How to Knock Down a Skyscraper
It’s really not that hard. That’s what nobody wants discussed, not Uncle Sam or the 9/11 alleged truth movement. Not when a big jet nearly full of fuel crashes into one at close to top speed and explodes against part of the main supporting structure. Not when steel beams fall hundreds of feet and crash into the side of a flimsy skyscraper across the way that burns fiercely and finally collapses into a heap of rubble. All this talk about the fires? The official story says fire primarily caused the collapses, which the alleged debunkers claim is impossible. In the absence of the peculiar cause of those fires, maybe so. How convenient is it to discount the crash impact, absorbed in a fraction of a second against the central columns of the Twin Towers? Those buildings were crippled by those explosive impacts, but might have survived for repair if it were not for the fires, which precipitated their collapse near the point of impact, where the supporting beams were relatively flimsy, not being expected to support as much weight as those at less lofty heights.
I listened carefully to the special series Gary Null did on how the buildings were done in. I’ve been deliberately avoiding the controversy, because I think there ought to be an independent investigation, but not along the lines the Truthers demand, which looks like a dead end and waste of precious time to me. Their theory in a nutshell is, the buildings must have been expertly demolished with explosives surreptitiously planted earlier by operatives paid off by traitors in power. Professor Steven Jones has fingered some nano-thermite the military had in the works. Occam’s Razor is useful here, the maxim that if a simpler explanation can account for something, it’s more likely than a more complicated explanation. I didn’t hear any accounting for the tons of unexploded nano-thermite Jones claims litters the rubble. How did it manage to survive unexploded? Does he mean to say this high-tech super explosive was so inefficiently detonated, tons of it didn’t explode and are to be found everywhere in the debris? What exactly did he find constituting evidence of nano-thermite? I heard no hard evidence for anything, except as is generally known, Uncle Sam has things to hide, what else is new? But that seems the rule for that 9/11 Truth movement. I’d think the Bush crowd covered their asses for incompetence and intelligence screwups, and kept the involvement of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan out of the news so they could punish Afghanistan for not agreeing to a deal for an important pipeline. Now the old Soviet mineral studies are making news, which US officials suddenly revealed, saying the country is a treasure trove of valuable minerals. There’s plenty of shenanigans to investigate, but there’s really no case that the whole disaster was planned and executed by the powers that be to stage a coup, i.e. an inside job. What took the cake for me so far in my research was the feeble attempt at debunking by Kevin Ryan of 911 Review, Manuel Garcia Sees Physics That Don’t Exist, of Manuel Garcia’s series of explanations of how the buildings came down on CounterPunch, which did a special report.
CounterPunch Special Report: Debunking the Myths of 9/11
Alexander Cockburn here assembles his two prime commentaries in a final, expanded essay, “The 9/11 Conspiracists and the Decline of the Left.”
Manuel Garcia Jr, physicist and engineer, presents his three separate reports, undertaken for CounterPunch.
Part One is his report on the Physics of 9/11..
Part Two (published here for the first time) is his report on the Thermodynamics of 9/11.
Part Three, Dark Fire, is his report on the collapse of the World Trade Center’s Building 7.
JoAnn Wypijewski wrote her essay “Conversations at Ground Zero” after a day spent with people at the site on 9/11/2006.
Garcia did a follow-up on Building 7, Thermal Expansion Downed WTC 7:
The Big Heat after NIST issued its report in August 2008. I recommend these articles to anyone who believes that Bush or his cronies had to be masterminding behind the scenes. In a way, since our politicians serve as inspiration to fight the empire they represent, in the name of all of us despite whatever each individual has to say about it, our leaders and their policies are chiefly responsible for what they call terrorism. The war on terror was old news, but it took on a much more public phase after these spectacular instances of blowback. Obama had his chance to redeem this nation, and deserve his Nobel Peace Prize, but his attacks on Pakistan are living up to his campaign war whooping, and now the heat is on in Afghanistan, with a surge of violence in Iraq postponing those withdrawal plans. But this post isn’t about foreign policy, and I’m just a skeptic about that, no kind of expert. I am, nonetheless, a scientist, not some lay person speculating on towers collapsing by some weird physics so hard to understand, there had to be some kind of thermite. Oxidized aluminum in an event of that magnitude, I’m supposed to believe required tons of thermite? Show me pools of molten metal, I’ll say that can happen when combining superheated gases under extreme pressure, hot aluminum, iron, steam. Metals absorb heat, so they can get significantly hotter than air temperatures in a fire, and their crystals start losing significant structural strength long before they start melting. I hear all this talk about the air temperature of a kerosene fire, as if jet fuel was the only fuel burning in those buildings. Metals will burn if they get hot enough, or if oxidation is catalyzed. When I hear talk about what can’t happen under such circumstances, I wonder if someone is blowing smoke, playing on public faith in experts asserting the counter-intuitive scenario of collapsing skyscrapers wasn’t the result of an act of war, because rogue elements in power pulled it off to stage a coup and start an endless war on terror
I have a nose for pseudo-scientific snow jobs. I attended Caltech, but decided to transfer because its computers back then were so primitive, and I wanted to study programming. My grades were not the reason, though once I was advised by a graduate General Relativity professor I was in danger of failing his course. I was a junior missing several prerequisites, but I wanted to study Einstein’s theories of relativity, so I took the class pass-fail and barely passed. I was not used to being out of my league. Caltech allowed that option, and gave out A+ grades then. I know, I got a few in math classes. But I digress, don’t mean to brag, but I’m making a point. I’m not easy to snow about physics, I’ll put it that way.
