Loose Change

[Ziggy Stardust]

No, really, i meant what i said, we are now getting someone where. This is the first expert cited (in this field, for this and other reason Dr. jones and like do not count) that says this looks like a CD.

Sorry for missreading the tone of your post and acting like a jerk

Sometimes this forum gets me all defensive

'looks like'

 

[woody60707]

With that said, i still don't believe that WTC was a CD. I just think this was a credible way to ask a expert, and i do believe he believes that demolitions were used. Also was he asked how this was done? what bombs does he think were used, how much would be needed to be used, how long would it take to plant? Does he think you could plant them all with out anyone seeing or needing to take out large section of the walls out? Does he think thremite(sp?) would make WTC7 jump like he said it would?

In the end, they are many many other experts that believe that after looking at the video it wasn't CD, what makes him right over all of them?

This is a good start, but still a LONG ways away form making a good case that i would believe.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I don't believe it was CD either. I merely tried to show Brennan that when you look at some footage, it looks like a CD.

The fact is that Lowenko was at a loss for an explanation when they told him the building had been on fire for 7 hours. In his point of view as a CD expert he saw no way that building could be or allready had been rigged. The engineers however could find an explenation. For me that shows it almost couldn't have been CD but another cause, likely fire weakening the steel and damage from the collapse of WTC1 like the engineers reasoned. Since they came up with the most likely scenario, I'm going to believe untill they come up with something better. Evidence would be nice.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I didn't see any comment about http://911blogger.com/node/2278?page=3

Regarding the surveilence videos (from gas stations, stores, hotels, etc.) around the pentagon:

Study Amendment #5 of the constitution:

nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The videos are still considered belonging to the stores and gas stations that owned them. The government can use it as evidence in their cases, but it is up to those businesses if they want to release it to the general public or not. This was also the case with the Zapruder film from the JFK assassination, where an individual owned that footage.

This was covered in the debunking video and the guy who made the debunking video joked that a Canadian knows more about the Constitution than most Americans (myself included).

As for the footage from the security camera AT the pentegon, if you watch the entire clip http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/P200022.html , then you will notice at the beginning, when the squad car drives by, you can see how choppy the footage is. The cop car is only going 5 mph and it looks jumpy (about 1 video frame per second). Then the plane comes in at 500 mph, so you only see it on the right for a second and then the next frame it has hit the building. With the camera only taking 1 frame/second and the plane traveling at 780 feet/second, it's not surprising that it doesn't show much of the actual impact.

If it was a cruise missile instead of a plane (that loose change would like us to believe), then are we are to believe that the cruise missile took out 5 lamp posts in a zig-zag pattern before striking the building? Loose change (2nd Edition) showed 3 clips of interviews. One guy said it was a passenger jet, another guy said he saw no windows on the plane (he was 2 miles away!) and another guy claimed it 'looked' like a missile.

As to what we could 'possibly' still be keeping a secret, it could be anything. Of course, theorists assume the worst. Did you ever think that maybe it was information about undercover CIA agents who are still working undercover and infiltrating the terrorist groups? Do you want that public knowledge? If you know it, the terrorists will know it. They read the newspaper too. Do you want a CIA agent exposed and beheaded? Even if they don't reveal the names there could be clues that the terrorist could use to figure out how we are getting our information from them, and work around it/stop the infiltration. After all the hype about secrets in the JFK case, when they finally released tons more of the information, what did we find? Nothing exciting. Oh, but because of the release of the JFK papers, the Northwoods Operation information was also released. So the government released, for anyone and everyone to see, crucial information about their 'secret plot' (9/11)? Not likely.

About the fact that Pop. Mech. didn't show a picture of #7 that was damaged? At that time he said it was property of the NYPD (amendment #5 again) and they allowed him to look at. So the NYPD is in on the conspiracy also, because they weren't showing it to everyone? Doesn't matter, there are pictures out there now on the web. Also consider maybe the NYPD was sick of pictures being splattered all over the media of that tragic event, considering how many of their own they lost. I'd be holding it back for awhile too.

About Silverstein: We covered that earlier. He actually LOST money on the deal. +Insurance payments - Cost to rebuild= -$727 million Not to mention he still has to make lease payments on the site ($10 million/month) during the entire cleanup/rebuilding process during which he isn't making any money. About him 'recently' buying insurance: He had just signed the 99-year lease, so it makes sense to have it insured, especially after the '93 attacks. What idiot wouldn't have it insured?

About the hijackers-Already discussed that as far as the mistaken identity (and some of the people we thought were the hijackers, but turned out to be alive had brothers who had disappeared months before 9/11, so it was mistaking one brother for the other- a heck of alot easier mistake to make). Where did they get the original DNA to compare it to? They found the houses/apartments these guys were staying at. You can find all kinds of DNA in an apartment, especially the bathroom. What about the cameras at the airport terminals showing these guys getting onto the plane!?

About the DNA found amongst the 'molten steel' rubble: If the molten steel did exist, it did not completely cover all of the rubble. They found DNA from hundreds of other people in the rubble, besides just the hijackers.

The Popular Mechanics guy does research. One guy doesn't have the expertise in every field, right off the top of his head until he goes and talks to experts in that particular field so he can get all the finer details that he might not be absolutely certain on. So because he was asked a question that he has not researched yet and wasn't prepared for (so he doesn't know the answer to it at that moment) seems a bit unfair. Some of the questions had absolutely nothing to do with science or mechanics. Why were they asking him political questions when he would have more knowledge in Science, mechanics and the technical aspects of the evidence?

Why did the passports survive the wreckage and not the black boxes? Watch the collision of the second tower being hit (try to find a close-up shot), and the debris that flies out from the other side. It's hard to see on many videos, but on one I saw several years ago, it looked like the cockpit comes flying out the other side (or at least part of it). It's possible that something the plane hit inside the building caused the cockpit to be sliced off from the rest of the plane, but I don't know enough about airplane/building collsions to say with any certainty, so it is only a guess and I don't want to try going into too much detail there. Another theory would be that since the cockpit is in front of the plane (obviously) it could have continued forward (and gone out the building) before the fireball from the fuel tank explosion could catch up to it. The plane did hit the building off-center so part of the plane could have avoided the major support in the middle. I'm sure we both agree that at least one hijacker had to have been in the cockpit. The black boxes are not located in the cockpit, http://travel.howstuffworks.com/black-box7.htm so they remained inside the building.

I don't have the time tonight to look into it, but I thought I heard before that the pressure of a blast hits you before the fireball does. Often, people suffer more serious injuries from the blast throwing them than from the fire part of an explosion (of course this depends on the exact circumstances). Could the blast have thrown things out of the way (like out the building) before the fire got to them to burn them?

500 bones were found on the roof of the Duetch (spelling?) building. How many bones in one human body? And there is also footage of small pieces of the aircraft and an airplane seat cushion on the street.

More evidence of things from the plane surviving:

The New York Times reported Saturday that one rescuer found the body of a flight attendant, whose hands were also bound. Another worker told the paper he had found the remains of people strapped to what seemed to be airplane seats.

Two more videos. New video released this year:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5474006551011489413&q=wtc&hl=en

When the collapse of the last tower started, the camera was focused on the bottom of the building. No indication of explosions. Find me one video that has the sound or bright flash of a bomb going off before the buildings collapse.

