Plume in Flight 93 photo is different

[Mercutio]

I've provided my evidence ...[snip]

No. You have presented the conclusions that you have drawn, ostensibly from your evidence. You have not presented the evidence. You have ignored repeated requests to provide the numbers you used, where you got those numbers, and what you did with those numbers in order to arrive at the conclusions you have presented here.

I hope this helps you understand the difference between what you have presented and what you have been asked to present.

Any conclusion asserted in absence of evidence may be dismissed just as easily. If you want to be taken seriously (and you already have been given far more respect in this thread than you have earned), show us the numbers that you say you have double-checked. Not the conclusions you have drawn from them; the raw data you started with.

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

Killtown,

It has been requested repeatedly of you to post the actually numbers and math you used in your calculations. You have not done so.

We on the other had have been completely transparent in the methods we have used for our estimates.

This behavior, coupled with your refusal to address other questions posed to you, and your refusal to retract your claims which have proven to be false leave me with no choice but to come to the conclusions that you are either (1) lying, (2) willfully ignorant, or (3) trolling.

 

[Yoink]

Killtown, just in case you ARE a bigfoot believer and therefore think that my last example was just a great example of sound argument, let me offer you another example.

Say I came up to you and said "I have proof that Pluto is made entirely of cheese!" "Oh, you say, what is that proof?" "Well, I looked at a photo of some cheese and a felt that it looked a lot like Pluto--QED" (this, by the way, is exactly the evidence you have for your "theory"--you looked at a photo and "felt" that all air crashes should look like that). "But," you say, "I don't actually have any proof that Pluto ISN'T made out of cheese, but it sure seems unlikely: can you give me any evidence other than your feeling"? "Ha Ha!" I say, "You can't prove your isn't-made-of-cheese theory, therefore my is-made-of-cheese theory is proven!!!!!!!"

Can you see what is wrong with the last claim? No? Really?

 

[Killtown]

I've provided evidence that Val's plume is too big to have originated from the crater...

http://killtown.blogspot.com/2006/07/val-mcclatchey-photo-more-smoking-guns.html


You guys have provided "numbers," but you can't explain how your numbers got from point A to point B. I've tried to test your theory, but so far I can't determine how your plume was able to achieve the size of your estimations from how the plane crashed.

I thought the comparison of the B-52 crash would be able to and I was going to use that to move on with the experiment, I even said if the B-52 was going the speed of 93 that the fireball would have been thrown further, thus creating a larger plume field, but you guys rejected that, yet haven't showed me anything else to compare it with to get to point b.

Now a 1,000 posts and insults towards me later, you still haven't shown me your theory holds water.

The ball is in your court now. Find me a comparison to show how the fireball from 93 crashing reacted.

 

[Gravy]

FINALLY he's admitted he has nothing new to add. Thank you for officially resting your case, which was de facto rested long ago.

As a reminder to all, here's Killtown's claim, from post 1 of this thread:

The smoke plume in Val McClatchey's infamous photo originated at a different location than where we were told Flight 93 crashed:

So this means this plume in Val's photo was not from Flight 93 crashing.

 

[MortFurd]

I've provided evidence that Val's plume is too big to have originated from the crater...

http://killtown.blogspot.com/2006/07/val-mcclatchey-photo-more-smoking-guns.html


You guys have provided "numbers," but you can't explain how your numbers got from point A to point B. I've tried to test your theory, but so far I can't determine how your plume was able to achieve the size of your estimations from how the plane crashed.

I thought the comparison of the B-52 crash would be able to and I was going to use that to move on with the experiment, I even said if the B-52 was going the speed of 93 that the fireball would have been thrown further, thus creating a larger plume field, but you guys rejected that, yet haven't showed me anything else to compare it with to get to point b.

Now a 1,000 posts and insults towards me later, you still haven't shown me your theory holds water.

The ball is in your court now. Find me a comparison to show how the fireball from 93 crashing reacted.

Your ever lovin' diagrams don't show how you arrived at your estimate of the size of the smoke plume. Nowhere on your site do you mention how you came to the conclusion that 600ft is a "normal size for a normal plume."

 

[Gravy]

I've started a new thread for Killtown's next strongest argument:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1858020#post1858020

 

[Gravy]

Your ever lovin' diagrams don't show how you arrived at your estimate of the size of the smoke plume. Nowhere on your site do you mention how you came to the conclusion that 600ft is a "normal size for a normal plume."

