What caused the mysterious flash of light during 9/11 plane strikes?

[Chi Meson]

EDIT: This is delicate. The thread was started in S&D, but just now moved to GD. In no way did I intend to further a conspiracy wing nut theory. I believe there to be a plausible explanation, I just would like to know what it might be: [/EDIT]

I saw last night a portion of a conspiracy theory on the 9/11 attacks. Most of it was rather absurd but I could not think of a good explanation for the following.

Tapes of the planes hitting the WTC towers clearly show a flash of light just as the nose of the plane touches the side of the building. Four views of the second strike, and the one and only film capture of the first strike show this flash.

The conspiracy guy suggested it was an incendiary device to make sure that the fuel ignited upon impact. This suggestion made me snarf my Orangina. But still, what would have caused this flash of light?

 

[scott1]

There all crazy.I herd one where it said that "muslims suspend the laws of physics":rofl: you don't to suspend the laws of physics to destroy two towers like unless you want all the debree flying toward space.

 

[russ_watters]

Did anyone catch the first plane on video? Here is a video of the second frame, which clearly shows the explosion after the impact. You can even pause and look at the plane halfway disappearing into the building, with no explosion. Keep in mind that the second plane impacted at almost 600mph, which is 880 feet per second or roughly 30 feet per frame of video. The entire plane disappears in 5 frames of video. If you pause it just right, you can see the plane disappearing through one side of the building and the nose of the plane breaking through the other side of the building before exploding.

http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/day.video.09.html

Do you have any photos that "clearly show a flash of light just as the nose of the plane touches the side of the building"?

 

[Evo]

Watching the videos, it's very clear that there was no flash of light or explosion as the plane hit.

Chi, the videos you watched were probaby tampered with.

 

[russ_watters]

To avoid ambiguity, here are 3 captures from the first video of the second plane on the link I posted. In the 3rd pic, you can clearly see the plane breaking through the other side of the building and still, no explosion.

 

[Pengwuino]

Chi, the videos you watched were probaby tampered with.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: Reminds me of this one stupid flash brought up in PWA a long time ago by one of the usuals that showed that convinence store video. Well i watched it and was like "wow... i remember that video being a lot clearer before...". Of course, after some research, i found the original video clip that was probably 3x as clearer meaning the flash guys pixelized the video frames. Sheesh.

 

[RVBuckeye]

Alex Jones at Ground Zero: The Use Of Explosives In the 9/11 Attack

I saw last night a portion of a conspiracy theory on the 9/11 attacks. Most of it was rather absurd but I could not think of a good explanation for the following.

Tapes of the planes hitting the WTC towers clearly show a flash of light just as the nose of the plane touches the side of the building. Four views of the second strike, and the one and only film capture of the first strike show this flash.

The conspiracy guy suggested it was an incendiary device to make sure that the fuel ignited upon impact. This suggestion made me snarf my Orangina. But still, what would have caused this flash of light?

http://70.84.33.210/~infomedi/video/previews/170305martialpreview2.wmv

Is this similar to what you are referring to? I've often wondered about this theory myself. (mentors-if this is not allowed for copyright or something)please delete link.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I thought that 9/11 conspiracy threads were completely banned?

http://www.fourwinds10.com/news/05-government/C-fraud/01-911/2004/05C1-08-17-04-911-video-shocks-sacramento-citizens.html
Is this what you saw Chi? If so the video is there for anyone to download apparently. I can't do that here at work though.

The link says this about the flash...

Other extremely disturbing segments of this video are the clear, slow motion shots of the second plane going into the towers which show a flash right before the nose of the plane hits the building and a pod attached to the bottom of the plane. This strange flash is clearly recorded from four different angles from four different cameras. While there is only one known piece of film showing the first plane hitting the first tower, in slow motion one can clearly see - as with the second plane - a flash from the nose section right before impact. What caused this?

Here's an amusing bit that was just before that...

One particular interview that brought gasps from the audience and many looking around with shock etched on their faces was an interview conducted - live at the time - by FOX News. This intense interview with Mark Burnback, an employee of FOX News, contains the following narrative, paraphrased: Burnback was close to the path of the second plane and had a good long look at what he describes was not a commercial airliner. The plane that hit the second tower had no windows, Burnback was very clear about that. The plane had some kind of blue logo on the front near the nose and looked like a cargo plane. This point was driven to the viewer several times along with the comment from this FOX employee that "this plane wasn't from around here or anything you'd see take off from the airport."