Here is a controlled demolition. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6979955002470780153&q=implosion&hl=en
See all the flashes and hear all the bombs? Nothing like any of the WTC buildings.

Not to mention one of the phone calls that was in that 3 hour video I posted earlier has somebody on the phone on the 102nd? floor talking to a 911 operator. He talks to her for it seems like 5-10 minutes and yelling at her to get the firemen up there to rescue him, before suddenly he is screaming "Oh my god, oh my god" and the phone goes silent. When lined up with the footage you see he is saying that at the same time/split second before you start seeing the building collapse. Never one sound of anything like an explosion. Sounds to me like he could feel the floor collapsing below him.

As for the OKC, I don't see the connection to 9/11 other than one reporter supposedly 'proved' it was a government plot. Providing proof of guilt requires more than the consensus of theorists and extremists. What in the world was the motive for the government? We certainly didn't use OKC to declare war or lay claim to any oil fields.

What about numerous embassy bombings, WTC in '93, marine barracks in Lebanon, etc., etc. or did the US government do all of those too? Who declared a Jihad on the US years before 9/11? And the Bin Ladin confession tape? Oh, that's right, that video is using a fake Osama. Just because we were his friends 20 or 30 years ago doesn't mean we still were. You never had a friend stab you in the back?

 

[Bamspeedy]

Would you know the difference between molten steel and glowing steel? Would you know the difference between moten steel and molten copper? I think the first question is a yes, but the proponents of the official 'no molten steel' story claimed that the witnesses were confused between 'glowing' and molten. The second question is more interesting. Rough melting points are 1083 degrees C for Copper and 1400 - 1500 degrees for Steel. The point is that both melt at a higher temperature than that caused by the office fire so it doesn't really matter if the witnesses can tell the difference. The presence of either is suspicious.

How about aluminum? (Hint: It has more uses than pop cans). Same color as steel and half(?) the heat required for melting. From all the debris there was lots of different metals, obviously some more abundant than others.

Regarding the 'free fall' speed: The loose change people don't start the timer at the exact second the building starts falling and with all that smoke and debris at the bottom there is no way to know precisely when the top of the building hit the ground. Not to mention that many pieces of the debris can be seen falling from the building at a faster rate than the building itself is falling at (so there was some resistance as the building was piledriving itself into the floors below).

Edit: Oh, and about the early reports of 'exploded bombs' and such. We only need to look at the recent Montreal Shooting. The first reports coming out in the first few hours were that there was 2, possibly 3 shooters. Turns out there was only 1. Now, why would some kid say there was more? I doubt he had any sinister motive, he was just confused at the moment.

 

[Xenocrates]

Woo Bamspeedy you've done too much work on this!

I think that the issues with the surveillance videos are that they said that the camera worked at 1 FPS (the one from the Pentagon, where they released a few useless frames). My local corner shop has a better camera than that! Besides which, only 1 camera pointing the right way? It's asking a lot to believe that the Pentagon's security is that slack.

I haven't studied the Pentagon side of 9/11 at all, so I can't really comment about it. I know some of what's been said, but I'm not confident on it. It's been a long time since I watched loose change, but I think they contradict themselves pretty badly on the Pentagon.

How would releasing a CCTV frame or two of debris from the twin towers hitting WTC 7 or the fire starting damage their investigation? We are told that WT7 was collateral damage, so what possible danger can there be of releasing CCTV footage of it? If allowing people from a magazine to see information and publish reports on it it isn't going to damage the investigation, then why would allowing anyone else to see it do that? It doesn't make any sense. Unless they knew that PM wouldn't ask the right questions and wouldn't see what others would.

Silverstein attempted to gain more from the insurance than he got (If I remember correctly).

I think I can see a problem with your DNA argument. Lets say that they found a bone fragnment, this would indicate the the owner had died on 9/11But: they would have had to separate the DNA of the passengers, crew, WTC people and hijackers. Then they'd have to get the address details of all the passengers from the credit cards that they used to pay for the tickets. They then would have had to search each address and take DNA samples and compare them to samples from WTC. Then identify which DNA belonged to the owner and to the hijacker and which to guests etc. They then would have some proof that the individual died at the scene (unless bones or bone fragments were already present in the buildings or on the aircraft). That's a pretty big job and I don't believe that it's possible in the two-three days between the attacks and the release of the identities of the hijackers (14th of September). Having DNA present at the scene does not prove that you are the hijacker So then they would have had to wave the magic wand and play 'guess the hijacker'. Unless they are either pulling names out of their trousers, or had some other evidence predating 9/11 that implicated these men (or the men that had stolen their identities). The passports found at the scene would have matched the false identites (on passenger lists) and not the assumed identity/ies (they probably had more than one) OR the real identity. Presumably they carried no information about that at all at any time in the USA. This suggests that the FBI had indeed been watching these people and decided to cease for some reason.

The fire was, we are told, hot enough to weaken the steel so the survival of the DNA is surprising but their ability to find it and match it is also surprising. If there were 500 bone fragments on another building (I didn't read this so I don't know), that's probably a very small proportion of the passengers, crew and hijackers covered. Bear in mind that many fragments would have been from the same bone. I don't buy the 'cockpit emerged from the other side of the building' theory'. If it happened like that let's see the evidence!

Another problem is that they used false names to buy the tickets, since the names of the hijackers do not match the passenger lists. Presumably the credit card information would have matched one of the assumed names and not the real name. This means that the addresses that they had were almost certainly not their real addresses. So where did the corrobative DNA come from and how did they know the real identity of the DNA owner?

If you can find a flaw with my logic, please point it out!

The popular mechanics guy was adamant that all the relevant details were in the public domain and this was shown to be wrong. It was also shown that he knew it was wrong when he said it. Popular mechanics made a decision to support the official line wholeheartedly; that's why they denied that 'pull it' was any kind of demolition term at all. That should be in their area of 'expertise' shouldn't it? PM voluntarily stepped into politics and forensics when it wrote about bodies in Indian Lake and the photos of the 'pod' etc. etc. The evidence that they are propagandists is pretty strong.

There's a paper here about thermite's possible use on 9/11 by the physics 911 guys. They say that cavities are sometimes designed into buildings to facilitate their detonation many years later. If that's the case with WTC (and the blueprints haven't yet been released for some reason) there's no necessity for flashes. Explosions wouldn't have occured in the normal way because thermite is set off by burning magnesium. It's not a bomb in the traditional sense, just something that burns very hot.

http://www.physics911.net/thermite.htm

In short, if a coating slightly less than 3" thick of a thermite like coating were applied to the outer surfaces of the box columns, that volume would contain sufficient energy to account for the pyroclastic cloud, under the conditions of the largest energy sink calculated by Hoffman.

I introduced Oklahoma because the proponents of the official theory say that the US government is too incompetent to pull this off, that it's too evil. Therefore Al Qaeda must have done it. There is another option: organised crime + corruption inside the FBI, CIA and military. This should not be overlooked. Next time I hear someone say "Al Qaeda must have done this because Bush couldn't have", I'll slap them.

