Split Thread The Towers should not hve collapsed (split from Gravysites)

[Minadin]

How exactly did he misrepresent UL?

Kevin Ryan is an idiot and a liar who got off easy being fired only because that was the most severe punishment available.

 

[Dabljuh]

Funny, when you used the word "wrong" it sounded like you intended to disagree with my point, but then you proceeded to agree with it. Okay, as long as it's clear in the end that when you say "wrong" you actually mean "correct," no problem, we're still communicating.

No, I think we do have a difference there. But more on that later.

And explaining more, explaining more accurately, and making accurate predictions are all things that support theories, so better theories are better-supported theories. Oh, wait, that's you using "wrong" to mean "correct" again. Okay, cool. Understood.

I understood that by what you meant "supported theories" means "Supported by the main stream scientific consensus" instead of "supported by evidence" - Cool, ok

I'm not assuming it, I'm pointing it out. The properties of steel are well known. The analysis of stresses in moment frames is a well-developed practice. The mechanisms of combustion and heat transfer are well understood; so much so that I was able to develop my own computer simulations of fire propagation as a high school student. Structural engineers must know how to determine when buildings will collapse in order to design buildings that don't, with great reliability.

I have no doubt that you are a talented individual.

Meanwhile, no building of significant size has ever been caused to collapse by the use of thermite. Not one.

Are you sure of that?

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,851012,00.html

Thermite firebombs were invented in 1918 and first used 1936. Thermite was very well used to bring buildings down. I'm going to assume the development in 1918 means that they also tested the thermite on buildings to some degree, and hence I argue buildings of significant size have been destroyed by thermite for 90 years.

Of course these weren't black ops arsonists but air force bombers but I didn't find any 'regular' criminal arson cases where thermite had been used within 30s of googling.

Ah, very good. You've correctly perceived the gist of my analogy. Your thermite theory cannot be falsified with evidence, and thus does not even qualify as a scientific theory.

Here, you are committing the central fallacy. You're confusing the impossibility of proving an universal negative with the ease of proving a local negative. You can very easily test for the presence or absence of something in a limited environment. You can test for the presence of, say, iron in a glass of water. You can test for the presence of, say, radioactive materials in someone's blood tract.

So, saying "Prove to me that the pink invisible unicorn doesn't exist" (An universal negative) is not comparable to saying "Prove to me that I have no radioactive materials in my blood stream" - One proposition, the universal existence of the pink invisible unicorn, cannot be falsified with any evidence. On the other hand, a geiger counter or whatever they used to find the non-beta-radiating polonium in the russian spy, can be tested for.

On the other hand, saying "Prove to me that Thermite doesn't exist" would be... well... just plain dumb. Because you can actually show it does. But eventually then you take a bath in linguistics.

You can prove me wrong about that, of course, by pointing out evidence that you would accept that would falsify your theory.

There is a variety of hypothetical evidence that could, in theory, demonstrate the absence of thermite. For example, one could test for the presence of thermite or thermite residue by looking for it in the entire debris. One could test for thermite residue by looking for it in the dust.

Of course, both these tests were already performed by Prof. Jones, but unfortunately, their result does not support the "There was no thermate in the WTC" hypothesis.

Do you own a digital camera or a video camera? If so, try this experiment: aim your TV remote control at the camera, and look at the LCD viewfinder while pushing buttons on the remote.

My Canon digital camera, which uses similar color mosaic filters and CCDs to most video cameras, easily "sees" the infrared dot projected by remote controls. In fact, it displays the dot as white, meaning it's seeing it on all three color channels, not just the red one.

This is some awesome stuff. Kudos. I didn't know about that. I'm playing around with my newfound free infrared vision right now!

The CCDs are sensitive to infrared light. Digital cameras and video cameras are supposed to filter out infrared light, in order to have a similar color response to the human eye. But guess what? The filters don't work perfectly. Who'd'a thought? When I heat a steel wire up to bright red-hot (about 800 degrees C), my camera records it as yellow-white (falsely indicating well over 1200 degrees C).

Now here I see two problems with this.

First, do a control. Get yourself a LED of any of the colors blue, red or green. Wire it up, and film it with your camera. You will find that - regardless of the original color of the LED - your cheap camera will display it as white. The reason for this seems to be simply that exposed to a direct light source - even one that is otherwise imperceptible to the human eye - a cheap camera with an open blend overloads and displays white. So no - the camera doesn't just display any infrared light source as 'white', it in fact display all lights as 'white' when exposed to them directly.

But here's the real kicker: The camera that recorded the WTC fires and the molten metal obviously wasn't cheap. Because unlike my cheap cam, it never displays any white flames. In fact, it displays them red to orange, like they would look like in real life. Do you think, that maybe, those reporter type cameras, do not have cheap-IR sensitive CCDs? Or do you suppose they use some sort of IR filter? Because I mean, those reporter types would sure like to film a nice fire now and then, and they'd get laughed out of their job if the fire were displayed in entirely wrong colors.

