The Burning of the Twin Towers
« on: 2008-02-03 08:39:09 »
[Blunderov] I have nothing against conspiracy theories per se. There have been very many conspiracies in the world and there will be many more. Many of them are improbable in some way or another...
1606: Guy Fawkes and other Gunpowder Plot conspirators
31 January 2008, 08:01:26 | Headsman
On this date in 1606, Guy Fawkes, “the only man to ever enter parliament with honorable intentions,” was hanged, drawn and quartered in London with three conspirators for attempting to blow up the Houses of Parliament … and the government with it.
Fawkes, a soldier, was part of the Gunpowder Plot, a Catholic attempt to assassinate the new king James I when it became clear the House of Stuart would continue its Tudor predecessors’ intolerance of the Roman church.
The conspiracy was crowded, so it was something of a miracle the secret kept for over a year while the plotters filled a rented room under the House of Lords with 36 barrels of gunpowder and waited for parliament to open...
...Today’s well-known victim also left a less obvious but more ubiquitous cultural artifact. The practice of marking Guy Fawkes Night with effigies of the traitor — “Guys” — caused the word to enter the general lexicon as slang for a strangely-dressed man, eventually coming to mean any man at all.
The House of Commons has a fact sheet (.pdf) on the affair.
[Bl.] Some conspiracy theories have more justification than others. Many conspiracy theories are based upon nothing more than conjecture ad inference. (It is perhaps worth observing that this is sometimes considered perfectly acceptable grounds for the death penalty but it might be dangerously akin to a tu quoque.)
Things are different when there is physical evidence to back up a conspiracy theory. "The Theory" becomes very much stronger. Such evidence can sometimes flush out the conspirators by the laughably obvious attempts to evade it's implications. "The Magic Bullet Theory" was a wonderfully droll example of this effect.
Now there is clear evidence of very high temperatures where there should have been no such temperatures. This requires explanation. In spades.
(On a more conjectural note I have always wondered why the two towers were struck by the aircraft, IMS, about 20 minutes apart and yet they both fell down within moments of one another. Odd that. But perhaps I misremember.)
So here we are. Finally the "Truther" conspiracy theory fetches up on the skeptic shores of the CoV.
Physicists associated with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Brigham Young University, the Department of Physics at the University of Iowa, and the University of Maryland at College Park have released a paper examining the evidence for extremely high temperatures, much higher than conventional office building fires, in the World Trade Center collapses. Evidence of extremely high temperatures was found in dust samples that contained once-molten spheres of metals with high melting points, silicates, or glass-like compounds, and evidence of vaporization of certain metals.
The office material fires described by the government-sponsored National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) study of the WTC collapses indicate air temperatures no higher than 1100C in highly localized areas. As for analysis of the steel from the buildings “…using metallographic analysis, NIST determined that there was no evidence that any of the samples had reached temperatures above 600C.” The temperatures required to form the once-molten spheres found in the dust samples, collected days after the collapses, range from 1000C to 2760C. Iron melts at 1565C, unless in the presence of other compounds under controlled conditions, at which the “eutectic” of iron and sulfur can melt at 1000C. This “eutectic” was discovered by FEMA, and by fire researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
The authors write in their Abstract:
“In an effort to better understand the conditions that led to complete collapses of the World Trade Center Towers and WTC 7, we apply scanning-election-microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (XEDS) methods to analyze the dust generated, with an emphasis on observed micro-spheres in the WTC dust. The formation of molten spheres with high iron contents along with other species in the WTC dust required extremely high temperatures. Our results are compared with those of other laboratories. The temperatures required for the molten sphere-formation and evaporation of materials as observed in the WTC dust are significantly higher than temperatures associated with the burning of jet fuel and office materials in the WTC buildings.”
The significance of this work is that it shows office materials ignited by jet fuel could not have been the cause of particles found. Hydrocarbon fires burn under the most optimum conditions at 1100C, conditions that did not exist in the fires at the towers. MIT Prof. Thomas Eagar wrote in 2001, ““The fire is the most misunderstood part of the WTC collapse. Even today, the media report (and Many scientists believe) that the steel melted. This is not true… The temperature of the fires at the WTC was not unusual, and it was most definitely not capable of melting steel… …The maximum flame temperature increase for burning hydrocarbons (jet fuel) in air is, thus, about 1000C – hardly sufficient to melt steel at 1500C.”
“But is it very difficult to reach this maximum temperature with a diffuse flame. There is nothing to ensure that the fuel and air in a diffuse flame are mixed in the best ratio… This is why the temperatures in a residential fire are usually in the 500 to 650C range. It is known that the WTC fire was a fuel-rich, diffuse flame as evidenced by the copious black smoke.”[1.]
Corroboration of Evidence
A US Geological Survey study was released in 2005 and a study of dust samples by the firm RJ Lee in 2003 both confirmed the presence of iron-rich spheres in the samples they examined. The Lee study also discovered silicates, glass-like compounds, which had a “Swiss cheese appearance as a result of boiling and evaporation.” The temperatures required to produce spheres of silicates are roughly 1450C. The temperature needed to vaporize silicates is roughly 2760C. The Lee study also found evidence of vaporized and condensed lead. Vaporization of lead occurs at around 1740C.