For a crowd screaming about ad hominem attacks, Kevin Ryan can dish it out with the worst of them. He can’t really refute the physics, so he ridicules Garcia as a government stooge twisting his joints, making up paradoxical yarns to explain the inexplicable, “spooky action at a distance,” “only imaginative conjecture at best.” I guess ridiculing someone as a stooge excuses one from the task of actually disproving his theories, which Ryan didn’t bother to attempt, though he thinks he did a bang up job, no doubt. He disproved his limited understanding of what Garcia tried to explain, like anyone who has no argument makes up and knocks down a straw man.
From the research of Steven Jones, we know that the thermite reaction likely played a role in bringing the towers down, and it would not be surprising if technology developed by LLNL was involved. Could that be why Manuel Garcia is so intent on seeing Physics that don’t exist, in order to avoid seeing links to technology developed by his employer?
These skyscrapers actually exhibit quantum behavior, as large multi-floor sections go from rest to a speed of 16 mph instantaneously!
If it was not already clear that Garcia never read NIST’s WTC report, we might think that he got his quantum leaps from them.
Garcia’s analysis of the WTC thermodynamics then begins with the removal of all of the fireproofing from all the steel, an unsupported assumption at best.
Did Ryan read what I read? All this grossly distorts Garcia’s work, straw man argument at best, and Ryan should know it. He surely knows about the law of conservation of momentum? What in a skyscraper is going to stop a gigantic sledgehammer crashing down with steadily increasing weight and speed? The ground, nothing else. If Ryan is a respected journalist in the Truther movement, I wonder why, if he is so bold as to engage in such “sloppy dishonesty,” which he blithely tags on Garcia. What else can I call deliberate misrepresentation in the name of science and truth? His piece is full of it. I could go on for pages about the differences between what Garcia says and what Ryan says Garcia says. For example, instantaneous and all have precise meanings in physics, and Ryan deliberately misuses them. The physics Garcia lays out is not mysterious or convoluted, unless one believes it was an inside job. Occam’s Razor tells me the Truthers have somehow managed to outdo the government, concocting theories even more unbelievable than Uncle Sam. I can understand the desire to believe the worst about the Bush gang, but I don’t even think they were unusual. Our political system reeks of corruption, dishonest dealing, power madness, hypocrisy, doublespeak, CYA, then, now, as usual. This is kind of an open secret; one overused euphemism is spin control.
Ryan makes a big deal about the lack of sufficient energy to cause that kind of damage, like knocking fire shielding off the central beams, claiming the available energy was much less than Garcia and NIST estimated. It’s not the total energy that matters, it’s the power applied to the area of impact, which for the duration of that sudden sharp change of momentum those beams had to absorb was considerable. Momentum is conserved, which means any loss of momentum by one mass has to be made up by disruption in another mass(es). That implies huge shock waves that would go all the way down to the bottom, triggering secondary waves and possibly explosions of generators. After burning for awhile, I don’t think it’s mysterious that somewhere support gave way in the area around the impact, starting the avalanche that collapsed the building in on itself.
It could be very distressing for some of these rebel leaders to realize that instead of “muckraking with a radical attitude” they have spent years meekly bolstering the status quo.
That’s Ryan blasting Alexander Cockburn and company, for publishing Garcia on CounterPunch. Maybe he ought to look in the mirror before lashing out. That’s tame compared to the hate mail Cockburn received attacking him for his position. I don’t agree with anyone on everything, not even Cockburn or Null, but Cockburn doesn’t deserve that, even though he is skeptical global warming is such a big problem. I think his point is it’s at most only one of many ecological crises looming created by industrial and military practices ignoring predictably dire consequences of their profit or destructive power over all mentality. It shames me as a scientist that scientists support these practices; they have the power to put a stop to all these abuses of science which that support makes possible. Just grow a backbone or conscience and call it out, colleagues. Some are, like Gary Null and other whistleblowing journalists and scientists, but they struggle to get some truth out while the mass media pumps out mainstream reassurances to trust the experts, they’re making such marvelous progress, everything is under control, not to panic or listen to fearmongers or quacks.
