Willravel

Author’s note: Before I begin, I invite you to read the 9/11 Commission Final Report (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/) and the FEMA report on the WTC collapse (http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/official/fema.html).

What is a patriot? A patriot is someone who loves and defends his or her country. But what does a patriot defend his or her country from? Usually you hear ‘patriot’ to describe those who defend America in the military, or those who lose their lives for our country. Those 3000 people who died on 9/11 were attacked by an enemy of America, and they will always be considered patriots in my mind.

I love my country. I love the people. I love our Constitution. I love our land. I love our freedom. We live in a country with astronomical potential for good and we are a people with the best intentions. We seek to better ourselves and the world.

As a patriot, I was devastated, just as I’m sure all of you were, by the events of September 11, 2001. I watched in horror as planes crashed into the buildings. I felt numb when shock overtook me as I realized that I had just watched the greatest terror attack in America’s history. I watched the death count and missing persons count rise and my heart broke. Then another plane crashed into the Pentagon. “My God”, I thought, “we are facing a full out attack.” The Word Trade center, the symbol for American strength of economy, and the Pentagon, the symbol for american defense and military, were in ruins.

The healing process never really heals us completely from things like this. To this day, 9/11 is a very sensitive subject, as so many people were hurt by it.

We struck back with mighty force. The al Qaeda networks were torn apart and training camps were atomized by our powerful weapons. We tracked terrorist networks around the world, and brought them to justice.

Justice. Another word that so very much applies to this. We were attacked to the very core. We wanted and deserved justice. The moral punishment for those who had done wrong is what we deserved and still deserve.

This thread is about patriotism and justice. This thread is about our moral and patriotic obligation to find those who are guilty of attacking us and bring them to justice. This post is about truth.

The following are points that contradict the official report given to us by the American Government and the press. If you are still sensitive to 9/11, please consider hitting the back button, as this may disturb you.

- all of the wreckage from the twin towers was shipped off, sold, and melted down before FEMA or any other investigators could test it.
- picture and video evidence suggests the buildings were demolished using explosives, as it is impossible for the heat of fires fueled by airplane fuel to be evenly distributed over the entire structure so that it completely melts and collapses all at the same time:
Since the aircraft were only flying from Boston to Los Angeles, they would have been nowhere near fully fueled on takeoff (the aircraft have a maximum range of 7,600 miles). They would have carried just enough fuel for the trip together with some safety factor. Remember, that carrying excess fuel means higher fuel bills and less paying passengers. The aircraft would have also burnt some fuel between Boston and New York.

What we propose to do, is pretend that the entire 3,500 gallons of jet fuel was confined to just one floor of the World Trade Center, that the jet fuel burnt with the perfect quantity of oxygen, that no hot gases left this floor and that no heat escaped this floor by conduction. With these ideal assumptions (none of which were meet in reality) we will calculate the maximum temperature that this one floor could have reached. Of course, on that day, the real temperature rise of any floor due to the burning jet fuel, would have been considerably lower than the rise that we calculate, but this estimate will enable us to demonstrate that the "official" explanation is a lie.

Note that a gallon of jet fuel weighs about 3.1 kilograms, hence 3,500 gallons weighs 3,500 x 3.1 = 10,850 kgs.

Jet fuel is a colorless, combustible, straight run petroleum distillate liquid. Its principal uses are as an ingredient in lamp oils, charcoal starter fluids, jet engine fuels and insecticides.

It is also known as, fuel oil #1, kerosene, range oil, coal oil and aviation fuel.

It is comprised of hydrocarbons with a carbon range of C9 - C17. The hydrocarbons are mainly alkanes CnH2n+2, with n ranging from 9 to 17.

It has a flash point within the range 42° C - 72° C (110° F - 162° F).

And an ignition temperature of 210° C (410° F).

Depending on the supply of oxygen, jet fuel burns by one of three chemical reactions:

(1) CnH2n+2 + (3n+1)/2 O2 => n CO2 + (n + 1) H2O

(2) CnH2n+2 + (2n+1)/2 O2 => n CO + (n + 1) H2O

(3) CnH2n+2 + (n+1)/2 O2 => n C + (n + 1) H2O

Reaction (1) occurs when jet fuel is well mixed with air before being burnt, as for example, in jet engines.

Reactions (2) and (3) occur when a pool of jet fuel burns. When reaction (3) occurs the carbon formed shows up as soot in the flame. This makes the smoke very dark.

In the aircraft crashes at the World Trade Center, the impact (with the aircraft going from 500 or 600 mph to zero) would have throughly mixed the fuel that entered the building with the limited amount of air available within. In fact, it is likely that all the fuel was turned into a flammable mist. However, for sake of argument we will assume that 3,500 gallons of the jet fuel did in fact form a pool fire. This means that it burnt according to reactions (2) and (3). Also note that the flammable mist would have burnt according to reactions (2) and (3), as the quantity of oxygen within the building was quite limited.

Since we do not know the exact quantities of oxygen available to the fire, we will assume that the combustion was perfectly efficient, that is, that the entire quantity of jet fuel burnt via reaction (1), even though we know that this was not so. This generous assumption will give a temperature that we know will be higher than the actual temperature of the fire attributable to the jet fuel.

We need to know that the (net) calorific value of jet fuel when burnt via reaction (1) is 42-44 MJ/kg. The calorific value of a fuel is the amount of energy released when the fuel is burnt. We will use the higher value of 44 MJ/kg as this will lead to a higher maximum temperature than the lower value of 42 (and we wish to continue being outrageously generous in our assumptions).

For a cleaner presentation and simpler calculations we will also assume that our hydrocarbons are of the form CnH2n. The dropping of the 2 hydrogen atoms does not make much difference to the final result and the interested reader can easily recalculate the figures for a slightly more accurate result. So we are now assuming the equation:

(4) CnH2n + 3n/2 O2 => n CO2 + n H2O

However, this model, does not take into account that the reaction is proceeding in air, which is only partly oxygen.