Other footage includes several women who had a very clear view watching the second plane hit were yelling, "That wasn't American Airlines...It wasn't American Airlines going into the building." These interviews were played that morning once on FOX News, never to be replayed again, despite the massive saturation and repetition by the media for many days to come.

 

[russ_watters]

http://70.84.33.210/~infomedi/video/previews/170305martialpreview2.wmv

Is this similar to what you are referring to? I've often wondered about this theory myself. (mentors-if this is not allowed for copyright or something)please delete link.

Do you have a timestamp for the relevant part of the video?

 

[russ_watters]

I thought that 9/11 conspiracy threads were completely banned?

Very, very short leash...

 

[RVBuckeye]

Do you have a timestamp for the relevant part of the video?

The entire video is relevant to the OP's final question as to possible explanations. It was a clip of an Alex Jones conspiracy documentary which I thought Chi Meson was referring to. Actually, I see TheStatutoryApe posted the more likely clip. Feel free to delete if you believe it to be off topic. (I thought Alex Jones mentioned the plane flashes in his full-length movie.)

 

[russ_watters]

I'm specifically asking about the claim about the flash as the nose hits the building - what the OP was asking about. I'm not going to wade through a 52 minute video to find it.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I thought that 9/11 conspiracy threads were completely banned?

That's correct. As per the posting guidelines, 911 threads are banned from S&D since the subject is not consistent with the forum's format.

 

[RVBuckeye]

I'm specifically asking about the claim about the flash as the nose hits the building - what the OP was asking about. I'm not going to wade through a 52 minute video to find it.

Well about 38 mins into the video posted by TheStatutoryApe, it talks about the flashes specifically. They don't make any "claim" as to what it is in the movie. It wants you to believe that the plane was not the passenger flight that was reported in the media but more like a "cargo plane" of some type, with a mounted long cylindrical object mounted to the fuselage. (an alleged missile, bomb, or external fuel tank).

Now, if you like, I actually might be able to answer the OP more specifically. I will draw on my time as an Aviation Ordnanceman in the Navy, working on repairing aircraft weapon systems. (I can provide proof if needed). The first time I saw the video I immediately thought of the LAU-92 weapons rail, which mounts to the fuselage of the F-14. It closely matches the apparent dimensions of the mounted object in the videos. This weapons rail is basically just a housing that allows one to easily switch out a smaller bomb rack to missile launcher depending on whether performing ATG or ATA combat. The LAU-92 could feasibly be modified to mount on a cargo plane. (hell, give me some duct tape and some wire and I could probably do it )
As for ordinance It could have been a MK-82 GP bomb with a non-delay fuse (When the functioning time of a fuze is 0.0003 to 0.0005 second). Or simply an external fuel tank with the same fuse (slightly modified). Just something to ignite the fuel on impact.

But let's keep in mind that the video was probably doctored. This coupled with the fact that all "unaltered" equiptment used by the military have safety devices which prevent arming the fuse until it has dropped away from the aircraft. This is done by means of an arming wire, or lanyard, attached to the bomb rack and the arming pin (like a grenade). Only after the bomb falls the length of the lanyard does it actually arm. Not very likely anyone would be able to safely take-off with an armed fuse without significant risk of early detonation! Too risky if your trying to pull off a conspiracy of this magnitude, imo.

http://www.anft.net/f-14/f14-detail-rack-bomb.htm

http://www.ordnance.org/fuzes.htm

 

[Chi Meson]

OK reeling it in, and getting back to the OP:

Avoiding the rest of the conspiracy theories, whether or not it was really an American Airlines craft, whether it was the Jews, the Arabs, the Aliens, J. Edgar Hoover, whether or not we landed on the moon, whether or not Nessie eats eggs, if crop circles are a virus etc etc...

The "flash" is not the explosion... it is too soon to have anything to do with the explosion. THe flash is small and very brief. It seems to be some sort of friction or discharge or other sparking phenomenon caused by the aluminum nose cone striking the steel/concrete/glass side of the building.