And it's still one of the central arguments - It doesn't matter what exactly is the glowing liquid's temperature is (Although we could pin down more accurately what it may be if we could more accurately estimate what its true temperature is) but the fact that it is - even with all the camera malfunction you can muster - far, far hotter than any part of the fire in the WTC. The fire isn't white. The only white parts are the smoke. So the molten liquid is still the hottest part in the scene.

So, while your argument has been the best one, most entertaining one, and most interesting one so far to disprove the thermite hypothesis, I can reject it on not just one but two grounds - The fact that isn't as cheap as my cam (demonstrated by displaying the normal fire in a regular fashion) and the fact that regardless of that, the molten liquid is still far hotter than any part of the fire.

But still, thank you for your *good* attempt.

Remember the part about the phenomena a theory being necessary to explain must first actually exist?

I still think this formulation is a failure. How do you know what "exists" if not by the formulation of a theory about the phenomenon's existence and testing for its correctness? I think you're confused about what you mean to say, to be honest. I believe you're about to propose that it's impossible to prove the absence of something. But you're confusing universal negatives and local negatives. This thought is probably your last excuse as to why you couldn't refute the hypothesis yet.

Ok, lets talk theoretically here. I propose that the pink invisible unicorn hops around the lawn twice daily. Now this is not a scientific hypothesis according to fallibilism because the truth value of its prediction cannot possibly be determined under any circumstances ever.

However, the truth value of the statement "There was thermite used on 9/11" can be determined. Get yourself the proper tools and start analyzing the evidence. As such it is not something that cannot be tested for.

Of course now that the entirety of the evidence in that area was destroyed by FEMA in the biggest obstruction of justice ever, it is no longer possible to test it. But then there's still eyewitnesses reporting molten metal, nasa noticing ridiculously high temperatures only with the buildings that collapsed, not the ones that merely catched fire, and of course the notorious video. Using this secondary evidence we can still test for the presence of thermite. For example, if we ask all the witnesses "Did you see any molten metal" and they will _all_ say "no" or if the youtube video simply didn't exist or if NASA had reported completely normal temperatures, those may be valid falsifications.

But you are confused. You're thinking, your difficulty of falsifying the thermate hypothesis is because there it is an unscientific, unfalsifiable theory. But it is not. Your difficulty falsifying it is because that's what actually happened.

Take a close look at a candle flame. What colors do you see? Now, what is that temperature that office fires cannot heat anything to a higher temperature than?

A candle flame is not like an office fire. A candle has sufficient oxygen to burn all the gaseous paraffin and can burn in excess of 1100° - Also, air has a very high emissivity due to the virtue of it being translucent, whereas steel is limited in brightness by its surface. An office fire - any large fire not in a jet engine - will be oxygen starved by comparison, and as such be massively cooler.

Take this great article about flame temperature in the WTC on some of the basics - It's great until the point where it explains the WTC collapse based on pancaking.

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

Most organics including wood burn with a maximum flame temperature of about 1,970 degrees C. That's with no pre-heating of the reagents. Of course, in a large sustained fire, pre-heating of the reagents would be expected. So, you were saying?

that's ultimately not true, as long as we're talking about earth's atmosphere and/or an office fire. Read the article linked above.

Everyone? Universities in foreign countries hostile to the U.S.? Insurance companies that would stand to recover billions of dollars if a 9/11 inside job were proven? Eager young reporters dreaming of being the next Woodward and Bernstein?

Maybe more like 'dreaming of disappearing randomly', 'losing their jobs', 'becoming hobos', and consequently being stalked and harassed by Ryan McPherson.

And not even to say something remotely sensible. If there's nothing that can explain certain phenomena, then thermite cannot explain those phenomena. Perhaps you meant to say "there's nothing besides thermite that can explain certain phenomena," but I can see why you would be reluctant to make such a statement, knowing you'd be asked to support it and cannot.

As I said, I am a fallibilist. And I can without a problem make a statement like the following:

There's no hypothesis besides a thermite hypothesis that can explain ALL phenomena.

But you are right in some way. It's damn hard to prove the absence of thermite after it's presence has been pretty much damn proven. But don't point at me for being unfair - I'm not. Point at the evidence not agreeing with you. The evidence is to blame for your difficulty.

Or to say it differently: "I can be absolutely certain that OJ is innocent, but this damning evidence makes it impossible for me to prove it!"

Actually I found a blog entry with relevance to your confusion. Don't worry. It's normal to be confused when one has been proven wrong with something as central to one's understanding of the world, oneself, his country, governments, people, etc...
http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/you-cant-prove-a-negative/

 

[Dabljuh]

As far as I can tell, we (the entire construction industry) are waiting to hear about how all this fireproofing is unneccessary.

I'm going to ignore you now. You see, there is - much to my surprise - some people here who actually bring forth arguments and dealing or even reading your posts takes time away from reading and dealing with them.

