BYU Prof says 9-11 was BushCo. plot!!!!!!!!!!!

[Lucky]

Hmmm Lets see a how much did the aircraft weigh???? How fast was it going??? sorry I am not up to trying to figure the energy expended on each tower in the crashes. Now take a structure that has already been stressed by removing a lot of its supports. Anyone seen what happens to steel at about 900deg?. After that you just have a cascading pancake failure. Basic physics says that as each floor collapsed the energy on the next will go up as more and more weight starts crashing down on the floor below.

I'm just as fascinated by this as everyone else. Like a puzzle, sort of. AIUI steel at 900degrees (f or c) doesn't actually do anything? Also, from my very rudimentary materials knowledge, it doesn't lose strength until much later. For instance, look at a blacksmith making horse-shoes. That is plain easy-to-work with iron, and even when it is heated it takes great force to bend it a little bit (repeated hammer strikes). You need a few thousand degrees to cut steel, and, aiui, gasoline cannot give you the heat needed. Simply put, there is not enough oxygen to get the temperature high enough. With a cutting torch you turn off the acetylene and use pure plain oxygen to get the hottest temps (says the manual). Structural steel, aiui, is of a type that is very resistant to heat. In that global security site they mention that modern skyscrapers are extremely resiliant buildings, and in a conflict they can be set on fire the first time, but 2 days after they burn-up the structure will remain, and be nearly indestructible.


Furthermore, to the person who spoke of a concrete building being demolished, that is fascinating, did you take any pictures? Very interesting.

One point, though, is that, again with rudimentary knowledge of materials, concrete cannot withstand the compressive forces present in high-level buildings. So the structure will be made more out of steel than concrete. As for demolishing steel, like has been said it is tough. However there is a new type of demolishion shaped-charge sticky-tape that works very well. It's like the moulding on the side of a car, except the entire length is shaped charge, with a sticky surface.

 

[shootinstudent]

First off, I don't believe that Israel had anything to do with it, but if I did, what would that have to do with "anti-semitism"?
Not a thing.

My post didn't say anything about Israel. What I said was: Many of these conspiracies are heavily laced with anti-semitism. Maybe there are some people who think Israel downed the towers who are genuinely not anti-semitic, but I sure haven't seen one. So far in my experience it's been one to one: someone who is willing to believe an idea so silly about the Israelis or "the Jews" is almost certainly willing to believe it because he/she already doesn't like Jews and wants to find yet another thing to blame them for.

I was posting about people's motivations for coming up with these plot theories, that's all. Making up a good blood libel against your pet evil minority is a historical classic in terms of conspiracy theory inspiration.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

For instance, look at a blacksmith making horse-shoes. That is plain easy-to-work with iron, and even when it is heated it takes great force to bend it a little bit (repeated hammer strikes). You need a few thousand degrees to cut steel, and, aiui, gasoline cannot give you the heat needed. Simply put, there is not enough oxygen to get the temperature high enough. With a cutting torch you turn off the acetylene and use pure plain oxygen to get the hottest temps (says the manual). Structural steel, aiui, is of a type that is very resistant to heat.

A blacksmith isn't "bending" a horseshoe so much as forging it. Same as making a knife or sword blade, you heat the steel, hammer it, then quench it to make it stronger.

Take a tempered blade and stick it into the fireplace at your ski lodge. When the fire goes out and you retrieve the blade the next morning, the temper will be gone. It's not like a cutting torch trying to remove material. The steel used in a modern skyscraper is a very high-strength steel alloy, and it is under very high stress in the normal conditions. Heat it up to a couple of thousand degrees (which any fireman will confirm is very possible in a typical building fire) and the temper goes away. It isn't necessary to cut the steel. The loss of temper renders it too weak to hold the load it was designed for. Then factor in that on two of the four sides of each tower a large percentage of the columns were taken out by the planes, and the remaining columns just didn't have enough moxie to do the job.

In point of fact, the real question puzzling most of the experts isn't why the buildings fell down, but how they managed to stay up as long as they did.

 

[Biker]

My post didn't say anything about Israel. What I said was: Many of these conspiracies are heavily laced with anti-semitism. Maybe there are some people who think Israel downed the towers who are genuinely not anti-semitic, but I sure haven't seen one. So far in my experience it's been one to one: someone who is willing to believe an idea so silly about the Israelis or "the Jews" is almost certainly willing to believe it because he/she already doesn't like Jews and wants to find yet another thing to blame them for.

I was posting about people's motivations for coming up with these plot theories, that's all. Making up a good blood libel against your pet evil minority is a historical classic in terms of conspiracy theory inspiration.