One of the more unusual finds came about through a Freedom of Information Act request to the USGS for data regarding earlier results the USGS had published in 2005. Not published originally are data showing spheres of molybdenum, a metal with a melting temperature of 2623C, over one thousand degrees hotter than that necessary to melt iron. Finding spheres of molybdenum in the dust of the WTC collapses is evidence that temperatures by some mechanism reached at least 2623C.
Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute also discovered evidence of extremely high temperatures completely unexplained by any of the official studies completed or underway to date. Prof. Jonathon Barnett also discovered steel possessing a “Swiss cheese like appearance.” Examining structural steel from WTC 7 he wrote, “A one-inch [steel] column has been reduced to half-inch thickness. Its edges – which are curled like paper scroll – have been thinned to almost razor sharpness. Gaping holes – some larger than a silver dollar – let light shine through a formerly solid steel flange. This Swiss cheese appearance shocked all of the fire-wise professors, who expected to see distortion and bending – but not holes.” [2.]
Cause and Effect
So what caused these temperatures? Was it the jet fuel and office material fires that burn at much, much lower temperatures? Or were there compounds such as thermite, or thermate-variants, a common military incendiary, which burns at closer to 2500C, and is capable of melting iron, steel? But how are temperatures of the intensity to boil silicates, or melt molybdenum, temperatures in excess of 2600C? The presence of these once-molten substances in dust from the WTC needs to be thoroughly investigated. Coupled with the observed presence of flowing pools of molten steel and iron “running like lava” under the rubble of the three collapsed buildings, persisting for 100 days, there is a need of further investigation. These temperatures are indicative of a very high-energy event, much higher than hydrocarbon fires, or gravity-induced collapses can possibly produce. Such high-energy events are entirely consistent with the use of explosives in bringing the buildings down. ANY investigation into the collapse of these buildings must include this observable evidence. The current investigation into the collapse of WTC 7 should include this evidence. To date, the team investigating this collapse, six years after the event, have not included this data in their inquiry.
1. Eagar, T. W. and Musso, C. (2001). “Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering, and Speculation”, Journal of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, 53/12:8-11 (2001).
2. “The "Deep Mystery" of Melted Steel,” WPI Transformations, Spring 2002,
Saturday, February 02, 2008 Official Conspiracy Theorists Suckered a Gullible Michael Shermer Skeptic Michael Shermer has fallen for the most outlandish conspiracy theory of them all: the official conspiracy theory for which there is not a shred of evidence.
Shermer has bought into an official lie. Fallaciously, Shermer simply discounts as untrue anything that contradicts his pre-conceived notion, an elementary breach of logic. Shermer should know better. If he knows better and persists in spite of it, he is dishonest. Jean-Paul Sartre termed this behavior -- "bad faith". Bertolt Brecht was more blunt: "A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook!" Shermer, which one are you?
Shermer's recent attempt to "debunk the 911" truth movement is flawed at the outset. His very headline on the Huffington Post is an ad hominem --the 911 movement, he says, are "liars". The bulk of his article is a strawman. Shermer chooses to zero in on Alex Jones, hardly the founder and most certainly not the "leader" of what is, in fact, a world-wide grassroots movement, a fact that must be terribly inconvenient for top-down, authoritarians who insist upon attacking a symbol or a figure-head. The pursuit of pure truth has no need of either. Shermer, I suspect, wanted an easy target, a fuhrer and finding none settled for a strawman.
Why Jones? Many folk dislike Jones and/or his style. Would Shermer have chosenJones in order to inject personality and emotion into an issue that is difficult enough to discuss rationally? Certainly --Shermer's tactic does not illuminate but obscures with personality and emotion. Until the events of 911 are discussed critically and dispassionately, there is little hope that the truth about this crime against the American people will ever be attained. If I wished to demagogue an issue, I might be tempted to choose the most visible, the easiest target. I had hoped Shermer would not have taken this low road.
If I wished to advance a fallacious argument, I might wish to choose someone upon which I might pin a strawman. Is this what Shermer has done? I leave that to you. If I were going to "debunk" a bogus campaign of pure propaganda, I would certainly not choose an easy target, as Shermer has done.
The official theory is a fire theory. If the "fires" did not bring about the collapse, then the official theory is bunkum! I challenge Michael Shermer to cite a single case in which fire has been determined decisively, authoritatively to have been the cause of the collapse of a large steel-frame building. Cite it! There are no such cases --until 911 that is. As David Ray Griffin accurately pointed out: Steel does not even begin to melt until it reaches almost 2800° Fahrenheit. Nor did the towers collapse because the fire had weakened the steel because the fires could not have burned long enough or hot enough for even that to have happened.
I have covered many fires in my day. A fire is considered spent when the smoke turns black. On 911 --the jet fuel, as to be expected, burned up quickly in enormous fireballs and were coughing up black smoke within minutes. They most certainly did not and could not have burned hot enough or long enough to have melted or weakened the steel! It is highly doubtful that even aluminum ( melting point 1220.666 °F)) would have utterly melted under 911 conditions and even if it had, it would not have affected the core known to have been made of steel --not aluminum. The implication that molten aluminum had been mistaken for aluminum is baseless and begs the question. It's a cover story proposed ex post facto as a result of 911 movement criticism, an attempt to paper over the glaring inadequacies of the official conspiracy theory. Additionally, it is put forward disingenuously by those who understand that the mere presence of molten steel, by itself, utterly discredits Bush's official conspiracy theory of 911.
