'What about building 7'?

[Oystein]

...I don't know of any demolition rigging system that you could subject to possible fire and impact damage and be assured it would go off later as planned.

The validity and strength of such arguments is always limited. While they perfectly reasonably describe the practical problems and thus raise the odds, they can't constitute definitive refutations, unless you hit a fundamental low of nature that cannot be overcome.

All the demo equipment that demo professionals, whether military or commercial, use today is designed for their intended uses and circumstances. Those typically would not involve building presently burning.

However, it is of course conceivable to design demo devices that survive impacts and fires up to defined limits, that don't require obvious rigging with miles of cords, that look sufficiently different from conventional equipment to avoid being recognized by demo experts combing through the debris, etc. It is basically just an engineering problem. Gather a good group of sharp brains, and the problem will be solved.

Of course, this would leave you with a group of sharp brains that knew exactly what they were doing - potential whistleblowers. And those that rigged the buildings.
Again, the danger of potential whistleblowers, too, is not a dead sure argument to win the debate...

Only the odds are stacked very much against such scenarios.

 

[jaydeehess]

Since we are wildly speculating to the benefit of a supposed demolition:
Digital encoded triggering signal , transport via heavily shielded coax cabling, coax runs to a heavily protected and RF shielded box containing initiator and the explosive cutter itself.
Protects very well against RF ingress and requires specific digital sequence to be received ,say 5 times, before explosive is set off. Cutter charge must penetrate its enclosure and the column.
Cutters are set on columns two floors below aircraft impacts and designed to draw down the core while being well away from impact and fire. This initiates collapse at the impact zone , that zone having been preweakened by impact and fire. To ensure global collapse further core cutters are positioned and set to go off in sequence.

 

[JayUtah]

The validity and strength of such arguments is always limited. While they perfectly reasonably describe the practical problems and thus raise the odds, they can't constitute definitive refutations, unless you hit a fundamental low of nature that cannot be overcome.

I agree, and that's fine. In the investigation of happenstance events, you rarely get conclusive data. It's always a matter of odds. You can't eschew methods that have limited value just because the value was limited. Overall findings are at best a consilience of individually limited techniques.

You have to beware especially of falling into straw-man territory.

However, it is of course conceivable to design demo devices that survive...

Many things are merely conceivable. But a useful investigation needs more than mere unprecedented conception. Determining what's possible is the first step toward determining what happened, but you can't stop after the first step. Otherwise it's just an appeal to magic, such as we've seen with the notion of silent, paint-on explosives.

The appeal to magic cuts both ways, too. The debate at the moment is based on the notion that a practiced expert is talking about WTC 7 resembling an ordinary controlled demolition. Understanding that the resemblance is problematic for practical reasons leads to ad hoc revision that it's necessarily then an extraordinary controlled demolition, using special techniques and tools not previously known and not especially visible in the evidence.

But by the same token, conspiracy theorists reject the notion that WTC 7's global collapse was inevitable, on the grounds that structures of that type don't typically fail in that way -- that there should only have been a partial collapse etc. But if you want to appeal to the extraordinary to fill the gaps in your own theory, you have to concede that your opponent may also appeal to the extraordinary. In this case the WTC 7 scenario was far from typical -- and we have evidence in spades of its unique nature. It was struck by debris, and it burned for hours. Those are not typical injuries.

Parsimony must still rule the battlefield. Explosives impervious to thermal denaturing? All the rigging hidden and installed undetectably amid ordinary operations? Disappears without a trace? Without disputing that those are "merely" engineering problems, the odds, as you say, just don't favor such explanations.

While researching work for Dept. of Energy I came across some (unclassified) writings on nuclear weapon fuzing. It's pretty neat stuff. The problem is to absolutely prevent the accidental or premature explosion of a nuclear weapon when it's not supposed to (for obvious reasons), while at the same time absolutely guaranteeing the intended explosion of the device when it is supposed to (for the obvious reasons, and also so your enemy doesn't pick up the fissible material and make a bomb out of it to throw back at you.) We've been working on this problem for nearly 70 years and we're still not satisfied with the existing solutions. I think that body of work applies a bit here. A one-off secret demolition system would have to share some properties with nuclear fuzes.