Dry air is 79% nitrogen and 21% oxygen (by volume). Normal air has a moisture content from 0 to 4%. We will include the water vapor and the other minor atmospheric gases with the nitrogen.

So the ratio of the main atmospheric gases, oxygen and nitrogen, is 1 : 3.76. In molar terms:

Air = O2 + 3.76 N2.

Because oxygen comes mixed with nitrogen, we have to include it in the equations. Even though it does not react, it is "along for the ride" and will absorb heat, affecting the overall heat balance. Thus we need to use the equation:

(5) CnH2n + 3n/2(O2 + 3.76 N2) => n CO2 + n H2O + 5.64n N2

From this equation we see that the molar ratio of CnH2n to that of the products is:

CnH2n : CO2 : H2O : N2 = 1 : n : n : 5.64n moles
= 14n : 44n : 18n : 28 x 5.64n kgs
= 1 : 3.14286 : 1.28571 : 11.28 kgs
= 31,000 : 97,429 : 39,857 : 349,680 kgs

In the conversion of moles to kilograms we have assumed the atomic weights of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen are 1, 12, 14 and 16 respectively.

Now each of the towers contained 96,000 (short) tons of steel. That is an average of 96,000/117 = 820 tons per floor. Lets suppose that the bottom floors contained roughly twice the amount of steel of the upper floors (since the lower floors had to carry more weight). So we estimate that the lower floors contained about 1,100 tons of steel and the upper floors about 550 tons = 550 x 907.2 ≈ 500,000 kgs. We will assume that the floors hit by the aircraft contained the lower estimate of 500,000 kgs of steel. This generously underestimates the quantity of steel in these floors, and once again leads to a higher estimate of the maximum temperature.

Each story had a floor slab and a ceiling slab. These slabs were 207 feet wide, 207 feet deep and 4 (in parts 5) inches thick and were constructed from lightweight concrete. So each slab contained 207 x 207 x 1/3 = 14,283 cubic feet of concrete. Now a cubic foot of lightweight concrete weighs about 50kg, hence each slab weighed 714,150 ≈ 700,000 kgs. Together, the floor and ceiling slabs weighed some 1,400,000 kgs.

So, now we take all the ingredients and estimate a maximum temperature to which they could have been heated by 3,500 gallons of jet fuel. We will call this maximum temperature T. Since the calorific value of jet fuel is 44 MJ/kg. We know that 3,500 gallons = 31,000 kgs of jet fuel

will release 10,850 x 44,000,000 = 477,400,000,000 Joules of energy.

This is the total quantity of energy available to heat the ingredients to the temperature T. But what is the temperature T? To find out, we first have to calculate the amount of energy absorbed by each of the ingredients.

That is, we need to calculate the energy needed to raise:

39,857 kilograms of water vapor to the temperature T° C,
97,429 kilograms of carbon dioxide to the temperature T° C,
349,680 kilograms of nitrogen to the temperature T° C,
500,000 kilograms of steel to the temperature T° C,
1,400,000 kilograms of concrete to the temperature T° C.

To calculate the energy needed to heat the above quantities, we need their specific heats. The specific heat of a substance is the amount of energy needed to raise one kilogram of the substance by one degree centigrade.

Substance Specific Heat [J/kg*C]
Nitrogen 1,038
Water Vapor 1,690
Carbon Dioxide 845
Lightweight Concrete 800
Steel 450

Substituting these values into the above, we obtain:

39,857 x 1,690 x (T - 25) Joules are needed to heat the water vapor from 25° to T° C,
97,429 x 845 x (T - 25) Joules are needed to heat the carbon dioxide from 25° to T° C,
349,680 x 1,038 x (T - 25) Joules are needed to heat the nitrogen from 25° to T° C,
500,000 x 450 x (T - 25) Joules are needed to heat the steel from 25° to T° C,
1,400,000 x 800 x (T - 25) Joules are needed to heat the concrete from 25° to T° C.

The assumption that the specific heats are constant over the temperature range 25° - T° C, is a good approximation if T turns out to be relatively small (as it does). For larger values of T this assumption once again leads to a higher maximum temperature (as the specific heat for these substances increases with temperature). We have assumed the initial temperature of the surroundings to be 25° C. The quantity, (T - 25)° C, is the temperature rise.

So the amount of energy needed to raise one floor to the temperature T° C is

= (39,857 x 1,690 + 97,429 x 845 + 349,680 x 1,038 + 500,000 x 450 + 1,400,000 x 800) x (T - 25)
= (67,358,330 + 82,327,505 + 362,967,840 + 225,000,000 + 1,120,000,000) x (T - 25) Joules
= 1,857,653,675 x (T - 25) Joules.

Since the amount of energy available to heat this floor is 477,400,000,000 Joules, we have that

1,857,653,675 x (T - 25) = 477,400,000,000
1,857,653,675 x T - 46,441,341,875 = 477,400,000,000

Therefore T = (477,400,000,000 + 46,441,341,875)/1,857,653,675 = 282° C (540° F).

So, the jet fuel could (at the very most) have only added T - 25 = 282 - 25 = 257° C (495° F) to the temperature of the typical office fire that developed.

Remember, this figure is a huge over-estimate, as (among other things) it assumes that the steel and concrete had an unlimited amount of time to absorb the heat, whereas in reality, the jet fuel fire was all over in one or two minutes, and the energy not absorbed by the concrete and steel within this brief period (that is, almost all of it) would have been vented to the outside world.

Here are statements from three eye-witnesses that provide evidence that the heating due to the jet fuel was indeed minimal.

