Ok, I watched the entire video, having already heard all those "theories", and yep, that guy is wrong. Sorry. He's not a civil engineer or a materials engineer, or an engineer at all, and he's just flat out wrong. Keep reading for a like-by-line on the things I picked out from that video
He says: Pentagon no passenger, because titanium can't vaporize and a 3 ft piece.
I say: 3 ft hub plus 3 ft blades is a 9 ft wide engine easy. And I guarantee I can turn a piece of titanium into nothing but dust given the resources. That much kinetic energy up against as immovable a building as has ever been constructed, yep, metal will turn to dust, and will take out steel-reinforced concrete with it int he process. There have been umpteen civil engineering schools do computer modeling to show exactly how it happened, including at least one report from a university in Beijing. China in on it too? Look 'em up.
He says: No other time a plane has ever been so thoroughly destroyed, or "vaporized"
Again: No plane has ever hit anything head on as strong as the Pentagon. Literally an unstoppable force against an immovable object. And the both gave some, but the ALUMINUM plane got the worst of it. Try throwing a soda can full of kerosene at a solid concrete wall at 500+ mph, it won't survive, and it'll make a heck of a dent.
He says: eye witnesses saw different planes
He's also not a psychologist, who have done hundreds of reports on the on-reliability of eye-witnesses, especially those not expecting anything and experiencing the most catastrophic event of their lives. Look up the studies, eye witnesses are horribly unreliable, as has been proven over and over.
He says: A shockwave from the Pentagon proves no plane, but an explosion instead.
I say: Do a quick experiment, clap your hands together right in front of you face. Feel that air hit your face? Yep, no explosion, but two objects colliding does push a wave of air outward in all directions. And it 500+mph, yep, that wave would be called a shockwave and would knock you off your feet. Oh, that and all the kerosene too.
He says: The Pentagon site has a white area, must be the aerial bullseye.
Or, it's a gravel construction site parking lot. Don't you think it would be easy enough to spot the HUGE FREAKING PENTAGON (a fairly unique building, I've never seen another) from above without needing the little white square on one side to know where to hit?
He says: Rumsfeld was safe on the other side of the building.
I dont know about you, but if I'm crashing something into a building, I'd be somewhere else that day. Maybe out to lunch? Morning coffee? Anything? But no, he was on the other side of the building (in his own office, no less), so he MUST have known it was going to happen on the other side. :
He says: Blah blah blah WTC Building 7
Ok, no one ever tells the full story of building 7. Remember all those stats about how big the Towers were? Well the towers FELL ON WTC 7. Check out photos
http://www.debunking911.com/WTC72.htm There was a 20 story hole in WTC 7. Add to that, there were fires, which they decided to not even fight. Then, oh yeah, there was a massive fuel oil storage facility inside the building. And, not only that, look at the aftermath (including photos linked above), it didn't fall straight down in its footprint, it did fall over away from the television camera, towards the south were the 20 story hole was.
He said: towers were the first buildings to ever fall due to fire
Experts say: There has never been another situation like this one, ever. The towers were not a solid structure, they were a "tube-in-a-tube". And the tubes got cut off when the plane went through them. There was massive structural damage. And there was massive fire damage. Either was ok, but not BOTH. And also, the towers, as the video says, were designed to withstand 707 impact. A 767 is a bigger plane that weighs more, and it did withstand the impact. BUT, they could no withstand the impact AND the fire.
He says: The building came down in free-fall.
Funny, I can't actually see the building itself, because after about 5 seconds, there is a huge cloud of dust in the way. The debris will fall at free-fall, so the cloud fell around the building at those speeds. Faster than the building was falling, I might add But he assume the building is falling at the same rate as the dust cloud around it.
He says: Underwriters Labs guy says steel couldn't have weakened.