 

[Dabljuh]

I don't understand why it should take long at all. Since I've gone ahead and called your bluff fallen into your trap by calling your thermite theory unfalsifiable, you can make me look really silly, with hardly any effort at all, by simply giving some examples of evidence you'd accept as refuting your thermite theory.

However, I'm going to sleep now, so I'll be blissfully unaware of my impending humiliation until tomorrow morning.

Respectfully,
Myriad

Yes, you figured out your fallacy before I even wrote my post. You're a smart person. I only humiliate those that do not deliver what they promise. Although the idea that cameras essentially suck and lack calibration has been brought forth, but no one has so far had the idea of suggesting that the IR-receptibility of CCD cams may be responsible for grossly distorted results. However in the case we're talking about, this doesn't seem to be the issue, and still doesn't make the fact go away that barring all calibration errors, the fire is still not even nearly as hot as the molten liquid.

 

[1337m4n]

Am I hallucinating or is Dabljuh's ENTIRE argument ultimately based on the infamous Youtube video of stuff dripping out of one of the towers?

That was dealt with in yet another Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhHzMttUKO0&feature=related

I know, I know, I'm on "ignore"...for the third time...lol.

 

[twinstead]

YAlthough the idea that cameras essentially suck and lack calibration has been brought forth, but no one has so far had the idea of suggesting that the IR-receptibility of CCD cams may be responsible for grossly distorted results. However in the case we're talking about, this doesn't seem to be the issue, and still doesn't make the fact go away that barring all calibration errors, the fire is still not even nearly as hot as the molten liquid.

The reason the idea that cameras essentially suck and lack calibration has been brought forth is it is a CRITICAL flaw in your theory. You can deny it all you want, but this is a huge issue. It is imperative IMO that you bring forth some other compelling corroborating evidence before you dance around declaring victory against the mighty JREF.

Just keeping it real.

 

[GlennB]

- It doesn't matter what exactly is the glowing liquid's temperature is (Although we could pin down more accurately what it may be if we could more accurately estimate what its true temperature is) but the fact that it is - even with all the camera malfunction you can muster - far, far hotter than any part of the fire in the WTC. The fire isn't white. The only white parts are the smoke. So the molten liquid is still the hottest part in the scene.

If it's molten steel we see falling, how come it solidifies into large silvery lumps within one or two seconds of its descent? Why doesn't it pass through the "normal" range of colours associated with molten steel that is cooling?

Given the likely resolution available of the camera involved it's fair to say that each of those silvery falling lumps is at least the size of a shoe-box, and probably a good deal bigger. Compare the sizes with the (known) size of the windows, for example. How long would it take a lump of molten steel - falling through air at about 20° - to cool to a silvery appearance?

Look into this and you'll find that your theory contains its own debunking.

 

[Grizzly Bear]

I'm going to ignore you now. You see, there is - much to my surprise - some people here who actually bring forth arguments and dealing or even reading your posts takes time away from reading and dealing with them.

You made the claim that steel's redundancy is such that fire cannot cause it to fail. Apparently you've still not got an answer to why they use fire proofing in the first place. I love how you evade

EDIT: I know I know, I'll be the next on ignore...

EDIT 2: Steel cannot fail in fire? Should have told building 5 that one...

WTC 5 connection failures
Connection failure
Steel connection failures

 

[ElMondoHummus]

EDIT: I know I know, I'll be the next on ignore...

The biggest problem isn't that he ignores us. It's that he ignores the reality of the theory he claims to refute. Again, he complained earlier about the fires being the cause, and just before this about the jets impacts being the cause. He still hasn't commented on the actual story of impact dislodging fireproofing, then fire weakening the structure.

It's as if that explanation doesn't exist for him. He'd rather single out elements than consider the explanation as a whole. Just like Jones did in his Bentham paper. Isolation of elements to illuminate or discuss is one thing; isolation in order to pretend that the singled-out element is the entire theory is another, and it's terribly dishonest to boot.

 

[Bananaman]

Dubljah:

I only humiliate those that do not deliver what they promise.

The only person you've humiliated on this thread is yourself.

You have to remember, Dub, you're the least intelligent person on this thread. When you've understood that you'll have made your first big step towards self knowledge: something you're clearly lacking in given the disparity between your ego and your intellect.

Bananaman.

 

[Minadin]

I'm going to ignore you now. You see, there is - much to my surprise - some people here who actually bring forth arguments and dealing or even reading your posts takes time away from reading and dealing with them.

Yes, yes, run away. That's certain to be easier than coming up with a fitting response to my reasonable question. Because, you see, in order to answer it, you would have to think about the problem, and maybe challenge your preconceived (and wrong) notions about how building structures behave. We wouldn't want you to strain yourself, though.

 

[doobiedoright]

Are you done wasting time yet?

I fail to see how correcting a outright lie is a waste of time!