I can smell a snow job even if I can’t prove it, and I smell a rat in many sides of this sideshow. Maybe most amazing statement I heard on the Gary Null special was by San Francisco Bay Area architect, Richard Gage, founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, comparing the relatively few floors with lighter supporting beams that initially collapsed above the impact to a Volkswagen crushing the Mack truck of 80,000 tons of solidly welded supporting beams below! What a misleading comparison. The mass of over ten floors moving at speed crashing into each weakened floor below? Which is the Mack truck, I’m puzzling? Especially since the gigantic wrecking ball kept getting heavier and moving faster all the while! Those floors broke off like toothpicks in rapid succession, probably made loud cracking sounds, not unlike explosions? Strong air pressure variations would have created all kinds of weird effects. Gage also claimed the upper floors disintegrated, so there wasn’t anything left to knock down the lower floors, must have been explosives! Where did they go? Where was he looking? There couldn’t have been much besides dust around the impact zone once it fell through, and it would be hard for any camera to track the mass crashing down ever faster. It’s hazardous to conclude much about the internal dynamics from views from the outside.
Richard Gage said 80,000 tons of structural steel would be the path of most resistance. Those tons weren’t standing together as a solid mass, but were supporting the entire building, a chain of welded beams under unimaginable loads and shearing strain. The path of least resistance was down. That’s the nature of gravity. There was some resistance, and some beams bounced or were thrown off to the side. Probably mostly the first few floors could resist milliseconds longer than the rest, but two-thirds is not near free fall acceleration, a peculiar exaggeration for a crowd saying there could be no resistance at all, so planted explosives had to clear the way. This professional architect made that claim, that the twin towers collapsed at about two-thirds of free-fall acceleration, so tightly synchronized explosives had to clear the way. Yet there was tons of unexploded super high tech top secret military nano thermite littering the debris? How well did that synchronizing go? Maybe it went just poorly enough to explain that missing third of free fall acceleration? If the way down was really cleared, that’s a big force factor missing, a good deal more than could be attributed to air resistance. I’m highly skeptical of these claims. Gage also exaggerated the melting temperature of iron, saying it was twice the temperature of the fire. Maybe he meant to say Fahrenheit, but he said iron melts at 3000 degrees Centigrade, which is nearly double 1535 degrees, almost 2800 degrees Fahrenheit. He misspoke, maybe. Otherwise that’s another peculiar exaggeration, though I haven’t heard of that mistake elsewhere, and Truthers usually say the fire was much cooler than 1000 Centigrade, which is plenty hot enough to weaken steel into putty and less than Gage’s calculation. Regardless, even at 600 degrees steel loses about half its strength (see graph).
The avalanche theory is ridiculous, Gage says. That’s ridiculous. There might have been significant resistance in the first few floors, but the speed increase of falling is nearly constant. Air resistance increases with speed, but the resistance of each floor had to decrease, until the bottom had to absorb all that energy, creating who knows what kind of hell. Not like a solar furnace, but could have melted anything, including metals. Some metals melt much cooler than others; tin and lead are used for soldering for that reason, besides being relatively cheap.
The point being, there was no Mack truck to provide resistance. The floors were punched out, becoming part of the sledgehammer, one by one; they couldn’t support each other. A building is more like a chain of supporting mechanisms, as strong as its weakest link, than a solid block. Skyscrapers have some redundancy and reinforcement, but not to stand up to those kind of shearing forces. I hear the towers were designed to withstand the impact of a plane crash. What kind of crash, accidental or deliberate? The initial impacts, and the heavy unbalanced load caused by the hole in the side and listing of the center beams around the impact site, put a lot of stress on the entire structure long before the avalanche came crashing down. The NIST report concentrated on how the cascade started because once that happened, the outcome was set; the path of least resistance was straight down. Where’s the mystery about that? This magical collapse was just a foregone conclusion once the fire finished the job the impact started. No further explosions were necessary to knock down those towers. This mythmaking isn’t helping anyone but the powers that be. What a useful distraction from real issues. Sure I could be wrong, but Gary Null has been exploited before by people using him to promote their own agendas, or steal from him. He’s a remarkable scientist and investigative journalist, but may be too idealistic about people who claim the progressive mantle. He’s skeptical of some such people, but others seem to get undeserved trust, in my opinion. I challenge Gary Null to allow me to defend my theories on his show. If there’s trouble finding a scientist to debate with the Truthers, I’ll do it. I don’t have much time, but I’ll find some for that. I agree with the idea of having an independent investigation, but why stop with what went wrong on 9/11/01? By the way, Manuel Garcia and most independent journalists support an independent investigation as well, regardless of their opinions on the involvement of Bush and his gang.
