MIHOP refuted by PhD friend of mine

[rpgamerd00d]

I do NOT, repeat, do NOT believe in MIHOP. If they can't keep NSA spying, Valerie Plame, the NIE declassification, or CheneyGate secret, there is no freaking prayer they could keep MIHOP a secret.

Also, I sent the "Scholars for 9/11" link to a friend of mine who happens to be a PhD in Material Science. He is not "political", although I think its fair to say he leans Liberal on social issues. I know this man personally, and have for 16 years.

Suffice it to say, he DESTROYED the "Scholars for 9/11" guys.
I mean, ripped them new assholes.
Here is what he wrote("scholars" stuff quoted)
================================================

OK, read the first article "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?" by Steven E. Jones, Ph.D. and here are some problems with it. I've quoted bits out of the article and responded.

For example, Greening has suggested that aluminum from the planes which struck the Towers could melt, and that this aluminum might fall on "rusted steel surfaces inducing violent thermite explosions." So a few students and I did straightforward experiments by melting aluminum and dropping molten aluminum on pre-heated rusted steel surfaces. There were in fact NO "violent thermite" reactions seen. We observed that the temperature of the molten aluminum in contact with the rusty iron simply cooled at about 25 C per minute (using an infrared probe) until the aluminum solidified, so that any thermite reactions between the aluminum and iron oxide must have been minimal and did not compete with radiative and conductive cooling, thus NOT supporting predictions made by Greening. There was no observable damage or even warping of the steel. Nor were violent reactions observed when we dropped molten aluminum onto crushed gypsum and concrete (wet or dry) and rusty steel. These experiments lend no support whatever to the notion that molten aluminum in the WTC Towers could have destroyed the enormous steel columns in the cores of the buildings, even if those columns were rusty and somehow subjected to direct contact with molten aluminum.

Their experiment is flawed. By their own admission (and I agree with this, I've worked with substrates at this temperature and used pyrometers on them), steel at 650 C is glowing red/orange. In the photo, the rusty steel isn't glowing, and they say the molten aluminum cooled and solidified, showing that the steel was cooler then the aluminum. They haven't heated the steel up enough for the aluminum to react with it.

They also argue consistently through the paper that the hydrocarbon fire was cool, because of the black smoke. The fact that some parts of the fire were cool and gave off black smoke does NOT mean that the WHOLE FIRE was cool. Thats such a dubious conclusion that it makes me doubtful of any other ones the paper makes. Such as;

Then there is the rather mysterious sulfidation of the steel reported in this paper. What is the origin of this sulfur? No solid answer is given in any of the official reports.

Common wallboard in office walls is mostly gypsum, which has about 40% sulfur in it by weight. That took about a minute of research to find; pity the author of this article didn't put that much time in before making it a huge mystery.

The observed partly evaporated� steel members is particularly upsetting to the official theory, since fires involving paper, office materials, even diesel fuel, cannot generate temperatures anywhere near the ~5,180oF (~2860oC) needed to evaporate steel. (Recall that WTC 7 was not hit by a jet, so there was no jet fuel involved in the fires in this building.)

As a note, standard JP7 jet fuel is basically slightly purified diesel. If WTC 7 had diesel in it, and it caught fire, it could do anything that jet fuel could do. I also saw another article refuting the claims on this web site that discussed the collapse of WTC 7 and stated that it had a very unusual support system which led to its collapse. I'm not qualified to judge that though.

In terms of whether jet fuel (or diesel) can get hot enough to melt steel, the thermal energy of combustion per pound is very similar to that of charcoal. You can't melt iron in your charcoal grill. Charcoal is, however, used in blast furnaces to get them to 3000 C to make steel. It all depends on the ventilation and the physical configuration of the area confining the flames.

If, as I suspect, the central elevator areas in the WTC acted as a chimney and provided a "furnace-like" location to melt the central beams of the WTC, it would explain most of their points quite well. The early drop of the central antenna, the puffs of "smoke" from the sides (the main support beams went first, and the perimeter beams mentioned above which didn't get heated much were nowhere near strong enough to support the towers, so they failed abruptly in multiple places). This is supported by eyewitness accounts I've read elsewhere that talk of flames coming down the elevator shaft at ground level within minutes of the impact.

Of the more than 170 areas examined on 16 perimeter column panels, only three columns had evidence that the steel reached temperatures above 250ºC. Only two core column specimens had sufficient paint remaining to make such an analysis, and their temperatures did not reach 250ºC. Using metallographic analysis, NIST determined that there was no evidence that any of the samples had reached temperatures above 600ºC.

The authors quoted a piece of the NIST report that dealt with analysis of beams which still had paint. Specifically, ones that *didn't* get heated much, around the perimeter. Evidently there wasn't much left of the core columns that actually supported the building. If anything, this argues against their main point.

The focus of the Investigation was on the sequence of events from the instant of aircraft impact to the initiation of collapse for each tower. This sequence is referred to as the "probable collapse sequence", although it does not actually include the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached. NIST admits that their computer simulation only proceeds until the building is poised for collapse�, thus ignoring any data from that time on. The results were a simulation of the structural deterioration of each tower from the time of aircraft impact to the time at which the building became unstable.

I've talked to someone who studies rapid, high speed impact simulations. A simulation of the actual tower collapse *after* its reached the failure point is way, way beyond the state of the art of computer simulations, and would require completely different software then the simulation used for its initial failure. What he asks for doesn't exist, and can't exist, its not a conspiracy. For proof of this, look at the impact simulations they did on the space shuttle tiles that said striking foam wouldn't be a problem. When they did the experiment, it in fact blew a large hole in the graphite panels on the leading edge of the wing.

Heck, they were pushing the boundaries of state of the art to even try to simulate the fire and failure that caused the collapse. Which, to *my* satisfaction, explains why they made several different models and only used and tweaked the ones that matched what happened. Thats how they do weather prediction every day, and its how any useful "real world" computer modeling I've ever seen was done.

After presenting the material summarized here, including actually looking at and discussing the collapses of WTC 7 and the Towers, only one attendee disagreed (by hand-vote) that further investigation of the WTC collapses was called for.

I have never in my entire scientific career seen any scientist or engineer say "this subject doesn't need any more investigation.", not a huge surprise here, given the extreme complexity of the problem.

Despite the web sites listing this as a "peer reviewed paper", the only place it seems that it is going to be published is in a "volume" being put out by the auther of one of the other papers on the web site. It doesn't count as peer reviewed until its in a scientific journal that exists independent of conspiracy buffs. It would obviously never be published in such; its extremely loaded language would prevent this, if not the major flaws I point out above.

I point out that the author carefully doesn't mention that controlled demolition of a building normally requires a substantial team of people working in a building for a week or two, drilling holes in support beams and stringing wires and such. This is not subtle. It also has never to my knowledge left pools of molten metal, since the explosions are over very quickly they certainly don't form puddles that are still molten weeks later. I suppose if you also applied a few tons of thermite all over the place you might achieve that, but then you need even more workmen and time, you would be working on huge sections of steel beams. To expect this work to go unnoticed in 3 buildings and such a large conspiracy to hold together for years afterwards seems to me to violate his Occams Razor test even more thoroughly then the fire theory.

I didn't have time to look much at the other "article" by Griffin, but like the one I discuss above, it would never pass muster in a true peer reviewed journal, and I saw a lot of problems just in the first readthrough. It is amusing that the two of them quote each other quite a bit as though they are independent experts, despite the fact they are writing (or have written) a book together.

Sorry, I'm not even close to convinced by the science in this work. Everything I have any expertise on is wrong, so I'm pretty dubious about the conclusions in areas I know less about.

[dailykoff]

1. This seems like boilerplate niggling

of the type seen in Popular Mechanics, 911myths.com, and many other places.

Two problems I see are:

1. It doesn't address the basic flaw in the official story, which is that a total collapse caused by progressive column compression failure is not only unprecedented (and in my view impossible) but completely lacking in evidence. There is also much evidence to the contrary.

2. The author is supposed to be a PhD in material science. Maybe he is, but so is Dr. Eagar, who is also totally ignorant of physics and structural engineering or more likely a shameless liar.

[rpgamerd00d]

2. Well, I know this man personally and trust him. Dont know 9/11 site guys

Its a little different when you personally know the scientist.

[rman]

8. What does personal acquaintance have to do with it?

If it's "different" when you know the scientist personally, then he hasn't done a very good job at presenting the evidence in writing.
If the evidence relevant, complete and correct then it will be convincing on its own merit.

You argument is along the lines of refuting criticism of Bush by saying that he's a likable guy.

[file83]

53. You took the words right out of my mouth.

:thumbsup:

[dailykoff]

9. Yes I see the difficulty.

I'm not challenging your friend's honesty or bona fides, or yours. Eagar and his pals at MIT are another story.

It's more a question of expertise. Let me know if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing neither you nor he have a lot of background in designing steel-frame structures. Most people don't, and that's one reason the tsunami of disinformation generated by the administration is hard to resist.

But you're here now and that's a good sign, so keep an open mind and you'll see what the noise is all about.

:)

[Kai]

20. Aiding and Abetting/Depraved Indifference to Human Life

I do NOT, repeat, do NOT believe in MIHOP. If they can't keep NSA spying, Valerie Plame, the NIE declassification, or CheneyGate secret, there is no freaking prayer they could keep MIHOP a secret.

They have not kept it a secret. They have tried to keep it a secret and there is a main stream media blackout on the subject but in spite of media propaganda, left wing gate keeping and right wing disinformation, the public is still asking questions about the truth of the official story.

At the very least, they knew something was going to happen and did nothing to stop it which makes them just as guilty as Zacharias Moussaoui by the standards of Mousaoui's prosecutors. In my view, there is no distinction between "let it happen on purpose" and "made it happen on purpose" only witting criminal behavior in various degrees.

What has yet to be determined is the full extent of their foreknowledge and complicity.

[frylock]

58. well stated..

and welcome to the board. :hi:

[dchill]

61. "They have not kept it a secret."

Exactly. In fact, the way I see it, they kept the other stuff you quoted secret way longer than they kept MIHOP a "secret." This has been an obvious cover-up since 9/11/01.

[Peter Frank]

22. Allot of People Personally Know Scientists...

You're saying that the one that you know holds the one and only empirical truth?

[SidDithers]

5. Why does a refutation of Dr. Jones paper...

need to address anything more than Dr. Jones' paper?