Donovan Cowan was in an open elevator at the 78th floor sky-lobby (one of the impact floors of the South Tower) when the aircraft hit. He has been quoted as saying: "We went into the elevator. As soon as I hit the button, that's when there was a big boom. We both got knocked down. I remember feeling this intense heat. The doors were still open. The heat lasted for maybe 15 to 20 seconds I guess. Then it stopped."

Stanley Praimnath was on the 81st floor of the South Tower: "The plane impacts. I try to get up and then I realize that I'm covered up to my shoulder in debris. And when I'm digging through under all this rubble, I can see the bottom wing starting to burn, and that wing is wedged 20 feet in my office doorway."

Ling Young was in her 78th floor office: "Only in my area were people alive, and the people alive were from my office. I figured that out later because I sat around in there for 10 or 15 minutes. That's how I got so burned."

Neither Stanley Praimnath nor Donovan Cowan nor Ling Young were cooked by the jet fuel fire. All three survived.

Summarizing:

We have assumed that the entire 3,500 gallons of jet fuel was confined to just one floor of the World Trade Center, that the jet fuel burnt with perfect efficency, that no hot gases left this floor, that no heat escaped this floor by conduction and that the steel and concrete had an unlimited amount of time to absorb all the heat.

Then it is impossible that the jet fuel, by itself, raised the temperature of this floor more than 257° C (495° F).

Now this temperature is nowhere near high enough to even begin explaining the World Trade Center Tower collapse.

It is not even close to the first critical temperature of 600° C (1,100° F) where steel loses about half its strength and it is nowhere near the quotes of 1500° C that we constantly read about in our lying media.

Recalling that the North Tower suffered no major structural damage from the intense office fire of February 23, 1975, we can conclude that the ensuing office fires of September 11, 2001, also did little extra damage to the towers.

Conclusion:

The jet fuel fires played almost no role in the collapse of the World Trade Center.

(research found via http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/...tc/how-hot.htm)

- even the FEMA report admits that they are confused and baffled as to how building 7 of the WTC collapsed (as it is riddled with scientific and logistical errors):
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/7collapse.avi

These both show that the building had basically no smoke, and it also shows a collapse speed to rival the speeds of the WTC 1 and 2. WTC 7 was not hit by a plane, and (as was admitted by FEMA) very little debris actually came in contact with WTC 7.
According to the FEMA report on Building 7, debris from the collapsing North Tower breached a fuel oil pipe in a room in the north side of the building. This means the debris had to travel across WTC 6, and smash through about 50 feet of the building, including a concrete masonry wall.
Also according to the FEMA report, the backup mechanism (that should have shut off the fuel oil pumps when a breach occurred) failed to work, and the fuel oil (diesel) was pumped from the tanks on the ground floor to the fifth floor where it ignited. The pumps emptied the tanks of all 12,000 gallons of fuel.
The extant fires raised the temperature of the spilled fuel oil to the 140 degrees F required for it to ignite. The sprinkler malfunctioned and failed to extinguish the fire.
The conclusion from FEMA: “The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time. Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed to resolve this issue.”
They would have investigated, but the wreckage was already sold as scrap and was being melted down.

- the investigation team supposedly found one of the terrorists passports in the wreckage of the wtc:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1546927.stm
This is probably the most impossible thing I’ve ever heard. The explosion that created a fireball and crushed the plane and melted one of the best steel reinforced structured in the world allowed a passport to fall gently to the ground.

- The plane in the only video footage of the Pentagon attack was not a Boeing 757-200
This is the picture I will deconstruct. It was oroginally on the CNN website following it's release to the Associated Press by the Pentagon and the FBI.

Here is something I threw together that shows the first frame.


The Pentagon is about 77' tall. The blue line represents the base of the outer wall, the red dot marks the exact impact point (reliable to about .5 mm depending on the resolution of your screen). The yellow line represents 77' relative to the distance from the camera. If you don't believe that my picture is crap, please measure it out yourself. It only take a small bit of geometry.

A Boeing 757-200 is about 44' tall with it's landing gear down, and 40' tall at the tail with it's landing gear up (I don't know if the plane supposedly had it's landing gear up or down, I'll assume up for the sake of this). Now I think we can all agree that the plane in this picture was not on the ground since not one picture from the crash site shows any damage to the grass, even as close as 30' from the building (which is amazing, considering the fire). Using the yellow line as a measurement of 77' at the entry point, one can start to get perspective on the picture. Allowing for an entry of about 60 degrees from the wall (acording to the info the FBI released), the tail is about 25' above it's supposed entry point. Now we have perspective on the plane's distance from the ground. 25' + 40' is 65', which is only 12' shorter than the roofline. The problem is that the tail is not 12' from the roofline, it is closer to 40' from the ground and 37' from the roofline.

- the damage at the pentagon is not consistent with the damage that should have been there. The windows where the wings were said to hit weren't even broken! The hole in the back wall is the wrong size (for the fuselage OR the engines):
http://sydney.indymedia.org/front.ph...&group=webcast is a good overview.
http://members.shaw.ca/freedomsix/pics/pentcrash.jpg shows a very famous picture of how the 757 matches up with the damage. As you and I can plainly see, the wings left no damage to the limestone side of the Pentagon. Now when a plane hits a steel reinforced concrete wall, it is going to be smashed to bits, but the idea that it left no impression is absurd.
shows that the smoke to the right of the impact is black versus the smoke coming from the building. Note also that they do not store fuel for the helicopters at the helipad to the right of the picture.
Speaks for itself.
The Pentagon is one of the most heavily guarded and watched site on the planet, with some exception of NORAD and the White House. With radar systems capable of tracking objects right down to sea level, Friend or Foe Systems, and satellite systems, it amazes me that a rogue Boeing 757 could hit the Pentagon with out warning after 2 planes already had hit the World Trade Center. The Pentagon is equipped with the latest state of the art technology in the war room.
http://killtown.911review.org/chart.html is a full response chart based on the FAA and NORAD reports.