Another oddity is Truther hero Professor David Ray Griffin making a big deal of claiming cell phones couldn’t have been transmitting panic calls from 30,000 feet. I doubt there would’ve been panic until the planes had descended quite a ways, enough for passengers to realize something terribly wrong was going on. I’m not sure how close to the ground cell phones had to be in those days, but the panic calls probably weren’t made anywhere near cruising altitude.
What I especially find puzzling is how Truthers rationalize the jihad against the United States. Do they believe that’s all Bush’s fault? That predates Bush, and sure as hell wasn’t caused by his reaction to 9/11. Is this a partisan witch hunt, or what? Why is such an attack from extremist Muslims hard to believe? Gary Null hasn’t gone that far; he got convinced the towers couldn’t have been knocked down by the airplane crashes, so someone high up must have known what was in the works and made sure the buildings did come down. Chaos theory was in full swing, along with Murphy’s law. The towers were doomed when their central columns were slammed; it was only a matter of time before the relatively flimsy supporting beams up there lost too much strength, bringing all the floors above the impact to bear on the floor just below. That explains why all that material seemed to disappear; it was partially pulverized by that impact, and everything besides clouds of dust battered the rest of the building down, floor by floor. Where’s the mystery?
Richard Gage must have realized his error about the melting temperature of iron. I heard him speak during another KPFK broadcast recently where he correctly stated the melting point is about 1500 degrees Centigrade. In his interview by Gary Null, he probably meant to say Fahrenheit, in which case he was only overstating the temperature by about 7%.
For those who think Manuel Garcia is just a government stooge, so his theories about 9/11 shouldn’t be taken seriously, I suggest they read his latest article on CounterPunch, Dear Democrats, 2012. The man is clearly not a fan of either party, so why would he make up a theory to explain how the buildings came down just to backstop George Bush and company? Some scientists think the purpose of science has something to do with searching for truth. Others think it’s all about making money, or fleecing the public. I think Garcia is in the first category. His detractors claim the mantle of 9/11 Truth, but I think their hatred of Bush greatly colors their judgment. Yes, the powers that be are up to no good, but they have no monopoly on that, and to claim the attacks of 9/11/2001 were entirely a false flag operation to enable a coup and the war on terror is to deny the reality of implacable anger among many Muslims at this country and its allies, which has been gathering steam since long before 9/11/2001.
Take a stone in your hand and throw it on concrete really hard (that could be the speed of a collapsing skyscraper top). You will see that little bits fall off but larger amounts may stay intact. It’s similar with pieces made of steel. Only if you accelerate the stone to very high speeds it pulverizes completely (like explosives do). If the pancake theory was the only effect, there had to be some of the massive concrete-steel pillars remain partially intact. 47 massive pillars sticking in the sky – maybe 50m high. I don’t see why a fire on the top weakens the lower structures.
1500 degrees Celsius equal 2732 degrees Fahrenheit – which is about the melting temperature of steel (no 7% error I would say). Problem is that steel looses its strength already at lower temperatures.
The outer structure of the twin towers was designed to cope with the wind forces. The wind creates more shear forces than the impulse of one airliner (my guess). The inner core was designed to take vertical ‘gravity’ forces.
Check out a documentary ‘Building the World Trade Center and Twin Towers’ on youtube to see how massive these buildings were.
7% is approximately the difference between 3000 degrees Fahrenheit and the melting point of iron.
The wind? Are you pulling my leg? Regardless, you ignore the shearing forces caused by the unbalanced load, which lasted until the buildings collapsed, and the forces caused by the collapse in progress. The jet impact lasted a fraction of a second.
Designed to take gravity forces? Gee, no kidding! They were supposedly designed to stand up to an airplane crash too, but probably not a jumbo jet nearly full of fuel moving near top speed! The momentum of the top of the skyscrapers wielded far more force on the floors that mass (which supposedly disappeared into thin air) crashed into than gravity.
Why should the girders remain intact? They were sheared off, probably at the weld points, snapping like toothpicks under the impacts of that sledgehammer, steadily increasing in mass and velocity. We’re not talking stones or pieces of steel. We’re talking about acres of concrete smashing down everything in the way.
