Steve Jones and his physics analysis of 9/11...

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by JoeXIII'007

Fire from the gasoline of the plane that crashed into it cannot burn that bright

Those planes weren't running on gasoline. But I know what you mean.

I do admit that some things don't quite seem to add up, but I'm not jumping to any conclusions because of that. So, I guess you could say I don't believe nor disbelieve in any theory.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

Those planes weren't running on gasoline. But I know what you mean.

I believe jet fuel is just gasoline with an extremely high octane level.

[Chriszuma]

Originally Posted by Tom Bottiglieri

I believe jet fuel is just gasoline with an extremely high octane level.

Actually, you're wrong. According to wikipedia:
"The most common fuel worldwide is a kerosene/paraffin oil-based fuel classified as JET A-1"

If you want the other side of the Loose Change argument, which make a lot more logical conclusions, check out the Loose Change Viewer's Guide

EDIT: By the way, I just started listening to this video, and already he's made some errors. He claims that the building couldn't have possibly fallen due to fire. It didn't. It fell due to fire AND a gigantic plane smashing into it at full throttle.

[thegathering]

I believe jet fuel is just gasoline with an extremely high octane level.

I believe that high octane, gasoline based fuels are only suitable for piston engine aircraft.

Chris is right about the parrafin/kerosine/naptha based fuels being used in modern jets.

[lukevanoort]

Originally Posted by JoeXIII'007

there was a high temperature alkaline metal (i think) called thermite w/sulfur that cut through the steel and thus made the towers collapse

Thermite is a mixture of powdered aluminum and iron oxide (rust). When it is raised to high enough temperatures, the aluminum rips the oxygen off the iron to form aluminum oxide and molten iron. It is used to weld together railroad tracks, and the military uses it to destroy equipment. If you've heard the stories of a material that you could ignite on the hood of a jeep, and it'll melt through the engine, this is it. That said, thermite could form accidentally on a rusty object, if aluminum powder is nearby. Mind you that is rather unlikely since powdered aluminum isn't going to be all over a rusty column. It also doesn't really 'explode', it might fling off bits of molten iron a few yards, but it wouldn't slow any falls.

[KenWittlief]

ok I watched part of it and read the summary in the post above. A couple of points:

1. The professor shows bldg 7 falling, and buildings that were intentionally demolished falling, and says something to the effect of "it looks the same"

what does that mean? If someone is poisoned and someone has a brain aneurysm, Im willing to bet they look pretty much the same as they fall to the floor. The fact that they fall the same way doesn't mean the cause of failure is the same. Logical fallacy.

2. The professor makes a big point that many sky scrapers have caught fire and burned, and none of them ever collapsed until 9/11. Ok, but how many of those other buildings had a fully fueled jetliner jammed into the center of their frame at the time? Most buildings are not constructed with materials anything like ten thousand gallons of jet fuel. There was nothing in those other buildings that would combine with the updraft rush of air to burn like a kerosene fueled blow torch.

3. Metal was seen pouring out of one tower? There was a jet aircraft in there, made mostly of aluminum! Aluminum does burn if you get it hot enough, and it would certainly melt in this type of a fire.

4. The fact that an engineer was fired from UL, after his computer models could not replicate the fall of the towers, what are we to conclude? That he was fired to cover up his discovery, or that he had no idea what he was doing, or how to model something this complex with the computer SW he was using? Could he have been fired for being incompetent?

5. The WTC area was cleaned up quickly because the cause of the fires and collapse was already known - it was captured on cameras, the second impact was seen live by millions of people, there was no mystery. If someone is shot multiple times during a robbery, with 10 million eye witnesses, and dies on the spot, Im pretty sure you dont have a bunch of doctors running tests, thinking "maybe his wife poisioned him? maybe he was hit by lightning?"

6. Why did bulding 7 fall? Because the towers that fell were right across the street, and tons of debris fell onto bldg 7, and the shock of the towers hitting the bedrock was like a localized earth quake. Again, nothing like this has happened before because nothing like this has ever happened before. There is no historical basis to look back on for similar events.

If this professor had been part of the investigation team, had access to the site, access to the materials, and then decided something else was going on, then I would give him more credibility. But to look at videos, and eyewitness account from people who didnt understand what they were seeing, and who were in shock at the time, and base his conclusions on that data alone,

that is not science. That is armchair speculation.

The analogy they use in the presentation is actually good one. It's like puncturing a screen window with a pencil - it puts a hole in it but it doesn't destroy the entire screen.

The WTC towers were designed in a unique manner. The outside walls were primary load bearing structures. This allowed the inside areas to be more open.