 

[doobiedoright]

Every theory is viable until you are able to refute it. (with some limits) If you dismiss theories without examining the evidence you have no basis to believe that your opinion is correct. In fact, your opinions would simply be determined by chance, or by whatever the MSM or your parents told you.

I can reject the "fake moon landing" idea with real evidence in 30 seconds. Why do you reject it if you have never examined the evidence? I might be wrong, after all.

And with regards to chemtrails... While it is clear that real chemicals can be - and are being - delivered by real planes in the real world, and occasionally even with humans as the targets, I think the chemtrails-people are for the most part just arguing from a point of view where they have not the slightest understanding how modern air traffic is organized or how to explain certain metereological phenomena - then they point out girder patterns in the sky and go ZOMG CHEMTRAILS!!!1

Then please refute one of your friends crazy theory's saying DEW brought the towers down!!!!!!

 

[Jonnyclueless]

And as always Dabljuh is making vast assumptions for his attempt at an argument. he is assuming that the circumstances on 9/11 were that of a common office fire and is making assumptions about the exact material make up of an office full of materials he knows nothing about , including your typical office 767.

So thank you for your assumptions of how YOU think the colors and how much oxigen such a fire would have. We're gonna stick to reality kiddo. And yes you are wasting your time. I suggest going to a conspiracy forum where people are happy to use hearsay and wild speculation and assumption to enforce an idiotic theory that once you assume these assumptions to be true, makes much less sense.

But let's remember one thing. So far not one piece of physical evidence has been shown to support these conspiracy theories. Dabljuh is unable to make a single positive argument to a controlled demolition.

 

[Jonnyclueless]

Yes, you figured out your fallacy before I even wrote my post. You're a smart person. I only humiliate those that do not deliver what they promise. Although the idea that cameras essentially suck and lack calibration has been brought forth, but no one has so far had the idea of suggesting that the IR-receptibility of CCD cams may be responsible for grossly distorted results. However in the case we're talking about, this doesn't seem to be the issue, and still doesn't make the fact go away that barring all calibration errors, the fire is still not even nearly as hot as the molten liquid.

This is some funny stuff!! Welcome to romper room kids, where you can play in imagination land and make up anything you want.

 

[Myriad]

Thermite firebombs were invented in 1918 and first used 1936. Thermite was very well used to bring buildings down. I'm going to assume the development in 1918 means that they also tested the thermite on buildings to some degree, and hence I argue buildings of significant size have been destroyed by thermite for 90 years.

It does seem very likely that thermite (like matches, kerosene, oily rags, and hundreds of other substances) have been used to ignite and/or accelerate fires which ultimately caused buildings to collapse. But that's not what we're talking about here, is it? If your argument were that thermite was used to start the fires in the World Trade Center, and the fires (combined with the structural damage) eventually caused the towers to collapse, then we'd have a completely different unnecessary theory. (Unnecessary, in that case, because fueled airplanes crashing into the buildings appear sufficient by themselves to ignite and accelerate the fires, without requiring the addition of thermite.)

Here, you are committing the central fallacy. You're confusing the impossibility of proving an universal negative with the ease of proving a local negative. You can very easily test for the presence or absence of something in a limited environment. You can test for the presence of, say, iron in a glass of water. You can test for the presence of, say, radioactive materials in someone's blood tract.

So, saying "Prove to me that the pink invisible unicorn doesn't exist" (An universal negative) is not comparable to saying "Prove to me that I have no radioactive materials in my blood stream" - One proposition, the universal existence of the pink invisible unicorn, cannot be falsified with any evidence. On the other hand, a geiger counter or whatever they used to find the non-beta-radiating polonium in the russian spy, can be tested for.

On the other hand, saying "Prove to me that Thermite doesn't exist" would be... well... just plain dumb. Because you can actually show it does. But eventually then you take a bath in linguistics.

None of this is in any way relevant to my argument. Mind if I move on to the point? Thanks.

There is a variety of hypothetical evidence that could, in theory, demonstrate the absence of thermite. For example, one could test for the presence of thermite or thermite residue by looking for it in the entire debris. One could test for thermite residue by looking for it in the dust.

I'm glad that you'd accept the absence of thermite residue (the only necessary components of which are iron and aluminum oxide) as falsifying the thermite theory. Unfortunately, the absence of iron and aluminum oxide in the WTC dust and debris would also falsify the "theory" that there were large aluminum-clad steel-framed buildings present in the first place.

Similarly, since my Embarrassed Moon theory claims that the moon cries wet salty tears into the sea out of embarrassment, I'd accept failure to find any water or salt in the sea as falsifying the theory. So my theory is falsifiable too! Hey, this science stuff is easier than I thought it would be!

Unless, of course, there's some flaw in that reasoning.

Of course, both these tests were already performed by Prof. Jones, but unfortunately, their result does not support the "There was no thermate in the WTC" hypothesis.