This is a picture of the inner-most wall. That hole is roughly 16’ wide and 11’ tall. Now each ring of the Pentagon has an outer and inner wall. Each wall is approx. 18" thick. This is steel reiforced concrete. That means that the impact point was 36" of steel reinforced concrete. This means a total of 9' of steel reinforced concrete from entry point in the outer ring, to the exit point of the inside of the inner ring. Could a 757 have punched out a 14-16' wide hole on entry and have pierced 9' total of steel reinforced concrete to make a hole of almost exactly the same dimentions?
Now the nose of a plane is not made of reinforced aluminum or anything of the sort. The nose of a plane (the part that would have been doing the punching) is called a "crashdome". This is the area of the plane that is below and infront of the cockpit; the area that would first impact. This crashdome is where the plane stores electronic navigation equiptment. To enable the transmission of signals, the nose is not made of metal, but carbon. It's shape has been designed to be aerodynamic but it is not crash resistant. The inside casting, as well as its contents, are extremly fragile. The nose would crash on impact with an obstacle, not penatrate it. You NEVER find a nose in a crashsite that involves a head on colision (the type in this case). Therefore, it is impossible that this carbon nose punshed a perfect 2.5 yard diameter circular hole in the steel reinforced buildings.

- almost no smoke or heat damage to the pentagon despite 8600 gallons of burning fuel that would have been left by the 757:

The roof is still intact and has virtually no fire damage. Notice the computer monitor and stool that the 8600 gallons of fuel were unable to even burn. This picture was published by Time, Newsweek, and People.

I am asking you (the reader) to please refute these.

Willravel

Note: Mods, feel free to move or delete this if it takes a turn for the worse, but I hope it can remain civil.

Dilbert1234567

Well here is the first problem, you are trying to heat everything, when actually the heat will not be spread evenly, it will be hotter in the center of the fire, and less in the outskirts. The center of the fire would be much hotter and the outsides would be cooler, as well as the top being hotter then the bottom.

This is incorrect, saying ‘it is impossible that the jet fuel, by itself, raised the Average temperature of this floor more than 257° C (495° F)’ is more accurate but in reality the you also have a large plane (87,135 kg) hitting at 850km/h, kinetic energy = .5 mass * vel*vel, so this is an additional 31,477,518,750 joules of energy. Not much, but this energy is transferring not as heat, but as kinetic motion, deformation to the structure of the towers, remember that this is hitting in a piercing motion, it’s not evenly distributed, it’s punching through the tower, severing supports all the way through. This weekend the towers to such a point that the addition of the heat weakening the steel brought the towers down.

You are right that if the heat was spread evenly through out a floor, it could not heat it very much, but it is not even. As I stated above the plane hit and pierced the building, this would spread the fuel in a line/cone pattern, it would be stopped by walls not destroyed by the plane, and shaped into an area much smaller than the entire floor. If the fuel was reduced in its area by half that would double the raise in temperature, but it would be more than half, much more. The wings would fold back near the start and no longer widen the path, the fuselage of the plane would continue further, but the total area covered by the fuel would only be several times the size of the plane, no where near the size of the floor. This would allow for more heat to be transferred to a smaller area, heating the beams up much more than you state.


As for the pentagon:

The pentagon is not some office building, it’s a fortress. The windows are several inches think and designed to withstand bombs, a plane will not create enough force to break them unless it hits it directly. In the bottom pictures, look how thick the walls are, that’s about a foot thick of reinforced concrete, that’s why the structural damage was not as sever. As for the plane penetrating so deeply, as I stated earlier it’s hitting with 30 billion joules of force.

Easily. The fact that the tip would break is irrelevant, you have a heavy cylinder crashing into a wall at an incredible speed, and it will go through. The body of a 757 is about 15 feet a cross, the same size as the hole, the wings would be ripped off, but the body would remain to continue to penetrate. It’s all about force per square inch. The 757 is a huge plane, going really fast, it will punch through anything, period. Just because the nose would break does not mean it would stop, everything behind would keep coming and punch through it. the roof is still intact is because the building is built like a fortress, the impact was able to penetrate the wall, but did not hit enough support beams to bring it down, and since it was on the ground, fire suppression was able to be used relatively quickly, stopping the fire from getting out of hand.

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Willravel

Before I start this, I want everyone to know that I am making a good effort to keep this from going into paranoia. This thread is simply here to examine facts and claims surrounding the 9/11 attacks. I'm not here to hypothesize about larger issues.
This is an interesting point. Tow things pop into my head when I read this:
1) If the heat is localized around the center of the buildings, that would mean that the perimeter columns were not subject to the same heat and thus the same fatigue as the center of the building. This means that when the building collapsed, one would expect to see free standing portions of perimeter columns that are buckling. This is not the case. There is no photo or video evidence that shows any of the perimeter columns standing for even a frame as the building was collapsing.
2) If the heat of this fire was able to collapse - at almost free fall speed - a steel reinforced building, how is it the same fire didn't show any effects on the aluminum on the outside of the building? I have no answer for that question.
I understand what you're saying here, but what I keep wondering is how much of a beating this building can take. According to public records, WTC 1 and 2 were designed to withstand a direct hit from a plane not much smaller than the ones that hit them. This to me suggests considerations in structural integrity (the tower can stand despite the loss of several perimeter columns) AND fire from airline fuel. WTC 1 and 2 were designed so that the perimeter columns supported some of the weight of each floor plate, but the core supports held the building up. I can understand that the core did heat up a great deal, but we're talking about a core that extended from its bedrock foundation to its roof. The cores were rectangular pillars with numerous large columns and girders, measuring 87 feet by 133 feet. The core structures housed the elevators, stairs, and other services. The cores had their own flooring systems, which were structurally independent of the floor diaphragms that spanned the space between the cores and the perimeter walls. The core structures, like the perimeter wall structures, were 100 percent steel-framed. I need to stress that jet fuel (lamp oil) cannot burn hotter than about 350 degrees C without assitsance. There was nothing in either of the buildings that would burn hotter than jet fuel. That temperature simply is not hot enough to decrease the tensile strength of the steel used in the twin towers.
Most of the fuel ignited upon contact. Jet fuel will not keep getting hotter and hotter as it burns, no matter how much you have. There is a limit, and that limit falls short of the ability to warp or bend steel, espically the steel core of the WTC.
So a plane that can punchture a 1'+ steel reinforced wall, multiple supports, and go through all the wings of the Pentagon can't break bullet proof glass?
According to the testimony of the fire fighters, the fire was almost out when they arrived on the scene, only about 15 minutes after he crash.