The pressure of strong winds against the tower (huge area) causes stronger forces in the structure then the unbalanced load. The momentum should be largest just below the point of impact – making the top tip over and fall off. Instead it falls straight down smashing and pulverizing everything in its path (causing floors to “disappear into thin air” – maybe I start calling this “Hollywood-physics”).
Of course there is a difference in scale but my practical and theoretical experience with steel tell me that 10 inch standard i-beams are not usually snapping like toothpicks. Especially not 47 of them from top to bottom (>100m) all in the same manner. Some might have snapped at the welding seams but it is unlikely that 100% did.
You say the “sledgehammer” steadily increases in mass in velocity – true. But if you watch closely the sledgehammer is powerful enough to pulverize stories from the beginning on (when it should be very slow)…
If the forces causing the collapse solely result due to the gravity of acres of concrete…why are parts of the building flying away from the tower with a horizontal component? Not just a few metres but out of the block – into or over opposing buildings! Looks like an oblique throw to me. Don’t tell me the air squeezed out of the building pushed steel beams over the street
WTC was designed for a similar airplane crash at higher speeds than occured on 9/11 including the resulting fire: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/design.html
Your argument reminds me of Kevin Ryan, comparing apples and oranges. You talk of high winds causing stronger forces, but those forces get distributed over the entirety of a structurally sound building. The impact of the airplane crash was concentrated in a relatively very small space, so the energy density at that point of impact was off the scale. If the top had been dislodged at that point, it would have tipped over and fallen off to the side, but it stuck around until its supports got too weak to stand.
Why should a building collapse be completely symmetrical? Why should some of the steel beams not bounce off to the side, or be thrown off to the side?
What’s usual about this scenario? How many experiments have been done crashing projectiles into gigantic skyscrapers? None that I know about. It would be too dangerous and costly, even for Hollywood.
The initial pulverization probably occurred when the top floors crashed into the floors just below the impact. That would be the point in time and place of maximum resistance. After that, the clouds of dust would make it appear everything was disappearing into thin air. Appearances can be deceiving.
Buildings can be designed for whatever disaster. That doesn’t mean the design will stand up. The best design can still only plan for expected circumstances. Anything unexpected will cause unpredicted results. That’s one reason Murphy’s law isn’t a joke; however cocky architects may be about their foolproof designs, it doesn’t necessarily mean a thing in the real world. The “accidents” at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl weren’t supposed to happen either; the odds were vanishingly small, we were supposed to believe.
Even after the meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor the building was mostly remaining intact but those are apples and bananas again.
The maximum resistance is not around the hot place: Steel looses strength with rising temperatures.
Of course steel beams may bounce of, but they may not fly 390 feet away and pierce into another building.
The wind force causes stress which might be comparable to the stress occurring at 9/11. But probably you are right: Airplane crashes and fires made those buildings disappear. Like WTC 7 (and parts of the Pentagon). There were no additional bombs placed in those buildings – do not listen to fire fighters and other survivors – they must have been daydreaming (videos of the explosions in the basements are fake!). The U.S. government has a straight record of telling the truth and loving peace. If fires and pancake theories are the official explanation it should not be questioned (especially not in times of war). BTW I think one of the 15 (or so) 911 commissions stated that there was a fully loaded oil truck in the garage beneath one of the twin towers – to give some explanations for the explosions.
But still why have 100% of all standard I-beams in all the WTC buildings snapped like toothpicks? Snapped into a length which can be conveniently be loaded on a truck and shipped to China?
This is about the quality of argument I’ve learned to expect from the Truthers. Anything I, or Manuel Garcia, said must be part of the official smokescreen, right, or Hollywood physics? If so, why would we agree there should be an investigation? Nobody is saying the government isn’t covering something up, but I am saying the mechanism of the building collapses probably isn’t part of the coverup. It just isn’t that hard to knock down a skyscraper.
I don’t know about oil trucks, but there were generators in the basements. Generators have fuel tanks that are likely to explode if subjected to a sufficient pressure wave.
Why is it unlikely for a steel beam that bounces or is thrown off to the side to move hundreds of feet horizontally if it is falling from a great height? Its horizontal momentum has to be conserved, so the farther it falls, the greater the horizontal displacement in its roughly parabolic path to the ground.
Anything subjected to greater shearing force than its tensile strength will snap. Why would any of the beams survive the onslaught of a sledgehammer of steadily increasing mass and speed?