Sid

[Rich Hunt]

23. "boilerplate niggling"??

Pardon me, sir - where did you get this phrase?

It does not make sense.

[dailykoff]

28. garden-variety nitpicking

sorry about the confusion Rich :)

[Bushwick Bill]

3. Ask...

what he thinks about Jim Hoffman:
http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/towers/index.html
http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/index.html
http://911research.wtc7.net/
http://911research.wtc7.net/sitemap.html

[petgoat]

4. At least the guy has actually read Jones's paper. Few self-styled

debunkers do.

rpgamer, your conclusion that your friend has "refuted MIHOP" is not justified, since MIHOP
no more depends on on Dr. Jones's theories of possible mechanisms of controlled demolition, or
on controlled demolition at all, than it depends on "pod theory" or the "Pentagon missile
strike theory" or the "radio controlled planes theory."

The comments on the poor evidential value of Dr. Jones's experiments with aluminium and relatively
low-temperature steel are noted. Still, given the fact that NIST has no core steel sample showing
heating above 250 degrees C, and given the great heat-sinking capacity of the core columns and
radiator capacity of the perimeter columns, perhaps the assumption of warmer steel is not sufficiently
credible to justify higher-temperature experiments.

The suggestion that the sulfidation attack on the steel came from drywall sulfur has been made before.
I'll suppose that Dr. Barnett of WPI, a professor of fire engineering, or other fire investigators
are qualified to judge whether drywall commonly evaporates steel in fires. If it did, I think we
would have heard about it by now.

The suggestion that the elevator shafts acted as chimneys to support high-temperature fires is
imaginative, but these areas were designed with fireblocks precisely to prevent that from happening.
The hypothesis that the evidence of these hot fires was vaporized is also creative, but I would
expect that some samples of partially-vaporized materials would remain to support it.

The impracticality of performing a computer simulation of the collapse mechanism does not change the
fact that spending $20 million on a collapse initiation investigation and then claiming that collapse
initiation = total progressive collapse is claiming to have proven what you've only assumed, and thus
specious and dishonest.

Drilling of support columns is normally done when demolishing concrete structures. Given the much
greater difficulty of drilling steel, I am skeptical of the proposition that it is a normal part of
demolishing steel ones. According to the explosives expert Dr. Van Romero, a few charges in key
places could have brought the building down. According to Dr. Eagar's "zipper/pancake theory,"
which was conventional wisdom for three years, the building was a house of cards that could be brought
down simply through the failure of a few perimeter truss "clips" on one part of one floor. The
hypothesis that demolition of the towers was prohibitively complex is thus not justified. Office
buildings are normally greatly depopulated after midnight, and there would be much opportunity for
explosives crews to work in privacy.


The use of the "quote marks" around "article" in describing a work your friend has not even "read"
indicates a "prejudiced" "attitude" on your friend's part, and his unwillingness to take the time to
read Dr. Griffin's well-written and pithy work shows your friend's laziness. Your friend's work,
while intelligent, exhibits a leap to judgment that is unscientific--and lacks peer review.

[Woody Box]

44. Good refutation of the refutation (nT)

[file83]

55. I looked at the diagrams of the elevator shafts....

...and it appears that there was only one shaft that ran the length of the building.


That wouldn't allow for the "furnace" type conditions he claims would have melted the interior columns. That's ridiculous that that guy said that - and a Phd no less.

[Taxloss]

127. So, my old nemesis, we meet again.

But this time - the advantage is mine! Muahahahahahahaha!

MIHOP
no more depends on on Dr. Jones's theories of possible mechanisms of controlled demolition, or on controlled demolition at all, than it depends on "pod theory" or the "Pentagon missile strike theory" or the "radio controlled planes theory."

So what does MIHOP depend on? The absence of a consistent alternative thesis is a really big flaw in MIHOP - if it's so obvious that "they" did it, you would think it would be more obvious how "they" did it.

perhaps the assumption of warmer steel is not sufficiently
credible to justify higher-temperature experiments

But Dr Jones' "paper" was based on that assumption. So you've just admitted the fact that its central scrap of science is balls.

Drilling of support columns is normally done when demolishing concrete structures. Given the much greater difficulty of drilling steel, I am skeptical of the proposition that it is a normal part of demolishing steel ones. According to the explosives expert Dr. Van Romero, a few charges in key places could have brought the building down. According to Dr. Eagar's "zipper/pancake theory," which was conventional wisdom for three years, the building was a house of cards that could be brought down simply through the failure of a few perimeter truss "clips" on one part of one floor. The hypothesis that demolition of the towers was prohibitively complex is thus not justified. Office buildings are normally greatly depopulated after midnight, and there would be much opportunity for explosives crews to work in privacy.

A lot of this paragraph is, I'm afraid, rubbish. You're correct in that concrete is drilled for charges - but steel has to be stripped of its cladding to be certain of the explosives having the desired effect. Office buildings are indeed greatly depopulated after midnight, but they are not depopulated - especially not huge buildings like the WTC that contain many financial service industries. To work in the lift shafts, teams would have to shut down the lifts. The WTC's "express lift" system meant that these lifts weren't all on the same circuit, but even the closure of one bank of lifts would be noticed PDQ by anyone left in the building. What's more, security and maintenance would have to be involved. Plus, stripping the internal core structure for demolition secretly, silently, and without anyone noticing would involve a fair quantity of debris in the lift shafts. (It's not like the movies, where you just slap a bundle of bangsick on a pillar.) Did the abseiling black-ops team you have in mind catch all the debris? Because a chunk of cladding and concrete falling 80+ storeys into a plant room would really fuck with the lifts.

Dr Van Romero's evidence is indeed pivotal to this question - because he has disavowed his earlier remarks about explosives, and said that fires brought down the WTC. He is reported as saying that the association of his name with conspiracy theories is embarrassing and upsetting.

[WoodrowFan]

6. thank you

I'm sure the true believers will be flaming you, but i thought it was very interesting.

thanks

[eomer]

7. This part can't be correct.

"Evidently there wasn't much left of the core columns that actually supported the building."

I'm curious what process your friend is picturing in his mind that would have almost all of the core column steel not exist as such when the collapse has finished. His "furnace in the central shaft" theory would surely (if true) have caused a localized failure long before it could have consumed any significant percentage of the core column steel from top to bottom.

I think your friend's own words are the appropriate reaction:

"Thats <sic> such a dubious conclusion that it makes me doubtful of any other ones the paper makes."

[mirandapriestly]

10. Jones does deal with the gypsum issue

and I have seen it discounted as the source for the sulfur on other sites. For one thing, it's used as fireproofing, and I think it would have to be on fire to release the sulfur, what's it going to do, rub off?

Greening claims that Jones overlooked Gypsum as a source of the sulfur.
This is what Greening says:
"That took about a minute of research to find; pity the author of this article didn't put that much time in before making it a huge mystery"
He should follow his own advice, that's how long it took me to find this statement from Jones:

..." While gypsum in the buildings is a source of sulfur, it is highly unlikely that this sulfur could find its way into the structural steel in such a way as to form a eutectic.
http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html

How can you say Greening "destroys" the 911 scholars without listening to Jones or others response to this?
Can you tell me in your own words on which points you think Greening "destroys" Jones?

[LARED]

11. Having dealt with eutectic corrosion in real life

I can assure you Dr. Jones does not know what he's talking about

[mirandapriestly]

12. Oh, Why didn't you say so?

Lared says that Dr Jones doesn't know what he's talking about, why didn't you say that before? You could have saved us so much time wasted discussing him.
Actually, the issue is not whether gypsum could be the source; it is whether Dr Jones CONSIDERED it. The point here is that this Greening guy says Jones never even considered it and uses that as a measurement of all of Jones' research standards. When in fact, Jones DID consider it. So how much weight should we give his other conclusions?

[petgoat]

14. Even if Dr. Jones doesn't know about eutectic corrosion,

Dr. Sisson does.

[Bouvet_Island]

19. What do you think about this guys theory

that the sulphur in the gypsum could generate active sulphur? Or that you can start a thermite reaction a 650C withouth a favorable mix of the constituents?

And what about comparing powdered coal burning in a jet of heated air to an office fire, stating like a casual fact that it probably could become 2600C if jet fuel was present ... He have it burning hotter than in a perfectly working jet engine, where the air is preheated and compressed ... If this is statements abouts fields he works with, it doesn't matter if he is a scientist or not, his judgement is crap and who heard about a scientist that didn't even have to check burn temperatures.

His occams razor test is flawed as well, it is an incredible this idea that it is a problem to bring down a building with a reasonable amount of explosives when your theory are that none would be needed.

Lared your theory is that it takes a lot of time aint it this eutectic corrosion? So how do you explain it again?

[trotsky]

13. Thank you.

Not only for this piece, but for the one sentence that should debunk just about any 9/11 PCT:

If they can't keep NSA spying, Valerie Plame, the NIE declassification, or CheneyGate secret, there is no freaking prayer they could keep MIHOP a secret.

[petgoat]

16. They DIDN'T keep MIHOP a secret.

Rummy predicted the WTC strike in conversation with Rep. Cox just minutes before
it happened. Then a half hour later he predicted the Pentagon strike just minutes
before it happened.

Bush sat on his butt in Florida while the nation was under attack. Why? Because
flights 77 and 93 were behind schedule, and he didn't want to interfere.

Rummy said the Pentagon was hit by a missile. Rummy said flight 93 was shot down.

Giuliani recycled the WTC steel--a former federal prosecutor destroying evidence.

NORAD claimed they'd scrambled no planes before the Pentagon strike, then said "oops
we were wrong." Two years later the 9/11 Commission said "oops, they were wrong" and
completely rewrote the NORAD timeline.

There was no air defense for almost two hours. What makes you think MIHOP is a secret?

[trotsky]

26. "What makes you think MIHOP is a secret?"

The compliant media has been able to find airtime for all those comparatively minor scandals. You honestly think that something as big as the intentional murder of 3000 Americans is going to go unreported? :rofl:

[UCLA02]

29. Yes.

It can and has.

[trotsky]

31. Well, I guess I can't argue with that kind of "proof." n/t

[UCLA02]

33. I don't know what you expected me to refute...

It was YOU who suggested the MSM has considered and dismissed these "comparatively minor scandals" without explaining why you felt that they were "minor" nor when and where the MSM has addressed them.