Nor was the size of the plume a condition of his claim. He claimed the plume was in the wrong place. But that's all in the past now. Glad we could wrap this up.

 

[R.Mackey]

Just to recap for posterity.

YOU guys need to prove the plume could have gotten as big as you guys estimated, or MY theory is the one that holds water.

False premise. The extraordinary claim is that the plume could not have gotten to such a size. Nonetheless, folks here have done precisely what you have asked:

For you guys on here who have been questioning mister killtown, I'd like to introduce another piece of information that ought to be considered. [...] I took the liberty of consulting a nuclear engineer from a physics question and answer forum. The math follows, and while one can say that I just found some "web guy" with an opinion, the numbers are all there and can be checked.

[...] Now that still needs to be multiplied by 6-7 to get to 5-600 meters across, but if one adds debris and heating of the atmosphere, then yes, 10,000 gallons of jet fuel could give rise to a plume of about 500-600m."

[Editor's note: Thermal expansion by a factor of 6-7 is quite possible within the twelve-second minimum window, also not necessary, since the impact itself could have spread the fuel over 300 meters or more in the first second after impact. Not to mention, we don't know the cloud is spherical, and the pre-impact vector of the aircraft could easily have jetted the fuel lengthwise across Val's field of vision, so the total volume of the cloud could be much smaller and even more plausibly in bounds.]

Arkan's work puts the plume size between 250-500m (ish) given the original photo. This is way off Killtowns 2200ft but he has never provided any evidence for this assertion.

I have been looking for info on smoke plume modelling.

Best site I could find was http://www.fire.nist.gov/aloft/

I have used this program to try and model the smoke plume.

Data for a jet fuel fire was taken from

http://www.fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/fire04/PDF/f04057.pdf#search="radiative fraction jet fuel"

and I used estimates of wind speed between 9 and 25 knots as discussed here.

I get plume heights (as represented by particulate density) between 320-390m at a distance of 2-2.5km from the crash site. This would fit with Arkan's model and the picture we have seen.

Asuumptions - surface temp 21degC, standard temp lapse rate, moderate solar radiation, crash site area = burning fuel area, jet fuel particulate properties taken from standard values in the program.

As a final note, I'll add that I contacted Dr. Joe Shepherd at CalTech's Explosion Dynamics Lab:

"Buck,

I can't say anything about what this image represents. There are many
possibilities and I am uncomfortable speculating. The dispersal and combustion of fuel following a high-speed impact of an airplane into the ground is a complex event and I know of no simple way to relate the resulting plume of smoke to the quantity of fuel and type of event.

Joe Shepherd"

So, to summarize:

1. Two independent calculations, both showing their methods, indicate the plume size is reasonable.
2. The stated opinion of a distinguished expert suggests that NOBODY could infer that this single photo is anything other than it appears.
3. The complaining member's claim that we have not proven that it could have gotten this big is, simply, a lie.

If anyone wants to investigate this further, these observations are the standard to beat. Any "explanation" that does not conclusively find flaws in all three lines of reasoning is wrong. End of story.

So get to work, Stalltown. And in the meantime, apologize to Val.

 

[Killtown]

Your ever lovin' diagrams don't show how you arrived at your estimate of the size of the smoke plume. Nowhere on your site do you mention how you came to the conclusion that 600ft is a "normal size for a normal plume."

Based mostly on the radius from the center of the crater to the end of the furthest point of the burnt forest section (which I don't even think the fireball reached the furthest burnt trees) and drawing a circle.

It's fine if you laugh at how I estimated this, but YOU guys haven't proven how your plume got to be as big as you claim. You've just thrown out numbers and said "here". Your plume had to develop from the crash spot, it couldn't have developed out of thin air.

So explain to me how 93's fireball behaved and then we can move on to how the plume grew to the size you guys estimated.

 

[MortFurd]

Now a 1,000 posts and insults towards me later, you still haven't shown me your theory holds water.

You are the one advancing a theory. You therefor must prove that it "holds water."

You spout off about how the plume is in the wrong place and the wrong size, and offer nothing but your gut feelings as proof.

Show proof.

 

[Killtown]

[*]The complaining member's claim that we have not proven that it could have gotten this big is, simply, a lie.