In other words, he did find iron and aluminum oxide in the dust? And other elements too, perhaps, that might be used in some thermite-like formulation or another but would also be present in the towers without thermite? Sorry, this is not convincing.

And you never did quite answer the original question. You mentioned some tests that might be done, but my question was, what evidence (for instance, what results of what tests) would you accept as falsifying the thermite theory? So far, you've implied one possibility: if the tower debris contained no iron or aluminum oxide. Is that it? Because if the only evidence that would falsify your theory is no iron or aluminum oxide in the remains of a steel and aluminum-clad building (full of office equipment containing plenty of additonal aluminum, some of which is known to have been exposed to fire), that's still an unfalsifiable theory.

This is some awesome stuff. Kudos. I didn't know about that. I'm playing around with my newfound free infrared vision right now!

Now here I see two problems with this.

First, do a control. Get yourself a LED of any of the colors blue, red or green. Wire it up, and film it with your camera. You will find that - regardless of the original color of the LED - your cheap camera will display it as white. The reason for this seems to be simply that exposed to a direct light source - even one that is otherwise imperceptible to the human eye - a cheap camera with an open blend overloads and displays white. So no - the camera doesn't just display any infrared light source as 'white', it in fact display all lights as 'white' when exposed to them directly.

Yes, bright light of any color including infrared will overload all the color sensors and register as white. (Annoying, when trying to photograph the sun's deep red disk at sunset.)

Less bright light will partially overload the color sensors, causing distortion of the color of the light source.

Metal heated to incandescence is a light source. I have already reported that metal heated to about 800 degrees C is a sufficient infrared light source to distort the color that the camera registers.

But here's the real kicker: The camera that recorded the WTC fires and the molten metal obviously wasn't cheap. Because unlike my cheap cam, it never displays any white flames. In fact, it displays them red to orange, like they would look like in real life.

My relatively cheap camera images flames just fine, with quite reasonably accurate color. Most flames are not very intense light sources, while incandescent metal is an intense light source in the infrared.

Do you think, that maybe, those reporter type cameras, do not have cheap-IR sensitive CCDs?

Nope. All CCD's are IR sensitive. Any practical difference must be in the filters.

Or do you suppose they use some sort of IR filter? Because I mean, those reporter types would sure like to film a nice fire now and then, and they'd get laughed out of their job if the fire were displayed in entirely wrong colors.

All CCD cameras use in IR filter. Those filters are good enough to image flames correctly (as in my camera) but that doesn't mean we can assume they can image an intense IR source like incandescent metal correctly.

And it's still one of the central arguments - It doesn't matter what exactly is the glowing liquid's temperature is (Although we could pin down more accurately what it may be if we could more accurately estimate what its true temperature is) but the fact that it is - even with all the camera malfunction you can muster - far, far hotter than any part of the fire in the WTC. The fire isn't white. The only white parts are the smoke. So the molten liquid is still the hottest part in the scene.

You cannot judge the temperature of the fire that is, as you point out, shrouded in smoke, by its color. And you certainly have not shown any evidence of specific limits on how hot the hottest part of the fire could be. Normal indoor fires of no great size or intensity can easily produce air temperatures above the fire of 800 degrees C, the temperature at which my camera records hot metal as yellow-white. Any visible flame you see is hotter than that. Additional local sources of additional heating include locations where incoming fresh air causes more intense combustion than the fire's overall average; zones in which heat is trapped allowing the temperature to rise higher despite the combustion rate being lower (when we create this effect on purpose, it's called a kiln); local presence of reactive chemicals (such as battery acid); local presence of reactive metals; and high-current electrical arcing (such as from damaged UPS batteries).

So, since you have no reliable measurement or line of argument of how hot the liquid was, and no reliable measurement or line of argument of how hot the hottest parts of the fire can be, that adds up to no evidence that the liquid is hotter than the fire.

I'll acknowledge, though, that the liquid probably is the "hottest part of the scene" -- "the scene" being the plainly visible facade of that side of the building at that particular time. Heat transfer by movement of heated fluids is called convection. That means the source of the heat in the liquid is not in plain view. This is not a surprise and doesn't preferentially support your theory at all, since the thermite reaction you theorize must also be occurring out of plain view.

So, while your argument has been the best one, most entertaining one, and most interesting one so far to disprove the thermite hypothesis, I can reject it on not just one but two grounds - The fact that isn't as cheap as my cam (demonstrated by displaying the normal fire in a regular fashion) and the fact that regardless of that, the molten liquid is still far hotter than any part of the fire.

It's where you go from "hottest part of the scene" (where the scene by definition is what is in plain view) to "hotter than any part of the fire" which you have no evidence for whatsoever, that you go wrong.

You have also not offered any evidence that a more expensive camera, capable of imaging flames correctly, would be able to correctly image an intense IR source such as incandescent flowing liquid. You're just speculating there, and your speculation (based on the knowledge that all CCDs are sensitive to infrared, and that all filters are compromise choices between filtering out more of the unwanted wavelengths versus allowing as much as possible of the desired wavelengths through) is very likely to be wrong.