Either jet fuel is hot enough to bring down two steel reinforced buildings in a matter of hours, despite there was no prescedent for ANY fire bringing down ANY steel reinforced buildings...but it was also cool enough that it would essentially put itself out in 15 minutes. You can't have it both ways, and it really confuses me.

Willravel

BTW, Dilbert1234567, I appreciate both your candor and your level of respect. It's posts like yours that will keep this thread out of paranoia.

highthief

I'm not sure I see the difference bewteen this thread and the one in Paranoia, to be frank. Honestly, you lose me with the opening "salvo" ...

preceded by this:

So, first off, the two statements are contradictory - either all the wreckage was scrapped or only 80% of it was. Which is the correct "fact"?

Secondly, just what was supposed to happen - all almost 200,000 tons was supposed to be examined by the guy from CSI? It's an impossible task.

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ubertuber

Will, nice thread. With the amount of factual evidence and analysis you are attempting to bring to the table, I agree that this doesn't belong in Paranoia. That doesn't mean I'm sold yet, but it does mean that I'll be looking forward to the discussion that will follow.

Highthief, I think there's a difference between this thread and the one in Paranoia. If nothing else, it is helpful for will to gather the allegedly factual information in one place without the other stuff that got pulled into the discussion before. I think replies like Dilbert's are very valuable to this discussion. In fact, if this thread goes awry, it'll probably be because of the responses, not the original post.

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Ustwo

http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...tml?page=6&c=y

Must we again be chasing windmills?

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This should come with a "WARNING: FAULTY MATH AT WORK"

Lets see here...

Ok, I've recently been to the site, all the steel has been carried away.

So that's 185,101 / 2 (per tower) = 92,550.5 tons of steel per tower.
92,550.5 / 117 = 791 tons per level

Wait what? Where'd this number come from? 29 tons per level is a lot of misplaced steel.

Yes... the fire explodes, runs low on oxygen, and then sucks in air preventing much of the spread of heat. Considering the levels struck were 93-100, it would have put him below the flame. As any High School physics person can tell you, heat rises.

And as far as your "carefully" laid out mathematical formula? Dilbert got most of it.1) If the heat is localized around the center of the buildings, that would mean that the perimeter columns were not subject to the same heat and thus the same fatigue as the center of the building. This means that when the building collapsed, one would expect to see free standing portions of perimeter columns that are buckling. This is not the case. There is no photo or video evidence that shows any of the perimeter columns standing for even a frame as the building was collapsing.
2) If the heat of this fire was able to collapse - at almost free fall speed - a steel reinforced building, how is it the same fire didn't show any effects on the aluminum on the outside of the building? I have no answer for that question.[/QUOTE]

That doesn't work like that. The structural support was that of a square of steel in the middle, and steel along the outer perimeter. If the center is heated to the point of the steel being weakened, the ENTIRE floor will drop at once because the outer steel would not be able to support the concrete slab.

Then you see the structural failure you're saying was intentional. One slab begets aother.

However with the Pentagon construction was completely different. It was not built for lightweight and cost efficiency, the windows did not consist of the majority of the walls. It was built more like a bunker in which all of the kinetic energy the plane weilds would immediately crush the lightweight aluminum plane as it pushes through the thick, reinforced concrete walls.

Elphaba

Will, I have a question. FEMA chose to assume that the plane was fully fueled.

Yet, your logic that 3,500 is a more accurate estimate is compelling. Shouldn't the amount of fuel on board at takeoff be a known/recorded amount? Also, if 10,000 was the actual amount, would that have been sufficient to cause the collapse?

Wonderful thread, will. Thank you for the time taken in laying it all out.

Willravel

highthief, in both the FEMA and NIST reports they include that they were not able to keep and study any of the material from the Twin Towers or WTC 7. The problem I am having is that there are different stories coming from differnt sources. The quote from the NY Daily was contradicted by CNN, but the message is the same: evidence destroyed.

Ustwo, I already addressed the Pop Mech article in another thread. I want to avoid double posting as much as possible.

Seaver, again, I have problems with the math because I get different stories from different sources. I do my best to get my info from reliable sources, but at the end of the day, very frew sources that are normally reliable have their facts straight. If people can provide sources and info, I'd appreciate it.

When I was referring to the perimeter aluminum not being melted, the heat may have been localized, but the smoke and heat from the fire burned out of the large openings made by the planes. If that fire was hot enough to melt the steel core in only a few hours, how was it not hot enough to show any effect on the aluminum, which has a much, much lower melting point?

If the largest amount of heat was at the crash point on the building, why did the top floor collapse first, and why did it collapse at near free fall speed? Was the steel so soft that it offered NO resistence?

Elphaba, yes, usually there are records about fuel and such, but access to that information is basically cut off (at least to me). I don't think 10,000 gallons could have brought down the building, espically in only a few hours.

Dilbert1234567

I totally agree with you.