The first thing I though about is how some stones spark when you strike them together, some other materials will spark when you snap them apart (Wintogreen lifesavers for example).

I am assuming that the flash was not due to tampering, because the purpose of this flash as evidece of a "detonator" is just too silly to discuss.

So, sticking to the "D" part of the S&D: what is a reasonable cause of this flash?

 

[fuzzyfelt]

http://www.parapolitics.info/phorum/read.php?f=44&i=1&t=1

General Partin says vonKleist omits the most obvious explanation. "It's very simple," he told The New American, "When the noses of the aircraft hit the buildings, you have a bright aluminum flash, the same as we saw at the Pentagon. That's obvious to anyone familiar with physics, chemistry, and what happens when aluminum hits a structure at a high rate of speed." And the proof of that analysis, the general points out, is in vonKleist's own video. "If you watch just a few frames after the nose flash, you'll see two smaller aluminum flashes as each engine strikes the building. That's all it is."

Hope this helps.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

I'm not familiar with physics of chem and don't know what happens when aluminium hits a structure at a high rate of speed, myself, is this correct?
Also, did the flash happen before or during impact?

 

[Bystander]

(snip)So, sticking to the "D" part of the S&D: what is a reasonable cause of this flash?

Let's see --- big ol' van der Graaf collector --- traveling at four, five hundred mph for half hour, hour --- at whatever altitudes --- approaching a metallic ground? Wouldn't think it'd be visible, but haven't witnessed all that much lightning from the clear sky.

 

[Chi Meson]

http://www.parapolitics.info/phorum/read.php?f=44&i=1&t=1

General Partin says ..."When the noses of the aircraft hit the buildings, you have a bright aluminum flash..."

This is along the idea I was thinking, except I too do not know what usually happens when high speed aluminum his a solid structure. Is it the KE causing a quick vaporization of the aluminum?

I also considered the static discharge possibility as Bystander mentioned. What I'd like is to have a confident response for people who bring this up in the future (especially in my classroom).

 

[RVBuckeye]

I wasn't intending to spur on the conspiracy theory with my last post. I was intending to give you a de-bunking of the missile, bomb, pod theory. You might be smart enough to have already figured that out on your own...but if others do still believe that anything other than a plane was involved, I wanted to present my evidence to the contrary.

The issue can still be raised if whether there was a flash at all. Those things can easily be doctored. I didn't see any flashes when I watched the video Russ posted.

As for what caused the flashes (if they occured)...I will bow out of this conversation as I have no idea.

 

[russ_watters]

I also considered the static discharge possibility as Bystander mentioned. What I'd like is to have a confident response for people who bring this up in the future (especially in my classroom).

Unfortunately, the only people who will ever give you unequivocal answers are the conspiracy theorists. Real scientists and engineers know that you can't give anything better than reasonable/likely possibilities. And I have another:

The shattering of the nose of the plane and the window of the building may have produced a small cloud of highly reflective debris.

One thing that is extrordinarily unlikely is the conspiracy theorists' idea of an incendiary device. On the nose of the plane would be a terrible place to locate it, since it would be 50 feet in front of the fuel and likely to pass completely through the building (which the nose did) without ever having any fuel touch it.

As for ordinance It could have been a MK-82 GP bomb with a non-delay fuse (When the functioning time of a fuze is 0.0003 to 0.0005 second). Or simply an external fuel tank with the same fuse (slightly modified). Just something to ignite the fuel on impact.

Well, the videos don't show an explosion, just a small flash, so that flash could not possibly have been from a 500 lb bomb.

But let's keep in mind that the video was probably doctored.

I don't see any reason to believe any video I've seen in the past 2 days has been doctored. The problem is simply that the video is of low enough quality that people's minds fill in the blanks and they start seeing things that aren't there. Human minds are wired for pattern/object recognition and because of that, it often sees things that aren't really there. Ie, potato chips that look like Elvis or Lenin in your shower curtain: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/lenin.html

Also, regarding the "pod" under the nose of the plane - I'll need to look at the video again (I don't have it in front of me), but from what I saw last night, the bright area does not break the profile of the fuselage, implying to me that it is, in fact, on the fuselage itself. Since the fuselage is mirror smooth and shiny, the difference in brightness between the sky and ground in the reflection could very well be creating the illusion of relief. Since the midsection of the plane is flat on the bottom, the illusion of relief only happens on the front 20 feet or so of the plane, where it is cylindrical and people can see a similar reflection regardless of camera angle. I may do some experimenting with MS Flight Simulator tonight to see if I can duplicate that...