Sorry Friend. I didn't catch anything anti-semitic at all in this thread, taken in context. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Biker

 

[gc70]

A large building across the street from where I work was recently imploded. I walked by the building daily for weeks as the demolition crew knocked hundreds, (if not thousands) of holes in the structure for charges and wired the place up like a Christmas tree. LawDog's right; prepping a large building for implosion is not something that could be hidden.

Next theory, please!

 

[Art Eatman]

Hawkmoon, I saw the hole in the Empire State Building, made by a B-25. IIRC, one of the engines went all the way across the building, but I don't recall if it cleared the wall and fell. Rent-a-telescopes all over the place.

That summer of 1945 was interesting. My stepfather was stationed at Newcastle Army Air Corps Base. I got to see the old, original Smithsonian before the expansion, learn about the heat and humidity of Wilmington, Delaware, and then "did" VJ night in Times Square.

I sat on the sidewalk in front of the various bars, people-watching, while my mother and stepfather got totally blithered. They were not pleased at my notion of wanting breakfast the next morning. They didn't.

Art

 

[Lucky]

Aiui the top end for fires would be 1000-1200 celcius. And heat transfer isn't instantaneous, the fire temperature is different then temperature of surrounding objects. In that regard, a steel structure is very conductive, but also very dense, and gigantic. The first property means it will take heat well, but it also means it can transfer it along its length. And because of it's density and massive size, that makes it more difficult to heat.

Now watch a real scientist come along and school me good!

edit:

btw Hawkmoon, could you give a quick explanation of tempering? I'm uninformed. Oh, and for the horse-shoe, iirc the term is plastic-deformation, when hit with the hammer.

 

[shootinstudent]

Sorry Friend. I didn't catch anything anti-semitic at all in this thread, taken in context. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Biker

I didn't accuse you or anyone else in this thread of being anti-semitic. I was posting on the BYU piece and similar theories.

 

[carebear]

Also, structural members are designed to take their loads in very specific axis.

Shift the load even a bit, especially when combined with, say, fire weakening the temper of the steel and you get an instantaneous domino effect of failure where even unharmed elements are stressed outside their defined specifications.

One of the factors (no cite available, might be hooey) I heard pointed out soon after was that the changeover in fireproofing occurred during construction, when the towers were in the mid-, wait for it, 60th floors. That change?

Sprayed asbestos.

Which, due to it's make-up, has greater adhesion and flexibility than the material which replaced it.

If what I read is correct, trying to save lives from potential (but preventable) asbestos "poisoning" (for lack of a better word) led to the structural members at and above the impact height being more susceptable to fire damage.

There's my favorite "hmmmmmmmmm" theory. "Asbestos is bad" led to more deaths due to less escape time for building residents.

 

[Molon Labe]

The main problem with conspiracy theorists is that they do not know the difference between questions and evidence. Heck, I could dream up questions all day. I can dream up all kinds of things that seem "fishy." It's fun and easy to do! But questions bore me, whereas evidence does not.

The surest sign that a person is a complete amateur is when he focuses on questions rather than evidence.

As an engineer, I only make conclusions based on factual evidence. And when you look at the factual evidence at the WTC, even the dimmest engineer can tell you what happened.

 

[Turkey Creek]

Les Nessman is alive and well in Utah

 

[seansean]

molon labe: would you mind looking at this ...
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/cutter.html
and telling us what you think....as far as actual evidence, most of the actual steel was removed as quick as possible, and shipped out of the country, I remember articles at the time about FBI guys who were frustrated that they didn't get a chance to actually analyze and examine the steel because they weren't allowed to. Yes, if I find a link to one of those articles I'll post it...

shootinstudent: My apologies too if you weren't making the anti-semite argument...But it is a tactic that many people use to deflect criticism of israel.

 

[Molon Labe]

molon labe: would you mind looking at this ...
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/cutter.html

Um, if you want a rational, objective, scientific, and factually-based explanation of what happened to WTC 7, the obvious thing to do would be to ask credentialed professionals, not crackpot conspiracy theorists. Agree?

Well here ya go...

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=5&c=y

Of course, this report will not convince you. Because the scientists at NIST are in on the conspiracy, right?

In fact, if 99% of scientists agree with the NIST report (which is probably a good estimate), you would not believe them. Instead, you would believe the 1% (the crackpots) who thinks the government planted bombs, or aliens brought them down, or whatever.

And I guess all the reporters at Popular Mechanics were paid off by the government, right?

Notice how you have to keep inventing new theories to cover up holes? Notice how your explanations are very elaborate and make an enormous amount of assumptions? That should tell you something.

Please, please, please don't tell me you're employed in any kind of scientific field. I will sleep much better at night knowing you are not.