The towers were not punctured like a pencil through a window screen. We all saw the plane fly into the second tower. The plane sliced the entire side of the tower open from wing tip to wing tip, destroying the load bearing structure of the entire one side and corner of the building.

I think this point alone demonstrates the poor science used by this professor. He could see with his own eyes that the entire side of the building was slashed open, but then presents the quoted statements about pencils and window screens.

As this point you gotta ask yourself "what is this person really up to? What are his motives?

[Chriszuma]

It's like puncturing a screen window with a pencil - it puts a hole in it but it doesn't destroy the entire screen.

I'm with Ken on this one. Whoever says it was like a pencil is blind. A more fitting analogy would be if you hit your screen door with an axe, and then torched it with a flame thrower. There's no telling what might happen.

[thegathering]

A friend of mine posted this in another forum:

A Boeing 767 is quite a bit bigger than a 707

WTC7

Matches up with the professors only quandry over the word implusion. A fire burned in the center of the building for seven uncontrolled.

Jet fuel burns well under the temperature to melt steel, but still hot enough to cause the structural integrity to start to fail. So when you have thousands and thousands of pounds of pressure bearing down on unstable support columns.

I didn't listen to all of it, cause its just rehashing the same theories that have been around for a long time.

I find this humorous. He cities a bunch of experts in the field that says this could never happen. They said the steel couldn't give out, but Farid Alfawakhiri, Ph.D. senior engineer, American Institute of Steel Construction does.

PM debunked a lot of it - http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...tml?page=1&c=y - but they have this oh so annoying habit of citing their experts in an easy to find fashion - http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...tml?page=9&c=y

Of all the people they could have sent, they sent a physics professor. What's up with that?

[JoeXIII'007]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

1. The professor shows bldg 7 falling, and buildings that were intentionally demolished falling, and says something to the effect of "it looks the same"

what does that mean? If someone is poisoned and someone has a brain aneurysm, Im willing to bet they look pretty much the same as they fall to the floor. The fact that they fall the same way doesn't mean the cause of failure is the same. Logical fallacy.


6. Why did bulding 7 fall? Because the towers that fell were right across the street, and tons of debris fell onto bldg 7, and the shock of the towers hitting the bedrock was like a localized earth quake. Again, nothing like this has happened before because nothing like this has ever happened before. There is no historical basis to look back on for similar events.

If this professor had been part of the investigation team, had access to the site, access to the materials, and then decided something else was going on, then I would give him more credibility. But to look at videos, and eyewitness account from people who didnt understand what they were seeing, and who were in shock at the time, and base his conclusions on that data alone,

that is not science. That is armchair speculation.

Well, #1, it was an awfully long delay between the collapse of the towers and bldg 7, and #2, mathematically the building fell too fast for just shock, debris, and what little fire there was to bring it down that quickly. If the building fell a bit more logically, it would fall a lot slower, and over a period of time, due to the resistance from the structure of the building.

2. The professor makes a big point that many sky scrapers have caught fire and burned, and none of them ever collapsed until 9/11. Ok, but how many of those other buildings had a fully fueled jetliner jammed into the center of their frame at the time? Most buildings are not constructed with materials anything like ten thousand gallons of jet fuel. There was nothing in those other buildings that would combine with the updraft rush of air to burn like a kerosene fueled blow torch.

The fuel burned off very quickly after the crashes, thus for it to have any effect on the structure, it would be very minimal. Plus whatever flammable materials in the towers at the time could not have burned hot enough alone to melt the steel.

3. Metal was seen pouring out of one tower? There was a jet aircraft in there, made mostly of aluminum! Aluminum does burn if you get it hot enough, and it would certainly melt in this type of a fire.

OK, three pictures. One of molten aluminum, one of molten steel, and one of the metal flowing from the tower shortly before the collapse. You can also see some comparison photos here, with a thermite demo too.

4. The fact that an engineer was fired from UL, after his computer models could not replicate the fall of the towers, what are we to conclude? That he was fired to cover up his discovery, or that he had no idea what he was doing, or how to model something this complex with the computer SW he was using? Could he have been fired for being incompetent?

I am pretty sure he was doing the right thing: starting with the evidence available from the scene, and ending with an appropiate conclusion, instead of starting with a conclusion and finding evidence to support it.

5. The WTC area was cleaned up quickly because the cause of the fires and collapse was already known - it was captured on cameras, the second impact was seen live by millions of people, there was no mystery. If someone is shot multiple times during a robbery, with 10 million eye witnesses, and dies on the spot, Im pretty sure you dont have a bunch of doctors running tests, thinking "maybe his wife poisioned him? maybe he was hit by lightning?"