You said a lot more in your post, but not anything that means very much. A true theory (more accurately, a theory that has not yet been falsified) is not indistinguishable from an unfalsifiable theory. The theory of universal gravitation would be falsified if a substance were discovered that does not attract other mass in proportion to its mass. That no such material has been discovered so far doesn't make gravity unfalsifiable, it just shows it's true, so far. But if the only possible findings that could falsify a theory are counterfactual -- if 2 + 2 = 5, or if no water is in the ocean, or if no iron is found in the debris of a steel building -- that does not show the theory falsifiable.

Unlike the invisible pink unicorn hypotheses, the thermite theory is not inherently unfalsifiable. But inherent unfalsifiable isn't the only way a theory can be unfalsifiable. Unfalsifiability can also come about via multiple outs. For instance, the theory that Joe can psychically diagnose disease should be falsified if Joe is unable to score better than chance in a controlled test of that ability. But after scoring no better than chance in such a test, Joe claims he wasn't feeling powerful that day, and this in no way falsifies the claim that he can psychically diagnose disease. So he is permitted another test, with the proviso that he confirms at the start that he is feeling powerful. When he again scores no better than chance, he claims that the presence of skeptics is psychically interfering with his ability. It soon becomes clear that his theory that he can psychically diagnose disease is not falsifiable after all; that he has endless multiple outs and no conceivable results of any conceivable tests will ever convince him that he cannot psychically diagnose disease.

Similarly, the thermite theory should be easy to falsify, based on such evidence as:
- No known practical method for cutting horizontally through large load-bearing columns with thermite.
- No bright pyrotechnic displays typical of thermite reactions observed on the exterior columns of the building, where most of the load-bearing structure was and where the collapse initiated, at the time of collapse initiation.
- Bowing of exterior columns observed prior to collapse, inconsistent with thermite effects.
- No plausible opportunity to place thermite devices in the buildings undetected.
- No plausible motive for using thermite to cause buildings to collapse that were very likely to collapse anyhow, and were not required by anyone to collapse for any known reason.

This should be enough to falsify the thermite theory, but you have multiple outs ready, which I'm sure you're eager to regale me with in great detail. But I'm not interested in them. My claim is not that your theory is false, remember, but that it is irrelevant. In order to keep the existing evidence from falsifying your theory, you must continue using multiple outs to make collapse from thermite increasingly indistinguishable from collapse due to structural damage and fire. You can only prevent its falsification by making it unfalsifiable. It's rapidly becoming invisible pink thermite.

What conceivable findings would falsify your thermite theory?

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[van_dutch]

Well done Myriad! Your skills never cease to amaze me.

 

[Corsair 115]

The fire appears orange at best.

Relevant word bolded. Therein lies your problem.

But it wouldn't even come close to change the fact that the molten liquid is far hotter than the fire.

Seems to me that would depend greatly on just what that molten liquid is.

 

[Dabljuh]

It does seem very likely that thermite (like matches, kerosene, oily rags, and hundreds of other substances) have been used to ignite and/or accelerate fires which ultimately caused buildings to collapse. But that's not what we're talking about here, is it? If your argument were that thermite was used to start the fires in the World Trade Center, and the fires (combined with the structural damage) eventually caused the towers to collapse, then we'd have a completely different unnecessary theory. (Unnecessary, in that case, because fueled airplanes crashing into the buildings appear sufficient by themselves to ignite and accelerate the fires, without requiring the addition of thermite.)

While it may be possible for an impacting airplane to cause the building's collapse, it is still fairly improbable to happen. Fires and Aircraft impacts have happened before and never caused the complete collapse of such a building. The WTC was designed with a high degree of redundancy to make it able to specifically withstand both fires and aircraft impacts.

We're not primarily talking about starting fires using thermite here, although thermite would certainly start fires - if, for example, you look at the video, you may notice that the liquid metal seems to actually ignite a fire within seconds, behind it.

I'm glad that you'd accept the absence of thermite residue (the only necessary components of which are iron and aluminum oxide) as falsifying the thermite theory. Unfortunately, the absence of iron and aluminum oxide in the WTC dust and debris would also falsify the "theory" that there were large aluminum-clad steel-framed buildings present in the first place.

In other words, he did find iron and aluminum oxide in the dust? And other elements too, perhaps, that might be used in some thermite-like formulation or another but would also be present in the towers without thermite? Sorry, this is not convincing.

You're underestimating to the level of analysis that can be performed on suspected thermite residue. Suprisingly, aluminium doesn't burn under the conditions observed, and even when it does (just like in a thermite reaction) it'll evaporate and become a fine white smoke.