 

[RVBuckeye]

Unfortunately, the only people who will ever give you unequivocal answers are the conspiracy theorists. Real scientists and engineers know that you can't give anything better than reasonable/likely possibilities. And I have another:

The shattering of the nose of the plane and the window of the building may have produced a small cloud of highly reflective debris.

One thing that is extrordinarily unlikely is the conspiracy theorists' idea of an incendiary device. On the nose of the plane would be a terrible place to locate it, since it would be 50 feet in front of the fuel and likely to pass completely through the building (which the nose did) without ever having any fuel touch it. Well, the videos don't show an explosion, just a small flash, so that flash could not possibly have been from a 500 lb bomb. I don't see any reason to believe any video I've seen in the past 2 days has been doctored. The problem is simply that the video is of low enough quality that people's minds fill in the blanks and they start seeing things that aren't there. Human minds are wired for pattern/object recognition and because of that, it often sees things that aren't really there. Ie, potato chips that look like Elvis or Lenin in your shower curtain: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/lenin.html

Also, regarding the "pod" under the nose of the plane - I'll need to look at the video again (I don't have it in front of me), but from what I saw last night, the bright area does not break the profile of the fuselage, implying to me that it is, in fact, on the fuselage itself. Since the fuselage is mirror smooth and shiny, the difference in brightness between the sky and ground in the reflection could very well be creating the illusion of relief. Since the midsection of the plane is flat on the bottom, the illusion of relief only happens on the front 20 feet or so of the plane, where it is cylindrical and people can see a similar reflection regardless of camera angle. I may do some experimenting with MS Flight Simulator tonight to see if I can duplicate that...

I agree with you. (see last post) It was late last night and I guess I didn't get my point across. It's just an example how, at first sight, it seems plausible...but after you think it through...it's non-sense.

One last thing. The guy they interviewed that identified the plane as not an airliner but a cargo plane with a blue circular emblem on it, made no mention of anything mounted underneath the aircraft. If he had that clear a view of the plane...why no mention of this? Because it wasn't there.

 

[russ_watters]

The issue can still be raised if whether there was a flash at all. Those things can easily be doctored. I didn't see any flashes when I watched the video Russ posted.

There are better videos and if this conversation hasn't dropped off the deep end by tonight and gotten itself closed, I'll see about capturing and posting them.

 

[russ_watters]

I agree with you. (see last post) It was late last night and I guess I didn't get my point across. It's just an example how, at first sight, it seems plausible...but after you think it through...it's non-sense.

Yeah, I didn't get that - no prob, I got it now.

 

[Bystander]

Sunlight reflecting from the cockpit windscreen moving across the building also looks like a "flash."

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

OK reeling it in, and getting back to the OP:

Avoiding the rest of the conspiracy theories, whether or not it was really an American Airlines craft, whether it was the Jews, the Arabs, the Aliens, J. Edgar Hoover, whether or not we landed on the moon, whether or not Nessie eats eggs, if crop circles are a virus etc etc...

The "flash" is not the explosion... it is too soon to have anything to do with the explosion. THe flash is small and very brief. It seems to be some sort of friction or discharge or other sparking phenomenon caused by the aluminum nose cone striking the steel/concrete/glass side of the building.

The first thing I though about is how some stones spark when you strike them together, some other materials will spark when you snap them apart (Wintogreen lifesavers for example).

I am assuming that the flash was not due to tampering, because the purpose of this flash as evidece of a "detonator" is just too silly to discuss.

So, sticking to the "D" part of the S&D: what is a reasonable cause of this flash?

yes yes... It could also be due to the glass blowing outward from the building when it shattered, caused by higher pressure inside the building than outside.