I've actually studied the Zapruder film of JFK; it's a fascinating game, trying to find a clue from it. I couldn't see anything that hadn't been seen many times before, but I tried really hard!

 

[Xenocrates]

I've looked in to the possibility of molten aluminium. It seems that the outer coating of the building was the only place where there was a significant amount of it and it's unlikely that it reached melting point there and also unlikely that it wouldn't have flaked off and fallen slower than the rest of the building; thus being on top of the pile and scattered rather than melting into pools. Also, I've seen molten aluminium in foundaries. It looks just like silver; even when in ingot form it looks just like silver. The eyewitnesses don't mention it's silvery appearance (which is really striking). It may have been full of slag, which may account for that, or it may have been steel or copper. The jury's still out in my opinion.

I can't see significant quantities of aluminium elsewhere, but there's too much in this for me to think about. Any idea where else there may have been large quantites of Al? (small quantities would have lost their heat quickly)

I remembered that the specific heat of aluminium was lower than it is:

Aluminium = 0.9 (J per kelvin per gram)
Copper = 0.39
Iron = 0.438 Steel is a tiny fraction higher because of the presence of:
Carbon 0.690

Melting points:

Steel 1370 degrees
Aluminium 660

Since the Specific heat capacity of aluminium is about double that of steel but the melting temperature is about half, it would have taken the same energy to melt it (approximately). That's by mass, by volume is different:

Density:

Aluminium = 2.7 g per cm cubed (@ 20 degrees)

Iron = 7.7 g per cm cubed

Basically Aluminium will take about 1/3 of the energy to melt than steel by volume (7.7/2.7). So you're quite right


There you are - proof that Bush did it! Errm what were we talking about again?

The office fire would have been hot enough to melt the aluminium, but was there enough of it in the middle of the fire account for all of the eyewitness reports?

NIST mentions Aluminium in section 11 of http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm but this is with respect to the streams running from the building before collapse.

FEMA admits that Building 7 was destroyed by thermite - conclusion:

The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion of Samples 1 and 2 are a very unusual event. No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified. The rate of corrosion is also unknown. It is possible that this is the result of long-term heating in the ground following the collapse of the buildings. It is also possible that the phenomenon started prior to collapse and accelerated the weakening of the steel structure. A detailed study into the mechanisms of this phenomenon is needed to determine what risk, if any, is presented to existing steel structures exposed to severe and long-burning fires.

From http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/metallurgy/WTC_apndxC.htm

OK read between the lines!

 

[brennan]

FEMA admits that Building 7 was destroyed by thermite - conclusion:

This may be news to FEMA. Where does this revelation take place?

 

[Xenocrates]

FEMA admits that Building 7 was destroyed by thermite - conclusion:
QUOTE]This may be news to FEMA. Where does this revelation take place?

The end quote in my last post above is from The FEMA report and that's linked in my post.

I may have used a bit of poetic license calling it an admission of the presence of thermite, but it's as close as we're likely to get!

 

[brennan]

Yes, I read the link and couldn't see how you had come to that conclusion.

'Poetic license' huh? An interesting way of putting it. How about 'claiming they have said something they haven't'? there's a shorter way of putting it, but i'm feeling generous...

 

[Bamspeedy]

only 1 camera pointing the right way? It's asking a lot to believe that the Pentagon's security is that slack.

Who says they need cameras if they have guards around the perimeter? Pointing the right way? That sounds like they should have been expecting it coming.

It seems that the outer coating of the building was the only place where there was a significant amount of it and it's unlikely that it reached melting point there and also unlikely that it wouldn't have flaked off and fallen slower than the rest of the building, thus being on top of the pile and scattered rather than melting into pools.

First of all, 2000 tons of aluminum for the exterior cladding to cover the facade of each tower I don't think is insignificant.
Secondly, the witnesses don't really say how large these 'pools' are. They could have been mere puddles. All these witnesses could have seen the same pool or puddle. While certainly some of it could have been flaked off, there isn't really any way to know how much of it did. If they did flake off, depending at which point this happened couldn't other, heavier debris force it down (the debris that was above the point in the building where the collapse started? (I don't know much about the process of exactly how and where each kind of debris is going to go in a collapse of a building, and I suspect nobody would unless it was an empty building that several demolition experts examined for several months before destroying it),

If they did land on the top of the pile, wouldn't heat from underneath rise up and heat the aluminum and then the aluminum would 'drip' downwards until it met some sort of resistance, and ending up in 'pools'?

Could it be possible that pulling out a steel beam that gets dragged through one of these puddles, thus having this aluminum attach itself to the steel, make the average hairdresser or mailman (theorists witnesses) think it was the steel that had a melting appearance, when it was really aluminum attached to the steel? Do all the different alloys of aluminum have a 'shiny' appearance? And do they all have that shiny appearance when it is on another metal and not in a puddle? Maybe the average joe walking down the street assumed that steel gets a shiny appearance when it is at it's melting stage since it was dripping from the steel that the aluminum attached itself to.

The office fire would have been hot enough to melt the aluminium, but was there enough of it in the middle of the fire account for all of the eyewitness reports?

Eyewitness reports? Are you talking before or after the collapse? I'm guessing you talking about the pools, which would be after the collapse in which case it doesn't really matter if the aluminum was on the outside (pre-collapse) or inside, once the building collapsed then all parts of the building got mixed together when it was in a pile.

but this is with respect to the streams running from the building before collapse.

And why wouldn't there be that much aluminum around after the collapse? And wasn't that the same building that had the airplane land closer to the edge of the building (melted aluminum from the airplane), so that is why it was pouring out the broken window. The other building still had the melted aluminum stay inside because the airplane hit it straight on, burying itself deep inside the building.

As to the metals found inside:

There is so many factors when you consider the effects of what several different elements do when they interact with each other. We may know what aluminum looks like when melting and what every other material does when it burns when we are doing this in a labratory. What does it look like when you mix melted aluminum and other melting metals, or a mixture of many different metals at the same time? When each metal or type of material is burning they may release different types of gases. What happens when those gases are mixed. No other 'office fire' (like you call it) had the jet fuel as a factor which could have contributed different gases that would not have been present in other fires. No other 'office fire' had airplane parts which may have some metals that you wouldn't find in other steel-building fires. Some of these mixtures may require alot of a certain material and just a little bit of another material.

This is like the Mississippi River. We may know what a particular pollutant does when put into the water, but as the polluted water flows downstream and gets combined with pollutants from many different types of industries and other polluting rivers get combined with the Mississippi, by the time you get down to the mouth of the river at the Gulf of Mexico, there is so many chemicals in the river that there are some chemical combinations that we probably don't even know about yet. (because of the number of pollutants and the varying amounts of the quantity of those pollutants) And no, I do not recommend swimming in the Mississippi.

Yes, we can figure out what the reactions are for the most common elements (the ones that comprise the basic structure of the building), but if you are looking at trace amounts then they could have came from things like computers and electrical equipment, watches, batteries (a source of sulfer), piping, paneling, insulation and combustible materials, wires, etc., etc. that may contain metals that are not in the more abundant construction materials and could cause reactions that show up in 'trace amounts'. Just look at all the cleanup workers getting sick because of the air quality from ground zero. One theory is that it was the plastic from thousands of computers burning.