That's an argument of the same form as, "It would be hard to rig a building quickly or undetectably for controlled demolition." And that too becomes a probabilistic argument, not a conclusive statement. But the point I'm making here is that you can't deny the essential complexity of the problem, even when postulating "magical" solutions.

 

[jaydeehess]

But by the same token, conspiracy theorists reject the notion that WTC 7's global collapse was inevitable, on the grounds that structures of that type don't typically fail in that way -- that there should only have been a partial collapse etc. But if you want to appeal to the extraordinary to fill the gaps in your own theory, you have to concede that your opponent may also appeal to the extraordinary. In this case the WTC 7 scenario was far from typical -- and we have evidence in spades of its unique nature. It was struck by debris, and it burned for hours. Those are not typical injuries.

The same also applies to the towers. These were structures that first suffered very significant damage due to aircraft impacts. Immediately following that damage, large area fires were in effect on several vertically adjacent floors. That fire condition is highly atypical as is the original aircraft impact damage.

Parsimony must still rule the battlefield. Explosives impervious to thermal denaturing? All the rigging hidden and installed undetectably amid ordinary operations? Disappears without a trace? Without disputing that those are "merely" engineering problems, the odds, as you say, just don't favor such explanations.

Which is the failing of my scenario above, maybe. The coax would certainly survive in the rubble to some extent , though if one simply uses cable that may be in use by a local cable company or at least looks very similar, it will be ignored. The explosive container though will have to be engineered to not only be innocuous to anyone seeing them in the time between installation and use (looking like a cable line amplifier?), it also must protect against physical damage until its use and then manage to be innocuous in the rubble.

 

[pgimeno]

The validity and strength of such arguments is always limited. While they perfectly reasonably describe the practical problems and thus raise the odds, they can't constitute definitive refutations, unless you hit a fundamental low of nature that cannot be overcome.

Do you mean like, explosives go boom and they should be audible from the distance the cameras were in 9/11?

 

[Oystein]

Do you mean like, explosives go boom and they should be audible from the distance the cameras were in 9/11?

Well, you surely could invent devices that shatter steel with lots of tiny booms, and you know nano-thermite - a little heat, a little boom - surely you can IMAGINE that those problems can be overcome?!? [/SQUIRM]

 

[Hellbound]

Well, you surely could invent devices that shatter steel with lots of tiny booms, and you know nano-thermite - a little heat, a little boom - surely you can IMAGINE that those problems can be overcome?!? [/SQUIRM]

Actually, I believe that's why the whole thermite track was started down in the first place. It's been a while (I was involved in these discussions when they first started), but I seem to recall that the use of thermite in construction/demolition was brought up as a specific counter to the fact that there's no such thing as silenced explosives. The nano-thermite unobtanium magic hushaboom came from that.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Actually, I believe that's why the whole thermite track was started down in the first place. It's been a while (I was involved in these discussions when they first started), but I seem to recall that the use of thermite in construction/demolition was brought up as a specific counter to the fact that there's no such thing as silenced explosives. The nano-thermite unobtanium magic hushaboom came from that.

And then they realised that undermined their argument that the sudden onset of collapse could only be caused by explosives. That's what led to the compromise solution of nanothermite. Unfortunately they got it a bit confused; they wanted something that could cut steel and not go boom, but ended up with something that goes boom but doesn't cut steel.

Dave

 

[Oystein]

Actually, I believe that's why the whole thermite track was started down in the first place. It's been a while (I was involved in these discussions when they first started), but I seem to recall that the use of thermite in construction/demolition was brought up as a specific counter to the fact that there's no such thing as silenced explosives. The nano-thermite unobtanium magic hushaboom came from that.