I offered just as much "proof" to back my assertion as you did, however, I believe your claim, as being 180-degrees removed from most sentiments on this board, required much more than mine did. Click any thread on this board and you will get an idea of my "proof." Anything I posted would therefore be redundant; any support you posted bolstering your claim would be novel, enlightening and worthy of comment. That being lacking in your conclusory post, I believe my response was appropriate.

In response to your final comment, why is it so hard to believe that they would sacrifice 3000 people for the cause? LIHOP/MIHOP is not so far fetched an idea as to now be considered a viable historical theory re Pearl Harbor or Operation Northwoods. Quality over quantity should be the explanation as to why this should not be a concept requiring a tin-foil hat.

[trotsky]

34. Wha?

I said that the "MSM" actually HAS covered these stories. They have been harmful to the Bush admin, as witnessed by the Chimp-in-Chief's approval rating. Yet they would sit on the biggest story of modern history? How do you keep that many people quiet when they all know a secret?

[UCLA02]

36. But the MSM hasn't pursued them.

You suggested that the MSM raising and dismissing these theories, should be proof enough that they are non-issues or, at best, "minor scandals". Sounds a bit circular suggesting that since the MSM brought the issue up and summarily dismissed them, that is evidence that the theories are bullshit, thereby binning them in the "minor" (read "discredited") scandals category. I would agree that the MSM has brought these issues up, then when told by the Admin. that they're barking up the wrong tree, they say, "Sorry to bother, my bad" and move on to the newest cute-dead-white-chick story. Nothing to see here, move along.

Also, many posts in this forum point to theories suggesting that it really wouldn't take that many people to keep this quiet. And they haven't done a very good job suppressing the easily-verifiable info, at least, as evidenced by Loose Change and about every other post in this forum.

[petgoat]

38. Your opinion that the lack of air defence was a "minor scandal",

that the mutating official timeline was a minor scandal; that the criminal destruction of
the WTC steel over the objections of the families, the firemen, and Fire Engineering magazine
was a minor scandal; and the commander-in-chief's failure to respond to news that the nation
was under attack was a minor scandal is peculiar.

How do you keep that many people quiet when they all know a secret?

First you say these scandals have been reported and then you say they're a secret and people
are keeping quiet about them. Which is it?

[trotsky]

39. LOL

This is too funny. Yu guys can't even argue straight.

First you say these scandals have been reported and then you say they're a secret and people
are keeping quiet about them. Which is it?

No, I didn't say that at all. You're not reading carefully.

I said that the scandals that HAVE been reported (Plamegate, etc.) have damaged Bush politically. Certainly not to the extent that we'd love to see, but c'mon, he's in the 30% range. His party is in danger of losing the House. These facts show that the media isn't automatically averse to stories that harm King Chimpy.

YOU'RE the one saying that after the willingness of the media to cover these minor scandals, they're perfectly willing to sit on the scandal of the millenium. All of them. We're talking thousands of people in the administration, many more thousands in the media, all being perfectly quiet and not breathing a word of the truth.

I call bullshit.

[petgoat]

42. All right. When you said "all those scandals" I assumed that

your were referring to the MIHOP evidence I'd said was right out in the open.

Instead those three cryptic words referred to other scandals you didn't name. Sorry about
my lousy reading skills.

You've answered your own question when you make a distinction between "minor scandals"
and "the scandal of the millenium". The former are reported because there is official
validation of their existence--Judith Miller goes to jail, Patrick Fitzgerald is appointed
as special prosecutor. They may be harmful to W, but they don't challenge the government's
competence, and the message is that the minor glitches of power are being dealt with and the
system works.

The latter is not reported because doing so would be a challenge to authority that few
professionals are willing to risk, and there is no official validation of the story. The 9/11
Commission has not been challenged by any official agency.

In case you haven't noticed, there's very little investigative journalism going on these days.
It's expensive, it's risky, and there's little market for it. News media are competing these
days more in terms of lowering costs than in quality of product. Certainly the thought of
doing a 9/11 story must be kicked around now and then, but the learning curve is rather steep,
and the thought of having to dig through and verify so much stuff must be inhibiting. And look
what happened to Gary Webb and the San Jose Mercury and Dan Rather when they took risks. It's
easy to convince yourself that keeping up with the latest breaking ephemera is more important than
doing a lot of expensive research that may not pay off.

Reporting on 9/11 now involves an implied self-criticism for not reporting it earlier. If there
have been editorial board arguments all these years in which people at the top have outlined
their reasons for squelching 9/11 stories, then even to suggest such a story involves opening
a battle threatening a repudiation of the executive arguments. Not an easy thing for the
underlings to do.

Have you read Dan Rather's BBC interview about self-censorship? The flaming necklace of the
accusation of lack of patriotism?

Also note that the news media really only started running anti-Bush stories when his approvals
dropped below 50%.

[trotsky]

43. Well, what better time to unleash the biggest bombshell of all?

What else could take Chimpy down into the .05% approval range? What else would get people STUCK to their TVs 24 hours a day non-stop but the biggest whammy of all - that the Chimp in charge and his henchmen (it doesn't have to be about the competence of government, you know) planned and executed the worst mass murder in United States history? The ratings, the advertising revenue, cripes, even FOX would jump at the chance to hang Bush if it meant oodles of money. And that's what it would bring.

But instead, you are telling me that I should believe that this whoring media that does anything for a buck would rather stay silent - to a person - rather than break the biggest story of the century.

Okey dokey.

[petgoat]

45. The media won't do anything for a buck. They are afraid of

the FCC, which holds power over how many radio stations and newspapers and TV stations
the conglomerated media can own in what regions.

The media declined to cover the election fraud story, they have declined to cover the
crooked voting machine story, they declined to cover the Downing Street Memo story,
they've declined to cover the Afghan heroin story, they declined to cover the Willy Pete
in Fallujah story, they declined to cover the Afghan "convoy of death" story, they declined
to cover the Kundiz airlift story, they declined to cover the Pakistani funding of alleged
9/11 hijackers story, they declined to cover the bin Laden met the CIA in Dubai story, they
declined to cover the Giuliana Sgrena story, they declined to cover the Florida got more votes
in Florida in 2000 story, they decline to cover the "Rathergate documents were genuine" story.

They fail to cover any number of juicy stories.

The problem with the biggest scandal of the millenium is that it doesn't just hang Bush. It
hangs the entire government, the Republican party, the Democratic party, the news media. It
even hangs people like you who've put energy into asserting that the story doesn't exist.
It's too big. There are thoughtful people who say that even if it's true we should keep it
a secret because it will bring panic, cynicism, and despair--i.e. it will hurt consumer
confidence, and that would hurt the advertisers and thus the shareholders.

[trotsky]

46. Well, that's the fun of a non-falsifiable position, isn't it?

There's always some magical excuse why everyone else doesn't swallow the same crud as you. Now it's because the 9/11 conspiracy is TOO BIG! It's too much of a story! Oh my! LOL

[petgoat]

47. Is it not too big? Everyone in Congress (with the exception of

Rep. Mckinney) is complicit in the great silence.

It used to be that the story of the President's mistress was too big to publish.
The evidence that Paul Wellstone's plane was brought down by electronic weapons is
too big to publish.

Anyway, even if you discard the "too big" argument,the fear of antagonizing the FCC
with "irresponsible" journalism remains.

[trotsky]

48. No story is "too big."

Sorry. Ain't buying your logic.

[petgoat]

98. The big club of the FCC is the stick. The carrot is the possibility

of lenient treatment in the hearings about multiple medium holdings (newspapers, radio, TV)
in the same region.

Programming that is "in the public interest" is the standard. Am I wrong to suspect that
reporting facts that would cause a collapse of confidence in our elections, in our legislative
branch, in our executive branch, in our judicial branch, in our military, and a collapse of
consumer confidence would be considered by the present politicized FCC to be not in the public
interest and irresponsible?

[trotsky]

101. So is your conspiracy big or small?

Seems you can't even keep THAT part straight! Now you've got the FCC in on the secret!

[petgoat]

107. What secret? The FCC is doing its job: regulating the use of

the public airwaves and regulating the conglomeration of the broadcast and news media.
It is doing so in a very politicized way to benefit the corporations and the Bush
regime.

What makes you think they're in on some big secret?

[SidDithers]

49. Got any evidence for your claim about Wellstone's plane?..

Maybe Dr. Jones wrote a paper about it?

Sid

[petgoat]

50. Dr. Fetzer wrote a book Wellstone's crash, "American Assasination."

I haven't read it, but the review/summary at the Amazon website makes it seem
well worth investigating.

[Peter Frank]

63. "How do you keep that many people quiet when they all know a secret?"...

Easy -- Intimidation ...public and/or private.

[trotsky]

65. Watergate

Iran Contra
Tammany Hall
Teapot Dome
Abscam
BCCI
And on and on and on and on.

Tons of scandals that involved very rich and/or very powerful people, and THEY couldn't stop someone from squealing. But you're just sure that every one of the thousands of people who must have been involved with or knew about this massive 9/11 conspiracy IS being silenced - perfectly.

How do I build a fact-proof fortress, anyway? I'd love to live in one.

[petgoat]

66. "thousands of people who must have been involved"

Please justify this number. What thousands? Why?

Besides the 19 hijackers, I count about ten. The war games disrupted the
air defense. Pretty much, the conspirators just had to do nothing.

[trotsky]

69. It really depends on your particular PCT.

Do you think that the planes full of passengers actually slammed into the WTC and Pentagon, or were missiles or holograms or something else used?

Because the complexity of your PCT is directly proportional to the number of people involved.

[petgoat]

71. It's YOUR PCT.

You wrote it. "{E}very one of the thousands of people who must have been involved with or knew about this massive 9/11 conspiracy IS being silenced - perfectly."

Your assumption that a conspiracy must have been massive is a straw man argument.

How many thousands would it take to fire a missile into the Pentagon?

What about holograms? Assuming that hologram generators are a secret weapon available to some branch of the security apparatus, are the people who built it going to talk? No. They don't talk about classified weapons. So how many thousands of people does it take to set up and operate the apparatus?

[trotsky]

72. State your particular PCT, and I will elaborate.

Right now I'm just taking stabs, and you have the advantage of saying, "Nope, not what I think."

State for the record (as briefly as possible, please) what you think happened on 9/11 and I'll point out just how many people would have to be involved to keep your PCT secret.

(Leaving aside, for the time being, why they haven't come and threatened or killed you to keep you from telling the "truth.")