Only 'trace' amounts of thermite was supposedly found. And if the 'proof' of thermite is that metallurgy test, then you have no case, because it does not say that there was thermite, just an unusual or unknown reaction that needs more studying.

I may have used a bit of poetic license calling it an admission of the presence of thermite, but it's as close as we're likely to get!

I guess it would be important here to clarify if we are talking about thermite or thermate.

Thermite:

A thermite reaction is a type of aluminothermic reaction in which aluminium metal is oxidized by the oxide of another metal, most commonly iron oxide. The name thermite is also used to refer to a mixture of two such chemicals. The products are aluminium oxide, free elemental iron, and a large amount of heat. The reactants are commonly powdered and mixed with a binder to keep the material solid and prevent separation. The reaction is used for thermite welding, often used to join rails.

Thermate:

Thermate, or Thermate-TH3, is an incendiary compound primarily used for military applications. Because of the similarity in names, thermate is sometimes confused with one of its components, thermite.

Thermate is a mixture of thermite and pyrotechnic additives which have been found to be superior to standard thermite for incendiary purposes. Its composition by weight is generally thermite 68.7%, barium nitrate 29.0%, sulphur 2.0% and binder 0.3%. Addition of barium nitrate to thermite increases its thermal effect, creates flame in burning and significantly reduces the ignition temperature.

Thermate is used in incendiary hand grenades.

Source: Wikipedia.com

I guess for your theory you want it to mean thermate (Thermate would look to be more intentional because of the damage it can do and the mention of sulphur). It doesn't need much sulphur at all (2%), and there are numerous things that contain small amounts of sulpher, including rubber and plastics. And it wouldn't take much to do the damage to a limited area (the test was on a small part of 2 steel beams, and that could have been the only area that was affected).

That's a pretty big job and I don't believe that it's possible in the two-three days between the attacks and the release of the identities of the hijackers (14th of September).

Hmmmm.....3 days, huh? That early? Or are your favorite conspiracy sites changing the past?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2808599.stm
February 28th, 2003 Only 2 of the 10 hijackers (involved in the WTC) identified by DNA.

The FBI had collected the DNA from tiny traces of skin on the steering wheels of vehicles hired by the hijackers and from hair samples recovered from their hotel rooms.

And here, a day earlier, on February 27th, 2003.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/02/27/hijackers.remains/index.html

Examiners could not say which of the hijackers' remains had been discovered because the FBI did not identify which of the DNA samples belonged to which hijacker, she said.

The samples came from items recovered from locations such as the scene of the crashes, a hotel or other places where the hijackers stayed, said a law enforcement official.

http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/092701hjpic.htm FBI releases photos of all 19 hijackers. Sept. 27th.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/08/17/attack/main519033.shtml
As of Aug 17, 2002, None of the hijackers from NYC were identified yet. All 9 at the Pentagon and PA crashes were identified (sort of):

Four sets of remains in Pennsylvania and five at the Pentagon were grouped together as the hijackers - but not identified by name - through a process of elimination.

Families of the airplanes' passengers and crews and those who died within the Pentagon provided DNA samples, typically on toothbrushes or hairbrushes, to aid with identification. The remains that didn't match any of the samples were ruled to be the terrorists, said Chris Kelly, spokesman for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, which did the DNA work. The nine sets of remains matched the number of hijackers believed to be on the two planes.
Without reference samples from the hijackers' personal effects or from their immediate families to compare with the recovered DNA, the remains could not be matched to individuals.

Your buddies like to change the facts.

The passports found at the scene would have matched the false identites (on passenger lists) and not the assumed identity/ies (they probably had more than one) OR the real identity.

And if he started off with a fake passport when he left the Middle East (He started using his brother's name before he even got to the US. So Saudi Arabia issued him a 'real' passport-or so they thought), couldn't he use that fake passport to get other forms of identification once in the US? And use that same name when booking his flight? And use that same name when renting a room? And use that faked passport for his pilot's license?

Who says he had to use more than one alias? Oh, because of this:

Another problem is that they used false names to buy the tickets, since the names of the hijackers do not match the passenger lists.

Theory:
Atta (for example) came into the US with his fake passport (not using the name Atta), could have slipped in because we were looking for his name Atta, not Ali or whatever name he used on his passport. So he got into the US and everything and then eventually on the flight for 9/11 under the name Ali, but when the passport picture is spread around the CIA, they immediately recognize him as somebody they thought was still in the Middle East.

that's why they denied that 'pull it' was any kind of demolition term at all.

But later in that same interview he describes how it is used to manually pull down a building. Simple mistake of using 'demolition' when he meant to say 'implosion', maybe?

They say that cavities are sometimes designed into buildings to facilitate their detonation many years later.

So how many years ahead of time did they plan this?

I introduced Oklahoma because the proponents of the official theory say that the US government is too incompetent to pull this off, that it's too evil.

And the theorists stick to "A bunch of cavemen with boxcutters couldn't possibly have pulled this off, they are too dumb".

Why did McVeigh and Nichols confess if they didn't do it? Were they threatened with death? Well, McVeigh got that anyways. The theorists blame the government for every single bad event that happens, ignoring the obvious. You do realize that the conspiracy theorists are dominated by extremists, don't you? They have ulterior motives for trying to get you to believe their version of events, besides the other people who are in it to make money off of book deals.

 

[Xenocrates]

I said of the aluminium:

The eyewitnesses don't mention it's silvery appearance (which is really striking). It may have been full of slag, which may account for that, or it may have been steel or copper. The jury's still out in my opinion.

and I said that there was a lot of it on the exterior of the towers. To simplify, the argument here is about whether the molten metal existed at all and if it did, whether it was aluminium, copper or steel. NOT whether is could have been aluminium copper or steel. I agreed that it could have been Al, but it also could have been steel, so that's not getting us nearer to the answer of what is actually was. If molten metal was found in the debris of another collapsed building, even one that collapsed due to a crime, I'd bet my bottom dollar that they'd investigate, but they didn't here. Why not? The answer is that they didn't categorise this as a crime, but as an act of war. The political class and the business class were falling over themselves to find a way to benefit from the deaths of 3,000 people and weren't thinking straight.

The same thing with the security cameras; there may have been only one covering that area, or there may have been several. Personally I think it unlikely that the establishment skimped on their own security (that always seems to be first priority!), but we simply don't know the answer.

If the aluminium was in the centre of the hotspot, it's easy to imagine that it could melt. If it was further away it it means that the temperature in the middle of the hotspot was higher, which puts us back into thermite/ate territory.

Actually you've helped me to think of one possible way to prove (reasonably prove) that thermite/ate wasn't used. Let's look at it the other way around. If a load of thermite/ate had been used the temperature in the rubble would have been extremely high. Could it have cooled down to the degree that it did in the time? Is thermite/ate consistant with the hotspots shown on http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0429/thermal.r09.html. This is a good idea and I'd put it to someone if I was still involved in physics. We'd need to estimate the insulation quality of the rubble, the specific heat capacities, the cooling during collapse, the effect of the rainfall and of the water they used to cool it. What chemicals were vapourised by the heat? They would have condensed on the nearby buildings. These variables should be reasonably well-known so maybe we can approach it this way. OK so FEMA and NIST and the 'theorists/researchers' couldn't solve the problem but we're doing a good job!