What was found was not just "steel and aluminium oxide" - What was found was thermate residue that has an entirely different elemental composition than the building. For example, it wasn't liquified structural steel, but an eutectic from iron, manganese and sulfur, with carbon, silicon, vanadium and other elements that would be expected in molten structural steel absent. And furthermore, was shown to have been in a liquid state - something which is just impossibly the result of all the sources of fire observed and predicted in the standard theory.

And before you ask, no, they also tested for the prediction that a thermite reaction would occur if you pour molten aluminium over yellow-hot glowing rusty steel.

So your objection is merely the result of ignorance with regards to the details to the analysis.

Similarly, since my Embarrassed Moon theory claims that the moon cries wet salty tears into the sea out of embarrassment, I'd accept failure to find any water or salt in the sea as falsifying the theory.

If we assume no level of sophistication in the analysis, no. However in this case, there really are not any known alternative explanations for the analyzed residue.

And you never did quite answer the original question. You mentioned some tests that might be done, but my question was, what evidence (for instance, what results of what tests) would you accept as falsifying the thermite theory? So far, you've implied one possibility: if the tower debris contained no iron or aluminum oxide. Is that it?

You're strawmanning. Of coure steel and aluminum would be expected to be found in the towers. But not molten steel. Much less, mysterious molten iron. And the biggest failure at falsifying the thermate theory would be finding thermate residue. Which they found.

Because if the only evidence that would falsify ...

You're strawmanning, due to a lack of knowledge on the subject.

It is perfectly possible to falsify the presence of thermite residue in the debris of an aluminium clad steel building. It were perfectly possible to falsify the presence of thermate residue in the WTC, were there no thermate residue in the first place. Thermates having been present around 9/11 are the most plausible explanation for the failure to do so.

That line of questioning has been answered. Lets move to the other.

Yes, bright light of any color including infrared will overload all the color sensors and register as white. (Annoying, when trying to photograph the sun's deep red disk at sunset.)

Less bright light will partially overload the color sensors, causing distortion of the color of the light source.

This distortion being mostly of the "white" or "purple" variety. However, the distortion is usually recognizable as a distortion.

Metal heated to incandescence is a light source. I have already reported that metal heated to about 800 degrees C is a sufficient infrared light source to distort the color that the camera registers.

You're saying that on your camera, 800°C is enough for a white out of the camera?

Try to film in broad daylight. I'm not a camera person, but I know that white outs happen when the lighting time and the aperture are not appropriate for the lighting conditions. I've actually done tests with the remote control IR and it began to become increasingly lilac/purple the more I tightened the exposure and aperture. If I, on the other hand, adapted those values to filming in a dark place and shined the IR light int them, it appeared blue.

With incandescent metals, I'd expect something similiar to happen, not because of the sensors' IR susceptibility, but simply because of exposure and aperture.

My relatively cheap camera images flames just fine, with quite reasonably accurate color.

My camera produces white-outs on every flame that I can produce (I'll admit problems producing flames below 1000°C though, like an oxygen starved fire)

Most flames are not very intense light sources, while incandescent metal is an intense light source in the infrared.

No, that's a flat out lie. It's Blackbody radiation. The percentage of light emitted in the infrared (read:below visible) does only change with temperature (it becomes SMALLER with increasing temperature, but as the overall energy emitted increases, it becomes bigger in absolute terms) but not with *what* you're heating - Be it air or metal.

All CCD cameras use in IR filter. Those filters are good enough to image flames correctly (as in my camera) but that doesn't mean we can assume they can image an intense IR source like incandescent metal correctly.

Your point that hot metal would be an IR source, where as fire would be not, is completely wrong.

From Failopedia:

In infrared photography, infrared filters are used to capture the near-infrared spectrum. Digital cameras often use infrared blockers. Cheaper digital cameras and camera phones have less effective filters and can "see" intense near-infrared, appearing as a bright purple-white color.

So... Just because your cam and my cam can see remote control, that doesn't mean the camera in question does. In fact, given its high resolution, it's tremendous ability to zoom, I'd say, your counter argument regarding CCD's abilities to see IR is fairly done.

As a backup, someone could run tests with an *expensive*, *professional* camera like used by news teams and see if he can see IR light there.

You cannot judge the temperature of the fire that is, as you point out, shrouded in smoke, by its color.

Even NIST doesn't think that many of the fires got hotter than 800°C. Remember - 500-600°C are the average, expected values for a diffuse office fire.

And you certainly have not shown any evidence of specific limits on how hot the hottest part of the fire could be. Normal indoor fires of no great size or intensity can easily produce air temperatures above the fire of 800 degrees C, the temperature at which my camera records hot metal as yellow-white.

You are aware that air would also emit IR radiation, thus, the entirety of the air above the flames in your theory, would cause white out? The IR we're talking about is just the near-infrared which doesn't have entirely different properties than red light, other than the human inability to see it.

