"Highly engineered explosive" found in WTC rubble...

[Isolder74]

They also ignore why demolition companies don't use thermite if it was so powerful. It can't be controlled. It goes where it wants and melts in patterns shaped nothing like a 'cut.' This is of course why thermite grenades are used to sabotage equipment. Once set off the damage spreads in random ways meaning that once deployed the enemy's device will be damaged in more places then where you put the grenade. This makes the equipment more or less garbage and unrepairable without taking it completely apart, if that is even possible, and replacing every one of the damaged items in the machinery. Often this means it iseasier for the enemy to simply replace the item outright.

Demolition of buildings requires that you know exactly what your charges are going to do and when. Thermite does not start controllably, does not burn controllably and it's effects are completely random. That is not something that they want in that the idea is a controlled demolition.

Thermite is put into incendiary bombs and devices because they will cause as widespread damage as possible. I'm surprised that they haven't tried to say that White Phosphorus was used as that has higher energy output then thermite. I think the main reason is that it's by products aren't common elements found in a normal office building.

[Sea Skimmer]

[quote="Darth Wong"]One other thing I forgot to mention: the author goes into some detail explaining that thermite has a higher energy content than many explosives. But this is classic misdirection: the critical parameter is velocity, not energy content. And when the author describes speed of reaction, he provides no numbers: instead, he uses purely qualitative descriptions.[quote]

Brisance, volume of gas generation and temperature are just as important as the velocity of detonation in determining destructiveness. A very fast detonation with very little gas being expanded wouldn’t accomplish much. The type of target is also important in destructiveness, which is why no one explosive dominates. Sometimes you need high heat and high brisance, other times the largest quantity of gases possible is best. Black powder can actually work better then high explosives in some situations because of this, but no one uses black powder for anything but old guns anymore because of its low safety. Safety also works against explosives… we could have significant more powerful ones if sensitively didn’t matter so much. In the end only field experiments have ever really worked for comparing explosives actual results.

You know whats really funny though. The world trade center SHOULD have evidence of certain military propellents in it, some of which could be used for demolition if you really wanted, because the Secret Service and several police agencies kept significant stores of ammunition in the building. The stuff was cooking off for most of September 11th and was a major hazard to early rescue efforts. But of but course these people are not known for being smart.

[FSTargetDrone]

If they'd used thermite to blow up the world trade center, they'd have had to use so much we would have been able to SEE the flash from outside.

What amount would you guess would be needed? That is, they would need "to use so much," an amount so large that its delivery and installation could not possibly go unnoticed?

[Sea Skimmer]

What amount would you guess would be needed? That is, they would need "to use so much," an amount so large that its delivery and installation could not possibly go unnoticed?

Remember the WTC had an unusual design. It was supported by the outer wall, and the inner core only. Nothing in-between. If you wanted to demolish it in anything like a controlled manner (conspiracy theorists always claim HAD to have been controlled to make it drop vertically, this is the foundation of all the government explosive claims) then you’d need explosives all around the outer edge. That’d make a blatant ring of blast no matter what explosive was used. Its great how self contradicting this nonsense can get.

[Vympel]

Because it never gets old.

BUSH: So, what's the plan again?

CHENEY: Well, we need to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. So what we've decided to do is crash a whole bunch of remote-controlled planes into Wall Street and the Pentagon, say they're real hijacked commercial planes, and blame it on the towelheads; then we'll just blow up the buildings ourselves to make sure they actually fall down.

RUMSFELD: Right! And we'll make sure that some of the hijackers are agents of Saddam Hussein! That way we'll have no problem getting the public to buy the invasion.

CHENEY: No, Dick, we won't.

RUMSFELD: We won't?

CHENEY: No, that's too obvious. We'll make the hijackers Al Qaeda and then just imply a connection to Iraq.

RUMSFELD: But if we're just making up the whole thing, why not just put Saddam's fingerprints on the attack?

CHENEY: (sighing) It just has to be this way, Dick. Ups the ante, as it were. This way, we're not insulated if things go wrong in Iraq. Gives us incentive to get the invasion right the first time around.

BUSH: I'm a total idiot who can barely read, so I'll buy that. But I've got a question. Why do we need to crash planes into the Towers at all? Since everyone knows terrorists already tried to blow up that building complex from the ground up once, why don't we just blow it up like we plan to anyway, and blame the bombs on the terrorists?

RUMSFELD: Mr. President, you don't understand. It's much better to sneak into the buildings ourselves in the days before the attacks, plant the bombs and then make it look like it was exploding planes that brought the buildings down. That way, we involve more people in the plot, stand a much greater chance of being exposed and needlessly complicate everything!