If the heat required to melt the aluminium was released post-collapse, then what reactions released it? Why didn't anyone investigate this?

Personally I'd expect a bit of separation to occur in the molten aluminium. I'd expect some of it to be silvery and some of it to be clagged up with shite. I'd expect a witness to comment of the silvery appearance of at least some of it; it has a low density so the clag would tend to sink - leaving a shiny surface.

You realise we're debating the mechanism by which something that we don't know for sure existed may have been caused? There lies the first evidence of "9/11 insanity"! There is a danger in going stark staring mad by looking at this too closely. Especially trying to find comprehensive answers to a wide range of questions instead of focussing on one element. There's a bit of 'loose change' in us all.

I know the issue of the dripping aluminium. Sure, you're right about the possible cause. It's not a 'smoking gun' unlike the aluminium/whatever in the rubble could be. Having said that, for the aircraft aluminium to melt and drip shortly after the crash isn't a surprise, but surely the combustibles in that area would have been consumed very early (the fire moved) and the aluminium cooled by the collapse time. So why the dripping aluminium (from the report I linked) 7 minutes before the collapse? Always more questions and no answers.

You ask some decent questions about the mixing of elements etc. Questions that any scientist would love to ask. Why did no one think to investigate this?

FEMA's report (WTC 7) is consistent with thermite/ate use. If the police find a corpse, even they they know that the murder was committed with a rusty axe, they'll still investigate the finding of poison at the scene. If they are decent policemen that is.... We are asked to believe that the official report is authoritative, but it clearly isn't.

The release of the identity of the hijackers:

When were the identities of the hijackers known: http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/13/investigation.terrorism/index.html

Apologies for the bad source (CNN CNN is NOT my buddy!), but this article was published on the 13th of September 2001. I think what you are saying is that they knew who they were before the DNA tests were complete. So how did they know? Some say that either the FBI had been watching these guys or that there was a false trail of evidence planted.

The thermite need not have been placed in the cavities at the time of construction; only that arrangements and already been made to bring the buildings down, i.e. the method and means of the demolition had already been considered. I don't know if it's true, but it makes perfect sense. Anyone with access to the blueprints would have known how to do it.

On the reliability of the information about 9/11; yes it sucks. You read something in ten different places and it turns out to be wrong. That's a problem for us all. There's really no such thing as a good source here sadly.

 

[brennan]

The political class and the business class were falling over themselves to find a way to benefit from the deaths of 3,000 people and weren't thinking straight.

That's a pretty shabby comment Xeno.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Apologies for the bad source (CNN CNN is NOT my buddy!), but this article was published on the 13th of September 2001. I think what you are saying is that they knew who they were before the DNA tests were complete. So how did they know? Some say that either the FBI had been watching these guys or that there was a false trail of evidence planted.

They figured out who they were (on paper, not by DNA):

1. By looking at the cameras in the airport terminals and see who got on the planes.
2. Cars left in the airport parking lot could be traced back to the person who owned/rented them.
3. Finding the addresses from #2 find out where they were staying at, who was staying there, and get more information there.
4. Using information from #2 and #3 pull up their identification files like driver's license, pilot license, passport files (do the customs officials make a copy of the passports of people coming in from other countries? I'm guessing they would, but I don't know for sure).
5. Compare picture from #4 and see if it is the same person as #1.

Since Atta (for example) used that name for all 5 steps they would all match up (let's pretend his 'real' name was Amad before he posed as Atta to ask for a passport when he was leaving Saudi Arabia). Since he fooled the people in Saudi Arabia they would issue him a real passport that would be accepted by customs officials in the US. Since Saudi Arabia was an ally, people from there probably didn't get as much scrutiny as if the person had came from Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. Maybe one reason Osama chose people from Saudi Arabia, perhaps?

There was probably some obvious hints (at least 5 arabs on every flight, and the phone calls from the planes mentioned the hijackers were Arab, so it would be reasonable to assume it was a mideast plot, and that all of the planes would have Arabs involved). Checking into their files (searching national databases) and finding out they had pilot liscenses, finding information at their apartments or in their cars that gave clues to the plot, looking at phone records to see who they had contact with (wouldn't that seem odd if each of the groups had contact with the other groups and they all had the similar records or clues left behind? Why would the hijackers care if they leave evidence behind after they've embarked on the suicide mission? They wanted to be martyrs.

Some of the hijackers did not have a valid ID on them when boarding the plane. Before 9/11 happened, required ID cards for domestic flights was technically required, but not that much of a concern at that time (blame the security workers/managers for that one). Even so, they could have produced fake ones that would trick the average security worker. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airport_security_repercussions_due_to_the_September_11,_2001_attacks

So because of the fake ID to get on the plane, that doesn't mean they couldn't figure out who these guys were by connecting them to the others who did use a real ID (some of these guys were traveling in pairs as seen in survelience videos).

Finding out this may seem to have been done quite fast, but nearly every FBI/CIA agent in the country was working on this, because of the magnitude of the event. In a normal case when they try to find someone they would have only had a handful on the case and of course that would likely have taken a great deal longer to gather the information.

So now the government says that Atta was one of the hijackers. Oh, but it wasn't Atta, but Amad (his brother) who stole his brother's identity. Or maybe it wasn't his brother, but someone else who stole is identity and there would be no way to find out who exactly it was since they obviously would not have DNA samples from every Arab in the middle east to compare it to. The real identity would never be known unless someone from Osama's group has kept really good records and we get a hold of it someday. But we do know it was somebody posing as Atta from the data in steps 1-5 (and the other information).

DNA was used later and just basically used to seperate them from the other passengers by the process of elimination (they got DNA from the other passengers family). If they weren't the hijackers, but regular passengers, how come none of them had family members contacting authorities to see if the remains of their loved ones were found?

If molten metal was found in the debris of another collapsed building, even one that collapsed due to a crime, I'd bet my bottom dollar that they'd investigate, but they didn't here. Why not? The answer is that they didn't categorise this as a crime, but as an act of war.

It seemed pretty obvious what the cause was. 20,000 lbs of jet fuel.
The jet fuel can act like an accelerant and spread the fire out over a large area very, very quickly. Just because you can't see fire on the outside doesn't mean it is not continuing inside. Keep in mind exactly how large these buildings were (floor space) which would allow a wide range of temperatures from one end of the building to the other, even when on the same floor. So even on the same floor there could be some things undamaged by fire (but would not escape the smoke) while something else on that floor is extremely burning/melting.

The political class and the business class were falling over themselves to find a way to benefit from the deaths of 3,000 people and weren't thinking straight.

A freakin' plane crashed into a building at over 500 mph. Why would they suspect that bombs were needed in addition to that? If you say that people were instantly thinking $$$ after the event, then I would say that other people were thinking "Now how can I make this look like the government did it" and they weren't thinking straight, either. Oh, and since we are on the subject of greed, Silverstein did get it counted as 2 incidents so the loss I posted earlier shows even with the double payment he still suffered a loss. I don't see how his actions about that could be skewed as evil unless you are his insurance agent. There was a cap on how much the insurance paid out, so WTC7 falling down would have made no difference because he had already hit the cap just from the towers.