[petgoat]

77. I don't have a particular CT. My opinions do not matter.

As I said, I don't see why more than ten conspirators are necessary (assuming we have the 19
hijackers).

The war games disrupted the air defense. Nobody can talk about those because they're classified.
We just need Rummy and Myers and Cheney and Rice to do nothing, we need Frasca and Maltbie to
obstruct investigations, and a few weasels like Zelikow and Lee Hamilton to cover it all up.

[trotsky]

78. And yet here you are, blabbing it all,

and no one has come knocking on your door to shut you up.

Go figure.

[petgoat]

80. I'm pretty well connected. People would talk if anything happened

to me. I think I know most of the methods of intimidation and they don't work on
me any more.

[trotsky]

81. ...

:rofl:

[petgoat]

85. Ah, so I'm NOT well connected, nobody would talk if something

happened to me, and I'm not familiar with the usual means of intimidation.

Thanks for setting me straight on that. You wield the smartest smiley in town.

[Peter Frank]

75. In a compartmentalized covert op...

Very few need to know the entire picture. And in an operation of this significance -- you can bet that the consequences of coming forward would be crystal clear.

[Bouvet_Island]

109. Aint that all examples of conspiracies

that were kept secret for way longer time than 9/11? 4 years?

I am not familiar with all of them though.

Noticed you didn't include JFK.

And wasn't what lead to watergate being revealed that they got caugth red handed? One should think that people in the same business as them would had learned a lesson or two since then.

And what is the last big conspiracy you heard about that was true, like those? Its almost as they are on pause ...?

And would you say that list is a complete one of that type of conspiracies over the time span they cover. Obviously all crime carry a risk of exposure, but are you basing your premise that the risk would be too high on the idea that they always or even usually get caugth?

Since you mention Iran/Contras, what do you think about John Conyers and his role in that? And how do you relate to his position on election fraud? I am just trying to better understand your position.

[rman]

112. In many of the cases you mention, the conspiracy had achieved its goal

before it was exposed (meaning that it was able to continue for quit some time before it was exposed) and in many cases the damage to the perpetrators (due to exposire of their conspiracy) was limited (see Iran-Contra, BCCI).
The fact that 9-11 CT has not been exposed yet does not mean it will never be exposed. Already people are blowing the whistle on 9-11 (Sibel Edmonds, Indira Singh, Robert Wright) - but the MSM aren't being very cooperative...

[toymachines]

122. But how many conspiracies do we NOT know about

Many. Conspiracies would not happen if they were always found out, it is only luck that we know what we know.

[Chemical Bill]

93. Intentional murder...

>You honestly think that something as big as the intentional murder of 3000 Americans is going to go unreported?

So far we are approaching that number of Americans dead in Iraq. There are of course many more Iraqis dead. The media still presents the murder of all those people as "Operation Iraqi Freedom". "No WMDs" may be mentioned in passing, there may be a hint that the Niger document was forged, but * is allowed to pass off "freedom" as justification for all the killing in Iraq.

How about government sponsored drug smuggling? Do you see that reported much? Read "The Politics of Heroin" by Alfred McCoy. Or just google "CIA cocaine". Try googling "coroner's report RFK".

No offense, but you are presenting your inability to see something as proof that it is false. I'll bet your PhD friend could tear that one up too.

Bill

[sabbat hunter]

32. links to 1 and 2

can you provide links to numbers 1 and 2 to prove them.


btw Giuliani had nothing to do with recycling the WTC steel. the Port Authority is a bi-state agency. city has nothing to do with the WTC site or the steel.

there was air defense after the towers were hit, i heard and saw them flying overhead. it was after the towers were hit but less than 2 hours.

what proof do you have that bush has the brains to pull something like this off? what has he done with any level of competance since the supreme court gave him the presidency?

[petgoat]

40. links

Rummy's clairvoyance on 9/11 events reported by Rep. Cox:

http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2004/06/141355.php

(search on Cox)

Daily Telegraph report of Pentagon prediction:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/12/16/wbush16.xml

"Seven minutes later, as Mr Bush, his entourage and the accompanying press corps were boarding Air Force One, American Flight 77 swooped low over the suburbs of northern Virginia and slammed into the Pentagon.

"Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence, was in his office on the eastern side of the building, in a meeting with Christopher Cox, the defence policy committee chairman of the House of Representatives. Mr Rumsfeld, recalls Mr Cox, watched the TV coverage from New York and said: "Believe me, this isn't over yet. There's going to be another attack, and it could be us."

"Moments later, the plane hit."

[petgoat]

56. "city has nothing to do with the WTC site or the steel. "

NY Post says you're wrong (at least the gothamgazette says the NY Post says so).

"Ground Zero Cleanup To Remain A City Job
New York Post - December 8, 2001
Mayor Giuliani is heeding the advice of federal experts not to replace city workers overseeing
the World Trade Center cleanup and will not be hiring the Bechtel construction company for the job."

http://www.gothamgazette.com/rebuilding_nyc/news/december.shtml

This NY Post editorial says of Giuliani:

"{T}he man dubbed "America's mayor" presided over the post-attack cleanup and attended the
funerals of the fallen heroes...."

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/books/29538.htm

[sabbat hunter]

59. the only thing

the only thing the post is good for is wrapping up fish that right wing rag. it isnt even a good right wing rag. it is the worst paper in town. they have gotten caught dumping papers on peoples lawns to pump up circulation numbers, their gossip columnist was fired for blackmailing someone. the writing in the paper is awful.

[dailykoff]

60. So Pataki and McGreevey ran the cleanup?

They controlled the PA at the time and it's pretty widely known that McGreevey stayed out of it and let Pataki do all the "rebuilding," and he left the cleanup to Rudy.

[sabbat hunter]

73. Guiliani

his term ended in 2001. Bloomberg took office Jan 1 2002. even right after 911 Guiliani had his eyes on his post mayoral career.

[DemInDistress]

95. sept.11 2001 9:20 am... rummy tells a reporter

"wait,this isn't over yet" how did he know? 10 minutes later an alleged commercial jet crashes into a wing
housing records and billings for the Pentagon. Killtown suspects thats where the records of the missing trillion dollars of US taxpayer money during the prior years was kept.
"THIS ISN'T OVER YET" how right rumsey was. My feeling is this year the 911 murder mystery is solved. The heat is on the crime family. They can't win, LIHOP= treason and MIHOP=treason. Bring it on !!

[salvorhardin]

15. Excellent and thorough analysis

Thank you.

[petgoat]

17. Try dealing with some of the criticisms in post #4. nt

[beam me up scottie]

18. A new kid in town!

May the force be with you.

[petgoat]

21. Check post #4 for a response. The 9/11 forum does not

tolerate "magical thinking" like some places in the unverse do.

[Rich Hunt]

24. "magical thinking"??

Is this a reference to all of the magicians who are skeptics?

Hello, fishy!

[petgoat]

25. Magical Thinking refers to scottie's allusion to "the force", as

well as to the similiar arguments asserted "elsewhere in the universe."

[SidDithers]

27. Magical thinking...

like the assertion that the top 30 floors of WTC2 turned to dust in midair?

Sid

[petgoat]

35. If it didn't turn to dust, where is the concrete? The only pictures

of substantial concrete debris I've seen are pictures of basement-level floor slabs.
Where's the concrete?

Jim Hoffman estimates that the creation of those dust clouds required ten times the energy
available in the potential energy of the towers.

[SidDithers]

51. How much concrete are you expecting?

And where would this concrete be coming from?

Sid

[petgoat]

52. The floors had a 10 cm concrete slab on top.

Let's see, at 2900 square meters per floor, 110 floors, 0.1 meter per floor I guess I expect
3,509,000 cubic meters of concrete slabs.

[SidDithers]

57. Ummm...check your math...

Using your estimate of the concrete in the building, I'd expect

2900 * .1 = 290 m3 per floor * 110 floors = 31,900 m3

Even doubling it to include both buildings, that's still a couple of orders of magnitude less than what you think should be there.

Are you really looking to try to find 3.5 million cubic meters of concrete? No wonder you haven't been having any success.

Sid

[petgoat]

68. Yup, I can't digest lunch and do math at the same time. Sorry.

But the fact remains. I can't 30,000 cubic meters, or even 3000 cubic meters of concrete.

[Make7]

62. Fun with numbers.

Posted by petgoat:

Jim Hoffman estimates that the creation of those dust clouds required ten times the energy available in the potential energy of the towers.

The potential energy of the North Tower used in Mr. Hoffman's paper is 4 x 10^11 joules. Ten times that is 4 x 10^12. Now subtract what was available as PE and we get 3.6 x 10^12. That is the extra energy that is required according to his theory.

Now if we are assuming this was a controlled demolition, let us compare this energy requirement to the amount of energy contained in a known explosive. I'll use TNT for this example because the energy it contains is easily found. According to wikipedia, "Amounts of TNT are used as units of energy, especially for expressing nuclear weapon yield, based on a specific combustion energy of TNT of 4.184 MJ/kg".

So in order to produce 3.6 x 10^12 joules with TNT, we would need:

  (3.6 x 10^12 joules) / (4.184 x 10^6 joules/kg) = 860,000 kg of TNT

Or converting to pounds: 1,900,000 lbs, which would be about 950 tons.

Now, I am certainly not suggesting that 950 tons of TNT were actually used, but based on Mr. Hoffman's calculations a source of energy equivalent to 950 tons of TNT appears to be needed. (Is it just me, or does 950 tons of TNT sound like a very large quantity of explosives?)

What makes this entire exercise even more interesting is this oft repeated argument of yours:

petgoat says

According to the explosives expert Dr. Van Romero, a few charges in key places could have brought the building down.

Post #4

I have no idea who you believe is correct, but it hardly seems possible that they could both be right. Well, I guess a few charges could have brought the building down and then some huge unexplained source of additional energy could have caused the expansion of the dust clouds as per Jim Hoffman's analysis.

What could that energy source be though? And what purpose did it serve....

- Make7

[petgoat]

67. Hoffman and Van Romero contradict each other. I don't

claim to know who is right. Hoffman claims is that he's modelled what actually
happened and Van Romero's consideration is a theoretical one.

Van Romero's statement refutes the myth that rigging the building with explosives
was prohibitively complex; Hoffman's argues against the notion that the collapse
was natural.

What could that energy source be? Check out Hoffman's web site. Thermpbaric weapons,
maybe? What purpose did it serve? Bringing the towers down, creating terror, providing
a new Pearl Harbor to justify a imperial agenda and increased military budgets to fund
death rays from space.