CHENEY: Of course, just toppling the Twin Towers will never be enough. No one would give us the war mandate we need if we just blow up the Towers. Clearly, we also need to shoot a missile at a small corner of the Pentagon to create a mightily underpublicized additional symbol of international terrorism -- and then, obviously, we need to fake a plane crash in the middle of fucking nowhere in rural Pennsylvania.

RUMSFELD: Yeah, it goes without saying that the level of public outrage will not be sufficient without that crash in the middle of fucking nowhere.

CHENEY: And the Pentagon crash -- we'll have to do it in broad daylight and say it was a plane, even though it'll really be a cruise missile.

BUSH: Wait, why do we have to use a missile?

CHENEY: Because it's much easier to shoot a missile and say it was a plane. It's not easy to steer a real passenger plane into the Pentagon. Planes are hard to come by.

BUSH: But aren't we using two planes for the Twin Towers?

CHENEY: Mr. President, you're missing the point. With the Pentagon, we use a missile, and say it was a plane.

BUSH: Right, but I'm saying, why don't we just use a plane and say it was a plane? We'll be doing that with the Twin Towers, right?

CHENEY: Right, but in this case, we use a missile. (Throws hands up in frustration) Don, can you help me out here?

RUMSFELD: Mr. President, in Washington, we use a missile because it's sneakier that way. Using an actual plane would be too obvious, even though we'll be doing just that in New York.

BUSH: Oh, OK.

RUMSFELD: The other good thing about saying that it was a passenger jet is that that way, we have to invent a few hundred fictional victims and account for a nonexistent missing crew and plane. It's always better when you leave more cover story to invent, more legwork to do and more possible holes to investigate. Doubt, legwork and possible exposure -- you can't pull off any good conspiracy without them.

BUSH: You guys are brilliant! Because if there's one thing about Americans -- they won't let a president go to war without a damn good reason. How could we ever get the media, the corporate world and our military to endorse an invasion of a secular Iraqi state unless we faked an attack against New York at the hands of a bunch of Saudi religious radicals? Why, they'd never buy it. Look at how hard it was to get us into Vietnam, Iraq the last time, Kosovo?

CHENEY: Like pulling teeth!

RUMSFELD: Well, I'm sold on the idea. Let's call the Joint Chiefs, the FAA, the New York and Washington, D.C., fire departments, Rudy Giuliani, all three networks, the families of a thousand fictional airline victims, MI5, the FBI, FEMA, the NYPD, Larry Eagleburger, Osama bin Laden, Noam Chomsky and the fifty thousand other people we'll need to pull this off. There isn't a moment to lose!

BUSH: Don't forget to call all of those Wall Street hotshots who donated $100 million to our last campaign. They'll be thrilled to know that we'll be targeting them for execution as part of our thousand-tentacled modern-day bonehead Reichstag scheme! After all, if we're going to make martyrs -- why not make them out of our campaign paymasters? Shit, didn't the Merrill Lynch guys say they needed a refurbishing in their New York offices?

RUMSFELD: Oh, they'll get a refurbishing, all right. Just in time for the "Big Wedding"!

ALL THREE: (cackling) Mwah-hah-hah!

You get the idea. None of this stuff makes any sense at all. If you just need an excuse to assume authoritarian powers, why fake a plane crash in Shanksville? What the hell does that accomplish? If you're using bombs, why fake a hijacking, why use remote-control planes? If the entire government apparatus is in on the scam, then why bother going to all this murderous trouble at all -- only to go to war a year later with a country no one even bothered to falsely blame for the attacks? You won't see any of this explored in 9/11 Truth lore, because the "conspiracy" they're describing is impossible everywhere outside a Zucker brothers movie -- unbelievably stupid in its conception, pointlessly baroque and excessive in its particulars, but flawless in its execution, with no concrete evidence left behind and tens of thousands keeping their roles a secret forever.

We are to imagine that not one of Bush's zillions of murderous confederates would slip and leave real incriminating evidence anywhere along the way, forcing us to deduce this massive crime via things like the shaking of a documentary filmmaker's tripod before the Towers' collapse (aha, see that shaking -- it must have been a bomb planted by the president and his ten thousand allies!). Richard Nixon was a hundred times smarter than Bush, and he couldn't prevent leaks and cries of anguished pseudo-conscience from sprouting among a dozen intimately involved conspirators -- but under the 9/11 conspiracy theory, even the lowest FBI agent used to seal off the crime scene never squeaks. It's absurd.

[CaptainChewbacca]

If they'd used thermite to blow up the world trade center, they'd have had to use so much we would have been able to SEE the flash from outside.

What amount would you guess would be needed? That is, they would need "to use so much," an amount so large that its delivery and installation could not possibly go unnoticed?