 

[JamesU]

Here's a conspiracy video. about 1 1/2 hours long. It brings up some good points...not too much though...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8260059923762628848&q=Loose+Change

 

[Pengwuino]

Here's a conspiracy video. about 1 1/2 hours long. It brings up some good points...not too much though...

There has yet to be a conspiracy video that has brought up good points. They bring up points that rely on peoples ignorance and gullability and mistrust of government to perpetuate.

 

[edward]

The entire premis here is that incedairy devices were mounted on the front of the planes to insure ignition of the jet fuel.

The internal temperature of jet engines plus the fuel already burning inside the engines, runs nearly 1000 degrees f hotter than the autoignition temperature of jet fuel.

A jet aircraft crashing at high speed has a highly potential built in incindiary device. Crashing head on into a building with no possibility of skid produces a guaranteed auto ignition.
Case Closed.

 

[Pengwuino]

A jet aircraft crashing at high speed has a highly potential built in incindiary device. Crashing head on into a building with no possibility of skid produces a guaranteed auto ignition.
Case Closed.

Yah i don't remember seeing any airplane vs. structure crashes that didn't involve any size fire as far as i can remember...

People need to realize that fuel vapors spreading through 5 stories in a skyscraper will find an ignition source come hell or high water.

These conspiracy theories are pretty funny to say the least. I mean sure, things like roswell are at the least, feasible because no one was really around to see it. The problem with these theories are... thousands, if not millions of people were around to see them happen. The whole thing about the pentagon being hit by a missile was always funny to me. You're flying it over a freeway and they expect people to believe that a whole mornings worth of commuter traffic suffered from some form of mass delusion?

 

[Chi Meson]

This thread was almost dead. Again, the purpose of the OP was to find a reasonable explanation for the nose flash. (I started in the "... Debunking" forum, but it was moved. Debunking is still the intent; Let's have no one believe that there was any deliberate incendiary device ).

I will be deleting the OP soon since this is not the right forum, and it keeps going in the wrong direction. The title is wrong, also.

Evo, feel free to move or lock it.

 

[fourier jr]

no mention of the flash made by the nose cone here, but here's a clip of a presentation by an MIT engineer (not a materials scientist or retired theology professor) who raises some good questions about the WTC collapses:
http://www.freedomisforeverybody.org/MITEngineer.php"
he also brought up some stuff about the dust cloud (a pyroclastic flow) which i had never heard of before. worth a watch i think...

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

if anything is fishy at the wtc disaster it's with building 7. There are much more solid arugments against the official report for that building. It wasn't even seriously damaged... planes didn't crash into it, and other buildings didn't fall onto it, and there wasn't much damage beyond some broken windows from the flying debris. Bldg 7 was further away from the scene than the millenium Hilton, and as intuition tells you, didn't receive as much damage as the Hilton, but the Hilton is still there). There were fires which broke out in bldg 7's lower floors, but that was about it, and for some odd reason, it collapsed in the same way builtings are demolished by controlled implosion. There is no way a fire which occupied less than 1/3 (a very liberal estimate, prolly much less than 1/7) of the building could've weakened it so much that it fell. In fact, if fire alone (and not explosives) truly caused this building to fall, it is the first modern steel building in recorded history to collapse due to a fire. Check out Fire Engineering magazine, that's one source that will confirm that claim. The fires in bldg 7 would be labeled as "moderate" by any firefighting manual. There has been over 100 uncontrolled fires in skyscrapers in the last 50 years, and none of them has collapsed, or even come close to collapsing from fire, only earthquakes and demolitions. The fires in bldg 7 were going for about 6 hours, whereas of the known uncontrolled fires I mentioned, some went on for over a week, and in the process burned out every floor (check out hte Windsor bldg in Madrid spain, it burned for 2 days, and at much hotter temperatures than bldg 7 http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/spain_fire_2005.html) . Why didn't the building's sprinkler system put out the fires anyway? Perhaps it was because the water to the building was damaged due to the first plane crash? bldg 7 was built to withstand much more damage than regular buildings since it sat on top of an electrical sub station for the city (it was over engineered to withstand thousands of degrees for days if need be), among other things, it housed offices for the department of defense, CIA, FEMA, US secret service, SEC, and also the Mayor's "emergency command center" on the 23rd floor which had bullet, and bomb resistant windows and it's own air and water supply, and was designed to withstand winds of up to 160 mph. So we know that the 23rd floor had working sprinklers, and then we can surmize that any fire that started below the 23rd floor wouldn't have traveled up the building past the 23rd floor, and if there were fires above the 23rd floor, they must've been started above the 23rd floor, but from the few pictures we have of building 7, no fires can be seen in the upper floors. An interesting note, Gulianni told ABC news that he was told to get out of bldg 7 and he left (to a FEMA command base that was setup the night before next to the harbor) before the fires broke out.