Oh, the NIST has continued to investigate, so whatever 'official report' you have been referring to, isn't the last word from them as they continue to study possibilities. They do still care about finding the real cause because THEY DO CARE ABOUT PEOPLE and want to make buildings safe. You are just upset because their findings don't fit the way you want it to.

http://www.icivilengineer.com/News/WTC/structure.php

Steel buildings have failed before. In the debunking video I posted earlier they mention 2 other cases, in addition to the one that Loose Change claims burned for 24 hours and didn't collapse. That building did suffer a partial collapse. The top half that was steel collapsed, but the bottom part that was concrete did not collapse.

That video also showed 2 other plane crashes that basically 'vanished' because it broke up into so many tiny pieces, just like the PA crash. And they showed debris like paper that survived the explosion, which people would have thought should had burned up. They also showed the crash in Florida that 'vanished', but that was in a swamp, so doesn't really apply.

I'd expect a witness to comment of the silvery appearance of at least some of it

Perhaps the theorists edited out those comments because they wanted to push the idea that it was steel? When you see alot of .... in a sentence (like "blah blah...blah....blah blah.....blah") you should be skeptical and look for the full quote to put it in the proper context. There are alot of people mad at some of the theorists for taking their words and twisting them around to mean something else.

FEMA's report (WTC 7) is consistent with thermite/ate use.

It shows that a thermite/ate reaction possibly happened (if I am understanding the material correctly), but that could have happened naturally by the mixture of burning materials in the fire, and not happened intentionally. There are also other possible explanations for it. There is presence of two of the reactions (oxidations,etc.) needed to make the thermite happen, but the paper doesn't conclude that these 2 reactions happened simultaneously, which would have caused thermite. As far as we know this could have been the only two beams affected. While thermite puts on an impressive show of burning through a car engine or destroying a computer disk drive, how they got this reaction to happen in a horizontal fashion to cut through the steel (instead of falling through the floor like in the car example) makes it hard to figure out right now. The reaction of making this thermite happen is similar to a super-sized sparkler which would be inconsistance with 'bomb explosions', which made our debates about explosions/bombs pointless. This stuff is very unstable which makes me doubt that they could make it into a coating to put around the beams (and in enough quantity).

The debris was not scuttled off to China in the 'heat of the night' like some would have you believe. The steel beams did go to China eventually, but not until after it first was removed from Ground Zero and sent to another staging area on Staten Island where each piece was examined and catalogued by forensic examiners, city officials, and site managers before (months later) it was on it's way to China. Nobody observed anything unusual or felt the job was 'rushed'.
http://www.jod911.com/WTC COLLAPSE STUDY BBlanchard 8-8-06.pdf#search="implosionworld.com 9/11"

I'm still thinking that the collapse was a combination of many factors. How much of a factor these played is debatable, but when you combine all them, then it's not at all unthinkable that the building would collapse.

1. Impact of plane.
2. 20,000+ gallons of jet fuel
3. Weakening of steel from the inferno. There is proof of molten aluminum which would mean it was at least at 660 C and that is past the point where steel starts to begin losing some of it's strength (I'm not saying the steel is melting).

Construction
In construction, critical temperature refers to the temperature above which structural steel loses its strength and is no longer fully capable of loadbearing support. Maintaining structural and important process steel building components below this critical temperature, which varies from country to country but is generally between 500 and 560°C, is an important function of passive fire protection.

I'm trying to research the temperatures in fires, but I seem to get conflicting details. What temperature jet fuel (Jet A) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_fuel burns at, for example, says the 'dirty slag' temperature is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_burn 260-315 C, but the maxium burning temp is 980 C. Tell me what that means! I always hated chemistry.

But then I see this:

Typical temperatures of fires and flames
Oxyacetylene Flame (3000 C or above)(5432 F)
Oxyhydrogen Flame (2000 C or above)(3632 F)
Bunsen Burner Flame (Max. Setting) (1300 - 1600 C)(2372 - 2912 F)
Candle Flame (1400 C)(2552 F)
Blowtorch (1300 C)(2372 F)

From what it looks to me the candle flame (1400 C) looks like it could severely weaken the steel, which makes no sense in my mind.

Is thermite/ate consistant with the hotspots shown on http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-...ermal.r09.html.

Note that the map is in Fahrenheight, not celsius. So 800 F would be 427 C. And that is below the 660 C needed for melted aluminum. But the only indicater we are given is that the hot spots (red, orange, yellow, I would assume) are 'over 800 F' so it was probably up to at least 660 C. No way to tell if it got hotter than that or by how much.

Interesting to note what happens when you pour water onto molten metals, like aluminum. It causes a steam explosion, which sends liquid metal all over the place, probably allowing it to find new things to burn. Is that possible, or is that not likely to be a contributing factor to why the fire continued for 99 days?

 

[Xenocrates]

Terrorist suspects:

Nice work Bam; your method would indeed find the false identities of the hijackers and other dubious characters on the planes and could be done in a day. That doesn't explain why the US released the false identities as if they were the real identities. People frequently get arrested carrying dozens of fake identities, so it should have occured to them that the identities were false. Also it's a pretty big step from ID-ing an Arab on a flight to ID-ing a terrorist. I'd wager that there are dubious characters without real passports on almost every flight. But this is a guess!

This is where the JFK connection really comes in. The JFK conspiracy was of the establisment pretending that they were 100% confident of the lone gunman theory. History has shown that the 'lone hunman' theory was probably correct but they could not possibly have been sure about that at the time. So my model of what happened is that the establishment needed to give the impression of maintaining control, even if it meant publishing spurious identities of the hijackers. What if they were right on JFK (luck) but wrong here; would they be able to backtrack now after invading Afghanistan?

Osama:

This is where I'm completely with the 'theorists' Bin Laden did not admit on the 'lucky find confession video' that he had a connection to 9/11. It simply isn't him; the face is different for a start. I posted this before somewhere, that Bin Laden died in late 2002 (or was it 2001 I can't remember) and all communications since then have been fake. That's not to say that he wasn't involved, but that the evidence released to us was false.

Collapses:

This is old ground but any theory of the collapse has to account for every observation (listed before). This can be done with the thermite/ate theory, but not with the jet fuel ignited office fire. At least I struggle to find a mechanism for the symmetry, dust, speed etc. that is consistant with office fire + weakening by collision. You are looking more at the force and I am looking more at the building. They were formidable buildings, an enormous mass of strong material that was capable of surviving huge wind and gravity loads. The planes were like house flies against elephants, fast and firey house flies, but still house flies! Perhaps I give the buildings too much credit? A plane, while having large momentum isn't particularly stiff (except in a few places obviously) - a jelly bullet won't kill you. I think only the steel plane sections would have had a chance of damaging the core through the heavy and dense filing cabinets etc. I'd like to see core sections from the impact point. I probably wouldn't be able to make any sense of them, but I'd like to see them anyway.

The ground zero heat image was of surface temps, so I can't know what lay beneath and what temperature it was. Someone should be able to work this out but not me.