[Make7]

74. Let me restate the question.

If the towers could be brought down by putting "a few charges in key places", what would the purpose be of using some method that is so powerful that it allows someone like Mr. Hoffman to come along and uncover the whole devious plot? Why go to such extraordinary lengths to bring the towers down in a way that would expose the operation to what amounts to a very significant yet completely unnecessary risk?

Why not just place the few charges required, set them off when the time comes, and leave it at that? What could possibly be gained by doing anything more than that?

- Make7

[petgoat]

76. You're trying to rewrite reality so that it makes sense.

Sometimes a photon is a particle and sometimes it's a wave. I can't help that.

The reality is that Van Romero had an opinion that a few charges could do the job.

The reality is that Jim Hoffman believes great quantities of energy were expended in
creating those clouds.

I don't pretend to have all the answers.

Why not just place the few charges required, set them off when the time comes, and leave
it at that?

Maybe the (assumed) people who designed the (assumed) operation lacked experience with anything
this big. To avoid the potential embarrassment of setting insufficient explosives to bring the
towers down, maybe they overkilled the overkill. Maybe somebody did the calculations when it
was lunchtime (like my 100X goof on the volume of the concrete :) )

The incompetence theory is invoked to explain why the attacks succeeded, and as evidence
that 9/11 could not be an inside job because Bushco could not have pulled it off. Why could
excess explosives not be an example of Bushco incompetence at work?


Maybe somebody wanted to sabotage the job by using enough explosives to make them obvious.

[greyl]

79. on Quantum Physics and Van Romero

Firstly, photons aren't sometimes a particle and sometimes a wave. They exhibit the properties of both.

Next, you're cherry picking statements to support your hypothesis while ignoring contrary statements. You aren't being fair to yourself or the issue.
Even if Van Romero never retracted his statement, the fact that explosives can destroy buildings, doesn't mean that all destroyed buildings were brought down with explosives. Fact is, he did retract the statement he made on September 11, 2001:

"Certainly the fire is what caused the building to fail," said Van Romero, a vice president at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
The day of the attack, Romero told the Journal the towers' collapse, as seen in news videotapes, looked as though it had been triggered by carefully placed explosives.
Subsequent conversations with structural engineers and more detailed looks at the tape have led Romero to a different conclusion.
Romero supports other experts, who have said the intense heat of the jet fuel fires weakened the skyscrapers' steel structural beams to the point that they gave way under the weight of the floors above. That set off a chain reaction, as upper floors pancaked onto lower ones.
Romero said he believes still it is possible that the final collapse of each building was triggered by a sudden pressure pulse caused when the fire reached an electrical transformer or other source of combustion within the building.
But he said he now believes explosives would not have been needed to create the collapse seen in video images.
http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/retractions/romero.html

So there you have it: Dr. Van Romero believes that fire brought the buildings down and that explosives weren't needed.

[petgoat]

82. Talk about your cherry picking!

You're completely missing the point.

The point is that demolishing the buildings with explosives was not a prohibitively
complicated undertaking. That was Dr. Romero's opinion and, as you said, he never
retracted it.

His opinion that fires brought down the buildings is irrelevant to the question of the
practicality of using explosives.

Given that a couple of years later he was recognized as something like the 6th top lobbyist
in America for his success in getting federal funds for New Mexico Tech his retraction
deserves some skepticism.

[greyl]

84. Afaik, Van Romero never said it wasn't "too complicated".

He can't retract statements he never made. He said, on 9/11, that it could have been a relatively small amount of explosives planted in more than 2 points in each of the towers. He never addressed the difficulty of planting them, detonating them, and coordinating the whole covert operation.

Hours after the attack, Van Romero, an explosives expert and former director of the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at New Mexico Tech, stated, “My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse.” Although he would recant days later – with some prodding, perhaps, from representatives of the Enterprise – Romero said on 9-11 that the collapses were “too methodical to be a chance result of airplanes colliding with the structures.”
www.911forthetruth.com/pages/RodriguezComplaint6.htm and
www.s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/main/timelinecomplete2.html

Furthermore, your motive attribution to his retraction is missing an obvious point and is clearly colored by your bias. On 9/11 Van Romero did not imply that our government planted explosives. Why should anyone jump to that conclusion? Confirmation bias mayhaps?

So, since he never implicated "the powers that be", why the hell would he feel the need to retract his statement?
In fact, his original statement implicated the terrorists!:

The detonation of bombs within the towers is consistent
with a common terrorist strategy, Romero said. "One of the
things terrorist events are noted for is a diversionary attack
and secondary device," Romero said. Attackers detonate
an initial, diversionary explosion that attracts emergency
personnel to the scene, then detonate a second explosion,
he said. Romero said that if his scenario is correct, the
diversionary attack would have been the collision of the
planes into the towers.
www.world-action.co.uk/explosives.html and
www.la.indymedia.org/news/2003/06/66278_comment.php

[file83]

87. If terrorists could rig the towers, then why not rogue USGov't agents?

It's obviously a possiblity that USGov't agents could have done it. That doesn't mean they did do it, but no one can legitimately claim that it's a PHYSICAL impossibility. Leave your moral expectations of the government at the door before you enter this forum.

[petgoat]

97. Ok, we're agreed that he said a small amount of explosives

could have done the job. Actually he said that in his opinion, it was explosive devices that
caused the collapse. So apparently he thought explosives was a practical idea.

On 9/11 Van Romero did not imply that our government planted explosives.

I never said he did. I said he provided expert testimony to the effect that explosive
demolition was not an impractically complex operation.

his original statement implicated the terrorists!

IMHO anybody who plants explosives in a populated office building is a terrorist, so your
distinction between our government and the terrorists makes no sense if our government
planted the explosives. Which is not to say they did. IMHO al Qaeda could have planted
explosives.

your motive attribution to his retraction is missing an obvious point

Since you don't quote my statement and it's not on this subthread, I don't know to what you
are referring. Van Romero's motive for retracting was obviously to get on board with the
official story that fires brought the towers down. He was handsomely rewarded, too, with
buku federal bucks for New Mexico tech.

[Make7]

102. How am I "trying to rewrite reality"?

petgoat says:

The reality is that Van Romero had an opinion that a few charges could do the job.

The reality is that Jim Hoffman believes great quantities of energy were expended in
creating those clouds.

Did I somehow try to rewrite their opinions? I thought I had basically stated the same thing you just did.

As a figure for a minimal amount of explosives used, I am going to pick 22 tons of TNT, or its equivalent. My previous figure for what Mr. Hoffman suggested was needed is 950 tons. That is an increase by a factor of more than 40. Could that just be a mistake? Possibly, but not very likely in my opinion.

I guess if the incompetence theory fits your current argument, it's as good as any other. Do you believe all the other things that fall within the incompetence theory? Or just this particular invention of yours because it allows you to come up with an answer.

If someone wanted to sabotage the job, do you really feel that using a ridiculous amount of explosives would actually be the method they would employ? If that truly is what happened, I think it has proven to be an extremely ineffective tactic. Who exactly do you think they were trying to communicate with by using this act of sabotage? Do you believe the message was received, or do you also think it has been unsuccessful? (If it was indeed sent.)

- Make7

[petgoat]

114. I find incompetence plausible in the case of the explosives

because nobody had ever demolished a building this big before, the temptation to err on
the side of excess was great since erring on the other side would result in discovery,
and since the pool of available experts who could be trusted to keep silent or who could
be inconspicuosly killed was probably limited.

I do not trust incompetence theories for the FAA and for the intelligence community because
all they needed to do was follow normal procedures and do their jobs and perform certain
simple and obvious actions.

If someone wanted to sabotage the job, do you really feel that using a ridiculous amount
of explosives would actually be the method they would employ? If that truly is what happened,
I think it has proven to be an extremely ineffective tactic.

It looks pretty effective to me. They covered lower Manhattan with dust four inches thick,
they introduced an asbestos hazard, they created photogenic pyroclastic clouds, they forced
the destruction of the steel.

Who exactly do you think they were trying to communicate with by using this act of
sabotage?

The world. The skeptics, the scientists, the journalists.

[Old and In the Way]

88. Here's an interesting article that I posted here a couple of years ago

"What Goes Up, must come down"

got this special US News and World Report last Christmas. The Magazine was called "Secrets of the Master Builders". The last article, whose title is noted above was quite interesting. It's been sitting in the bathroom and I finally got around to reading this article today.

Anyway, there were 2 interesting paragraphs I thought I'd share.

"The tools of the destructor's trade range from standard dynamite, used to shatter concrete, to linear shaped charges that concentrate the force of the blast. Shaped charges use a high explosive called RDX, slicing through steel with millions of pounds pf pressure per square inch. In 2001 project, for example, a New York gas storage tank built with 5 million pounds of steel took a mere 80 pounds of shaped charges to come down.

And this unrelated paragraph in the same story:

"The Murrah building was but a prelude to the greater disaster on Sept. 11, 2001. Like most Americans, the Loizeaux's {my note: family business is Controlled Demolition International} were transfixed by the televised destruction shortly after the first jet struck the World Trade Center. But they knew then what few Americans realized, or dared to contemplate. "I told Doug immediately that the tower was coming down, and when the second tower was hit, that it would follow," remembers Mark. "I was familiar with the buildings structure, and with all that jet fuel and the massive amount of combustibles, a catastrophic failure was inevitable."

[Jazz2006]

90. I recall also reading somewhere...

that Mark Loizeaux tried to get in touch with various officials on Sept. 11/01 to tell them that he thought the towers were going to collapse from the heat and damage, and that when he could not get through, he went down to the site or something like that? Anyone else read that?

[Make7]

91. Man - you are giving me a bad case of deja vu.

Edit to add link and related comments. (Stuff below the line.)

I think you posted that as a reply to me way back then. I was arguing with someone that claimed the North Tower collapsed in 8.1 seconds. There were some calculations(?) indicating that to make it fall faster than free-fall would require a significant amount of extra energy. Somewhere in there I said it sounded like a lot of explosives would be needed, to which I think you replied with this current post.

We don't have to rehash that whole discussion again do we? :)

I might just have to look that old thread up after I post this. In there somewhere was my first attempt at posting a table of data, with dismal results as I recall. But I digress....

Maybe a short explanation as to why you were posting this might have been instructive.