Bush and Cheney asked Tom Dashle to limit the investigation of bldg 7, in March 2002, the committee on science for the house of representatives tried to investigate the investigation, congressman Boehlert said the investigation seemed "shrouded in excessive secrecy", the investigation was done with part-time engineers and scientists on a shoestring budget, and there were accusations that landlords and insurance companies interfered with efforts to investigate, by May 2002, all the rubble was destroyed, so nobody could conduct further investigations on to how the buildings (not just bldg 7) collapsed. This of course was illegal to do, since there are laws which state that rubble from disasters claimed to be caused by fires should be saved and studied so that in the future we may be able to design buildings safer. Ken starr spent 40 million investigating the sex life of Clinton, but yet there wasn't enough money spent to investiage an attack on our nation (ie shoestring budget, with part time egineers), what is more important here? Larry Silverstein bought bldg 7 years ago, but 2 months before 9-11, he bought the whole complex and insured them all with a record breaking insurance policy worth 3.5 billion to insure against you guessed it, terrorist attacks. The millenium Hilton was closer to the two towers, but it didn't collapse, probably because it wasn't owed by Larry Silverstein... GW's brother Marvin Bush was running security on the wtc complex and his contract ended on the morning of 9-11 (this was written by Barbra Bush in her memoir "reflections"). Preceding the collapse of bldg 7, seismographs (at the university of NY and the US geological survey) detected explosions going off which resemble the classical pattern of a controlled demolotion.

Try to debunk that... Then again this was moved to GD, oh well. The starting idea with this thread is laughable, but these things about building 7 are not. Let's not focus on nose cone flashes when there is much more credible and relavent things to consider.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

if anything is fishy at the wtc disaster it's with building 7. There are much more solid arugments against the official report for that building. It wasn't even seriously damaged... planes didn't crash into it, and other buildings didn't fall onto it, and there wasn't much damage beyond some broken windows from the flying debris...
_____

...So we know that the 23rd floor had working sprinklers, and then we can surmize that any fire that started below the 23rd floor wouldn't have traveled up the building past the 23rd floor, and if there were fires above the 23rd floor, they must've been started above the 23rd floor, but from the few pictures we have of building 7, no fires can be seen in the upper floors...

I looked at 7 World Trade Center. There was smoke showing, but not a lot and I’m saying that isn’t going to fall. So I went up Church Street two more blocks and went across to West and went right down behind 7 and got a good look at three sides. Again, there were a lot of fires on the ground, some crushed mail trucks, some burned-up engines. It was a scene out of a war zone. I continued around to West and Vesey and reported into the command post. They were very concerned about fire extending into the telephone company building. They gave me a couple of companies and said get into the telephone company building and check on extension there. We had extension on the first and second floors, so we took some standpipe lines, put them in operation and knocked that down. From there, we looked out at 7 World Trade Center again. You could see smoke, but no visible fire, and some damage to the south face. You couldn’t really see from where we were on the west face of the building, but at the edge of the south face you could see that it was very heavily damaged.

http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/norman.html

So we go there and on the north and east side of 7 it didn’t look like there was any damage at all, but then you looked on the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors. Debris was falling down on the building and it didn’t look good.

http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/boyle.html

for some odd reason, it collapsed in the same way builtings are demolished by controlled implosion.

NOVA: The Twin Towers collapsed essentially straight down. Was there any chance they could have tipped over?

Eagar: It's really not possible in this case. In our normal experience, we deal with small things, say, a glass of water, that might tip over, and we don't realize how far something has to tip proportional to its base. The base of the World Trade Center was 208 feet on a side, and that means it would have had to have tipped at least 100 feet to one side in order to move its center of gravity from the center of the building out beyond its base. That would have been a tremendous amount of bending. In a building that is mostly air, as the World Trade Center was, there would have been buckling columns, and it would have come straight down before it ever tipped over.

