When I have a very good understanding of physics and of science in general, having earned almost every dollar I've ever earned in science laboratories or science classrooms, why not be open minded to what I'm saying?
I have spent my life as a scientist, starting when I took extra science classes in high school and won first place in science competitions, etc. I was accepted into medical school at age 17, accepted at Stanford, graduated valedictorian, graduated with a science degree on the honor rolls, earned a PhD early, completed a postdoctoral fellowship, industry experience, peer reviewed journal articles with my name as first author..............
And I lived in lower Manhattan and smelled the strange fire coming from Ground Zero with my own nose. Darn it! The size of the fire doesn't determine the smell. It's what is ON FIRE that determines the smell. You don't have to be a physics whiz to understand this.
Aluminum airplanes cannot pierce through steel beams WITHOUT SHOWING SIGNS THAT THEY HIT STEEL BEAMS! Crash physics are easy to understand. Can a fast car hit a tree without damage to the car? No. And cars are made of steel, not aluminum.
Not hardly dearie.
In the first place, you are not a physicist, so whether you passed beginner physics or not is irrelevant to the discussion. There are individuals on this board with serious degrees in various physics disciplines, so if we're going to "argue from authority", I'm inclined to lean toward the folks who have spent the vast majority of their lives studying said discipline, and guess what? Every single one of them says you're mistaken.
Secondly, your particular credentials are in the field of medical biology, IIRC (although please correct me if I misstated). Quite frankly, you are not a member of a discipline that is needed to understand what happened on 9/11, so your credentials, impressive though they may be, are in YOUR field, not the fields needed (such as architecture, physics, aeronautics, structural engineering, and fire disciplines, to name a few) to really grasp the enormity of what happened there. Your personal incredulity is not the measure you should be using; what you SHOULD be using is the research conducted by people IN THOSE FIELDS who have pretty much all (with a few exceptions that have subsequently been proven wrong by their peers) said that two planes flew into the WTC towers, caused major structural damage and fires, and subsequently were a major contributing factor to the towers collapsing.
Third, I'm quite frankly amazed that you are still persisting in your lunatic theory that the planes should have bounced off of the WTC and fallen to the ground, and that because we don't see the damage to the planes, that somehow translates to "there were no planes". Newsflash m'dear; the planes were virtually DISINTEGRATED. They were traveling at their upper speed limit with no attempt made to slow down before plowing into a relatively thin skin of aluminum, glass, and steel (no more than a foot thick, and the steel columns were hollow as well, IIRC); what exactly did you THINK was going to happen? Something traveling that fast and plowing into something that was at least partially (probably close to fifty percent, taking into account the aluminum cladding and glass that comprised part of the outer shell of the WTC) made of material softer than itself is barely going to be slowed down by something like that! Inertia and kinetic energy can EASILY account for the planes being able to penetrate the building, as well as the fact that the buildings were made up of nearly 95% AIR! What was going to stop it; the steel? Please; unless you think those columns were made up of all one piece or something, that's ludicrous. Of course the columns would give way at their joints; that's the weak spot of the columns! It's like the game Red Rover; the weak spot that allows you to break the chain is ALWAYS where two people are holding hands. The speed the planes were traveling at was enough to break the chain at numerous locations.
Fourth, no one is arguing that the fire carried an unusual smell, but it is easily accounted for when you take into account what was in the towers; i.e. computer materials, drywall, fabrics from upholstery, wood, metal, glass, electronic components, plastic, fiber optics, and sadly, human bodies. For God's sake, woman, you have two individuals in this very thread who have spent YEARS dealing with and studying the physics of fires; if there were something odd or wrong about those fires, they would have known! The hundreds of firefighters, first responders, and investigators would have known! Again, your personal incredulity does not constitute a reliable factor by which wrongness should be measured!
I'm sick and tired of you trying to claim expertise you do not possess, Dusty. You have a PhD; fine, whatever, I'm glad for you, but do your work within the confines of that discipline, because that's what you're TRAINED in. If you want to expand your horizons, great; but go to school FIRST before you start trying to step to people who have YEARS of expertise in their fields to back up what they're saying. If someone like me, who has little experience in ANY of the fields I mentioned above that would be REQUIRED to fully understand the events of that day can see right through your BS, then you have problems. My area of expertise lies in other directions; namely military intelligence and TTPs, or Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures, coming from almost nine years spent as an officer in the United States Army. And using that, I can see right through the line of BS you are trying to sell, because what you are proposing makes absolutely NO sense if you're talking about the reasons behind why someone would do this. There's little or no gain for anyone in this entire scenario; even the terrorists, while gaining the overreactions of fear and panic in this country, have schooled us well and made us realize that we are vulnerable, and I along with thousands of others are working to make damn sure we aren't that vulnerable again. We aren't perfect at it yet, but we damn sure learn fast. You could learn a thing or two from that.