I (A materials engineer, knowing a lot about steel and metals) say: You don't have to melt steel to weaken it. The fireproofing around supports wasn't there. So, there's steel and a huge fire around it, but the fire isn't hot enough to melt it. Let's lay, 1500F. That won't melt the steel, absolutely right. But the eutectic of the iron-carbon system in the area of steel is 1333F. That means at least part of the steel changes phases from that nice, strong combo of ferrite and cementite that we all love so much to austenite. Still solid, didn't melt, but it got a heck of a lot weaker in doing so. (where ferrite/cementite are alloys of Fe/C, austenite is a solid solution of the two. Very different things). Heat also does something known as annealing. This serves to change a very hard, strong steel into a softer, more ductile steel, one that also has a lower yield strength and a lower fracture strength. So even if it wasn't changing the structure of the steel through the whole steel beams, it was annealing the steel, causing it to weaken. Massive structural damage + phase change from ferrite/cementite to austenite + annealing or over-aging effects = catastrophic failure
He says: molten steel in basement
I say: Ever ice skated? You know how that works? Well, the pressure (force/area) on the blade (since all your weight is on a very small area) melts the ice. It doesn't increase the temperature, but the huge increase in pressure changes the water from solid to liquid. Same thing happens with all metals too, pressure can change phases just like temperature can. Also, there's something known as "adiabatic heating/cooling", which is where a constant amount of gas, when changing pressure, undergoes a change in temperature due to that change. When you rapidly compress gas to a higher pressure, the temperature goes up drastically. This is physics. The pressure of a massive building falling, compressing all the gas in the basement, would certainly undergo MASSIVE adiabatic heating, plenty to melt aluminum of possibly even iron. Another interesting point: High energy collision of aluminum with steel, resulting in fine particles of both being disbursed in a high temperature oxidizing environment. Fine particles of oxidized iron, plus fine aluminum, plus heat. See where I'm going with this? THERMITE. Not saying it happened exactly like that, but that chemical reaction to produce all that heat definitely had all its prerequisites. And any chemical reaction going on up there had excellent chances of being exothermic, giving even more heat. And one more thing: mercury. There were tons of it in groundzero after the collapse, because all those fluoresescent lightbulbs had mercury in them. Even if it's not pure mercury, mercury will alloy with other metals. In fact, it will hook up with iron, that stuff the building was made of, and will reduce the melting point drastically. The more Hg you put in with some iron, the lowering the melting point gets.
He says: explosions on lower floors,
I say: the planes sever elevators shafts and cables. Falling elevators, along with fireballs coming down the shafts. Huge pressure explosions from elevators compressing air in the shafts. Enough said.
He says: Windows blow out ahead of collapsing building
I say: Again, pressure. When a floor begin to get compress, the air has to go somewhere. The windows are easy to break, the air escapes. The top of the building is falling, of course it will cause pressure. Up in the building, windows blow out. Int he basement, no windows, you get the adiabatic compression mentioned above.
He says: Flashing lights in the buildings
Fire alarms? I know all big buildings around me have flashing strobes. Previously-mentioned pressure explosions? Don't know, but also, witnesses are the least reliable things in the world, as mentioned above.
He says: People heard lots of explosions
I say: Ever heard a piece of steel just break from force? No? It's LOUD. A one inch circular bar will go WHAM and scare the crap out of you. Imagine what a 3 or 4 foot beam of steel would sound like if it just snaps suddenly, which is what was happening. It would have to be deafening, just the energy released is HUGE, and like the guy said, there were THOUSANDS of these steel beams snapping like toothpicks when the building fell
He said: The building fell straight down, in its footprint, controlled demolition.
Look at aftermath photos, it fell all around, it damaged many other buildings, it didn't fall in its footprint, but it makes no sense for it to fall over. It was just pancaking down.
He said: Flight 93 went somewhere else.
I say: pure confusion. Every plane in the country was in the wrong place, no one knew where all the planes were when they all basically emergency landed.
He says: Black boxes
I say: Black boxe4s aren't always found, they aren't always recoverable/usable, and there was confusion over them. It's not Donald Rumsfeld's job to keep up with their status, he's not the FAA or the NTSB, he's DOD.
He says: Calls faked, because they were "weird" and cellphones won't work
I say: They used seat-back phones, not cell phones. And even if cell phones don't work at high altitude, they work at low altitude, where the plans had to be at some point. And as far as being "weird", what would you say? I'd be in complete shock, unable to appropriately respond. Shock and trauma, and not wanting to piss off your captor by talking on the phone.
He says: stuff about gold stored there
Of course they had armed guards watching while excavating all that gold, would you let the construction workers just go at it unsupervised? And if it was being moved as a pre-planned move (the gold moves ALL the time, literally, constant transactions), they would have it on a truck leaving in the morning, but wouldn't have been able to once the attack started and the streets were all closed. So they left it in a secure location and evacuated like they were told to. Simple explanation.
He said: This was all a very cunning plan by Bush et al.
Umm, aren't these the same people who rave about how dumb Bush is? And here's one: If they're ingenious and talented enough to do all of this and cover it all up in view of billions over the entire world, to get the permission to invade these other countries, then why couldn't they fabricate some WMDs in Iraq and cover that up too? This massive cover up had to fold the world and involve thousands of cohorts in mass planning in broad daylight. In Iraq, they would've needed a few dozen soldiers and a truck, and they could have completely fooled the world into thinking there were WMDs there the whole time, and been lauded the world over. If they could do 9/11, why couldn't they do that easy scam in Iraq? Maybe because they weren't lying in the first place?
Fire away.
Edit: Change 1 word about explanation for: corrected on page 3 of thread that pressure won't change solid to liquid, but it will still induce a phase change, just not a solid to liquid phase change, but instead a solid to different solid phase change (that's what writing at night will get you). This of course wouldn't result in the molten steel, but the adiabatic heating point still holds, as does alloying with other metals (mercury, aluminum) to lower the melting point.