Have you ever seen the demolition of buildings? They blow them up, and they implode. Well, I once asked demolition experts, "How do you get it to implode and not fall outward?" They said, "Oh, it's really how you time and place the explosives." I always accepted that answer, until the World Trade Center, when I thought about it myself. And that's not the correct answer. The correct answer is, there's no other way for them to go but down. They're too big. With anything that massive -- each of the World Trade Center towers weighed half a million tons -- there's nothing that can exert a big enough force to push it sideways.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/collapse.html
And that's a very good interview that explains why the towers fell.

Larry Silverstein bought bldg 7 years ago, but 2 months before 9-11, he bought the whole complex and insured them all with a record breaking insurance policy worth 3.5 billion to insure against you guessed it, terrorist attacks.

"Even after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, insurers in the United States did not view either international or domestic terrorism as a risk that should be explicitly considered when pricing their commercial insurance policy, principally because losses from terrorism had historically been small and, to a large degree, uncorrelated. Thus, prior to September 11, 2001, terrorism coverage in the United States was an unnamed peril covered in most standard all-risk commercial and homeowners’ policies covering damage to property and contents"

http://grace.wharton.upenn.edu/risk/downloads/05-03-HK.pdf

In its court papers, Swiss Re shows how Silverstein first tried to buy just $1.5 billion in property damage and business-interruption coverage. When his lenders objected, he discussed buying a $5 billion policy. Ultimately, he settled on the $3.5 billion figure, which was less than the likely cost of rebuilding.

http://www.forbes.com/2003/09/11/cx_da_0911silverstein.html

Perhaps that will be enough for you to be just as skeptical of the conspiracy theories as you are of the official stories.

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

here's some photos of building 7, I can't seem to find any photos of the south face... So I guess that is open for discussion until someone can produce them. As far as the south face goes, I guess there must've been a 20 story high hole in it... But that is one guy, and he may have been exagerrating, and he also didn't say how deep it went into the building, and also, he may have mistaken blackened walls as missing walls since there was a lot of dust in the air obstructing the view and stuff. Even if there was a gash 20 stories high, it must've not penetrated that far into the building because the buildings right next to it, and the other buildings that were very close to the two towers weren't damaged enough to collapse. If you show me a picture of the south face which shows damage that looks reasonably greater than the damage received from other buildings at ground zero, then I'll start to entertain this idea even more.
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/wtc7.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/collapse.html
this link doesn't talk about why a skyscraper would fall due to a fire. It talks about how they are designed to take an impact from a plane. At the beginning, a materials scientist says

"It wasn't until Dr. Thomas Eagar saw Building 7 of the World Trade Center implode late on the afternoon of September 11th that he understood what had transpired structurally earlier that day as the Twin Towers disintegrated."

But never explains how a fire destroyed building 7. Was there 10,000 gallons of jet feul in building 7 or something, is that what he's comparing the fire with?Ok, keep in mind I'm really only trying to focus on building 7, and the fact that the official report claims that it fell due mainly to fires and some flying debris. I'm not talking about towers 1 and 2, because I think that those could've fallen due to the combined forces of the aircraft impacts and fires due to 10,000 gallons of jet fuel, and the idea that the insulation of the supporting beams could've blown off during the impact of the aircraft. The sotry for towers 1 and 2 is definitely plausible, but not the story of building 7.Your link about terrorism insurance is informative, and helps to persuade that terrorism insurance wasn't explicitly offered by insurance companies until after 9-11. Thats nice to know, but do you have a copy of Larry Silverstien's insurance policy? It may not have been labeled explicitly as "terrorism insurance" but did it not cover the terrorist attacks, and was it not a 3.5 billion dollar policy? More importantly, did Larry not buy the whole wtc site 2 months before 9-11 and insure it with said policy? Was the wtc not covered by an insurance policy which protected against things such as what happened?
Thanks for the links. Don't get me wrong, I'm skeptical of conspiracy theories, even the ones fed to the public and labeled as "official", perhaps some of the points I've made, and some of the links I've listed will help you too.