With all the smoke and debris of the collapse, I don’t think you could see anything like that. The tower collapsed floor by floor, not all at the same time, the compact air pushed debris out the windows of the collapsing as it fell, obscuring all view of the collapsing floor. The inertia from acceleration of the above floors when the first floor failed let the above weight crush the lower floors one by one. If you watch the videos, you can see that the inside column goes first, notice the radio towers on the roof disappear before the outside of the building, then after a second, the rest starts to fall. This shows that the failure was at the inside support not the outside support

The fire was not at the outside, it was localized in the center. The smoke reached the outside and some heat, but not really that much; it was all at the core. And that initial explosion would not transfer enough energy to do anything serious to the outside.


They were designed to take the impact of just about any plane that existed, when they were built, and then Boeing made a bigger plane. When you scale something up linearly, the mass increases by a larger ratio, if you double the size, you increase the mass by 8 times. A lot more weight going just as fast, the building was designed to survive a moderate plane crash, not a 767.


Well, to get a hotter flame, we need more oxygen, that’s easy. Think of the shape of the impact, its cone shaped, and the plane’s wings tore a large gape in the walls before breaking away while the fuselage continued to go deeper. Now the airspeeds at that altitude are pretty fast, if the air gets going the right way, it will be funneled through the cone, and increase the oxygen content greatly.

Jet fuel alone will only burn so hot; the extra oxygen as described above would make it even hotter, as would all the office supplies. But it is not just about the fire, there are many more forces at work here, you don’t have to melt a beam to make the building collapse. Take this bad diagram I am making in ascii, as the fire heats the top girder, it will expand, bending the bottom supports, causing the building to lose its integrity, this coupled with the large plane that defiantly ruined some of the supports, cause the tower to collapse.

______ ______
| | => \ /


It did, but only the glass in the direct line of the plane. I think the term is sectional density, describing bullet penetration. We have the main plane cylinder, a huge mass, hitting the pentagon in a relatively small area this allowed it to penetrate so deeply, where as the wings are relatively light, and have a large surface that they hit, causing the light damage.

Well yes I can. There is no precedent because we have never had something of this scale before; never have 767’s hit large steel buildings, never. Second as I stated with the wind adding oxygen to the fire in the towers, this would not be the case at the pentagon, the wind speed on the ground would not be anywhere as fast. Second, even though the fire crews did not make it to the scene for 15 minutes, does not mean that the internal sprinkler system did not kick in. and before you mention the sprinklers in the wtc, they are designed for small fires, pumping water up 100 stories is tough, it is done through multiple pumps space out among multiple floors, the power would be ruined and not allow the pumps to work not to mention some of the pipes would be ruined by the plane making them ineffective.





Play nice please

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host

Actually, the WTC towers were designed to withstand the impact of a 707 airliner, which had a higher top speed capability, and was not much smaller than a 767, featuring nearly identical fuel capacity. Relevant only if a 767 model aircraft actually flew into one of the towers.....
Flight 175 engine debris, landing after the impact on 9/11 on the corner of Murray and Church in Manhattan, seems more likely to have come from a much smaller 737 aircraft, and thus, was much lighter than a 727 or 767.
The defendants' "answer" in the 2003 Berg Rico lawsuit, vs. George Herbert Walker Bush discloses that the aircraft engine core pictured below was later buried with other WTC debris in the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island.
Note the carpenter square, placed on top of the engine assembly, to provide a frame of reference for it's small size.....
<img src="http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/evidence/photos/docs/streetengine1.jpg">

Ustwo

host as is often the case your link doesn't correspond with your own text. Your link refers to the idea that the WTC towers were designed to take the impact of a 707 they should be able to survive the impact of a 767. Ironicly they DID survive the impact, but not the heat so the whole point is moot.

It of course has nothing to do with what you said other than it was even a SMALLER plane that hit the wtc, which again has nothing to do with your link. This of course would require collaberation by the major airlines, all their ground crew, the flight traffic controllers, and we won't even get into what happened to the real 757's or how crazy that idea is.

I'm sorry uber but lots of bad math and bad assumptions does not a politics thread make, if there was a tiltled mania it would belong there, and not here, but lets PRETEND we have some integrity in the politics forum.

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Dilbert1234567

I’m not really sure where your going with this, this seems to be more of a conspiracy theory that the plans that hit were not the planes that hit, please keep this out of this thread, tilted paranoia is where you want to be.

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The_Jazz

I'm a little limited on time today, so I'm going to only address one issue - the burning jet fuel. Yes, the jet fuel burns at 210 C, but there is no reason to believe that the fire was limited to that temperature. Remember that this is the minimum temperature for ignition, and it will certainly burn at higher temperatures. In an enclosed space with the right flow of oxygen, a wood fire can burn much hotter than 451 F (which is what I remember the ignition point of wood without looking it up). The heat from the fire rose upwards and did what, disapeared? The temperature of the flames themselves would have been higher than that fuel source

http://www.doctorfire.com/flametmp.html

so the high temperature number that we need to look at is that of the flame, not the burning substance. A typical house fire involves wood burning in one way or another. Given that wood has an ignition temperature of 451 F (thank you Ray Bradbury), your logic would make it impossible for the average house fire temperature to be 1100 F.

http://www.health.state.ok.us/progra...ouse_fires.htm

There's also the fact that there were a lot of other things on fire besides the jet fuel. Looking out my office door, I can see a copier (plastic, paper and toner), desk (wood), chair (plastic and fabric), ceiling tiles and cubicle walls (some sort of composite plastic). Remember that just because things are fire resistive doesn't mean that they won't burn. It's a well known fact in insurance that non-combustable buildings will in fact burn, possibly to the ground given enough fuel and lack of firefighting. All the surrounding materials would have added their own flames and heat, which would have gathered in the core of the building, making the steel less and less rigid until it caused more load than it transfered and brought down the concrete.