Lesser known "debunkers" than Shermer have claimed that emergency responders mistook molten aluminum for steel. There is simply no compelling reason, and certainly no evidence to suspect that that is the case. See the papers by Professor Steven Jones that I have cited in this post. The truth of all this might have been known if only there had been an investigation. Only a tiny portion of the steel columns were available for scrutiny; government officials --most certainly under orders from the Bush administration --ordered the steel sold and shipped off. The willful concealment or destruction of evidence from a crime scene is a felony!
"We start with the fact that large quantities of molten steel were observed in basement areas under rubble piles in all three building: the Twin Towers and WTC7. ...The photographs ...by Frank Silecchia show chunks of the hotel metal being removed from the North Tower on September 27, 2001 (according to the photographer's aid). Notice the color of the lower portion of the extracted metal --this tells us much about the temperature of the metal and provides important clues regarding its composition, as we shall see." ..."On the basis of photographic and video evidence as well as related data and analyses, I have provide thirteen reasons for rejecting the official hypothesis, according to which fire and impact damage caused the collapse of the Twin Tower and WTC7, in favor of the controlled-demolition hypothesis. The goal of this paper is to promote further scrutiny of the official government-sponsored reports as well as serious investigation of the controlled-demotion hypothesis. (No rebuttal of my arguments for an in-depth investigation can be complete, of course, unless it addresses all of these points.)" --Dr, Steven E. Jones, Physicist and Archeometrist. [Prof. Jones' peer-reviewed paper is available as a PDF file here.]
Shermer's "rebuttal" of Jones consists of quoting Jones and contradicting him. But Shermer's practiced fallacies are not confined to Jones. For those who believe that Building 7 fell due to controlled demolition, some of the most powerful “evidence” seemingly comes from WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein’s alleged “confession” that he authorized the tower’s destruction. The quote in question comes from a September, 2002 PBS Special called America Rebuilds, in which Silverstein says: I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, “We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.” And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse. --Larry Silverstein, 911 Quotes [my link, LH]
To conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones at prisonplanet.com, this quote seems to be a “smoking gun” because they interpret the phrase “pull it” tobe “industry jargon for taking a building down with explosives.”15 Silverstein seems to be saying that he and the firefighters decided to pull (destroy) Building 7, and watched it fall after authorizing the demolition. No building could be controllably demolished so quickly, the conspiracy theorists go onto argue, so WTC 7 must have been prepared for demolition long in advance.
On closer inspection, this supposedly devastating evidence does not seem to mean what the 9/11 Truth Movement thinks it means. There is far from unanimous industry agreement that the phrase “pull it” always signifies a controlled demolition with explosives — more specific phrases such as “pull away” would be used to designate the specific operation to be performed.16 And of course, “pull” has many common language uses quite separate from demolition lingo. But if Silverstein wasn’t describing a decision to destroy WTC 7, what could the words “pull it” mean?
--Michael Shermer
If I may address this reply to Shermer: well, Michael, apply Occam's Razor. Did it ever occur to you that that is, in fact, precisely what Silverstein meant? The term 'pull' is, indeed, industry jargon for"controlled demolition". I submit that the word "pull" means precisely what it means to those who "pull" buildings for a living and I would suggest that Shermer conduct some field research to include interviews of people who make a living doing this kind of thing. Shermer goes on to posit that the word "pull" was used to mean "pull out" as in "pulling out the firefighters" still at work on Building 7. That is an illogical and unnecessary complication of a simple, straight forward explanation to be found in the very meaning of the word "pull" as it is, in fact, used by experts. Besides --why would firefighters have pulled out? What was the sudden urgency? The 'Twin Towers' had already collapsed and the fires in Building 7 were certainly insignificant by comparison if not already under control. There was simply no compelling reason to conclude anything other than Silverstein authorized the "controlled demolition" of the building.
"I remember getting a call from the Fire Department commander, telling me they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, you know, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is just pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse." --Larry Silverstein, 911 Quotes
If Silverstein had been referring to the "firefighters" themselves, he might have said "pull them" or "pull them out! But he didn't! He said "pull it" and, in the jargon of the trade "it" was Building 7. Since when do even callous people begin referring to other people (plural) as "it"? Not even Silverstein would have done that! People are a "them". A building is an "it"!
According to Debunking911, Silverstein's spokesperson, Mr. McQuillan, later clarified: "In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building."
Compare the "clarification" with Silverstin's actual words! The "clarification" hardly supports either the Debunking site or Shermer. It is the work of a PR flack. In other respects, Shermer's argument in this respect is not really Shermer's. It belongs to 911 Research.net, what Shermer would fallaciously "label" a conspiracy site, who plays a better "devil's advocate" than Shermer plays the devil himself. (In other words, Michael, we've heard all your stuff before and are even less than impressed with them now)
However, there are several problems with this explanation.