NIST admits that no checks for explosive residue were carried out. Remember those police reports of unexploded bombs and the basement explosion? Whether they were true or not doesn't matter, there was enough evidence to justify checking for explosives but they didn't.

Loose change:

We both agree that it's a poor show.

Molten steel:

It is more likely that the cleanup workers were exagerating the hellishness of the wreckage to make themselves sound more heroic than in conspiracy. Either that or there was some kind of molten metal that could be mistaken for steel (or steel). Maybe aluminium is a candidate for that, maybe not. The NIST article is not straight on the molten metal. They don't confirm and they don't deny it's existence. Why? Don't they know what it was or if it was there? What kind of investigation is that?

Thermite/thermate

I used these words to describe the material that may have been used to bring down the towers. It's a guess. A military could have researched a similar compound/mixture with different properties. Besides which, the same difficulties with thermite/ate would have been present with any model of the collapse. Whatever was burning had to be extremely well coupled to the core. Otherwise air would have had to conduct the heat to the core. It's very difficult to imagine how this could have happened. That's why other buildings only partially collapse.

Jet fuel:

I'm not really concerned about the jet fuel temperature. The jet fuel was history long before the buidings fell. The only relevance of it is what other exothermic reactions it could have started and whether any of them were hot enough to weaken the steel.

Rodriguez's account of an explosion before the collision:

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=6625

He claims to have seen a 'hijacker' casing the building before 9/11 and that he is 100% sure that the basement explosion preceded the plane impact. And the the explosion was below him and not above. I don't want to simply discount Rodriguez and the other witnesses. I've seen other explantions for this but none are compelling.

I read the wiki article, but as a fellow non-chemist the only thing that attracts my eye are the burning temperatures. Open air = 315 degrees C and in a controlled O and insulated environment up to 980 degrees. 980 is enough to cause some of the steel to weaken, if the conditions were exactly right, but 380 is not. The conditions couldn't have been exactly right if the fuel was thermally connected to the steel core (or could it?). Specific heat capacity and conductivity mean that we need to talk energy as well as temperature. That's the candle flame for you, it's hot (because it's insulated by air), but it doesn't release a lot of energy. It doesn't matter anyway since the fuel had burnt off before the collapse. If enough of it survived the first few minutes, I'd like to know how.



I can feel a new thread coming on, we've exhausted this pretty well! I'm going to post on the international drugs trade, when I've got the research done.

PS Bam - sometimes I feel like we're burying each other other a ground zero-sized pile of words!

 

[Paradigne]

You know, the Discovery Channel did an in-depth report on how the fire could have (and obviously did) weaken the supports and cause the buildings to collapse as they did. I have no specifics, but those with doubts should probably check out the Discovery Channel every now and then.

 

[JerichoHill]

About the Pentagon

Xeno, since I live less than a mile from that place, let me tell you about the security. There are camera's everywhere, but they face outwards. Where the plane hit is one of the most secure ground areas of the pentagon, with the helipad area and route 110 right there. There's a major highway and shopping center / parking lot on the southside of the pentagon where most of the cameras and security is. The North side is relatively (very) flat, green and can be covered by the 2 snipers on top of the building.

Just saying, I saw you're from Liverpool, so I know you havent seen the grounds around the Pentagon. Helps to make sure you know what you're talking about.

To recap:

MAJOR highway (395)
MAJOR Roads (GW Parkway, route 110, Washington BLVD)
within seeing distance. There are highly congested roads. Eyewitnesses galore.

I was one mile away, my apartment near a hill, and saw the plane fly overhead (slightly) and then a big ole BOOM.

It was a plane that hit the Pentagon. To suggest otherwise is lunacy.

 

[willemvanoranje]

I think many programs have shown already that the hole created by the plane actually does make sense. When a plane crashes into a building, the wings usually leave very little traces. They are strong enough to carry the plane, but light enough to not overload it. If it crashes into a building, especially one like the Pentagon and especially in a part of that building which has been reinforced little time before, it is even more likely that the wings don't leave gaps than that they do.

 

[brennan]

This is where I'm completely with the 'theorists' Bin Laden did not admit on the 'lucky find confession video' that he had a connection to 9/11. It simply isn't him; the face is different for a start.

Already been debunked, conspiracy theorists pull out the single frame from a lengthy video that looks least like him. He looks fine in most of the rest of the video.

This is old ground but any theory of the collapse has to account for every observation (listed before). This can be done with the thermite/ate theory, but not with the jet fuel ignited office fire. At least I struggle to find a mechanism for the symmetry, dust, speed etc. that is consistant with office fire + weakening by collision. You are looking more at the force and I am looking more at the building. They were formidable buildings, an enormous mass of strong material that was capable of surviving huge wind and gravity loads. The planes were like house flies against elephants, fast and firey house flies, but still house flies! Perhaps I give the buildings too much credit? A plane, while having large momentum isn't particularly stiff (except in a few places obviously) - a jelly bullet won't kill you. I think only the steel plane sections would have had a chance of damaging the core through the heavy and dense filing cabinets etc. I'd like to see core sections from the impact point. I probably wouldn't be able to make any sense of them, but I'd like to see them anyway.

Ok:
1) A jelly bullet probably would kill you, it is the velocity that counts.
2) An airliner hits one of the worlds largest buildings, smashes a hole several storeys high and a hundred feet wide in it, blasts debris out the opposite side of the building and starts a conflagration that burns for hours, and is hot enough to melt the aluminium facing on the building: this to you is an 'office fire'? This is an impact that can't make it through a filing cabinet? Wake up.
3) Wind loads are completely irrelevant: Lateral strain is not the same thing as compressional stress. We have already established that the tempreatures reached were easily high enough (at 650 degrees half the strength would be lost, we have seen that temperatures may have been up to about 800 degrees) to seriously weaken the steel providing the building with it's structural strength. You are starting to sound like you don't want to acknowledge the evidence.

NIST admits that no checks for explosive residue were carried out. Remember those police reports of unexploded bombs and the basement explosion? Whether they were true or not doesn't matter, there was enough evidence to justify checking for explosives but they didn't.

Well, duh. No doubt NIST thought that, what with the whole world having seen a couple of dirty great airliners hit the buildings, the 'It was the airliners that did it' case was fairly strong. Can you seriously blame them for not checking for explosives? Remember not one eyewitness said they saw a bomb go off, not one eyewitness claims to have seen a bomb; the only actual evidence for the presence of bombs is people describing explosions as being like bombs going off. Hardly a surprise frankly.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Thermite
Ok, I'll stop shooting down thermite (just to say that all the materials needed for it were already there, including sulpher in the drywall) and admit that there could have been some other possible compound used, but they did examine the steel columns and picked out any that looked unusual. It would be unreasonable to scientifically test 1.6 million tons of debris unless you see evidence of explosives being used.

Construction

I have just one question:
If steel can hold up to 'normal' fires, why do they fireproof them?

The construction of the new 'Freedom Tower is going to have 5 times the thickness of what the WTC had. I read some report that said some of the fireproofing was a half inch thick and 1 and a half inches think in other areas.

Perhaps I give the buildings too much credit?

They were formidable buildings, an enormous mass of strong material that was capable of surviving huge wind and gravity loads.

