WTC Conspiracy Theories
Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 10:23 pm
DAR
I have a hard time even believing people take these World Trade Center conspiracy claims seriously. This one was forwarded to me and I roasted it this evening so I thought I would share it:
> ----- Forwarded Message ----
> From: Sharilyn
> Sent: Monday, October 23, 2006 12:16:47 AM
> Subject: FW: Bits and Bytes
>
> I can't figure out how to send only the very
> last news item on the bottom of
> this list so I am sending it all. I want Daryl
> to see it. He may have
> information on the nuclear bomb stuff
> mentioned. It does make sense.
....
View of a military expert: why did the towers of World Trade Center collapse
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/finn/5/soldier5.htm
....
DAR
The claim is that a "military expert" wrote this but no name or date is given. That's important. The article is filled with howlers and basic errors. Assertion after assertion is made but nothing is backed up with direct reference or evidence. I was almost going to say that every line in the thing is false but that would be going to far. It is really hard to write an article that is 100% false but this one really tries!
Let me check a couple claims:
Article claims:
"The towers took the impacts of crushing Boeing 767's. The towers were originally built to take impacts of Boeing 707's, which are approximately of the same size and was[sic] widely used in the 1970's."
DAR
I checked and found:
767 = 395,000 lb
707 = 257,000 lb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_707
Not even close.
***
ARTICLE claim:
"Fires that kindled from the fuel in the planes were too shortlasting and weak to be able to severely damage the structure of the skyscrapers. Even in the extreme situation, the heat from a kerosene fire cannot threat the durability of a steel trunk. With the temperature of carbohydrate fires that reaches only 825 °C (approx. 1517 °F) steel weakens at 800 °C (approx. 1470 °F) and melts at 1585 °C (approx. 2890 °F)."
DAR
Popular Mechanics has an extensive article that deals with 16 of the most common conspiracy myths about 9/11. As they reference at the end of the article: "PM consulted more than 300 experts and organizations in its investigation into 9/11 conspiracy theories." They list them and link to them. It is not likely that all of those people are in on a conspiracy.
The article can be read here:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technol ... tml?page=1
This is their response to this claim:
"Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks."
"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent." NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.
But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832°F.
"The jet fuel was the ignition source," Williams tells PM. "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."
DAR
I also found:
"The 767-300ER and 767-400ER hold 23,980 gallons (90,770 l) of fuel - enough to fill 1,200 minivans."
That is a tremendous amount of fuel to start and sustain a fire!
ARTICLE claims:
"If either of the WTC tower had started to collapse because of fires the collapse would have been limited to only a few of the floors and then stopped."
DAR
That makes no sense. The Popular Mechanics article dealt with this one:
"Once each tower began to collapse, the weight of all the floors above the collapsed zone bore down with pulverizing force on the highest intact floor. Unable to absorb the massive energy, that floor would fail, transmitting the forces to the floor below, allowing the collapse to progress downward through the building in a chain reaction. Engineers call the process "pancaking," and it does not require an explosion to begin, according to David Biggs, a structural engineer at Ryan-Biggs Associates and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) team that worked on the FEMA report.
Like all office buildings, the WTC towers contained a huge volume of air. As they pancaked, all that air--along with the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse--was ejected with enormous energy. "When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it's going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window," NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM. Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition, Sunder adds, "but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception."
The ARTICLE claims:
"As seen in the following pictures, the cores of the towers were not distracted by thousands of powerful cutting charges but by a modern thermonuclear explosive, a small hydrogen bomb."
DAR
This is absolutely ridiculous and shows a profound ignorance of hydrogen bombs. The last claim in the article is mostly incoherent but is:
"Radioactivity in air creates shades of brown. (The subterranean nuke in the picture on the right is 10 times stronger than the small nuke on the left.) This is the reason why the FBI did not search the crime scene. Ground zeros of nuclear weapons are a health risk and belong to the FEMA."
DAR
I had dinner with a physicist friend this evening and asked him if this is true. He said it was not. The picture shown is misleading. The bomb blast is brown because what it is blowing up is brown.
The FBI did not search the crime scene? A hydrogen bomb goes off in NYC and it wasn't detected?