Let's put it this way; you'd need more thermite than you could fit in a semi-truck. All around the outside. And, as has been said, the uncontrolled way it burns makes it terrible for anything other than cutting metal in very small cases. I don't know what 'super-thermite' is, but I'm guessing it isn't super because it's easily directed.

[bilateralrope]

Wouldn't Super Thermite be thermite with the exact properties that the truthers need it to have. So high explosive, no visible flash, etc.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Wouldn't Super Thermite be thermite with the exact properties that the truthers need it to have. So high explosive, no visible flash, etc.

Designer explosives aren't designer jeans. Thermite is, by definition, NOT a high-explosive. It is a high-energy metastable compound, and is generally used in something like an anti-tank round to burn through dense armor quickly. I suppose you COULD turn the basic concept of a nanoparticle thermite into a high explosive, but doing so would make about as much sense as designing a rake you can dig with. It isn't DESIGNED for demolitions, and if you were going to destroy a building, you wouldn't use thermite.

I'm with Mike on this, there are FAR more mundane and plausible explanations for how powdered iron and aluminum were found in a collapsed building.

[Rogue 9]

Because it never gets old.

You're right, it doesn't, but it's always bothered me how he has Cheney continually refer to Rumsfeld as "Dick."

[Isolder74]

The Open Chemical Physics Journal is an Open Access online journal which publishes research articles, reviews and letters in all areas of chemical physics.

Does not fill me with much confidence.

I've looked through the articles and did not find it but I might later.

Edit: No new articles listed before April 2. I will look harder later I m busy now.

Sorry, a pile of segfaults is making me cranky. I was excessively bitchy.

When I asked for names I wanted Scientists not in their clique that were willing to sign saying they found their findings valid.

[bilateralrope]

Wouldn't Super Thermite be thermite with the exact properties that the truthers need it to have. So high explosive, no visible flash, etc.

Designer explosives aren't designer jeans. Thermite is, by definition, NOT a high-explosive. It is a high-energy metastable compound, and is generally used in something like an anti-tank round to burn through dense armor quickly. I suppose you COULD turn the basic concept of a nanoparticle thermite into a high explosive, but doing so would make about as much sense as designing a rake you can dig with. It isn't DESIGNED for demolitions, and if you were going to destroy a building, you wouldn't use thermite.

I'm with Mike on this, there are FAR more mundane and plausible explanations for how powdered iron and aluminum were found in a collapsed building.

I'm with Mike as well. The intent of my post was that the truthers invented this Super Thermite to handwave away any problems with their conspiracy nonsense.

[FSTargetDrone]

Let's put it this way; you'd need more thermite than you could fit in a semi-truck. All around the outside. And, as has been said, the uncontrolled way it burns makes it terrible for anything other than cutting metal in very small cases. I don't know what 'super-thermite' is, but I'm guessing it isn't super because it's easily directed.

Okay, well just for kicks, I looked up the roadway limits for tractor/semitrailer combinations in NYC (let's assume the weight limits are followed, so as not to attract the attention of a road scale operator!). The maximum allowable weight is not to exceed 36,000 pounds, or 18 tons. If were were to assume a full 18 tons (and that seems unlikely, given the weight of the tractor, etc.) and a fully-packed trailer, it is as I thought: It sounds like a lot more explosives than one could possibly transport into the buildings, unload and set up around the buildings' structure without being noticed by someone else, leaving aside the absurd notion of a massive conspiracy arranging all of this in the first place. And this is just for one trailer load.

[Darth Wong]

Let's put it this way; you'd need more thermite than you could fit in a semi-truck. All around the outside. And, as has been said, the uncontrolled way it burns makes it terrible for anything other than cutting metal in very small cases. I don't know what 'super-thermite' is, but I'm guessing it isn't super because it's easily directed.

Okay, well just for kicks, I looked up the roadway limits for tractor/semitrailer combinations in NYC (let's assume the weight limits are followed, so as not to attract the attention of a road scale operator!). The maximum allowable weight is not to exceed 36,000 pounds, or 18 tons. If were were to assume a full 18 tons (and that seems unlikely, given the weight of the tractor, etc.) and a fully-packed trailer, it is as I thought: It sounds like a lot more explosives than one could possibly transport into the buildings, unload and set up around the buildings' structure without being noticed by someone else, leaving aside the absurd notion of a massive conspiracy arranging all of this in the first place. And this is just for one trailer load.

And then you'd have to magically make the explosions at the base of the building cause the upper floors to collapse first.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I think someone once worked out that a controlled demo of the WTC would take a dedicated team of 100 people about two weeks to set up if the building was empty. Full, there's no way you could cut the support struts without someone noticing. The only way for it to be possible is if everyone who worked at the WTC was in on the coverup.

[CJvR]

...but you'd be hopeless if you tried to use gasoline for building demolition.