Of course the cause of death from a shooting is obvious, but when you have two towers that were built to last collapse due to what the official story claims, and the official story contradicts the laws of physics and whatnot, you have a very obvious problem. Especially when engineers all over the place are befuddled and puzzled as to why they collapsed. Evidence is crucial to figuring out exactly why. Popular conclusion in this case needs to be verified, and there was no time to do it with how quickly the evidence was buried.

Also, in any crime scene, there are investigators who find evidence (bullets, shrapnel, etc.) and will put them in bags to keep them in the condition they were in at the scene. There is almost always an evidence gathering phase, then a clean up, not just a clean up. In the case of 9/11, the evidence at the scene of the crime was immediately destroyed, allowing for little to no scientific analysis of the steel from the towers from private investigators.

The towers were not punctured like a pencil through a window screen. We all saw the plane fly into the second tower. The plane sliced the entire side of the tower open from wing tip to wing tip, destroying the load bearing structure of the entire one side and corner of the building.

What about the central core columns at the center of the buildings??? I am pretty certain that the outer walls were a bit weak to a jet, but the core had to have withstood the impact a lot better.

As this point you gotta ask yourself "what is this person really up to? What are his motives?

His motives are to pressure the government for solid answers as to what exactly happened on the days before and on 9/11. In a follow up video here, he claims that he has been bribed to shut up about this from homeland security. There are a lot of holes in the official story, and it takes the removal of the shock and awe of that day's memories to do some real critical analysis of what really happened, and if you think about it, there was some crazy stuff going on that doesn't happen on any normal disaster.

total: 4 cents... with extreme caution.

-Joe

[KenWittlief]

His motives are to pressure the government for solid answers as to what exactly happened on the days before and on 9/11. In a follow up video here, he claims that he has been bribed to shut up about this from homeland security.

there is no logic to this. If someone is making outrageous claims (the buildings were rigged with explosive/thermite charges set to go off 1 hour after the impacts.... apparently all done with the governments fore-knowledge)

then making more outrageous claims (the government tried to bribe me to shut up) does not further his case

its only more of the same.

If the government wanted to silence him, after killing thousands of people in the WTC, they would not do it with money. He would simply disappear.

Going back to the aircraft. The towers were designed to withstand an impact from a 707? 727? Jet planes normally fly at 200 to 250mph when they are only 1000 feet above the ground. They would have to be on final approach and off course to be that low to the ground over Manhatten, or suffering from engine failure that causes them to fly too slow to maintain altitude.

The planes that hit the towers were not only fully loaded with fuel, they were flying at full speed. They hit the towers going 650mph. You can see this in the video of the first plane that hit, taken by the documenary crew working with new fireman recruits. The plane flew overhead at full throttle, screaming across the Manhatten skyline, only 600 feet off the ground.

No one would ever expect an impact like that. The towers were not designed for that kind of event.

[thegathering]

I guess the biggest problem with his theory is that explosives have to be set before they can be detonated.

There is no evidence that those parts of the tower were deconstructed to have explosive charges layed inside the steel support columns before the towers were hit. A detonation of that scale would take months of careful planning to be executed... and almost as long to prepare the building for detonation, coordinate drilling locations, and set charges.

Explosives could have been a possibility, but research was not conducted on the possibility of explosives in the tower because there was no evidence to support explosives being in the tower (unlike an aircraft and jet fuel).

[Cory]

Originally Posted by JoeXIII'007

The fuel burned off very quickly after the crashes, thus for it to have any effect on the structure, it would be very minimal. Plus whatever flammable materials in the towers at the time could not have burned hot enough alone to melt the steel.

This issue has been cleared up many times. The jet fuel was merely the ignition source. All the flammables inside the towers were what burned long after the fuel was exhausted. In addition, the steel never melted. It merely was severely weakened to the point where it was no longer capable of bearing the load of the building.

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by JoeXIII'007

What about the central core columns at the center of the buildings??? I am pretty certain that the outer walls were a bit weak to a jet, but the core had to have withstood the impact a lot better.
-Joe

I was in one of the WTC towers about a year before the attack and if I recall correctly, the outer walls carried the majority of the building's load.

And planted explosives? There's no way that much drilling could go unnoticed. A pneumatic hammer drill is one loud beast.

Also, I'm reading that the 767s hit with a kinetic energy 7 times greater than the impact modeled when the building was designed.

[JoeXIII'007]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

And planted explosives? There's no way that much drilling could go unnoticed. A pneumatic hammer drill is one loud beast.

Thus could be the reason that there were unannounced evacuations of the building before the attacks according to people that worked there.

[Wetzel]

He bills the presentation has a serious scientific lecture, but I never heard any serious science. I did hear a lot of "seems to me..." and far more political reasons to support his conspiracy theory than science.

Wetzel