I would just like to state that when someone says comparing apples and oranges is ridiculous, they are missing the fact that apples and oranges are almost exactly the same in vastly many ways. Yes superficially, they are different, but that’s like saying the empire state building and the twin towers are completely different because the twin towers were flat topped and the empire state building is pointed on top. Come on guys, this is supposed to be scientiffic debate, don’t get lazy.
Yeah, apples and oranges are more alike than the forces exerted on a building by wind are alike the forces exerted by a high speed airplane crash into a building. They are also more alike than what Manuel Garcia said and what Kevin Ryan said Garcia said. Maybe I should have drawn the analogy of comparing peaches to rocks. They are also superficially related, a stone fruit and a stone?
Unfortunately I don’t see much scientific debate going on about 9/11. I see much more of an appeal to faith in the indestructibility of skyscrapers by any means short of conventional demolition, along with an attitude that George Bush and his cronies were so evil, they must have done this in order to engineer a coup, as if Muslim extremists had no reason to attack the good old USA before Bush started the war on terror! What about all the previous attacks, mostly not on US soil, so maybe people forgot about those? Talk about rewriting history!
Here’s an interesting analysis of the alleged nano-thermitic material found in the dust.
Your smoke-screen has some good points, however I am still not convinced. I, at first, was convinced by the 911 report. I bought it hook line and sinker. However, with government BS if you look closely you can see the Joker in their Deck every time. In the Roswell incident, for example, the Joker was the fact that the Government has changed its story no less than 4 times over the years, not to mention the witnesses that have come forward in recent years. With JFK the Joker that got people thinking was the Zapruder film and the crazy trajectory of the last shot a.k.a the M.B.Theory, pretty much scraping the single shooter BS. As for the 911 story of the twin falling towers, you try to debunk the Truthers however the Joker for me was something you note once and only once! I.E. the near perfact dropping into its own footprint of Bld.#7. A Bld. that was not hit by a Jet loaded with fuel. With only a few small fires on different floors,(origin and cause of these fires still as yet unknown and not explained by You or the 911 report.) Take a look at the side by side comparison put forth by the Truthers of the fall of Bld.#7 and a planed demolition of a Bld. of comparable size caused by Thermite cutting charges. They are so close that you cant tell witch is witch without being told first. The cause, we are told is, the fires? Bull!! The “truthers” made up of fireman, witness at the scene, Engineers, and Architects have opened my eyes to the many jokers in the deck, and you have not turned me back with your few counter points. The films that swayed me put forth 9 (nine) points that prove the Thermite cutting charges demolition of all three 911 Bld. Nine points that you have not refuted at all! Let me state that I voted for Bush twice, (sorry to say) and the second time was partly to do with the 911 STORY. A story that helped push us to invade two country’s, gave the D.O.D. suppliers new sales of Billions that they would NOT have gotten otherwise, helped re-elect a man that was clearly not able to win on his own, and most sadly gave this man and his, ‘gang’ as you call them, the support to change the Rules of engagement that our country has stood by for a very long time, and an excuse to spy on our own people! Let me also state that I have worked at a D.O.D. site and witnessed and herd things that only gave the Truthers case even more power. If you want to debunk them you must take a look at ALL their information and take it down point by point. respectfully yours Tom, (a new and unconvinced by you Truther.)
My smokescreen? There’s plenty of smoke to go around in the various analyses of 9/11, but what specifically are you referring to?
You seem not to realize the government has been spying on dissenters for a very long time. Ever hear of COINTELPRO? What rules of engagement have changed, really? Who do you think is really in charge in this country? Those wars served corporate interests, so the so-called liberal media pushed for them as much as the Bush gang. Does Judith Miller ring any bells?
Did you read Manuel Garcia’s analysis of Building 7? That building was precariously structured to begin with, hardly comparable to other skyscrapers, and after getting clobbered by falling debris from the Twin Towers, it’s no mystery to me it suffered a similar fate. You don’t seem to understand the concept of proof. I’m a logic expert. A scientific proof has to meet very high standards, and I’ve seen nothing remotely close to those from the Truthers. Where’s the thermite, anyway? Where’s the proof the material found that contains iron and aluminum was actually some top-secret nano-thermite, instead of run of the mill insulating material? How in these allegedly so perfect demolitions did so much of the crucial explosive (literally tons, it’s claimed) fail to detonate?
What’s your answer to that damning evidence that Steven Jones and Niels Harrit were trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes?
This whole fuss about the buildings falling into their footprint amuses me. Since when does gravity pull in any direction but straight down? When the supporting structures of a building give way, most of the building will fall straight down. Some will be thrown off to the side, because of asymmetry, but gravity will be the primary force acting on most of it. You truthers seem to have a superstitious confidence in the strength of steel (cut in half at 600 degrees Centigrade) and the ability of a skyscraper to withstand such an intense impact.