I believe this, too, but am not aware I ever saw tangible evidence for it. This is probably in no small part due to my arriving late at the party (I signed up here in December 2009 and, if memory serves, did not come across any 9/11 CTs until few months before that, i.e. after the April 2009 Harrit paper was already out).

Looking back, my perception is that Steven Jones made his debut around 2006 or so with claims of molten and evaporated metals and "evidence" for extreme temperatures, derived from studying both slack on WTC steel and dust ("microspheres"). Back then, they talked a lot about sulfur and thus about thermAte. Of course they could not find sulfur in too many red-gray chips, so they quietly buried that (as a matter of fact, some of their chips DO contain some sulfur, which they explain away as contamination ).

However, I haven't seen any Jones-quote that indicates his high-temp stuff was after realizing problems with the booms.

...ended up with something that goes boom but doesn't cut steel.

Few people realize that Harrit and Jones don't even claim their stuff goes boom - because evidently it doesn't! It mystifies me why people keep talking about an "explosive" nature of the chips...

 

[JayUtah]

...ended up with something that goes boom but doesn't cut steel.

I think this is where Kevin Ryan ended up taking a lot of people down a rathole. He alludes to some nanocomposites that are classified as "explosives" and on that basis believes he's found the smoking gun. He fails to consider that within the broad category of compounds to which that label applies, there is a vast difference in brisance that translates into varying ability to perform different tasks.

Nanothermites can perform what's called "pressure and volume work," which means they can create a volume of gas rapidly, such as to deploy an airbag, or exert pressure, such as to move a piston or eject a projectile. They are in the same brisance category as classic gunpowder. In order to get the brisance necessary to cut steel as for controlled demolition, you need materials in the category of RDX.

None of the proponents of nanothermite seem to appreciate this important difference.

There is one alleged demonstration where an oxidizing aluminum compound is shown to burn through a thick sheet of steel in under a minute. But the proponent fails to note that it was directed through a rocket nozzle that not only concentrated the heat but also created a fluid scour that mechanically eroded the softened metal. We already know steel can be cut with high-pressure fluids -- even ordinary liquid water. That the products of a thermite reaction can be directed to perform work just as any other fluid doesn't necessitate using thermite to create that fluid. Thermite is a red herring. Thermite still takes time, requires an appropriately robust nozzle and rigging, and still leaves a buttload of solid residue on and around the cuts, and a vast aerosolized cloud of foul-smelling products, none of which was observed.

 

[Oystein]

... Thermite is a red herring. Thermite still takes time, requires an appropriately robust nozzle and rigging, and still leaves a buttload of solid residue on and around the cuts, and a vast aerosolized cloud of foul-smelling products, none of which was observed.

[SQUIRM]But... but... In the ensuing collapse which pulverized everything, he residues would be mostly knocked off and dispersed. What is in thermite residue that smells foul? [/SQUIRM]

The thermate-nozzle proponents point to Jon Cole's experiment, and how it resulted in edgy steel ends superficially similar to the WPI/FEMA Appx C specimens.
Trouble is of course that these edges are too irregular in shape, betraying a highly inefficient use of the nozzles. Nobody found significant steel members in the rubble that showed credible signs of having been cut by ANY method.

 

[JayUtah]

Collapses don't pulverize everything. The smell is often sulfurous, but also typically akin to burnt plastic, as the binder is often some form of urethane. For rocketry formulations the residue smells strongly of ammonia. In all cases you get a bright, hot flame to be sure, but also copious clouds of usually white or light-gray smoke.

No sign of it in the rubble is, of course, one of those probabilistic arguments you spoke of earlier. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but explanatory logic in the context of happenstance investigation allows that hypotheses for which no affirmative evidence can be found are reduced to a low order of probability.