Well except for wooden buildings, there gasoline works just fine...

[Oskuro]

Based on these observations, we conclude that the red layer of the red/gray chips we have discovered in the WTC dust is active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material.

Nanotech? NANOTECH?! Why don't they bring quatum into the fray while they're at it? I'm no expert on chemistry or explosives, but that "incorporating nanotech" line completely obliterates whatever credibility the article might have had, even if nanotech actually applies, it sounds so much like layman-baiting.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Based on these observations, we conclude that the red layer of the red/gray chips we have discovered in the WTC dust is active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material.

Nanotech? NANOTECH?! Why don't they bring quatum into the fray while they're at it? I'm no expert on chemistry or explosives, but that "incorporating nanotech" line completely obliterates whatever credibility the article might have had, even if nanotech actually applies, it sounds so much like layman-baiting.

That's the problem with being an idiot. You hear things like 'nanoparticles', but if you don't know how the term actually applies you might conclude that it DOES mean nanotechnologically enhanced, instead of just 'really small particles under 2.500 microns'.

[PeZook]

It's funny that they pretty much hint at the conclusions in the very introduction to the paper, where they pointlessly mention all the other typical hoaxer claims. It's obvious from the first sentence that they'll skew the results towards a favorable outcome - inventing "superthermite" that has all the properties they need to fit they premade conclusion is just icing on the cake.

Of course, this will just give steam to the hoaxer movement. Yay!

[tim31]

Man, these nutjobs still refuse to let this shit go. You'd think by now we'd start seeing less of this crap.

It's been forty years since Apollo 11 and Buzz Aldrin is still having to punch out conspiracy nuts. People just don't let go of this sort of really big, really obvious shit; I know it's even more pathetic in the case of September 11, what with half the world having witnessed the tops of the buildings crushing the rest of their masses and all, but the point stands.

[Darth Onasi]

The only thing conspiracy nuts see when they watch the towers go down is superficial similarities to controlled demolition.
Therefore it was a deliberate act by the U.S. government! They see what they want to see, because it gives them attention, because it makes them feel better to think that the government did it and not a bunch of airplane hijacking fanatics working for a guy in a cave half a world away.

So no, we'll never see the end of this. In 100 years I guarantee there'll still be people calling it a conspiracy.

[Kanastrous]

So no, we'll never see the end of this. In 100 years I guarantee there'll still be people calling it a conspiracy.

Try 500 years. I already know altogether too many people to whom every item of evidence contrary to a controlled demolition is dismissed with oh, that's just what they *want* you to think; they can make tests and simulations come out any old way that they want. Although for some reason they don't like to apply that things can be made to come out any way you want filter, to the 'Truther' claims.

[Darth Wong]

The only thing conspiracy nuts see when they watch the towers go down is superficial similarities to controlled demolition.

The really sad thing is that it is not superficially similar to a controlled demolition. Anyone who watches even a single controlled demolition video will see that it starts from the bottom of the building, not the top. These idiots are so lazy that they can't even be bothered to take a good look at a controlled demolition video before declaring that the 9/11 collapse looks just like one!

[Isolder74]

The only thing conspiracy nuts see when they watch the towers go down is superficial similarities to controlled demolition.

The really sad thing is that it is not superficially similar to a controlled demolition. Anyone who watches even a single controlled demolition video will see that it starts from the bottom of the building, not the top. These idiots are so lazy that they can't even be bothered to take a good look at a controlled demolition video before declaring that the 9/11 collapse looks just like one!

They are also blatantly dishonest as well. They never show pictures of the front of building 7 when they claim that it was only either lightly burning or superficially damaged. They never actually show the entire video of the buildings collapse when they want to claim that the building fall at free fall speeds. They especially do this with building 7 in that they alway start the films after the east mechanical penthouse has already fallen into the building meaning that the collapse has already started several seconds before.

[Surlethe]

Here's a bit of evidence, since we can now embed flash.

Controlled demolition:


Controlled demolition:


World Trade Center:


One of these things is not like the other ones ...

[Darmalus]

My brother is a conspiracy nut (9/11, Illuminati, Masons, We didn't land on the moon, everything 'invented' since the 1950s is actually copied UFO technology, magic crystals, he is being followed by black helicopters, there's no end to this shit) and pretty much all he sees are buildings falling straight down. He pretty much swallows the entire Truther argument hook, line, and sinker, so no amount of evidence is going to convince him otherwise.

I think it might be the whole Good vs Evil idea, so if you have Good (magic crystals) and destroy the Evil (MiBs) the world will suddenly be perfect! That or he just can't handle the idea that the world of full of crazy, violent people without a rational agenda or plan, and things often happen randomly, and there is little or nothing you can do to stop them beyond being lucky.