This article is absolutely ridiculous! Thanks for sending it but it should be ignored.
cheers,
Darrel
I have a hard time even believing people take these World Trade Center conspiracy claims seriously. This one was forwarded to me and I roasted it this evening so I thought I would share it:
> ----- Forwarded Message ----
> From: Sharilyn
> Sent: Monday, October 23, 2006 12:16:47 AM
> Subject: FW: Bits and Bytes
>
> I can't figure out how to send only the very
> last news item on the bottom of
> this list so I am sending it all. I want Daryl
> to see it. He may have
> information on the nuclear bomb stuff
> mentioned. It does make sense.
....
View of a military expert: why did the towers of World Trade Center collapse
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/finn/5/soldier5.htm
....
DAR
The claim is that a "military expert" wrote this but no name or date is given. That's important. The article is filled with howlers and basic errors. Assertion after assertion is made but nothing is backed up with direct reference or evidence. I was almost going to say that every line in the thing is false but that would be going to far. It is really hard to write an article that is 100% false but this one really tries!
Let me check a couple claims:
Article claims:
"The towers took the impacts of crushing Boeing 767's. The towers were originally built to take impacts of Boeing 707's, which are approximately of the same size and was[sic] widely used in the 1970's."
DAR
I checked and found:
767 = 395,000 lb
707 = 257,000 lb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_707
Not even close.
***
ARTICLE claim:
"Fires that kindled from the fuel in the planes were too shortlasting and weak to be able to severely damage the structure of the skyscrapers. Even in the extreme situation, the heat from a kerosene fire cannot threat the durability of a steel trunk. With the temperature of carbohydrate fires that reaches only 825 °C (approx. 1517 °F) steel weakens at 800 °C (approx. 1470 °F) and melts at 1585 °C (approx. 2890 °F)."
DAR
Popular Mechanics has an extensive article that deals with 16 of the most common conspiracy myths about 9/11. As they reference at the end of the article: "PM consulted more than 300 experts and organizations in its investigation into 9/11 conspiracy theories." They list them and link to them. It is not likely that all of those people are in on a conspiracy.
The article can be read here:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technol ... tml?page=1
This is their response to this claim:
"Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks."
"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent." NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.
But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832°F.
"The jet fuel was the ignition source," Williams tells PM. "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."
DAR
I also found:
"The 767-300ER and 767-400ER hold 23,980 gallons (90,770 l) of fuel - enough to fill 1,200 minivans."
That is a tremendous amount of fuel to start and sustain a fire!
ARTICLE claims:
"If either of the WTC tower had started to collapse because of fires the collapse would have been limited to only a few of the floors and then stopped."
DAR
That makes no sense. The Popular Mechanics article dealt with this one:
"Once each tower began to collapse, the weight of all the floors above the collapsed zone bore down with pulverizing force on the highest intact floor. Unable to absorb the massive energy, that floor would fail, transmitting the forces to the floor below, allowing the collapse to progress downward through the building in a chain reaction. Engineers call the process "pancaking," and it does not require an explosion to begin, according to David Biggs, a structural engineer at Ryan-Biggs Associates and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) team that worked on the FEMA report.
Like all office buildings, the WTC towers contained a huge volume of air. As they pancaked, all that air--along with the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse--was ejected with enormous energy. "When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it's going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window," NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM. Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition, Sunder adds, "but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception."
The ARTICLE claims:
"As seen in the following pictures, the cores of the towers were not distracted by thousands of powerful cutting charges but by a modern thermonuclear explosive, a small hydrogen bomb."
DAR
This is absolutely ridiculous and shows a profound ignorance of hydrogen bombs. The last claim in the article is mostly incoherent but is:
"Radioactivity in air creates shades of brown. (The subterranean nuke in the picture on the right is 10 times stronger than the small nuke on the left.) This is the reason why the FBI did not search the crime scene. Ground zeros of nuclear weapons are a health risk and belong to the FEMA."
DAR
I had dinner with a physicist friend this evening and asked him if this is true. He said it was not. The picture shown is misleading. The bomb blast is brown because what it is blowing up is brown.
The FBI did not search the crime scene? A hydrogen bomb goes off in NYC and it wasn't detected?
This article is absolutely ridiculous! Thanks for sending it but it should be ignored.
cheers,
Darrel