 

[Redwood]

Originally Posted by Oystein
If memory serves me right, the TV team (the name of the program was ... Zemla? Or something similar - I keep forgetting) that interviewed Jowenko was not a bunch of truthers out to trick him.

I can't vouch for what clip you may have seen. The clip I saw had dialogue in a language that appeared to me to be Dutch, and had English subtitles. It framed Jowenko's interview in a fair number of insinuations and rhetoric that certainly led me to believe it was a pro-conspiracy program. I do not know its provenance.

There's no reason not to believe that the documentary wasn't intended to challenge both Truthers and Debunkers, and biased its techniques as such.

 

[Redwood]

Originally Posted by JayUtah

Pertinent information was withheld. The question is whether his opinion was properly informed. That pertinent information included that the building had been previously damaged by falling heavy debris, that it had burned for several hours with little if any mitigation, and that it had been occupied as an office building right up to a few hours before it collapsed.

I seem to recall that he was also played the video only, with no sound track. That's a piece of pertinent information, given NIST's estimate of the sound that would have been produced by an explosive charge sufficiently large to sever column 79; again, I seem to recall the sound level would have been high enough to cause temporary hearing loss within about half a mile of the building, a condition nobody reported.

Dave

The video that was shown to Jowenko was one of only four that managed to capture the entire collapse sequence. The camera was mounted and ran continuously. It was (unintentionally) over-exposed and tightly framed which made it difficult to appreciate the smoke pouring out of WTC 7. For a better appreciation of the extent of the fires before the collapse, see the footage shot from the roof of 5 Penn Plaza, the home of CNN (also continuous footage.)



No sound, but I doubt that it would have made any difference, given the distance. I have zero doubt as to what Jowenko's opinion would have been, had he seen this; it wouldn't be "controlled demolition".

 

[Oystein]

By coincidence, while following another interest, I came across this interview with Tony Szamboti, and what Tony's theory is about WTC7 - a question I had, coincidentally, asked him earlier today via email (answer not in yet):

Ben Swann: More Americans Are “Rethinking” 9/11? Sep 10, 2013

Szamboti: “... What I say caused it and you can cut this out or leave it in, but I think they took out the core columns for 8 full stories, and that pulled in the exterior. When you have controlled demotion, and when take the core out, you pull in exterior and it comes down. When you take out 8 stories it all comes in.”

Swann: “What happens if you leave half of them? If it is not a controlled demolition and you have a failure of some columns?”

Szamboti: “Then you have a partial collapse.”

I guess that means no CD charges to the exterior columns!? Whaddabout the "freefall" then?

 

[Crazy Chainsaw]

I believe this, too, but am not aware I ever saw tangible evidence for it. This is probably in no small part due to my arriving late at the party (I signed up here in December 2009 and, if memory serves, did not come across any 9/11 CTs until few months before that, i.e. after the April 2009 Harrit paper was already out).

Looking back, my perception is that Steven Jones made his debut around 2006 or so with claims of molten and evaporated metals and "evidence" for extreme temperatures, derived from studying both slack on WTC steel and dust ("microspheres"). Back then, they talked a lot about sulfur and thus about thermAte. Of course they could not find sulfur in too many red-gray chips, so they quietly buried that (as a matter of fact, some of their chips DO contain some sulfur, which they explain away as contamination ).

However, I haven't seen any Jones-quote that indicates his high-temp stuff was after realizing problems with the booms.





Few people realize that Harrit and Jones don't even claim their stuff goes boom - because evidently it doesn't! It mystifies me why people keep talking about an "explosive" nature of the chips...

Actually Jones made his premiere in 2005 I remember our phone conversation from that year.
Never overestimate the Stupidity of people who do not understand or seek to understand science.