According to Chapter 5 of FEMA's Building Performance Study , firefighters were never in the building: "Preliminary indications were that, due to lack of water, no manual firefighting actions were taken by FDNY." Silverstein's statement implies a close temporal proximity between "that decision to pull" and "watch[ing] the building collapse," giving no time for the fires to become more severe and do what fires have never before done: cause the total collapse of a steel-frame high-rise.
Of course there are even greater problems with the implication that Silverstein and the FDNY decided to demolish the building only after the attack on the Twin Towers.
Rigging a building for controlled demolition normally takes weeks of preparation -- far longer than the at most a few hours between the determination that "they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire," and the 5:20 PM collapse of the building.
The building had several areas of fire -- hardly conditions under which a demolitions team could be expected to lay high explosives.
However, if we imagine that the "decision to pull" had been made before 9/11/01, Silverstein's comment makes more sense as an admission that there had been a deliberate decision to demolish the building. --911 Research
Shermer's conclusion sounds remarkably similar: There’s also the problem that, as even the 9/11 Truth Movement admits, prepping a building for demolition takes considerable time and effort. Usually a building targeted for demolition has been abandoned for considerable time and partially gutted to allow explosives intimate contact with the structure of the building. But since all of the WTC buildings were occupied right up to 9/11, how did the government gain access to wire 3 towers for complete demolition without anyone noticing? Imagine trying to sneak wires and bombs into buildings while thousands of people are working in offices, riding the elevators and milling about in the halls — that scenario is unlikely in the extreme.
The fact is: someone did do the "wiring" and getting in and out was not a problem. There numerous witnesses to the comings and goings. Had this crime been investigated all that testimony might have made its way into an official record. But --not! Bush has covered this crime up! Unless, of course, you subscribe to the "theory" that concrete-coated steel girders can be melted in minutes with cool burning kerosene fires! Absurd!
If one wishes to be logical, one simply must be prepared to follow facts to logical conclusions --even if you don't like the consequences, even if the conclusions run counter to your prejudices and pre-conceived notions. No one wanted to believe what the evidence points to. No one wanted to accept the logical consequences of the facts, the multitudinous Bush lies, the laws of physics.
The Twin Towers were largely "un-occupied" at the time of the attacks. Access prior to the attacks was not the problem. Entire floors were unoccupied and were the "site" of extensive and even "mysterious" renovations. A recently published chart proves that the offending airliners "targeted" precisely those floors where "renovations" were known to have been going on in the months preceding 911.
NIST report NCSTAR1-6A, page xxxvii (Via 911 Blogger): in WTC 1, floors 92 through 100 and 102 were upgraded; and in WTC 2, floors 77, 78, 88, 89, 92, 96 and 97 were upgraded. [See: Chart I, Chari II, Chart III, ] a number of the floors affected by the fires on September 11, 2001. Specifically, In the years between 1995 and 2001, thermal protection was upgraded in These renovations covered the almost exact same floors as where the "planes" hit-- particularly they spanned the "plane-hit" floors perfectly for WTC1 (94-98), and covered the lowest floor of the "plane-hit" floors (78-84) for WTC2.
Simply put, this is too much of a coincidence to be mere chance: that the same regions of both towers where the demolition started following the "plane hits" were the same regions that were recently "upgraded".
Renovations would have been perfect times to plant explosives and other devices that could mimic plane hits and subsequent fires. [See: Chart I, Chart II, Chart III]
At 610 feet, 47 stories, Building 7 would have been the tallest building in 33 states. It was not hit by an airplane and there is absolutely no mention of it in the report of the 911 Commission, lately disowned by the committe co-chairs. Watch the collapse video here. Six years on, our government has not seen fit to publish a complete explanation of its fall.
Conan Doyle's creation, Sherlock Holmes, said: "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." -Sherlock Holmes. When the "official conspiracy theory" is, thus, eliminated, that leaves the only logical and scientific explanation that makes sense and explains the observable facts consistent with the laws of science and logic.
It is interesting to note that Bush himself may have given the game away, implying that the airliner fires alone did not bring down the towers. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed described the design of planned attacks of buildings inside the U.S. and how operatives were directed to carry them out. That is valuable information for those of us who have the responsibility to protect the American people. He told us the operatives had been instructed to ensure that the explosives went off at a high -- a point that was high enough to prevent people trapped above from escaping. --Bush, Press Conference of the President, The Rose Garden, September 2006
Conspiracy theorists say World Trade Center 7 is the best proof for controlled demolition because it wasn't hit by airliners and only had a few fires. They also claim that there was a confession from the building owner who said he "pulled" it. But this is deceptive because while building 7 wasn't hit by an airliner, it was hit by the large perimeter columns of the Tower collapse. It was 400 ft away but the towers were more than 1300 ft tall. As the tower peeled open, it easily tilted over to reach building 7. Below is evidence showing that conspiracy theorists are wrong. --Debunking911
Check the bolded part. That is not what happened. The towers did not tip over onto Building 7. Nor did they "peel open". Who comes up with this stuff? Any cursory examination of any video of the Twin Towers collapse disproves it; you don't have to take my word for it. Just open your eyes. Certainly, the damage done by debris from the Twin Towers was relatively minor; it would not have necessitated that the building be pulled, nor would it have caused its collapse. Statements by "Debunking911" are evidence striking writers are moonlighting.
bombing of the Murrah building in OK City. Both buildings were constructed using the same bridge beam system that, in WTC 7's case, allegedly contributed to its demise. But more importantly WTC 7, like the Murrah building, housed high-level government offices including the FBI, CIA and the Secret Service. WTC 7 was also the storage facility for millions of files pertaining to active cases involving international drug dealing, organized crime, terrorism and money laundering.