Perhaps I'll explain myself first. I believe Van Romero is absolutely correct in his theory that a relatively small number of well placed charges could bring one of the towers down. My calculations based on Mr. Hoffman's paper were only to illustrate how much extra energy he is claiming needed to be present. However, I do not agree with his paper. (Probably said something along the same lines back then.)

I just thought the fact that the papers contradict each other was interesting given the context.

- Make7

Here is your post from the old thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=34042&mesg_id=34118

I read it the first time - quit nagging me about it already. :)

[Old and In the Way]

94. hehehe....

ok, ok.....

actualy, I grabbed it from my original post back in 2004. I didn't see you on it, so I figured you might find it interesting. Ya can't expect me, at my advanced years, to remember every thread I may have posted to. :-)

Anyways, I found that clipping interesting because it shows just how small a quantity of explosives, carely prepped, can drop such a significant structural mass.

[Make7]

100. I'm afraid we might just have to agree to agree on this point.

I was just pointing out that old thread because I found it amusing that we had discussed it before so long ago. Reading that article again simply jogged my memory - usually I can't even remember what I posted last week. BTW - I just went and read my response to you in that old thread, it seems that I agreed with you back then too.

The next time you reply with that article to one of my posts, I'm going to disagree with you just to shake things up a bit. I shall be looking forward to the 2007 showdown. :)

- Make7

[Bouvet_Island]

110. Fun with energy

You ignore his variable that he is basing his calculus on. His main premise is that is takes a potential energy grinder so and so much energy to grind concrete into as fine dust as was found after WTC, namely 1.5 KWH/ton. It takes a lot of energy because this energy is of low quality. I made the comparison on here earlier, there is a lot of energy in a rainfall, but a water jet is preferable if you want to cut steel, you have to consider efficiency at the task at hand, in this case making fine dust outta concrete. I wouldn't be surprised if you could show shockwaves from explosions to be ten times more effective at this than a gravity based grinder with comparably low speeds. If you could make the rain fall at the same speeds as that water jet, we would need parachutes of dieamond.

I am not too enthustiastic about his paper, but the idea is interesting if it could be implemented more thoroughly.

[Make7]

113. Unless explosives were specifically placed to pulverize the concrete,...

... I'm not sure that would make a significant difference. I'm also not sure if it makes that much difference to my original point since Hoffman's paper attributes the vast majority of the calculated energy required to the expansion of the dust cloud.

Even if I were to completely discount the energy he claims was required to pulverize the concrete, the dust cloud expansion would still require the amount of energy equivalent to about 820 tons of TNT. You can consider that the new estimate if you are more agreeable to that.

Considering the currently available paper on his website has been revised a few times already, I really don't think a thorough implementation will be done any time soon. If ever.

- Make7

[petgoat]

115. You keep citing pounds of TNT. Other explosives doubtless

pack more bang per pound.

[Make7]

117. I have said TNT or something with an equivalent amount of energy.

"the amount of energy equivalent to about 820 tons of TNT"

"I am certainly not suggesting that 950 tons of TNT were actually used, but based on Mr. Hoffman's calculations a source of energy equivalent to 950 tons of TNT appears to be needed."


If you would like to theoretically use something else, then calculate how much of whatever it is you want to use would be equivalent to the amounts of TNT given. I already stated why I chose TNT.

- Make7

[Bouvet_Island]

118. I think I am going to repat my point

you can't compare the type of work of ripping up concrete, with lifting microparticles suspended in air. With your logic, we would need a hammer to pass a fart. What do you figger 950 tons of tnt blowing up inside not this cloud of dust but any old cloud of concrete dust would look like? He is not claiming you need 950 tons of tnt to move that mass, you are. He are saying it would take a lot of energy of type that is of the lowest quality when it comes to doing "physical labour" (le pun intendeé). Namely heat, or chemical reactions. This indicate some other energy source was present that would be of higher quality for the task at hand. The better suited for the task, the less you would need. Higher burn rate explosives would probably decrease weight more than linearly to their energy density, they would be more effective effective effective! More speed !!! :) And the less the particle size, the even less you would need. I don't mean to come off as too rude in all this, but you are going for a ridicule and a hacked one at that of your opponent. I don't need to be more polite to you than you to Jim Hoffman, that I don't know, might frequent this board.

You are calculating only the potential heat energy of your tnt. If you would mix it 5/95 with Jello or somthing like that and burn it inside the cloud over the course of 30 seconds, you are back on track again. Because in your 950 tons you are burning it like firewood, you are not detonating it. If there were no shockwaves, You are making Hoffmans exact point. I am not accepting his analysis as it stands now with too many uncertainties for my taste, but I have yet to see anything like a good debunkment. Can you point me to one?

[Make7]

120. Well, then I might as well repeat some too.

 

Bouvet_Island wrote:

I don't mean to come off as too rude in all this, but you are going for a ridicule and a hacked one at that of your opponent. I don't need to be more polite to you than you to Jim Hoffman, that I don't know, might frequent this board.

It doesn't matter to me if you should choose to be rude. Just do not be surprised if I decide to respond in kind. Or not at all.

How exactly have I been impolite and/or ridiculed Jim Hoffman? His actual paper is secondary to my response to petgoat, I was pointing out that two of the arguments that petgoat repeatedly uses to support controlled demolition theories seem to contradict each other. Why you think I am attacking Mr. Hoffman's paper is not clear to me. I don't believe I have ever said that it would be impossible to put extremely large quantities of explosives, or whatever source of energy you prefer, into the towers. I was asking what would be the purpose of that if the towers could be brought down with a few charges as Dr. Van Romero has said.

Bouvet_Island wrote:

I have yet to see anything like a good debunkment. Can you point me to one?

Umm.. I'm not debunking Mr. Hoffman's paper here, is that what you are asking for?

Bouvet_Island wrote:

He are saying it would take a lot of energy of type that is of the lowest quality when it comes to doing "physical labour" (le pun intendeé). Namely heat, or chemical reactions. This indicate some other energy source was present that would be of higher quality for the task at hand. The better suited for the task, the less you would need. Higher burn rate explosives would probably decrease weight more than linearly to their energy density, they would be more effective effective effective! More speed !!! :)

Please show me how this concept works by calculating the amount of whatever heat source you believe was used to account for the pulverizing of the concrete and the expansion of the dust clouds. In light of what you said about me not showing my theory to be right in your previous post, I imagine you'll be more than happy to provide an example by showing how your theory on this matter is correct. Please show any pertinent calculations for verification. Thanks.

- Make7

[Bouvet_Island]

116. I don't think your theory that you would need specifically placed

explosives to get the effect is good. And who is to say that "more dust" wouldn't be desirable to someone that are in the "hidden explosions in public display" business? I am not sure either, but I don't accept your opinions as expert analysis since you just used the same number for concrete grinder and shockwave grinder. It sounds to me like you are just tossing what first comes into your mind and "sounds right" up in the air.

Again you are not keeping tabs on the quality of the energy for the type of work. If you want to lift 1 kg of concrete 1 meter, it'll take a lot more joules if you are going to lift it by heating the air if it is in brick form or suspended in the air as micron sized dust.

And it'll take even less if you can have those in a size where they would travel on the front of a shock wave, than if they were just to big for that and it would go through them. If you would use the combustion index for a modern explosive that burns way faster than TNT, you would need "less energy". If you used the same amount of joules brought in as hot coffe from starbucks, All the starbucks in New York couldn't have lifted the cloud fast enough even if they had 20 times the heat energy needed to lift the cloud, (which would be a terrible waste of an incredible amount of fairly good coffee btw). You can't just say "energy" and throw in a number from TNT, the fact that you think you can is the best debunkment of your debunkment there is ...

As I said I am not very enthustiastic about ver. 3.1. of Hoffmans paper, but the difference between Hoffman and you is that you don't seem to think you have to show your own theory to be right, only your opponents to be wrong. It seems you don't even think that you need to show his prime argument wrong, only details in his calculation eg. If you are able to cut his number in half, you would have strengthened his theory, not weakened it. And it is the theory that is interesting, not the person or if undeservin If you are right, it should be easy to show the accounting is well balanced. Can you show it to be so?

"860,000 kg of TNT

Or converting to pounds: 1,900,000 lbs, which would be about 950 tons."

Can you explain this to me? are you saying that 860 000 kg is 950 tons?

If you are arguing against a paper that the author says is currently under revision:

"NOTE BY JIM HOFFMAN:
This paper is currently under development, taking into consideration critiques by various reviewers.
The apparent disparity between energy sinks documented in the collapses of the Twin Towers and energy sources admitted by the official government account is an important area of research.
The examination of this issue in this and previous versions of this paper should not be construed as suggesting that there are not simple lines of analysis that strongly indicate or prove that controlled demolition induced the collapses of the Twin Towers. Arguments for controlled demolition can be divided into two catagories:
The many features of the collapses are never observed outside of controlled demolition, making it illogical to conclude that they could all be exhibited in an event other than a controlled demolition.
Some of the features cannot be explained as natural collapses without defying basic physical principles."

As can be read if you click the notice about revisions at the top of the page. Then I think you should state so upfront. I take it your last statement isn't based on real knowledge about the status of the project, and is intended as a personal attack on the author. I mean that when you say it isn't coming any time soon you don't actually have any real idea if he have gotten responses from scientist with specific experience in this and is doing work each day on this, or if he don't believe it is possible to prove what he says and have ditched the process for that reason. You are talking like an expert, when you probably have no idea, at all.

[Make7]

119. Perhaps we should start at the beginning.

Posted by Bouvet_Island:

If you are arguing against a paper that the author says is currently under revision...

Perhaps this is where the misunderstanding lies. Let me paraphrase the point in my first post that you replied to. I posted the following two quotes:

Posted by petgoat:

Jim Hoffman estimates that the creation of those dust clouds required ten times the energy available in the potential energy of the towers.

petgoat says:

According to the explosives expert Dr. Van Romero, a few charges in key places could have brought the building down.

My point is this: nine times the potential energy of the North Tower is vastly different than the energy in "a few charges" of explosives. Petgoat has previously posted quotes similar to each of these at different times in support of the controlled demolition theory. The two statements appear to contradict each other so I was asking him which one he believes is correct. My guess was that he leaned more to the side of a great deal of energy being required to explain the characteristics of the collapse, so I asked him what he thought that source of energy could be.