One other note - while the WTC may have been designed to withstand a 707 impact, that doesn't mean that it was built that way. Buildings, in my experience, are rarely built exactly to specification, and contractors take lots of shortcuts to save money and time. Using slightly less fire-proofing or a slightly weaker concrete mix on the upper levels wouldn't impact the day-to-day survivability of the building (as seen by the 93 bombing), but they would be fatal in these circumstances. Who has proof on how the buildings were actually built, not how they were intended to be built?

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dksuddeth

1) the WTC towers WERE designed to take a 707 hit, but the design was meant to keep it from tumbling down from the direction of the hit, hence the strong inner columns

2) jazz is dead spot on about the flash point and flames, also consider what the wind conditions were like that high up and all the furniture and other flammable materials up there.

3) I still have digital media of the towers crashing down. The given explanation of the top weight crushing the towers straight down is the most plausible theory there is. While a timed and sequenced detonation theory is possible, it's not very probable. Where would all these charges have been placed, when could they have been placed in there, and who would not have noticed any of that going on?

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Willravel

To address the fire issue:

The time between the impact (9:03 AM) and the collapse of the South Tower (10:50 AM) was 47 minutes.

The time between the impact (8:45 AM) and the collapse of the North Tower (10.29 AM) was 104 minutes.

Willravel

I would like to avoid speculation at this point. Let's stick to invesigating the evidence first. If everyone can agree that something doesn't add up, THEN we can move on to the question of the how and why. I don't want to put the cart before the horse.

host

Unless you are disputing the authenticity of the photo, and I would think that you would need to document such a dispute, how does the jet engine core debris photo differ from any of the links that willravel has posted? My point is that there is legitimate photo evidence that the airliner represented by authorities as flight 175, threw off a jet engine core, after impacting WTC tower #2, that landed on a Manhattan street corner, and is obviously from a much smaller aircraft. I think that is material to a discussion like this one. The photo evidence is that the engine core debris found on Murray St. comes from a much smaller engine, a CFM56, than this, a PW4000 767 airliner engine:
http://www.volvo.com/volvoaero/globa...000/PW4000.htm
<img src="http://www.volvo.com/NR/rdonlyres/0EE37C86-7EA9-4123-9AC5-68562AE5A3E0/0/335x150PW4000.jpg">

Ustwo, the crux of my post was to counter this statement in Dilbert's post which directly preceded mine....and I think that willravel does an admirable job of countering your fire damage related comments. As is so often the case, compare the content of what you're "bringing" to the discussion, compared to the "hard work" that others demonstrate. Give us something to think about; we already have vigilant mods to referee.

Seaver

You dont have to melt the steel. What is required is the steel must lose structural integrity.

Here's some more math for you:

791-820 Tons of Steel per floor we agreed upon correct? So we'll cut the difference in half for 809 tons of steel alone per floor. Lets go ahead and run with that (ignoring people, equipment, wiring, or the hundreds of tons of concrete) since that's a hard number with little estimation.

It impacted between the 93rd and 100th floor correct? Lets cut it in half and go 96th story.

(117-96)*809 = 16,989 tons of steel structures above the impact. Once again this is ignoring ALL other weight, which could easily triple the number.

So that's 17 tons of direct downward pressure on a structure that is undoubtably damaged by a direct impact of say... 400 miles per hour by a plane that weighs several tons and carrying lots of fuel... which ignited.

The heat from the fires would suck in massive amounts of oxygen from the holes punched through both sides of the building. With fresh air being sucked in, the heat would be insulated from rising by the concrete slabs that the floors consisted of. Thus the steel heats to enormous temeratures which, as we know, causes steel to expand and lose it's rigidness.

The problem with the conspiracy theorists is they use the temperature for the melting of steel. While men have been making steel since ancient times, we can see steel doesnt need to melt to become fragile. That fragile nature of heated steel could not support the massive weight above and it collapsed.

Ustwo

Ok lets try this from another direction.

Conspiracy people, what happened to the 757's involved, where did those flights go, what about the people on them?

Did the Airlines, ground crews, and flight controllers all lie? Were the oringinal passangers executed? What is the story behind flight 93 and the cell phone calls to loved ones, or was that a REAL 757 and the others were not?

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Willravel

I already addressed this. We can't jump ahead in a discussion like this.
This thread is about the questions coming from official reports, pictures, videos, and interviews surrounding 9/11. When and if we move out of that part of the discussion and into the larger issues, then we can address your questions.

Ustwo

Its not ahead. Either there is a good explanation or not. I don't buy your 'facts' as valid, and if that is required prior to answering my question than your argument is faulty.

If what you claim is true IS true then there is an explantion for what I asked. That explanation is not dependent on accepting anything prior. What happened to the planes will, answer that, with evidence, and maybe I'll relook at the rest and ignore the experts that say you are wrong.

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host

If it can be established that the jet engine core and landing gear found on streets in lower Manhattan did not come from a 767 that our government claimed hit each WTC tower, that will open the door to an actual investigation of what happened on 9/11. Nothing else is required of skeptics, if physical evidence jeopordizes previous official "finding".

Willravel

If you don't buy my evidence as true, then why ask a question that assumes the evidence is true? Occams razor says: Ustwo is trying to get this thread shut down or moved into paranoia.

That's not very nice, Ustwo.

This thread is about an examination of facts. This thread is not about guessing, and I could not answer your questions because I don't have any evidence. If I were to make a conclusion without evidence, then it would be speculation, and speculation has no place in this thread.

ubertuber

You could probably examine those questions in whichever order. However, will started with evidence and math that alleges that the official story of the WTC collapse can't possibly be correct. Let's do that for now - there seem to be numerous questions about the numbers we've seen so far.

Once that hurdle is cleared, I absolutely agree that your questions about the fate of the people and equipment will be quite pressing.

I did see your comment about this not being a politics worthy thread. I think we're still in the acceptable realm for this forum - as long as we're talking about debatable facts. In fact I think that's pretty much the best way to talk about this idea here. If we can never get to a reasonably settled place with what will started with we should let it go until there is more information. However, if will makes his case convincingly, we can move into the next set of questions.