I have plenty of issues with the 9/11 report, but not with its explanation of the mechanics of the building collapses. Why isn’t there comparable questioning of the role played by powerful people in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? Oh, because according to the Truthers, they had nothing to do with it! Gary Null wouldn’t go that far; he seems to think the government knew of the plot and planted explosives to make sure the buildings would not survive. I wonder if the Bush gang has been amused by the distractions pursued by the Truthers. If they were covering up for their friends in those nations, dubious allies at best, the Truthers have been a great distraction from the really important issues the 9/11 report did gloss over. Talk about a smokescreen! The Truthers may not realize how they have been played for fools!
Why? The “information” I’ve heard was more than enough to convince me the Truthers don’t understand physics. I don’t need to look at all their theories to show they are full of holes. Besides, they don’t seem to comprehend there are extremists out there who really do hate America enough to carry out such an act of revenge!
You speak the truth my friend. I am in awe.
I never know when something like that is spam, but Akismet didn’t flag it. Truth shouldn’t be awesome, but I guess in this society, it’s rare enough.
What puzzles me is this focus on temperatures. Metals absorb heat faster than they radiate it, so they can easily get hotter than the air in a fire. Kerosene burns at a relatively low temperature, but it can set other things on fire in an office skyscraper. I can see why the Truthers scream about how a kerosene fire won’t melt steel. Kerosene only got those fires started.
The question of thermite is just silly. There was plenty of aluminum around to burn. Where do the Truthers think the energy of a thermite reaction comes from, magic? It comes from aluminum burning! The iron oxide just makes it easier to ignite. Aluminum doesn’t burn easily, because the activation temperature of most metal fires is not encountered under expected conditions, even most fires. But burning aluminum can melt other metals or set them on fire, and maybe that’s why there were fires burning deep in the debris for months. Kinetic energy of all those acres of skyscraper flooring and furniture crashing into the one thing that could resist, the ground, flashing into heat, and they explain molten metal by top-secret nanothermite? They must think because NIST’s explanation of the cascading collapse was so short and simple, it must be hiding something. What got it started was complicated, but once that floor below the impact gave way under the onslaught of the floors above, the buildings were doomed. Nothing was going to stop that sledgehammer until it hit ground. Gravity is funny that way. But that part wasn’t complicated at all, so there wasn’t much to explain. That pesky law of conservation of momentum. The supporting steel was kind of thin up there in the impact zone, so it didn’t have much chance to stand up, to absorb all that momentum. The floors gave some resistance, more than would be expected if it was controlled demolition or collapse of support, when there would be nothing but air to give resistance, and it would be a lot closer to free fall acceleration than two-thirds. There is some air resistance, but that would not be significant at first, since that increases with velocity. Some of those snapping beams could have snapped up and out at high speed.
I listened over and over to that architect on the Gary Null special. His theory is so full of holes, I drove a Mack truck through it. I will inform Null of my challenge soon; I doubt he or any of his staff would notice my blog.
Well, what do you know. Gary Null isn’t sold on the super top secret nanothermite theory. He interviewed Judy Wood, a “brilliant physicist” who seems to have a problem with Steven Jones. Jones won’t be happy about this. Seems there’s a number of theories knocking about in the Truther world, and they don’t mix too well. Null might have trouble assembling a panel of scientific experts to have a civil scientific discussion. I’ll have more to say about this development later, when I’ve analyzed the interview. What puzzles me is why these scientists think it’s necessary to concoct fantastic theories to explain what happened. There’s no great mystery about it, and there are plenty of ways to explain what happened, as there are plenty of ways to knock down a skyscraper. I maintain a high speed collision with a huge plane is one way.
I regret to say, Gary Null has gotten some of his facts thoroughly mixed up. The second caller he took on his 6/21/11 show, Joe from the Bronx, said fire does weaken steel. Null shot back, “at 4300 degrees, not the degrees of the airlines.” 4300 degrees Celsius exceeds the boiling point of iron by about fifty percent. Possibly he meant Fahrenheit. Iron melts about 2800 degrees Fahrenheit and boils around 5200. 4300 degrees Fahrenheit is approximately the burning temperature of a thermite reaction. I guess that’s where Null got that number, but he ought to take care not to make a fool of himself. Unfortunately physics is not his area of expertise, and at times like this, it shows.
On Null’s August 12, 2011 show, Richard Gage was on again, repeating his usual spiel, despite Null asking him for new findings that people would not be aware of. Gage stated there were only a few small fires in Building 7. Really? He wasn’t there. Some who were told a different story. He also said that the paper I cited above about the alleged nano-thermite found in the dust has been “uncontested” in the last two years. Maybe to his knowledge, but this completely ignores the article I linked in comment 10, which tears that paper to pieces.