That's it. That was my point. I did a very simple energy conversion to some amount of TNT to illustrate that 9 times the PE of the building was a large quantity of energy. I specifically stated that I was not suggesting that that amount of TNT was actually used, just something with a similar quantity of energy.

The only thing I used from Mr. Hoffman's paper was the figure he cited for the PE of the building. Which was not even his calculation - it was from a FEMA paper.

Why you think I am arguing against his paper is something you'll have to explain, because I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion.

Posted by Bouvet_Island:

As I said I am not very enthustiastic about ver. 3.1. of Hoffmans paper, but the difference between Hoffman and you is that you don't seem to think you have to show your own theory to be right, only your opponents to be wrong. It seems you don't even think that you need to show his prime argument wrong, only details in his calculation eg. If you are able to cut his number in half, you would have strengthened his theory, not weakened it.

Once again, I have not been trying to show Mr. Hoffman's paper to be wrong here. I have not quoted from his paper and I have not been examining the details of his calculations to try to disprove them. Perhaps you could explain to me why you think that I am debunking Mr. Hoffman's paper. If possible, please show some direct quotes from me where I have been doing so.

In light of what you have said above regarding people proving their theories to be right, I would request that you do one of the following two things:

1. Calculate how many kilograms of TNT would be required to explain the energy requirements outlined in Mr. Hoffman's paper.
   
2. Calculate the amount of whatever energy source you believe was used to account for those energy requirements.

Please show your calculations when posting, I would like to see the proof of your own theory.

- Make7

[Bouvet_Island]

121. This is bordering on ridiculousness

Is 860 000 kilos being 950? We need to agree on what a ton is if we are going to debate gas diffusion, shockwaves vs particle density, problems with Hoffman don't calculating the water in the gypsum in his analysis and fluid dynamics.

Jim Hoffman is saying that it is hard to make the cloud expand so fast *without* explosions or/and highly exotermic chemical processes like thermite burning. He thinks it would easy with explosions, but without it he finds it very difficult to get the accounting to work out and that is what he is writing about. What I have seen from his critics seems to go on about inaccuracies that doesn't make any real difference to his points, while easily ignoring earthquakes and all heat dissipation from in their counterarguments. And they seem to have a fondness for measuring energy in tnt, which is a nonsensical idea if what you are comparing with are not other explosions or you do a energy efficiency calculation to follow. There are explosions in a car engine, but if you take the burn value of a litre of gasoline and expect to get the same joule out as horsepower, you are going to be very disappointed. Because like easily 70% of that burn value won't do anything towards moving the car.

Neither the kinetic energy from the falling building nor the heat energy from the fire or material stress would be very effective at sending that away so fast. Shockwaves would. Explosives are excellent at moving particles suspended in the air.

Neither heating the air or dropping concrete and steel through the air comes close. Because mister heat and mister dropping solids through the air doesn't know much about pushing mr microparticles around, while mr. Shockwave from and explosion are a focking genious about it and one of mister shockwave is like ten of mister heat, or even more. That is what makes your whole charade so laughable. You are demanding we answer to your misunderstanding of a paper that uses simple physics, like you were a professor in thermodynamics. There is absolutely no inconsequence between Hoffmans study and theories that speak about a reasonable amount of explosives, and further the statement "could be brought down with a few well placed charges" it doesn't say there couldn't been more than the minimum explosives to bring it down in some manner employed, if you are to go along with the logic it was demolished with explosives. So he says you wouldn't need more explosives than could be carried in there, and Hoffman says that it is likely there was additional energy sources that probably was more effective at expanding air than heat or hypothetical chemical processes. Because it seems impossible on a scale of at least 5 to make a simple energy accounting break even.

[Make7]

124. One more time.

If, as Dr. Van Romero has said, a few charges in key places could have brought the building down, but that doesn't explain the concrete pulverization and dust cloud expansion, then it must have taken more than a few charges.

- Make7

[file83]

54. What's the "unverse"? Is that where "dark matter" resides?

I know, I know, it was a typo - I'm just making a joke. I'm a nerd. :rofl:

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Debunking911]

37. You need a computer sim?

Via two simple models, Kausel was able to determine that the fall of the upper building portion down onto a single floor must have caused dynamic forces exceeding the buildings’ design loads by at least an order of magnitude. He also performed some computer simulations that indicate the building material fell almost unrestricted at nearly the speed of free-falling objects. "The towers' resistive systems played no role. Otherwise the elapsed time of the fall would have been extended," he noted. As it was, the debris took about nine seconds to reach the ground from the top.

http://www.public-action.com/911/jmcm/sciam/

The two towers of world trade center in New York were impact by two aeroplanes on Sep. 11 of 2001. The two towers were collapsed completely and more than 3 thousand people died in this affair. This affair obtained everyone¡¯s focus and many explanations are put forward for the reason of this collapse, including fire damage, heaped load, second-damage and so on. Because the collapse of the towers is very complex and it is difficult to recur by test, most explanations are based on qualitative analysis. However, the computer technology applied us a chance to simulate the collapse in the computer, so that the reason for the collapse can be discussed, as well as the methods can be raised to avoid this disaster.

http://www.luxinzheng.net/publications/english_WTC.htm

Heh! Heres one from a physics blogger..

When I did the calculations, what I got for a thousand feet was about nine seconds- let's see,
d = 1/2at^2
so
t = (2d/a)^1/2
a is 9.8m/s^2 (acceleration of gravity at Earth's surface, according to Wikipedia),
d is 417m (height of the World Trade Center towers, same source)
so
t = (834m/9.8m/s^2)^1/2 = 9.23s
OK, so how fast was it going? Easy enough,
v = at
v = (9.8m/s^2 x 9.23s) = 90.4m/s
So in the following second, it would have fallen about another hundred meters. That's almost a quarter of the height it already fell. And we haven't even made it to eleven seconds yet; it could have fallen more than twice it's height in that additional four seconds. The time for it to fall from start to finish was three and a half times its own height.

Let's see:
KE = 1/2mv^2
The mass of the towers was about 450 million kg, according to this. Four sources, he has. I think that's pretty definitive. So now we can take the KE of the top floor, and divide by two- that will be the average of the top and bottom floors. Then we'll compare that to the KE of a floor in the middle, and if they're comparable, then we're good to go- take the KE of the top floor and divide by two and multiply by 110 stories. We'll also assume that the mass is evenly divided among the floors, and that they were loaded to perhaps half of their load rating of 100lbs/sqft. That would be
208ft x 208ft = 43,264sqft
50lbs/sqft * 43264sqft = 2,163,200lbs = 981,211kg
additional weight per floor. So the top floor would be
450,000,000 kg / 110 floors = 4,090,909 kg/floor
so the total mass would be
4,090,909 kg + 981,211 kg = 5,072,120 kg/floor
Now, the velocity at impact we figured above was
90.4m/s
so our
KE = (5,072,120kg x (90.4m/s)^2)/2 = 20,725,088,521J
So, divide by 2 and we get
10,362,544,260J
OK, now let's try a floor halfway up:
t = (2d/a)^1/2 = (417/9.8)^1/2 = 6.52s
v = at = 9.8*6.52 = 63.93m/s
KE = (mv^2)/2 = (5,072,120kg x (63.93m/s)^2)/2 = 10,363,863,011J
Hey, look at that! They're almost equal! That means we can just multiply that 10 billion Joules of energy by 110 floors and get the total, to a very good approximation. Let's see now, that's
110 floors * 10,362,544,260J (see, I'm being conservative, took the lower value)
= 1,139,879,868,600J
OK, now how much is 1.1 trillion joules in tons of TNT-equivalent? Let's see, now, a ton of TNT is 4,184,000,000J. So how many tons of TNT is 1,139,879,868,600J?
1,139,879,868,600J / 4,184,000,000J/t = 272t
Now, that's 272 tons of TNT, more or less; five hundred forty one-thousand-pound blockbuster bombs, more or less. That's over a quarter kiloton. We're talking about as much energy as a small nuclear weapon- and we've only calculated the kinetic energy of the falling building. We haven't added in the burning fuel, or the burning paper and cloth and wood and plastic, or the kinetic energy of impact of the plane (which, by the way, would have substantially turned to heat, and been put into the tower by the plane debris, that's another small nuclear weapon-equivalent) and we've got enough heat to melt the entire whole thing.

Remember, we haven't added the energy of four floors of burning wood, plastic, cloth and paper, at- let's be conservative, say half the weight is stuff like that and half is metal, so 25lbs/sqft? And then how about as much energy as the total collapse again, from the plane impact? And what about the energy from the burning fuel? You know, I'm betting we have a kiloton to play with here. I bet we have a twentieth of the energy that turned the entire city of Nagasaki into a flat burning plain with a hundred-foot hole surrounded by a mile of firestorm to work with. - Schneibster

Despite repeated calculations showing that the energy released simply from the kinetic collapse is on the close order of a small nuclear weapon, without even mentioning the energy contents of the millions of tons of paper, wood, plastic, etc. that were on the floors and a large percentage of which would be in the rubble pile and heated to ignition point by the heat from the kinetic energy dissipated by the collapse.

My best estimate at 13 psf by 35,000 sf/floor by 110 floors by about 30% combustibles, 60% metal and other non-combustible items, by the energy content of common garbage, gives a lot more energy than the energy of the collapse. The insulation provided in that debris pile was apparently pretty good, and that’s not surprising. Rock and concrete really are bad heat conductors, air isn’t much better, and steel while capable isn’t all that good, as you can tell from the fact that the jaws of the shovel aren’t melting. Ever hear of “rock wool?” It’s insulation; look it up. You’ll get the idea pretty quick.

There’s two more factors I’ll throw in: first, a certain amount of the office materials didn’t make it into the debris pile, perhaps as much as 10% of it just got scattered all over lower Manhattan island. Second, a few floors worth had already burned. So when the time comes, I’ll take three floors out, and then another 10%. You’ll be surprised, I think, at how much energy there is involved.

This, by the way, is a place where Jim Hoffman makes a serious mistake; in his paper on the dust cloud, he fails to note that he has to ADD THE HEAT BACK IN when he’s totaling things up at the end. This is a violation of conservation of energy, the First Law of Thermodynamics (and a foundational law of physics). The energy dissipated during the fall is about 250 or 300 GJ, and the leftover energy at impact is about 600 GJ. So it’s about a quarter kiloton of TNT for the North tower and about a fifth of a kiloton for the South tower; that’s still a hell of a lot of energy, more than sufficient to liquefy a pretty healthy chunk of steel, and it doesn’t change the fact that there’s a lot more energy in the office contents.