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Ustwo

We are not talking facts, we are talking bad science, its been documented (and ignored) already.

If he wants to hide behind that smoke screen so be it. Its also a horrible way to investigate something like this. Its the equivalent of seeing me shoot a man in crowded room that was being videotaped and not looking at the evidence there, but seeing if I had a gun permit, showing that my gun permit was for a .45 and since I shot him with a .38 I must not be the shooter. Its assinine in the extreme, but if you think it belongs here, instead of where its been moved since 9/11 so be it. I'm done.

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The_Jazz

Will, I'm enjoying this thread so far, and I hope that we can keep the discussion limited to accepted facts and observed results of the attack. But that's me, and obviously host and Ustwo disagree with me, which is fine.

Other than to blow sunshine up your ass, my point is to ask what you think of my previous post of a plausible explanation for the higher temperature that would occur. It seems pretty clear to me that the fire could have easily burned hotter than the 210 C ingition point of the jet fuel given I can set a house on fire using the same mix of jet fuel and achieve 1100 F ON AVERAGE. Since steel loses riditity at the same 1100 degrees, we'd clearly need a higher temperature than produced in an average house fire to reach the critical point in 47 minutes, but I don't see where that's an unacheiveable task given that there were fire resistant materials known to be burning at the time. Given the collapse of the structure, all that was needed was for the focal point of the fire to be in a critical area.

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Ustwo

Its in my link above. Guess I wasn't done, but this makes me quite angry.

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Seaver

I'm not enjoying this thread. It's giving validity to arguments that hold no water.

And thank you for pointing out the 210C. I didn't bother with even going through that section of math. Any mathematical equation that trys to claim that 38,000 gallons of JP5 jet fuel burns colder than a piece of wood isn't worth my time.

ubertuber

Ustwo, I think that's a great link and very germane. I haven't seen will IGNORING people's questions - seems to me that he's trying to explain them or incorporate them into his understanding. Your skepticism also helps keep this thread from disappearing into la-la land. Obviously no one can talk about the diabolical plots of the illuminati or whatever while we're still debating how hot the fire actually was.

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The_Jazz

Ustwo, thanks for the story - I had a vague recollection of that article but had no idea when or where I read it, so I just tried to recreate it. I should have clicked on your link. Sorry for my laziness. It makes it more credible to be coming from an engineer as opposed to me.

By the way - I'm in the red ex club too.

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highthief

Yeah, this would assume pinpoint piloting of a jet liner into specific floors, and then have the fire spread in a certain way, so as to not disturb the carefully laid explosive charges just a few floors below.

It's very farfetched. And if it didn't work, or even so much as a stick of tnt or a bit of plastique were recovered, the whole plan would have fallen apart. It's so unlikely outside of a comic book.

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Dilbert1234567

This is ludicrous, we have plenty of video footage of the plans hitting the towers, to come back and say, wait the big plane we see in the footage is actually small even though it looks big, because I see a picture of a supposed engine is crazy. Maybe it did throw off the engine, and maybe because we don’t personally diagnose airplane crash data we cont really tell what we are looking at because we are not experts. But seriously how many camera angles will it take to convince you. The videos show 2, 767 hit the towers. I don’t know if the photo of the engine is fake or not, quite frankly it is irrelevant.

But here we go. that picture is of a GE CF6, not a CFM56, yes there is a huge size discrepancy, and the span of a GE CF6 is 9 feet, Or is there. The engine found is only part of it; the fins and front end have been ripped off. Reducing its size from 9 feet to just the core of the engine. The picture is of a compressor and turbine for the GE CF6. A CFM56 with its fins ripped off would be much smaller than the picture you show.

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Willravel

Much appreciated!
Okay so you're saying it's possible for the fire to have burned at 1100 degrees F, or 533 C, and thus would have caused the steel to lose it's rigidity to the point where it was no longer able to stand. This caused a chain reaction which brought floor on top of floor and levelled the building. The problem, at least in my mind, is that when you heat a stel sturcture the heat moves out, and thus dissapates, acros the entire structure. Imagine pouring applesauce onto a plate. The applesauce doesn't just stack up, it spreads across the flat surface. What surprises me is the fact that a fire in the North Tower, spread through 200,000 (est) tons of steel enough in 104 minutes to cause a structural collapse. In addition to this, a great deal of the fuel from each plane was instantly burned upon impact (thus the explosions in the pictures and video). Leaving the North Tower alone for a bit, South Tower went down in only 47 minutes! Just so you know, the South Tower did not recieve a duirect impact, as the North Tower did. The plane that hit the South Tower hit it at an angle, and most of the fuel burst outside of the building. How did the building with the least fuel fall twice as fast?

Seaver, if this isn't worth your time, why are you posting?

Willravel

I'll link the pics for those who are seeing rexes:
North Tower:
http://www.public-action.com/911/jmc...htowerpath.jpg
South Tower:
http://www.public-action.com/911/jmc...htowerpath.jpg

ratbastid

I remember hearing an explanation for this that claimed that the ignited fuel poured down central shafts, burning and heating the core supports the whole way down to the ground. I don't know what that does to your requirement for all the fuel to stay in one place to have a hot enough fire, though.

Poppinjay

Host, I believe you have introduced an argument with no facts or backup. If you really want to get into the minutae of what kind of Boeing crashed into the WTC and how they should have been able to withstand such a hit, they did.

However, they sucuumbed to a breach of integrity within the structure. But collapse from the plane crashes? No. They stood.

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Willravel

I remember hearing that too (maybe we heard it from the same person). If that had been the case, we might have seen smoke coming from the doors at the bottom floor. It's an interesting idea.

Can everyone see the pics I linked? I can try to reformat them when I get home from work.