 

[beachnut]

Jones made up his paranoid Conspiracy, an old man making it up as he goes nuts.

http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/wtc/videos.html
http://tinyurl.com/7drxn

WTC collapses due to controlled demolition
Steven E. Jones
Professor of Physics/BYU

I believe WTC collapses to be due to controlled demolition are:

1. My own analysis of the "pancaking" floors model (the FEMA/NIST model) combined with Conservation of Momentum considerations gives a much longer time for the fall (over 10 seconds) than that which was actually observed for WTC-7 (about 6.3 seconds, just over the free-fall time of 6.0 seconds). I find no evidence in their reports that government researchers (FEMA, NIST, 9-11 Commission) included Conservation of Momentum in their analyses.

2. The fact that WTC-7 fell down symmetrically, onto its own footprint very neatly, even though fires were just observed on one side of the building. A symmetrical collapse, as observed, requires the simultaneous "pulling" of support beams. By my count, there were 24 core columns and 57 perimeter columns in WTC-7. Heat transport considerations for steel beams heated by fire suggest that failure of even a few columns at the same time is very small. Adding in the Second Law of Thermodynamics ("law of increasing entropy") leads to the conclusion that the likelihood of near-symmetrical collapse of the building due to fires (the "government" theory) -- requiring as it does near-simultaneous failure of many support columns -- is infinitesimal. Yet near-symmetrical collapse of WTC-7 was observed. (If you still haven't gone to the links above to see the actual collapse for yourself, please go there now.)

Note that the 9-11 Commission report does not even deal with the collapse of WTC-7. This is a striking omission of highly relevant data.

3.Squibs (horizontal puffs of smoke and debris) are observed emerging from WTC-7, in regular sequence, just as the building starts to collapse. (SEE: http://tinyurl.com/7drxn ) Yet the floors have not moved relative to one another yet, as one can verify from the videos, so air-expulsion due to collapsing floors is excluded. I have personally examined many building demolitions based on on-line videos, and the presence of such squibs firing in rapid sequence as observed is prima facie evidence for the use of pre-positioned explosives inside the building.

4. The pulverization of concrete to powder and the horizontal ejection of steel beams for hundreds of yards, observed clearly in the collapses of the WTC towers, requires much more energy than is available from gravitational potential energy alone. Explosives will give the observed features. Other scientists have provided quantitative analysis of the observed pulverizations, and I can provide references if you wish. Here we are appealing to the violation of Conservation of Energy inherent in the "official" pancaking-floors theory-- a horrendous violation, forbidden by principles of Physics. (What is going on for the FEMA/NIST researchers to make such striking errors/omissions?)

5. I conducted simple experiments on the "pancaking" theory, by dropping cement blocks from approximately 12 feet onto other cement blocks. (The floors in the WTC buildings were about 12 feet apart.) We are supposed to believe, from the pancaking theory, that a concrete floor dropping 12 feet onto another concrete floor will result in PULVERIZED concrete observed during the Towers' collapses! Nonsense! My own experiments, and I welcome you to try this yourself, is that only chips/large chunks of cement flaked off the blocks -- no mass pulverization to approx. 100-micron powder as observed. Explosives, however, can indeed convert concrete to dust --mostly, along with some large chunks-- as observed in the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9-11-01.

6. The observations of molten metal (I did not say molten steel!) in the basements of all three buildings, WTC 1, 2 and 7 is consistent with the use of the extremely high-temperature thermite reaction: iron oxide + aluminum powder --> Al2O3 + molten iron. Falling buildings are not observed to generate melting of large quantities of molten metal -- this requires a concentrated heat source such as explosives. Even the government reports admit that the fires were insufficient to melt steel beams (they argue for heating and warping then failure of these beams) -- but these reports do not mention the observed molten metal in the basements of WTC1, 2 and 7. Again we have a glaring omission of critical data in the FEMA, NIST and 9-11 Commission reports.

