Mojo
Mostly harmless
We’re back to Willium, aren’t we:
http://www.thegoonshow.net/scripts_show.asp?title=s05e21_the_sinking_of_westminster_pier
It’s an exciting thing to report.
The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-opened Part II
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We’re back to Willium, aren’t we:
It’s an exciting thing to report.
LondonJohn
Penultimate Amazing
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Ah, it's clear now that you don't understand the meaning of the term.
I'll give you an example of a Gish Gallop concerning just the Gospels, to enlighten you:
Gish Galloper (GG): Jesus walked on water.
Respondent (R): He did what now? How did he do that? I don't believe that's possible in the real world. I need more explanation.
GG: Jesus turned water into wine.
R: Woah hold on! You haven't explained about the "walking on water" stuff yet! Maybe you'll now explain how he did both these things, seeing as they're both beyond the realms of all known science and human experience.
GG: Jesus raised a man from the dead.
R: Stop changing the subject with these fresh claims! Please can we go back to the first one, and deal with them properly in the order you raised them?
GG: Jesus himself rose from the dead, on Day 3 after he'd been pronounced dead.
R: *bangs head on keyboard*.
Any clearer now as to what a Gish Gallop is? And why the term applies to much of your...uhm..."work" in this thread?
Jack by the hedge
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Well done. I only watched the few minutes of Westermann's presentation, from about 19 mins in.
She found considerable deformation. She found one sample had been heated on one side while another from a few centimetres away had been heated on the other side. The heating had caused changes which take some time to develop so it wasn't brief.
Well, that all sounds compatible with previously-welded parts being torn apart by force. Nothing much new to see here.
Kid Eager
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Therefore the Cockney welders from the Swedish mini sub cut the bow door off with laboratory grade radioactive cutting equipment. I knew it!
Nice summary and, in Vixen's case, after galloping through several easily-debunked claims, she'll go right back to "Jesus walked on water"
LondonJohn
Penultimate Amazing
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Exactly.
And I too was disquieted by the "Good job!"-style exchanges at the end of her presentation from those who'd commissioned her work here. It suggests to me that at the very least, she was aware that the group which had commissioned her had an agenda which rested on finding a cause other than the official one. And at worst*, it might suggest that she had prior awareness of the types of result they were hoping she'd find.
Whether either or neither of these is true, however, is of little consequence - since her report stops very far short of drawing any conclusions which can only reasonably be explained if one disregards the official cause in favour of some sort of malevolent-actor one. As other have already pointed out, her conclusions are in fact entirely consistent with these areas having been subjected to normal welding processes at some point in the past (and the lug attachments to the visor were indeed welded on), then subjected to some form of mechanical deformation at some other time (eg..... at the time the bow visor failed......).
ETA: * There is, of course, an "at worst" which is significantly worse than mine. But since I don't believe it could reasonably have happened here, and in the absence of any supporting evidence for it, I reject it at this time.
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Disbelief
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I'm shocked at the cherrypicking. Nice summary, by the way.
Jack by the hedge
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And with military precision, don't forget.
The Man
Unbanned zombie poster
No problem, while not quite the same, arc, MIG and TIG welding heat similarly though more locally. Metals are modeled as a positive ion crystalline structure infused with an electron gas. By forcing electrons through that structure they basically knock about heating it. Also while one of the definitions of metals is that they give up electrons easily to form positive ions (hence the modeling mentioned before). The Voltage of the welding can rip additional electrons from the positive ion lattice structure disassociating it and rapidly turning it into a plasma. This is the basis of a plasma cutter, though in that case the plasma is generated in the gas at the tip of the cutter and directed at the work piece.
Shaped and cutting charges combine most of these principles (except the direct applied electrical field as in arc, MIG and TIG welding). Both the shock wave and explosion plasma are focused and directed at a limited area of the target turning that area into a plasma. Such charges can involve additional materials as backing to help direct the shock and plasma and as a frontal element that can form a more effective plasma much like the gas that gets turned into a plasma in a plasma cutter.
As noted before, such types of charges leave very district traces because they actually cut the material. Again being more deliberately localized.
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JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Probably not in the way I believe Prof. Westermann intended the term. Here she's probably talking about very high kinetic-energy impacts between solids, such as projectile impacts. It's an allusion to what she is interpreting as similar to explosive welding.
That's solid-state welding, one of the ways to weld two metals that wouldn't ordinarily mix in the liquid state. It's common also when cladding metals with other metals, where debonding of the cladding would be disastrous later. Let's say you want to clad an aluminum plate with a thin layer of zinc. You lay your plate down on the ground, lay the thin zinc plate over it, and cover the whole thing with a thin, even layer of explosive. When you set off the charge, the zinc is driven against the aluminum with enough energy to bond them together as if they had been welded. When you examine the bond metallurgically, you see a distinctive pattern at the boundary between the two metals. There are still two distinct layers of different metal, but some mixing occurs in the fraction of a millimeter that constitutes the boundary.