 

[Leatherneck]

On the other hand (Devil's Advocate time), who here, among dissenters, can offer an educated refutation to his argument?
Biker

Let me try.
All these bar-napkin "analyses" seem to rest on the assumption that the only energy available to destroy the towers was from the Jet A-1 fuel in the planes, plus some small amount of kinetic energy from the planes' motion. They ignore the huge--nay, incredible--amount of kinetic energy gained as the top floors began their downward travel, precipitated by the failure of heat-weakened steel structural elements of the buildings. Like in an explosive-formed penetrator weapon, the non-linear effects such fantastic energy produce are nearly impossible to calculate, let alone model. The pulverized concrete is evidence of such a high-energy phenomenon; no such evidence was found at the Pentagon, which only had five stories to collapse.

Combine that with Lawdog's observation that demolition preparations are hardly transparent. Then analyze consistent with Occam's razor and the Moonbats lose all credibility.

TC

 

[seansean]

ah, sarcasm I never said popular mechanics or NIST were part of a conspiracy...I never said aliens....stick to what I posted, and keep the sarcastic drama to yourself.

 

[Byron Quick]

I'm not an engineer. Or a scientist. Not even close. But I've got a teensy, weensy feeling that this guy isn't qualified to conduct such research or to evaluate the research of others on the WTC.

Why? I don't think that thermite fits the definition of explosive. I might be off base here but isn't the iron produced by thermite distinctive to chemical analysis...as in being much purer than iron is ordinarily found?

 

[HarryB]

A excellent show and site:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/

 

[Lucky]

I'm not an engineer. Or a scientist. Not even close. But I've got a teensy, weensy feeling that this guy isn't qualified to conduct such research or to evaluate the research of others on the WTC.

Why? I don't think that thermite fits the definition of explosive. I might be off base here but isn't the iron produced by thermite distinctive to chemical analysis...as in being much purer than iron is ordinarily found?

I think it's oxidized, and combined with aluminum (aluminized). So it's rust and aluminum, basically.

 

[Krenn]

The mythical Mormon 'planet' is Kolob.

http://www.shields-research.org/Critics/Kolob.htm
http://www.whatismormonism.com/

We now return you to your regularly scheduled conspiracy thread.

http://scriptures.lds.org/abr/3

Kolob is a star, which is "near unto the throne of God," and is apparently divinely referenced for various units of measurement and geography. (either spiritual or physical.)

http://scriptures.lds.org/moses/1 (verses 27-35)

there do appear to be other inhabited planets, but Kolob is not neccessarily host to any of them. And Whether or not any of them has become by now a a "specifically and entirely" mormon planet is not said.

 

[El Tejon]

Planet Mormon! A planet of my people, clean, tidy, all wearing tucked in shirts, but no beer, tea or Starbuck's--terrifying!

The BYU insanity is going to happen and will only get worse. The Left has to become more and more outrageous to out Churchill each other for attention, i.e. funding. It's all about the money.

By summer of 2006 I anticipate theories of how George Bush and Dick Cheney flew the planes into the towers.

BTW, if anyone is interested is just how zany the Left is becoming, check out Michelle Malkin's Unhinged that came out a couple of months ago.

 

[carebear]

Planet Hot Fallen Catholic Chicks, that's the one I'm after.

 

[JohnBT]

"I still think that someone, anyone would have noticed (and commented on) a bundle of det-cord as big around as your thigh going down the middle of the halls and staircases."

Maybe it was a long-range plot. Maybe everything was put into place when it was built. That's right, designed from the ground up to fall down.

John

 

[gc70]

John, I think you just might have a publishing career in your future.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

molon labe: would you mind looking at this ...
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/cutter.html
and telling us what you think....as far as actual evidence, most of the actual steel was removed as quick as possible, and shipped out of the country, I remember articles at the time about FBI guys who were frustrated that they didn't get a chance to actually analyze and examine the steel because they weren't allowed to. Yes, if I find a link to one of those articles I'll post it...

shootinstudent: My apologies too if you weren't making the anti-semite argument...But it is a tactic that many people use to deflect criticism of israel.

The steel wasn't shipped out of country, it was shipped to a landfill on Staten Island. And the investigators were able to go out there, identify specific strictural elements (beams and columns), and cut "coupons" (small sample sections) out of the critical ones to test the physical properties of the steel.

 

[shootinstudent]

.as far as actual evidence, most of the actual steel was removed as quick as possible, and shipped out of the country, I remember articles at the time about FBI guys who were frustrated that they didn't get a chance to actually analyze and examine the steel because they weren't allowed to. Yes, if I find a link to one of those articles I'll post it...

That site is terribly unreliable. It claims that a plane didn't hit the pentagon too...despite the fact that it crossed Washington's busiest highway at rush hour and was seen by hundreds of people.

The factual questions on these theories aren't even up for dispute, IMO...all that's interesting is figuring out why people believe them. For many, it's anti-semitism...for others, I'm not sure. It's certainly not the reputation of the sources that leads people to believe this stuff.