7. I understand that models of the steel-frame WTC buildings at Underwriters Laboratories subjected to intense fires did NOT collapse. And no steel-frame buildings before or after 9/11/2001 have collapsed due to fire. Thus, the "official" fire-pancaking model fails the scientific test of REPRODUCIBILITY. (Earthquake- caused collapses have occured, but there were no major earthquakes in NYC on that day. And buildings which have collapsed due to earthquakes collapse asymmetrically, as expected -- not like the nearly straight-down collapse of WTC 7 to a small rubble pile!)

8. Explosions -- multiple loud explosions in rapid sequence -- were heard and reported by numerous observers in (and near) the WTC buildings, consistent with explosive demolition. Some of the firemen who reported explosions barely escaped with their lives.

Essentially none of these science-based considerations is mentioned in the Popular Mechanics article on this subject, authored by B. Chertoff (a cousin of M. Chertoff who heads the Homeland Security Dept.) (Squibs are mentioned briefly, but the brief PM analysis does not fit the observed facts.)

I have performed other analyses regarding the WTC collapses on 9-11-01 which may be of interest --let me know if you're interested. The matter is highly interesting to me as a physicist -- and as a citizen of the United States. I conclude that the evidence for pre-positioned explosives in WTC 7 (also in towers 1 and 2) is truly compelling.

Steven E. Jones
Professor of Physics/BYU

This article was posted on 9.16.05

 

[Oystein]

Thanks, Chainsaw and beachy!

I used to have a copy of the assessment of his analysis, made by one of Steven Earl Jones's fellow professors at the BYU physics department, but think I lost it along with an external hard drive and my old inbox

It was a major rant! A total rip-up, this guy was gloriously embarrassed to have such nut on the same faculty.

 

[JayUtah]

Actually Jones made his premiere in 2005 I remember our phone conversation from that year.

He was testing the waters locally here in Utah at about that time or before. I don't remember the exact dates. Local TV news gave him a minute or so of airtime every so often.

Never overestimate the Stupidity of people who do not understand or seek to understand science.

Beachnut's post above is pretty close to what I remember his first handouts looking like. The cinder block stunt stood out as being remarkably stupid, I recall. But yeah, the gist of it was that because he was a physicist, he thought he was also an engineer. He wasn't even the right kind of physicist. And so if you read between the lines in his early stuff, he's trying to reinvent the science of structural engineering from the ground up (no pun intended). And getting it wrong.

 

[Oystein]

But yeah, the gist of it was that because he was a physicist, he thought he was also an engineer. He wasn't even the right kind of physicist. And so if you read between the lines in his early stuff, he's trying to reinvent the science of structural engineering from the ground up (no pun intended). And getting it wrong.

He still pretends to be an engineer at the A&E petition, where he is listed as an "Engineering professional (degreed only)", even though he has no engineering degree:

http://www.ae911truth.org/signatures/ae.html#:xml/supporters/U/StevenJonesSpring-CityUTUS.xml.txt

"Title: Prof. of Physics Emeritus, Senior Engineer
Degree: PhD, Physics, Vanderbilt University 1978
...
Biography:
Before going to BYU I was known as a senior engineer at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (now simply the Idaho National Laboratory) -- where I had the title Senior Engineering Specialist.
...
Curriculum Vitae: http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/currvitaApril09.htm"​

And his vita at byu.edu:

"Graduated from Bellevue High School, Bellevue, Washington, with 4.0 scholastic average (A=4.0) in 1967.
B.S. in Physics, Mathematics minor, magna cum laude with honors, from Brigham Young University in 1973, retaining the Presidential (David O. McKay) Scholarship.
Ph.D. in Physics, Mathematics/Electronics minors from Vanderbilt University in 1978, retaining full Tuition Scholarship and Research Fellowship (1973-1978).
Ph.D. research conducted at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (1974-1977); course work completed at Stanford University.
Post-doctoral research conducted at Cornell University (CESR) and the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility.
Conducted research at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, EG & G Idaho, Idaho Falls, 1979-1985 (Senior Engineering Specialist)."​

He is NOT a degreed engineer! What a bunch of liars!