There's also disturbing correlations between the collapse of WTC 7 and the Murrah Bldg
--Owner of WTC admits explosives were used!
Method and opportunity can be demonstrated. But what of motive? Why would Silverstein want to blow up his own buildings?
Six months before the attacks on the World Trade Center, the World Trade Center was "privatized" by being leased to a private sector developer. The lease was purchased by the Silverstein Group for $3.2 billion 6 weeks before 911. But the World Trade Towers were not the real estate prize the Silverstein Group might have been led to believe. The towers required some $200 million in renovations and improvements, most of which related to removal and replacement of building materials declared to be health hazards in the years since the towers were built. Other New York developers had been driven into bankruptcy by the costly mandated renovations, and $200 million represented an entire year's worth of revenues from the World Trade Towers.
The attacks on 9/11 changed the picture. Instead of renovation, Silverstein is rebuilding, funded by the insurance coverage on the property which 'fortuitously' covered acts of terrorism. Even better, Silverstein filed TWO insurance claims for the maximum amount of the policy, based on the two, in Silverstein's view, separate attacks. The total potential payout is $7.1 billion, more than enough to build a fabulous new complex and leave a hefty profit for the Silverstein Group, including Larry Silverstein himself.
As reported in The Washington Post, the insurance company, Swiss Re, has gone to court to argue that the 9/11 disaster was only one attack, not two and that therefore the insurance payout should be limited to $3.55 billion, still enough to rebuild the complex. The destruction of the World Trade Towers may make Silverstein one of the wealthiest men alive.
Giuliani Was Warned About The Demolitions
Before either of the Twin Towers had collapsed, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his associates were told to leave the headquarters that they had set up within Building 7.
" We were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was gonna collapse," Rudolph Giuliani told Peter Jennings of ABC News that morning, "and it did collapse before we could get out of the building."
Mind you, no steel building had ever collapsed because of a fire in the world's history. So, how did they know that the Twin Towers were going to collapse if it was such an unprecedented occurrence?
--Portland Indymedia
Much is said about the how the towers collapsed, or more properly, were collapsed. Most violate Occam's Razor with unnecessary complications, rationalizations after the fact. There is no reason to come up with crazy explanations about how they might look like controlled demolitions but are not really. Simply: the collapse of the Twin Towers looked like controlled demolitions because they were controlled demotions.
The basic idea of explosive demolition is quite simple: If you remove the support structure of a building at a certain point, the section of the building above that point will fall down on the part of the building below that point. If this upper section is heavy enough, it will collide with the lower part with sufficient force to cause significant damage. The explosives are just the trigger for the demolition. It's gravity that brings the building down.
--The Bigger They Come, the Harder They Fall
At last, some straight talk about "controlled demolitions", the only process which can explain what was witnessed and what happened on 911.
You can demolish a stone wall with a sledgehammer, and it's fairly easy to level a five-story building using excavators and wrecking balls. But when you need to bring down a massive structure, say a 20-story skyscraper, you have to haul out the big guns. Explosive demolition is the preferred method for safely and efficiently demolishing larger structures. When a building is surrounded by other buildings, it may be necessary to "implode" the building, that is, make it collapse down into its footprint. --How Building Implosions Work
My conclusion: if airliners had merely crashed into the Twin Tower of the WTC that day, there would have been fires and loss of life. The fires would have burned out as rapidly as they, in fact, did that very day. In the absence of "help", that would have been the beginning and the end of that tragedy. The towers would not have fallen and there would have been no need to "pull" Building 7.
There would have been no need for the vast propaganda and strong-arm machine that this crooked administration marshaled to cover up its crimes that day and its criminal complicity in a cover up. The destruction of evidence in and of itself should have been sufficient to send this administration up the river on felony charges of obstruction of justice.
Power corrupts and absolute power has absolutely corrupted this most corrupt, the most evil administration that the United States, possibly the world, has ever seen.
Re:The Burning of the Twin Towers
« Reply #1 on: 2008-02-05 10:26:03 »
Blunderov:
Quote:
(On a more conjectural note I have always wondered why the two towers were struck by the aircraft, IMS, about 20 minutes apart and yet they both fell down within moments of one another. Odd that. But perhaps I misremember.)
You remember correctly, but there is nothing odd about it. The second airplane hit the tower considerably lower than the first one, placing more structural weight above the damage zone, making collapse occur faster.
(On a more conjectural note I have always wondered why the two towers were struck by the aircraft, IMS, about 20 minutes apart and yet they both fell down within moments of one another. Odd that. But perhaps I misremember.)
You remember correctly, but there is nothing odd about it. The second airplane hit the tower considerably lower than the first one, placing more structural weight above the damage zone, making collapse occur faster.