I'm not saying it couldn't get to that size, I'm saying your haven't DEMONSTRATED how it got to that size. Did 93 blow up in midair? No, it crashed and no one can tell my how the fireball reacted.

I suggested it reacted like the B-52 crash and times that by however we need to be reasonable to grew the plume to the whooping 2,000-3,000 ft across it needed to be.

 

[Killtown]

You are the one advancing a theory. You therefor must prove that it "holds water."

You spout off about how the plume is in the wrong place and the wrong size, and offer nothing but your gut feelings as proof.

Show proof.

I did. To say I didn't is a bold face lie. You may not like, or accept my evidence, but if my evidence doesn't support my theory, that doesn't automatically PROVE your theory.

You guys still haven't proven YOUR theory, regardless of what you think of mine.

 

[Pardalis]

So explain to me how 93's fireball behaved and then we can move on to how the plume grew to the size you guys estimated.

How DO YOU think a fire balls behaves? Doesnt a fire ball, when the fire is consumed, expands in a plume of smoke, gets carried away by wind and eventually dissipates in the air?

What is odd about Val's picture?

I remind you that there is no conclusive timing of when it was taken, so we don't know for sure how much time after the crash the pic is supposed to be.

 

[R.Mackey]

Based mostly on the radius from the center of the crater to the end of the furthest point of the burnt forest section (which I don't even think the fireball reached the furthest burnt trees) and drawing a circle.

It's fine if you laugh at how I estimated this, but YOU guys haven't proven how your plume got to be as big as you claim. You've just thrown out numbers and said "here". Your plume had to develop from the crash spot, it couldn't have developed out of thin air.

I'd take you up on that offer, if the consequences of your delusion weren't so severe.

You're trying to determine how big a fireball was from ruddy Google Earth. No way in the world are you going to properly estimate the maximum extent of char from a satellite photo taken long after the fact. The fireball could easily have been larger than that.

The smoke cloud is by definition wider than the fireball. It would have cooled as it expanded. Even before it rose, it could have pushed through the trees.

The smoke cloud further expanded as it rose, through residual convection, mixing, diffusion, and dispersion from crosswinds.

You would have saved yourself a world of ridicule, not to mention potential legal action, if you'd simply presented your thoughts and ASKED WHETHER YOU'D GOTTEN IT RIGHT before posting your laughably simple analysis as gospel. Please bookmark this painful lesson for the future.

 

[R.Mackey]

I'm not saying it couldn't get to that size, I'm saying your haven't DEMONSTRATED how it got to that size. Did 93 blow up in midair? No, it crashed and no one can tell my how the fireball reacted.

Another lie, and another non-sequitur, all wrapped in one.

You said we hadn't "proved" how it "could" get to that size. See my post. We did. Case closed.

We don't have to "Demonstrate" how it "did" get to that size, either.

We don't have to crash a fueled aircraft, at 500+ knots, steep dive and rolled nearly inverted, just to get you to agree. You just aren't that special.

 

[twinstead]

You guys still haven't proven YOUR theory, regardless of what you think of mine.

The only way to prove any part of this is for YOU to prove that plume is impossible. Otherwise, the fact the plume could very well be from flight 93 and all the other corroborating evidence that you fail to even acknowledge falsifies your theory.

Again, why do you keep with this plume thing? Why don't you start addressing the other evidence?

 

[Pardalis]

We don't have to crash a fueled aircraft, at 500+ knots, steep dive and rolled nearly inverted, just to get you to agree.

We don't have to, something very similar happened the very same day.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/888644e6b1dd0f08c.png[/qimg]

Killtown, granted it didn't crash in the ground, but doesn't it look a hell of alot like the plume in Val's picture? Can't you see in the video how plumes of smoke "behave"?

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?doc...71&q=plane+hit

 

[Killtown]

The fireball could easily have been larger than that.

The smoke cloud is by definition wider than the fireball. It would have cooled as it expanded. Even before it rose, it could have pushed through the trees.

The smoke cloud further expanded as it rose, through residual convection, mixing, diffusion, and dispersion from crosswinds.

Fine, now PROVE your claims then. How did it get from point A to point B?

 

[Pardalis]

Fine, now PROVE your claims then. How did it get from point A to point B?

According to you, how else a cloud of smoke should behave?