Null brought out the testimony of William Rodriguez, a maintenance worker for the towers with the master key to all the elevator shafts, a recognized hero for rescuing many people. Rodriguez claims he heard and felt an explosion in the basement 7 seconds before the jet hit the building. How could he possibly know that? From the basement, he couldn’t have seen the jet, so the only way he could surmise when the jet hit was by feeling the shock wave. By the time he felt that, the fuel in generators, or other volatile chemicals, could have been exploded by that same shock wave, and the 7 seconds was an estimate at best. What, did Rodriguez compare his watch when the first explosion threw him off his feet to the official time the plane hit the building? He claims there were at least three explosions within seconds of each other, all prior to the plane impact. This isn’t “fully documented,” “accurate,” or an “irrefutable fact.” Null usually has higher standards for what he calls irrefutable. Since when is anyone’s testimony an irrefutable fact, especially of one’s memory of such a traumatic and quickly unfolding event? Null conceded at first Rodriguez was parroting the official story, at the behest of the Administration, but then after realizing his testimony for the 9/11 committee was never going to see the light of day, he came out with the “real story.”
Null also told stories of several mysterious deaths of eyewitnesses. Considering how toxic the atmosphere was on that day, are these deaths really so mysterious? Sure, there’s a coverup of something, but isn’t it possible all this guesswork about how the towers were brought down is a blind alley?
Here’s a logic lesson for those who don’t understand the concept of scientific proof. I’m sure Gary Null knows this lesson, but for some reason he doesn’t seem to be applying his usual rigor to this issue. He’s putting the pieces of the puzzle together, he says. The puzzle may not reveal what he expects. The nature of causality is such that A can cause B implies A caused B, or in other words A is the cause of B, if and only if A is both necessary and sufficient to cause B. Explosive charges, or directed energy beams, or both, could have caused the collapse of the WTC buildings, but though either would be sufficient, neither would be necessary to bring those buildings crashing down. Anyone who doesn’t understand the laws of physics can claim it was impossible for the combination of the jet impacts and the subsequent fires to bring down those buildings, but that’s a matter of faith, not science. So NIST had to revise their theories. So what? There has never been a scientific theory that stood the test of time, and I doubt there ever will be. Theories are made to be broken; they’re always incomplete or not quite 100% accurate, so they have to be revised or scrapped.
On Gary’s Progressive Commentary Hour from August 8, he read a piece from Veterans Today by Susan Lindauer, which he said was unusual, very intriguing, and an interesting article. Yeah, some of it was interesting, but this in particular was a dead giveaway.
Gary read this verbatim, without remark. It’s really hard for me to believe he is as clueless as Ms. Lindauer about the nature of thermite. Thermite reactions derive their extreme heat from the oxidation of aluminum. They have no relation to thermonuclear devices whatsoever, except that both start with “therm” and both produce extreme heat. It’s impossible to conceal the detonation of a thermonuclear device, because it releases a great deal of radioactivity. I’ve heard plenty about the toxicity of the atmosphere following 9/11, but nowhere have I heard that there were elevated levels of radioactivity. This conflation of a thermonuclear device with thermite is so nonsensical, it’s embarrassing. Lindauer may know something about what the CIA knew before 9/11, but when it comes to explosives, she clearly has no idea what she is talking about.
Gary did observe that he hadn’t been able to independently confirm this story. Lindauer previously made a big deal of vans that showed up a couple of weeks before the attack for several nights after the janitors had left, insinuating they were planting explosives. If the CIA was expecting an attack on the towers that could bring them down, maybe these vans were taking out the gold stored there. There has been speculation about what happened to all that gold, which as far as I know was never found.
Meanwhile, yesterday Amy Goodman reported on Democracy Now about information linking prominent Saudis to the attacks.
Now this is the kind of coverup I’d expect from the Bush gang, what with his close connections with the House of Saud. All this speculation about how the towers must have gotten an extra push seems to me to be a distraction from the real coverup. What’s the real agenda of the 9/11 Truthers anyway? Distraction? Misinformation? I don’t know, but it was interesting that Gary said he was tempted to walk out of a recent 9/11 symposium because one speaker said he was glad about 9/11, and the audience applauded. He said if he hadn’t been the keynote speaker, he would have walked out. Yeah, Gary is starting to get it. He doesn’t belong with this crowd. Gary is interested in truth. I suspect many of the 9/11 Truthers are more interested in pinning all the problems of the world on George Bush and company.