Any visible flame you see is hotter than that. Additional local sources of additional heating include locations where incoming fresh air causes more intense combustion than the fire's overall average; zones in which heat is trapped allowing the temperature to rise higher despite the combustion rate being lower (when we create this effect on purpose, it's called a kiln); local presence of reactive chemicals (such as battery acid); local presence of reactive metals; and high-current electrical arcing (such as from damaged UPS batteries).

You are trying to argue that somehow - magically - the batteries heated themselves or something else to >1000°C ?

So, since you have no reliable measurement or line of argument of how hot the liquid was, and no reliable measurement or line of argument of how hot the hottest parts of the fire can be, that adds up to no evidence that the liquid is hotter than the fire.

We have had reasonable assumptions regarding the hotness of the fire - 500 to 800°C - With a few isolated pockets possibly achieving 1000°C for a short time.

And with your objection about cameras' ability to see IR refuted, I'll go right back and assume a lower bound of 1200°C for the liquid in question. Something which the office fire can't dream of.

I'll acknowledge, though, that the liquid probably is the "hottest part of the scene" -- "the scene" being the plainly visible facade of that side of the building at that particular time. Heat transfer by movement of heated fluids is called convection. That means the source of the heat in the liquid is not in plain view. This is not a surprise and doesn't preferentially support your theory at all, since the thermite reaction you theorize must also be occurring out of plain view.

But also for the liquid to appear at the edge of the building without an immediate source of heat visible nearby (remember how violent a thermite reaction is) we can assume that it either has been there for a while, or has travelled quite a while. As such it would have to have started out much, much, much hotter than the mere 1200°C.

It's where you go from "hottest part of the scene" (where the scene by definition is what is in plain view) to "hotter than any part of the fire" which you have no evidence for whatsoever, that you go wrong.

Given the 1 minute-long clip alone, you'd be right. But given the circumstantial evidence - more cameras watching the WTC, none of them recording particularly hot fires, it's a fairly safe bet to say that the molten liquid is hotter than any part of the fire. Especially taking into account that with an immediate heat source missing, we have to assume its starting temperature from whereever it came must have been far far hotter.

You have also not offered any evidence that a more expensive camera, capable of imaging flames correctly, would be able to correctly image an intense IR source such as incandescent flowing liquid. You're just speculating there, and your speculation (based on the knowledge that all CCDs are sensitive to infrared, and that all filters are compromise choices between filtering out more of the unwanted wavelengths versus allowing as much as possible of the desired wavelengths through) is very likely to be wrong.

CCDs are sensitive to X-Ray-Radiation too, but then again, pretty much everything is. With CCDs, they use a so called Hot Mirror. A hot mirror is a sheet of dielectric glass that reflects near-visible IR (glass by default is opaque to far IR) but allows transmission of the visible light.

For any type of professional recording, you want to filter out the near-infrared, simply because it distorts the colors that the CCD records. While even a hot filter is not perfect (A quick google sweep for a cheap one says it's 96% effective at filtering out the near infrared) I simply reject your cheap camera argument.

Similarly, the thermite theory should be easy to falsify, based on such evidence as:
- No known practical method for cutting horizontally through large load-bearing columns with thermite.
(You're not taking the lateral grid into account)
- No bright pyrotechnic displays typical of thermite reactions observed on the exterior columns of the building, where most of the load-bearing structure was and where the collapse initiated, at the time of collapse initiation.
(No, this wouldn't necessarily be visible either way, plus thermite produces white smoke, where as an oxygen starved office fire produces black smoke. Do you see the occasional white smoke?)
- Bowing of exterior columns observed prior to collapse, inconsistent with thermite effects.
(Destruction of the core columns would result in bowing of the peripherial columns)
- No plausible opportunity to place thermite devices in the buildings undetected.
(The weekend before 9/11 for the towers, 6 weeks to 9 months of time for WTC7)
- No plausible motive for using thermite to cause buildings to collapse that were very likely to collapse anyhow, and were not required by anyone to collapse for any known reason.
(They were not likely to collapse, and no one in 2001 would have assumed they would collapse due to planes)

This should be enough to falsify the thermite theory

Not by a long shot.

What conceivable findings would falsify your thermite theory?

At this point? I don't believe a conceivable finding could falsify it anymore. It's like you say - we'd have to find matter that is immune to gravity.

The only non-conspirative argument that you can offer was that there was in fact thermite in the building, and tons of it, but it wasn't planted in order to destroy the building, but in fact was merely there by accident, or because the 60th floor manager was a secret pyromaniac or something.

However, as a conspirative counter to this, we should be wondering then why NIST and all the others never found any thermite.

 

[Dabljuh]

Relevant word bolded. Therein lies your problem.

if you propose fire hotter than orange-something then I'm sure every fire protection engineer would like to know about your fascinating new theory on how you prove all their old knowledge wrong.

It also appears to me that the sun is bright. Human perception is fallible.

Seems to me that would depend greatly on just what that molten liquid is.

Wrong, Primarily, it would depend on how it got so hot.