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Of course the fires weakened the steel. Of course the fires could have weakened the steel to the point where it could bend. Of course that could have been enough to cause a collapse, though the buildings were designed by experts to have no such thing occur, and had suffered at least one large fire before.

But what could create large pools of molten steel, not just bent steel? There are pictures of some beams with portions that are described as “vaporized”.

But what could create large pools of molten steel, not just bent steel?

Try kinetic energy. An iron meteorite estimated to be 65 feet in diameter created this:

Granted, the materials at the top of the WTC did not reach anything close to the velocity of the meteorite in question. But the amount of material involved was also far greater - and some of it fell over 1,000 feet.

So, in other words, when all that material hit the ground, a lot of the kinetic energy was translated into heat. And then more material piled on top of it, insulating the hottest materials in the center.

When the Twin Towers Fell One month after the attack on the World Trade Center, M.I.T. structural engineers offer their take on how and why the towers came down.

Kausel also reported that he had made estimates of the amount of energy generated during the collapse of each tower. "The gravitational energy of a building is like water backed up behind a dam," he explained. When released, the accumulated potential energy is converted to kinetic energy. With a mass of about 500,000 tons (5 x 108 kilograms), a height of about 1,350 ft. (411 meters), and the acceleration of gravity at 9.8 meters per second 2, he came up with a potential energy total of 1019 ergs (1012 Joules or 278 Megawatt-hours). "That's about 1 percent of the energy released by a small atomic bomb," he noted.

The M.I.T. professor added that about 30 percent of the collapse energy was expended rupturing the materials of the building, while the rest was converted into the kinetic energy of the falling mass. The huge gray dust clouds that covered lower Manhattan after the collapse were probably formed when the concrete floors were pulverized in the fall and then jetted into the surrounding neighborhood. "Of the kinetic energy impacting the ground, only 0.1 percent was converted to seismic energy," he stated. "Each event created a (modest-sized) magnitude 2 earthquake, as monitored at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Observatory, which is located about 30 kilometers away from New York City." Kausel concluded that the "the largest share of the kinetic energy was converted to heat, material rupture and deformation of the ground below."

In other words, the collapse of the WTC towers released over a kiloton of TNT's worth of energy. And a large amount of that energy was converted into heat in the pile of debris. No conspiracy needed.

Would you (or someone else) please explain to me what possible reason the Great Conspiracy would have had for destroying WTC-7? The symbolism associated with bringing down the Twin Towers is obvious. Bringing down a nearby building of no particular symbolic importance would have been meaningless and particularly so since there was no third plane to provide a plausible explanation. Taking down the Twin Towers would have been enough. Why risk the operation by going after a third building in that complex?

“But what could create large pools of molten steel, not just bent steel? There are pictures of some beams with portions that are described as “vaporized”.”

You mean those pictures of the beams sitting over in Fishkills?

Those same beams that were cut up so they could be loaded onto trucks that had to travel through narrow city streets?

The only way steel could be “vaporized” is if you launch it towards the Sun or have a nuclear detonation of which neither happened.

Other than that you’re watching waaaaaay too much Star Trek and Star Wars movies.

"beams with portions that are described as "vaporized".The key word is "described" (by truthers). Truthers take eyewitness descriptions of warped steel and "describe" it an molten also.

Anyway, lets assume that some steel was vaporized. Is there a possible explanation? If there was still electricity in parts of the tower, arcing from shearing of electric cables could possibly vaporize steel; I've seen a chunk of a knife blade instantly vaporized by shorting out a circuit inside a radio chassis.