Blunderov.
I've never been a fan of conspiracy theories either.
The events of 9/11, from everything I've read and seen, haven't changed that either.
I believe everything about that horrible day was just as it first appeared.
Islamic fundamentalists hijacking of U.S. airliners and the subsequent horror that ensued.
Nothing else.
Respectfully,
Walter
PS--Of course that is JMHO.
« Last Edit: 2008-02-05 16:01:01 by Walter Watts »
(On a more conjectural note I have always wondered why the two towers were struck by the aircraft, IMS, about 20 minutes apart and yet they both fell down within moments of one another. Odd that. But perhaps I misremember.)
You remember correctly, but there is nothing odd about it. The second airplane hit the tower considerably lower than the first one, placing more structural weight above the damage zone, making collapse occur faster.
And further, the explosive pressures of one collapse probably sent the other building next to it into considerable sway and inflicted more damage hastening its already inevitable collapse. The pressure and collapse of these two gargantuan burning buildings are likewise the simplest explanation for the subsequent damage and firey collapse of the nearby building "Tower 7". They were, after all, two of the tallest building in the world, so their collapse had a rather explosive effect on nearby structures.
Re:The Burning of the Twin Towers
« Reply #4 on: 2008-02-05 16:48:38 »
"Finding spheres of molybdenum in the dust of the WTC collapses is evidence that temperatures by some mechanism reached at least 2623C."
[Blunderov] I have been chary of this "Truther" thing for awhile. I thought perhaps 9/11 was something which was simply permitted to happen rather than actively contrived. But 2623C? I would like to know how that could happen. Metals boil at that temperature.
Re:The Burning of the Twin Towers
« Reply #5 on: 2008-02-06 12:12:01 »
My problem with this particular conspiracy theory depends to some extent on who is supposed to have been behind it and why.
The additional risk of discovery that it would have posed to the aircraft hijacking perpetrators, who must have been aware that their operators were neither reliable nor skilled in tradescraft, surely meant that they would have seen that the risk of the operators being caught placing thermite in the buildings would have jeopardized the far more spectacular aircraft impacts.
While we know that the Jewish Intelligence agents were in close contact with the actual perpetrators (as opposed to the alleged planners), to the point where it seems likely that they had identified at least some of the targets and placed surveillance teams to record the impacts, it seems that their intention was primarily to monitor the process (and of course, this could be explained away much more easily than any possible active participation preparing buildings for demolition).
While it is possible that one group could have been planning an explosive (or thermal) attack on the same building as another group definitely targeted with aircraft, making the sequence suggested here one of coincidence and happenstance rather than conspiracy and so much more believable, there are also perfectly natural explanations that require no second, secretive, and undetected though ultimately successful, attack on the buildings.
Unlike analysis of the vagaries of humans behavior, this is thoroughly based in inflexible physics and so much more persuasive to my mind.
The most obvious is that we perform welding operations by hitting pieces of metal together quickly. High instantaneous temperatures at particular points are caused by masses hitting immovable targets at velocity converting kinetic into thermal energy and resulting in the release of heat. When the heat is not averaged due to the masses being made of disparate parts and surfaces, as was the case for the WTC, it is easy to envisage individual parts reaching extreme temperatures and possibly vaporizing their materials which would then spread over a relatively wide area.
Let's look at the energy released in the collapse and see if this is a viable explanation:
So: Building Mass: 450,000,000 kg / 110 floors = 4,090,909 kg/floor Content Mass: 208ft^2 = 43,264 square feet * 50lbs/ft^2 * 43264ft^2 = 2,163,200lbs = 981,211kg Total Mass: 4,090,909 kg+ 981,211 kg = 5,072,120 kg/floor or 5Gg/floor
Velocity:
Actual Case:
13 seconds
Freefall case:
d = 1/2at^2 => t = (2d/a)^1/2 a is 9.8m.s^-2 (acceleration of gravity at Earth's surface) d is 415m (approximate height of the World Trade Center towers) so t = (830m/9.8m.s^-2)^1/2 = 9.2s
And
v = at
v = (9.8m.s^-2 x 9.2) = 90.2m.s^-1
Comparison of the start of the collapse events as ascertained by photographic times with impacts measured by seismic analysis shows that the collapse was not significantly slowed by the collapse of the intervening floor systems (refer the NIST report supra). Thus although the building could have fallen 3.5 times its height in the actual time taken (13s), it didn't; instead it took an additional 4 seconds, which points to the 90m/s number being close to the effective speed achieved at the bottom of the fall (which is when the kinetic energy of the falling components would have converted to thermal energy).
Top floor Ek = (5Gg x (90m/s)^2)/2 = 20G250 J
As the masses are the same and the time is proportional, we can pair the 1st and 110th floor, 2nd and 109th and so on, or ~10G/floor.
Checking this on the center floor: t = (2d/a)^1/2 = (415/9.^1/2 = 6.5s v = at = 9.8*6.5 = 63.77m.s^-1 Ek=(mv^2)/2 = (5Gg x (63.77m/s)^2)/2 = 10G166J
So 110 floors * 10GJ = 1T1J
1 ton of TNT = 4G184 J
So we have an energy equivalence of 263 Tons of TNT or so, over a quarter kiloton (ie more than a tactical nuclear weapon) or the equivalent of over 500 1000lb bombs.