Note that this is exactly the opposite of what you would do if you were deploying an explosive charge to cut metal, and the results are considerably different at both the macro- and microscopic scale. Further, shaped-charge cutting drives bits of copper into the steel that are painfully apparent upon metallurgical analysis. (LSCs are commonly used to cut the bits of metal holding one rocket stage to another.) And it's unlikely that the mysteriously disappearing satchel charge allegedly found by Braidwood's divers would produce that result. The explosives must be placed very evenly, or else you just get holes ripped through the metal.
Everything else in Westermann's analysis is consistent with metal that has been welded together in the ordinary fashion and then subjected to considerable mechanical stress.
Prof. Westermann's conclusion of the absence of contact deformation markers applies only to the three samples she took. She was unable to find any contact deformation marks on the samples, amounting to a few square centimeters of applicable area. That's not to say the entire 55-tonne structure was devoid of evidence of contact with other things.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
As did I, and some of the bits that followed. Sadly I had to divide my attention; our company is getting its annual audit this week from one of our regulatory bodies. I'll want to watch it again when I can pay closer attention. I may watch the rest of the press conference, if there's time. But I'm really only interested in the testimony of the scientists.
The 60 seconds that followed her presentation was the most painful exercise in witness-leading I've seen outside a courtroom. To her credit, Prof. Westermann did not take the bait. She was clearly being asked to speculate that explosives caused what she saw. That questioning was entirely unscientific, and was clearly part of a dog-and-pony show. It sounded more like a lawyer in court trying to get an expert witness to endorse a particular theory of causation, to a "reasonable degree of scientific certainty."
Yes. The only thing that bears additional explanation is the discontinuity that she describes as similar to explosive welding and has suggested was caused by a "high energy impact." I don't believe that's the only reason for such a discontinuity. She has ruled out "mechanical deformation" and "friction" as potential causes for this discontinuity, but that is merely to say, essentially, that the violence of the storm and the sinking doesn't account for it. She doesn't go into detail about what she means by friction. I wonder if she's talking about effects akin to friction stir welding, yet another welding technique that doesn't liquefy the metal.
Mojo
Mostly harmless
LondonJohn
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LOL. You obviously have no idea what the term "controlled explosion" actually means - and, crucially, what it doesn't mean - do you?
LondonJohn
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What if (as I'd deem to be significantly possible) some of the rescued passengers/crew were so hypothermic and/or exhausted that they were either unconscious, semi-conscious or unable to communicate clearly. Which would potentially make it somewhat difficult for rescue operatives to determine their identity accurately at the time of rescue, which in turn would potentially lead to confusion over who'd genuinely been rescued alive and who had not.
I expect that headcounts weren't high on his agenda. Why would you think he should have known this info? What impact would it have had on anything? If he'd known (for example) that there were precisely 27 survivors on his ship, what use would that information have been at that point? His only responsibility was to contribute to the rescue effort as effectively as he could, and then to take every reasonable step to get those survivors who were on his ship to shore (and on to hospital as required). Headcounts and more strenuous identification attempts would have been taking place onshore.
On top of all of this, I really don't know what you're insinuating here. Are you alleging incompetence? Or are you alleging participation in your conspiracy by people such as the rescue-helicopter crew and/or the crew of the Mariella? Or are you just reflexively questioning as much of the official version of events as you possibly can, because..... stuff?
junkshop
Otto's Favourite
I wouldn't bother if I were you. There's nothing of value there, Just Angstrom waffling and insisting it must have been explosives, and a painfully long section where they struggle to get Westermann's laptop to connect to the projector.
ETA: And a bit at the end where they handwave away a few question from some very bored looking journalists.
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JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
I sympathize. The bane of everyone who's ever had to give a presentation in an unfamiliar place.
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
As most survivors were Swedish nationals, the hospitals will definitely have asked for name and d.o.b. to search their patient records? Few survivors were unconscious, although some may not have been able to speak much at first.
It is not just the rescuers, pilots and hospitals who got a list of 'dead or missing' people but also the Estonian Emabssy in Stockholm, together with Interpol issuing a warrant for Piht's arrest dated circa 2 Oct 1994 iirc.
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
Now you are being obtuse.
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
The presenter, Lars Angstrom (_sp?) is a politician, hence his advocacy and pushing for a more affirmative conclusion didn't sit well with Westermann an academic scientist whose only professional remit was to state what she empirically observed, not come to a conclusion what caused the accident. So we had the persuasive politician and the clinical professor.
Nonetheless, the results conveyed were astonishing, given the JAIC never mentioned any deformations and just made assumptions. It now seems that key information was withheld from them and all they could do was make their own assumptions from what little they had.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
As well it shouldn't. Political advocacy has clearly tainted the group you're holding up as the paragon of scientific virtue.
And your standard pivot away from an uncomfortable fact. It's the "Hillary's emails" of this debate.
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