The potential force of impact from the mass of the plane hitting at it's speed would be 95% of the maximum wind load the building was designed to withstand (an earlier version of this report said it was 1/3 over the maximum, but he revised it as he got better information/recalculated). And that doesn't take into account blast load (jet fuel exploding).
http://www.caddigest.com/subjects/wtc/select/clifton/p1.htm <-- (good diagram of the structure to show where the support columns were on page 2 of the report).

Thanks to http://www.lolloosechange.co.nr/ for the pictures.

I would think there would be some damage to some of the 44 core columns since the wind load the building can support is using all 44 of them at once to support it, while the impact of the plane is concentrated at a particular point (one or a few of them). When one is weakened or destroyed that puts more stress on the other remaining columns. Sure, the building of course would still be standing (which it did for an hour) and if we could stop the damage right then, the building might have even remained standing. But then we move to temperatures of fires:

Fire/Temperature

But it is very difficult to reach this maximum temperature with a diffuse flame. There is nothing to ensure that the fuel and air in a diffuse flame are mixed in the best ratio. Typically, diffuse flames are fuel rich, meaning that the excess fuel molecules, which are unburned, must also be heated. It is known that most diffuse fires are fuel rich because blowing on a campfire or using a blacksmith’s bellows increases the rate of combustion by adding more oxygen. This fuel-rich diffuse flame can drop the temperature by up to a factor of two again. This is why the temperatures in a residential fire are usually in the 500°C to 650°C range.2,3 It is known that the WTC fire was a fuel-rich, diffuse flame as evidenced by the copious black smoke. Soot is generated by incompletely burned fuel; hence, the WTC fire was fuel rich—hardly surprising with 90,000 L of jet fuel available. Factors such as flame volume and quantity of soot decrease the radiative heat loss in the fire, moving the temperature closer to the maximum of 1,000°C. However, it is highly unlikely that the steel at the WTC experienced temperatures above the 750–800°C range. All reports that the steel melted at 1,500°C are using imprecise terminology at best.

The additional problem was distortion of the steel in the fire. The temperature of the fire was not uniform everywhere, and the temperature on the outside of the box columns was clearly lower than on the side facing the fire. The temperature along the 18 m long joists was certainly not uniform. Given the thermal expansion of steel, a 150°C temperature difference from one location to another will produce yield-level residual stresses. This produced distortions in the slender structural steel, which resulted in buckling failures. Thus, the failure of the steel was due to two factors: loss of strength due to the temperature of the fire, and loss of structural integrity due to distortion of the steel from the non-uniform temperatures in the fire.

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html

Temperatures vary in a fire and the heat and temperature can be different based on the speed of how quickly the fire spreads and area it consumes (to a point).

Ask any fireman and they will tell you that explosions inside a building are normal during a fire. The WTC had transformers that could have exploded:
http://www.stupidcollege.com/items/Electric-Transformer-Explosion (video of transformer exploding).
And the first paragraph here: http://www.debunking911.com/explosions.htm for more lists of things that could sound like an explosion.

Most office fires would take at least an hour (or more) for a fire to consume the 4 floors that the WTC did in an instant because of the jet fuel/plane collision.

Some info on temperature and heat in a fire:
http://www.mace.manchester.ac.uk/pr...e/fireModelling/nominalFireCurves/default.htm

Molten metal

They don't confirm and they don't deny it's existence.

If your talking about the commission report, then was the molten metal ever brought up to them during the hearing? If it isn't brought up, they can't confirm nor deny.

If your talking about the NIST report, that is why they have a FAQ that answers that. http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm (#13)

As to what is and isn't in the report, I do have to say that they needed the FAQ along time ago or they should condense their information into a smaller report because how many people are going to read a 298 page report? (and that is just section 1)
http://wtc.nist.gov/reports_october05.htm

Any molten steel in the wreckage was more likely due to the high temperature resulting from long exposure to combustion within the pile than to short exposure to fires or explosions while the buildings were standing.

Osama

It simply isn't him; the face is different for a start.

When you take a few select still frames from a video with very bad quality and harsh directional lighting then yeah it could convince some people that it is not the same person. The picture on my ID card and Driver's liscense makes my nose look twice as wide as the picture on my work ID.

If you are saying it is because Osama is shown using his right hand for eating and writing when he is reported to be left handed, that is debunked because of islamic religion that states something about the devil using his left, so good people use their right for eating (and they use their left for taking care of 'bathroom business').

If you talking about the gold rings and watches, there is nothing in the Koran against fake gold or other rings and watches, they just don't allow gold. And many religious leaders in the middle east can be seen with watches and rings, Osama included, before and after 9/11.

Hijackers

People frequently get arrested carrying dozens of fake identities, so it should have occured to them that the identities were false.

Well, if they fooled the Saudis then how could the US trace their identity back to before they got their passport from Saudi Arabia? They wanted these names and pictures out so that people could supply information about them to extend the scope of the investigation (and that is how the European reporter found one of the victims of the identity theft). The reporter wouldn't have got the story if the government didn't release the fake passport pictures/names and got broadcast all over the world.

Here, you can follow the trail of identity use here:
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/OG00013.pdf (annoyingly tilted on the side, so you'll get a sore neck reading it!)

Other evidence used in Moussai trial (which includes info on the hijackers)
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution.html

Defense exhibits: http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/defense.html

Also it's a pretty big step from ID-ing an Arab on a flight to ID-ing a terrorist.

Perhaps one reason there was discrepencies when you compared the early lists of the passengers and the number that was said to be on the plane? They didn't want to list the hijackers as passengers (victims), which would upset the families on the real victims. There were probably other Arabs on the list but they had to do more investigating to find out if that Arab was a terrorist or just a regular Arab businessman or student. So they only listed the names of the non-arabs at first?

Conspiracy

What if they were right on JFK (luck) but wrong here; would they be able to backtrack now after invading Afghanistan?

A JFK conspiracy is WAY more believable than a 9/11 conspiracy theory that would have involved thousands of people (depending on what theory is being considered). A conspiracy to hijack a plane (the 'using it as a missile' part is irrelevent, just getting control of the plane requires planning) doesn't require the level of skill to pull off as what the theorists are accusing the government of doing.
http://www.debunking911.com/massivect.htm

The mob and CIA can pull off assassinations, but since when do they do suicide missions? Yes, people will commit suicide for their faith/god, but nobody commits suicide to make someone else rich. Was the government using 'black helicopters' to shuttle Osama to safety, because the government are secretly buddies with him? Well, the stories about black helicopters have been used as often, and for almost as long as UFOs have been used have to accuse the US of 'evil things', so I wouldn't put much stock in those accusations.

Willie Rodriguez
Certainly a hero, so I don't want to diminish his heroic acts, but from his vantage point he wouldn't be the best witness for what happened hundreds of feet above him (inside the basement when talking about the impact of the plane).
http://www.911myths.com/html/william_rodriguez.html offers some possible explainations (but not proof, they are just theories, I know).
I do think it is a little fishy that the biggest witness for the truth seekers also claims to have seen one of the hijackers combing the buildings before 9/11.

And if the hijackers had the government's help, why would the hijackers need to do survellience on the WTC? Couldn't the government supply them with whatever information they needed?