Given that Guernica, WW II and Korean War experience showed that a 1000 pounder will generally reduce a city block - and the WTC buildings were each less than a city block in size - so thinking of a floor as a block, meaning over 5 bombs of available kinetic energy per block, do you think this is enough to push temperatures to insane levels. Now add the kinetic energy delivered by the aircraft (1/4 kT) as well as its fuel load (1/4 kT) as well as the energy of the burning contents of the building (estimating 1/2 the contents burned, another 1/4 kT) to the mix, all of which energy had to be represented as thermal energy and we have a full kT of TNT equivalent. This energy wasn't all released simultaneously, but still, it took only 200 kT to reduce a square mile of Nagasaki to rubble and ashes. The WTC was much smaller and of course, that was 1kT per building so across the two of them, one hundredth of a Nagasaki sized explosion, and as the debris continued to smoulder for weeks temperatures deep in the already really hot piles could easily have reached totally insane levels and would account for both the reported pyroclastic flows and, given Gypsum boards high Sulfur levels, would also account for any chemical anomalies.
To build this class of back-of-an-envelope-grade model doesn't take anything more than basic school physics and a little common sense, yet it seems to demolish the conspiracy arguments forwarded. Which may say something about the physics skill - and, or common sense, of those advocating such theories.
Kindest Regards
Hermit
PS According to the NIST the WTC collapse was primarily caused by the thermal deformation of the external structure, and consequent non-concentric load transfer to the internal structure.
The mechanism involved in Building 7 was different, being primarily caused by fire reducing the ability of the building to carry the load of the penthouse block, followed by its well signaled and predicted collapse.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
<snip> To build this class of back-of-an-envelope-grade model doesn't take anything more than basic school physics and a little common sense, yet it seems to demolish the conspiracy arguments forwarded. Which may say something about the physics skill - and, or common sense, of those advocating such theories.</snip>
[Blunderov] Guilty as charged I'm afraid but much wiser now thanks to the Hermit's brilliant energy analysis. I'm now happy that those extreme temperatures were to be expected given the forces involved. Incredible to think that all that steel reached boiling point in 13s. Amazing.
There is simply not enough conspiracy theory-driven paranoid funk rock in the world.
By the looks of his YouTube video Ralph Buckley is hoping to redress the balance with a song that rages against psychiatry, the media, George Bush, Prozac, corporations, socialised health care, mind control, the police state, and the government. Phew!
Not one to let his shaky grasp of neurobiology temper his attack on the New World Order, he notes that antidepressants are hallucinogenic like LSD and both were created to keep down the masses. Fact.
Prozac, zoloft, wellbutrin, paxil etc...are psychoactive drugs (in the hallucinogen family) not unlike LSD which is also another drug developed by the government for purposes of mind control. Curious coincidence? How many 'coincidences' does it take before a conspiracy stops becoming a conspiracy?
How many conspiracy theorists does it take to change a light bulb? The light bulb didn't change man, that's WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK!
Despite the pharmacological mix-up, Buckley definitely has the funk and cuts some mean blues into the deal. The track is from an album called '9/11 Conspiracy Blues' and he's a big Ron Paul supporter if you want to get a feel for his suspicious outlook on life.
Best of all though, he rhymes 'schizophrenia' with 'fuck the media' and you gotta respect that.
Link to Buckley's paranoid blues track 'schizophrenia'.
<snip> To build this class of back-of-an-envelope-grade model doesn't take anything more than basic school physics and a little common sense, yet it seems to demolish the conspiracy arguments forwarded. Which may say something about the physics skill - and, or common sense, of those advocating such theories.</snip>
[Blunderov] Guilty as charged I'm afraid but much wiser now thanks to the Hermit's brilliant energy analysis. I'm now happy that those extreme temperatures were to be expected given the forces involved. Incredible to think that all that steel reached boiling point in 13s. Amazing.
I've reached the decision point in the last few months, that if there really was some secret conspiracy behind 9/11 (other than Al Qeda) somebody would have succeeded in articulating it by now. All of the ones I've heard so far have suffered from contextual misunderstandings - focusing on one picture, or one piece of evidence, to the exclusion of other more relevant and explanatory facts and circumstances. However, I think its still a good exercise to continue debunking the 9/11 truthers, and I like to see the Church of Virus doing things like that. If we let bullshit float around unchallenged, more people are likely to give it undeserved credance. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Blunderov.
Re:The Burning of the Twin Towers
« Reply #9 on: 2008-02-07 18:41:16 »
[Blunderov] I'm now happy that those extreme temperatures were to be expected given the forces involved. Incredible to think that all that steel reached boiling point in 13s. Amazing.
