oxygen) ate into a wall of concrete as though it were candle wax. A second torch, burning fluorine in hydrogen, spat a tiny blue flame that could melt the concrete even faster. Either one, explained scientists of Temple University’s Research Institute last week, could knife through any substance known to man.

The torches produce more heat than any known instrument can measure: the fluorine burns at an estimated 9,000° Fahrenheit, nearly the temperature at the surface of the sun; the powdered aluminum, its cooler flame brilliant enough to give a bystander a sunburn in a matter of seconds, produces an estimated 5,500°, about twice the temperature of steel at white heat. The formidable torches are merely incidental byproducts of basic research. Under Navy sponsorship, the Temple scientists have been learning everything they can about producing and controlling extremely high temperatures, compiling information that should be valuable in fields as varied as atomic energy and jet propulsion. The Temple Research Institute’s boss, Dr. Aristid V. Grosse, says his workers are not interested either in weapons or tools. Still, he admitted last week, the byproduct torches will be tremendously useful in industry and other ways, e.g., they might cut through to people trapped in disasters who otherwise could not have been freed in time.