You should be aware that anytime you do mechanical work, the energy you do it with doesn’t just “go away” or “get used up.” Energy that does work gets dissipated, and when that happens, it turns to heat. This is a well known fact of physics, specifically thermodynamics, that was proven early (or maybe it was late? no, I’m pretty sure it was EARLY) in the nineteenth century by the gentleman for whom the SI unit of energy is named, James Prescott Joule. Go look him up on Wikipedia, or elsewhere if you’re a newbie and believe what you read in the newspapers about Wikipedia. He did this experiment where he stirred water in buckets and showed it got hotter.

This, by the way, is a place where Jim Hoffman makes a serious mistake; in his paper on the dust cloud, he fails to note that he has to ADD THE HEAT BACK IN when he’s totaling things up at the end. This is a violation of conservation of energy, the First Law of Thermodynamics (and a foundational law of physics).

What distance do you drop the load from? The floor of initial collapse: 79 for the South tower, 97 for the North. It’s a variable in the program, you can change it for yourself and run it yourself, it’s a perl. Interestingly, going from a 39-story to a 13-story falling section doesn’t make a great deal of difference in the energy, and makes even less difference in the energy that’s left over when the building hits the ground.

A falling building is not like a bomb or a laser beam. But it makes heat all the same- just like all work makes heat. Feel the bottom of the bicycle pump after you’ve pumped the tire up. Where does that heat come from? Same place as this does.

While a 600GJ bomb would take out ten blocks in any direction, the WTC collapse obviously did not. While that’s true, you need to know that conservation of energy says that energy NEVER disappears. It ALWAYS winds up SOMEWHERE, and if this is energy capable of knocking buildings over for many blocks in all directions, and it didn’t knock them over, then where did it go and what did it do? Answer: it went into the rubble pile, and it melted and burned stuff in there.

There was energy spent “pancaking” or “snapping supports” if you believe those theories (I do not). Whether it was explosives or whether it was sheer mass and momentum that snapped them (and I have excellent reason to believe it was nothing but mass- you’ll see shortly), it STILL made heat, and that heat STILL went into the debris pile at the bottom. Heat is energy and energy NEVER just “goes away.”

All the collapse theories say that the weight of the top of the building is what caused the collapse… well that is HALF true. It was also pushing UP WITH EQUAL FORCE. This force was largely transmitted into the ground during the collapse, not the rubble afterwards. The STATIC FORCE of the building pushes down and the ground pushes up, when the DYNAMIC FORCE of the collapse occurs, it is local to whatever is moving; this is because it’s the MOTION that causes the DYNAMIC force, and that force is (and must be, to collapse the building) many times the static forces of the building just standing there.

Now, for the program:

**BEGIN PROGRAM**

#!/usr/bin/perl
$m = 4285500; # mass of one floor (kg)
$mt = 0; # mass of falling section
$fc = 39; # floor count of falling section (39 floors for 2 WTC)
$v1 = 0; # beginning velocity for the current step
$v2 = 0; # velocity at impact
$v3 = 0; # ending velocity for prior step
$p = 0; # current momentum
$ke1 = 0; # kinetic energy at impact
$ke2 = 0; # kinetic energy after impact
$de = 0; # total energy dissipated so far
$a = 9.80665; # acceleration of gravity (constant)
$t = 0; # cumulative time taken
$t1 = 0; # time taken for this step
$d = 3.8; # distance between floors (418m/110 stories)
$mt = $fc*$m; # initialize mass of falling section
$rfc = 110 – $fc;# initialize remaining floor count of uncollapsed floors
while($rfc > 0) {
$v1 = $v3; # starting velocity is ending for last step
$v2 = (($v1*2)+((2$a)*$d))**0.5; # impact velocity for this step by formula
print(“Impact velocity for story ”, $rfc, ” was ”, $v2, “n”);
$p = $mt*$v2; # momentum at impact
print(“Impulse delivered for story ”, $rfc, ” was ”, $p, “n”);
$ke1 = ($mt*($v2**2))/2; # kinetic energy at impact
print(“Impact kinetic energy for story ”, $rfc, ” was ”, $ke1, “n”);
$fc++; # increment falling floor count
$mt = $fc*$m; # update mass of falling section
$v3 = $p/$mt; # new velocity
print(“Velocity after impact for story ”, $rfc, ” was ”, $v3, “n”);
$ke2 = ($mt*($v3**2))/2; # kinetic energy after impact
print(“Remaining kinetic energy for story ”, $rfc, ” was ”, $ke2, “n”);
$de += $ke1 – $ke2; # add dissipated kinetic energy to total
print(“The kinetic energy dissipated for story ”, $rfc, ” was ”, $ke1 – $ke2, ”
n”);
$t1 = $d/(($v2 + $v1)/2); # time for this step by formula
print(“The time spent collapsing story ”, $rfc, ” was ”, $t1, “n”);
$t += $t1; # add step time to running total
$rfc—; # decrement remaining floor count
}
print(“The total time was ”, $t, “n”);
print(“The total energy dissipated during the collapse was ”, $de, “n”);
print(“The remaining kinetic energy at the end of the collapse was ”, $ke2, “n”
);

**END PROGRAM**

It’s a perl, you can download perl for just about anything from www.perl.org or somewhere they point. If you’re going to get involved in CS, somewhere you’re going to encounter perl, and now’s as good a time to learn it as any. I highly recommend the O’Reilly Press perl book which happens to be by the inventors of the language. Just so you can muddle your way through and derive the equations from the code above, * is multiplication, ** is raising to a power (and don’t forget that a fractional power is a root; so **0.5 is the square-root operation). The rest of the symbols are obvious, and the parentheses work the same way as they do in standard math notation. You should be aware that the single = in most languages simply ASSIGNS the value of what’s on the right to the thing on the left; usually, you’re required to put a single variable on the left of an =. The double == TESTS whether one value is equal to another, returning 1 or TRUE if it is, and 0 or FALSE if it is not.

Now what...

[reprehensor]

64. physics blogger = "Schneibster"

Original data dump;
http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtopic=3108&view=findpost&p=29884

Rebuttal kicks into gear here;
http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtopic=3108&st=135&#entry30341

[Debunking911]

70. As long as you keep on reading...

http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtopic=3108&view=findpost&p=30744

[carlvs]

92. That was fun!!!

I can't believe that the 9/11 conspiracy mongers actually tried to push their pseudo-scientific garbage in a discussion site frequented by people who have a true understanding of the laws of physics... :rofl:

[Kai]

96. Hey Oppenheimer,

don't laugh so hard that you roll right off the edge of the flat earth.

[carlvs]

105. I think you got me confused with someone else

But then again, considering what goes for "rational" thought here, I shouldn't be surprised...

[Taxloss]

128. I always find it funny when

MIHOPers disregard the testimony of hundreds of respected physicists, engineers, journals and other experts in favour of their own little theory scraped together from a half-dozen far-right websites.

[petgoat]

99. I guess you're claiming Dr. Steven Jones does not understand

the freshman physics involved in the collapses.

[carlvs]

104. Yes, I am claiming it!!!

Based on what I saw over there, he and his delusional arguments wouldn't last 10 seconds over on forum.physorg.com.

It is nice to see a place where the "facts" you conspiracy mongers spew out get precisely the debunking they TRULY and HONESTLY deserve...

[petgoat]

108. If you are claiming it, then support your claim with examples

and citations. Expressions of unfounded opinion are a waste of space.

[Make7]

41. 5038349371116328754360555

libertypirate says:

Have you ever wondered why they don't blow up nukes for testing anymore. They have computers that simulate this for them, what is so unique is that these systems can simulate the position of every atom in an explosion.

5,038,349,371,116,328,754,360,555

That's the number of atoms in what I believe to be approximately the minimum amount of Plutonium required to achieve a critical mass. (2kg)

Could you provide some general details on the computer system that has the processing capability to "simulate the position of every atom in an explosion"? I find it utterly fascinating that such a thing would even be possible.

- Make7

[Debunking911]

83. I believe he was talking about this...

... http://www.silicon.com/hardware/servers/0,39024647,11026606,00.htm

But I still haven't found anything current saying they never modeled the entire event. I think they may be using old information before the models were completed. In the final version of the report it doesn't say they never completed the modeling.



Anyway, their were a number of computer models done outside the NIST. The purpose of the NIST report wasn't to make the conspiracy theorist happy. It was to make future building codes which would make buildings safer. For instance, tall buildings should be built with concrete cores and stairways should be spaced apart further. They need to rely less on inexpensive fire proofing blown on after the buildings build and more on concrete insulation of columns. The modeling helped toward this goal.

[Make7]

86. Well, I was just pointing out the impossibility of the task.

When modeling a nuclear detonation, even if they only had to perform one calculation per atom, and nothing else - in order to "simulate every atom" with the fastest computer, it would take:

   5,038,349,371,116,328,754,360,555 atoms / 100,000,000,000,000 cps = 1,500 years

And that only includes my estimate for the amount of Plutonium in the reaction.

- Make7

[Debunking911]

89. Hi make7

I don't believe they modeled everything but I can't be sure. They just wanted to simulate it's destructive power

Did you read my message?

[Kai]

103. Awwwwww

:grouphug:
:party:

[greyl]

106. Where did you get the idea that sarcasm makes a sound argument?nt

[Make7]

111. Check your email. ( n/t )

[StrafingMoose]

123. What tells you...

I do NOT, repeat, do NOT believe in MIHOP. If they can't keep NSA spying, Valerie Plame, the NIE declassification, or CheneyGate secret, there is no freaking prayer they could keep MIHOP a secret.

What are the logical indicators telling you it will stay secret forever, if MIHOP was the case ?

It took 18 years for us Canadians to learn that the Air India bombing of 1985, at bare minimum, was total LIHOP, that they knew exactly what would have happened, CSIS erased proofs before/while and after the bombing, etc.

Declassifications take time. You know that I think.

MIHOP does not only revolves around how the towers fell I believe.

[rman]

125. And it's taking forever to uncover the JFK and MLK assassination plots

And then if something is uncovered nothing much comes of it - Bay of Pigs, Iran-Contra, BCCI, coup attempt against FDR. That's testimony to the power of that network.

[Debunking911]

126. What's your evidence for this?

Do you have any evidence the administration or anyone in government knew the exact plan before the attack and did nothing?