[MoEnzyme] I've reached the decision point in the last few months, that if there really was some secret conspiracy behind 9/11 (other than Al Qeda) somebody would have succeeded in articulating it by now. All of the ones I've heard so far have suffered from contextual misunderstandings - focusing on one picture, or one piece of evidence, to the exclusion of other more relevant and explanatory facts and circumstances. However, I think its still a good exercise to continue debunking the 9/11 truthers, and I like to see the Church of Virus doing things like that. If we let bullshit float around unchallenged, more people are likely to give it undeserved credance. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Blunderov. 1) I don't think that more than a relatively small amount of steel was melted. I think that the vaporised material almost certainly did happen in the few seconds as falling debris hit the still standing sections and then the ground. I think that larger amounts of material would have been exposed to very high temperatures (high enough to achieve pyroclastic flow) due to the ongoing high-energy oxidation in relatively well insulated piles in the following weeks. This would have involved a relatively small amount of the total mass as it would only occur where there were ongoing fires in large piles.
2) I don't think that stating that 9/11 was planned by Al Q'aeda is the same as proving it. Bearing in mind that the perps are dead, I would still like to see some of the alleged planners be charged in open court and see how it was put together - and importantly how it varies from the official line. As I'm sure would many others. Which is one reason that I suspect, like Lockerbie, that it is unlikely ever to happen.
3) I didn't say that I rejected all conspiracy theory, just that this one was nonsensical - and more fatal - unnecessary.
4) I am completely convinced by readily available evidence and analysis that Israeli intelligence knew for sure that something was in the wind well before 9/11, and suspect that they had sufficient information to work out most if not all of what went down that day. I would like to know what perverted reasoning they used to justify not sharing what they had, or if they did, I want to know why it was not acted upon. If my suspicion is not correct, I would like to know how they knew to have field teams following the hijacking crews around the US and a prepositioned camera crew to photograph the first airframe crashing into the towers, never mind the second or the collapse. Unfortunately, while campaigning US politicians have to sound as if they are running for office in Israel whilst supporting AIPIC's every excess in order to be electable, I don't think these questions will be asked, never mind answered. Heck, nobody even bothers with the USS Liberty anymore even though it has now been repeatedly and conclusively shown that Israel knew full well that it was a US military vessel when it attempted to sink her and kill the survivors in cold blood, with the US political and military command apparently having made deliberate decisions to sacrifice their assets, their personnel and the truth to prevent embarrassment for Israel.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Re:The Burning of the Twin Towers
« Reply #10 on: 2008-02-07 22:50:51 »
I'm feel certain that numerous individuals in Bush administration had more than enough information to connect the dots if they actually cared to. I wouldn't be shocked if Israelis even told us . . . there just wasn't enough competance to compute on the other side of that conversation. The neocons were too busy watching Saddam Hussein at the time. I wonder what they do now that he's dead?
<snip> "If my suspicion is not correct, I would like to know how they knew to have field teams following the hijacking crews around the US and a prepositioned camera crew to photograph the first airframe crashing into the towers, never mind the second or the collapse. <snip>
Kind Regards
Hermit
If I might respectfully inquire, how did the video of the first plane hitting the north tower go from being a documentary about New York firefighters ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Naudet_and_Gedeon_Naudet ) to a video shot by an Israeli Intelligence field team?
The availability of (multiple) videos of the subsequent second plane hitting the south tower seems obvious.
Just from a statistical standpoint, I would find it odd if there weren't camcorders shooting something or other on Manhattan 24/7.
Re:The Burning of the Twin Towers
« Reply #12 on: 2008-02-07 23:56:41 »
I wouldn't know about the video. I do know about the vast amount of cross-confirmatory evidence including material presented in and developed for the House and Senate which confirms the basic facts as stated by me. Or why I provided a link where you could examine most of what persuaded me.
For a quick summary (with many confirmatory links) try just http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10528. You might also read this article http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7127 and examine at least the maps on pages 163 to 169 of this report (THe source for the mapped data is FBI movement schedules from Appendix B). As you know, I'm familiar with the evaluation of such material and the subject, and in the light of the multiple independent sources, indications and reports, both in the US and in Israel, I see no alternative but to reach the provisional conclusions I articulated previously. It is certain that Israel knew who was involved in the 9/11 plot, what they were planning (at least in terms of flying aircraft) by mid 2001 and had undoubtedly modeled the very scenarios played out on 9/11 in the 1980s, and subsequent to 9/11 intervened successfully to prevent the US from following up on her agents who had been arrested and possibly intervened to squash news reports on this matter, particularly at Fox News which withdrew both transcripts and archive footage from their sites - with no explanation.
Let me briefly quote from the second article (supra):
"Why the Israeli government decided not to share with us all the critical information they had, and the extent of that information, is a subject for the public inquiry. They may have thought some sort of warning prudent in the event their surveillance activities later became a matter of public knowledge. But any energetic Israeli effort to assist the United States in preventing the attacks would not have served their strategic interest, in view of the disastrous effect those attacks were likely to have on the relationships between the United States and the Arab world. As a leader of the Israeli New Jersey Group said when he was arrested on the afternoon of September 11, 'We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems.'"
Students of this subject will not be surprised by much of what is contained in the Shea memorandum, but there are significant new details unearthed by Shea's research and his thoroughness, particularly in tracing the parallel movements of the 9/11 hijackers (and their known associates) and the Israelis. Shea shows the Israelis had the means, the motive, and the physical proximity to track the hijackers' movements and intercept the details of their plans.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Author
Logged
^1/2 = 6.5s
