Explanation of what thermate and thermite are:

video.google.com/videoplay

How do I communicate this principle to you? Thermite does not explode. Thermite is an incendiary and the thermite reaction is a displacement reaction between Al and Fe2O3. It does not involve explosive reactions. Explosive reactions are those which employ rapid electron donation to highly electronegative chemical groups or rapid displacement of electrons in highly positive groupings, employing a very strong oxidizing agent or a pure substance like nitro. The displacement reaction between Al and Fe2O3 falls into neither category. It is a metal-displacement reaction resulting in extreme heat (deflagration), not detonation.

It can be explained by the ignition of a large amount of jet fuel.  You know, the sort of thing an airplane is filled with and a sort of explosion that happens when a jet collides with a building.

Jet fuel does not burn anywhere near hot enough to melt metal.

Thermite does not explode! How can I get this through your head. Thermite does not explode. It is therefore not an explosive. It is an incendiary device. It is completely false to state that it is a "military-grade explosive".

I assure you I know a very, very great deal about physics. You are not in a position to decide whether I am pretending to know physics. The question is: Do you? Can you, for example, employ a contour integral over a vector function? Can you employ a Jacobian to change a plane or use a Lagrange multiplier to find an unknown vector? Can you recognize the rate differential for thermal expansion, or use triple integrals to compute variable density where mass is a function of position in R3? Can you employ del operations in n-dimensional gradient fields to find rates of change of flow or use Stoke's theorem to find the curl in a magnetic field?

Perhaps you should read the link you cited:

Thermite is a pyrotechnic composition of aluminium powder and a metal oxide which produces an aluminothermic reaction known as a thermite reaction. It is not explosive, but can create short bursts of extremely high temperatures focused on a very small target for a short period of time.

This is exactly what I've been trying to tell you for the better part of an hour!

If nit-picking means getting people to get what few facts they bring to the table straight, then I will happily nit-pick my ass off.

How about you? Are you trying to get to the truth of the matter or is your concern more about not blaming the Muslims who flew into the buildings for flying the planes into the buildings?

No one here has ever blamed all Muslims for 9/11 - the  onlything we agree on concerning Islam is that it is a foolish as any other religion.

   Deluded..... I put this on the other post; relax! That turkey isn't going to hear anything that abases his new toy.  Ux is no more then a child with a new toy and it wants all of us to see it, and be just as excited about it as it is.  I gave up on the SOB an hour and a half ago.

He's working so hard to protect the guys who flew the planes that he's forgotten that no one has scapegoated Muslims (except maybe for himself).

Dude! Who do you think G.W. Bush works for? It sure as hell ain't the Templars.

Do you really think Bush would be smart enough to pull something like that off? Not only that but it would require years of planning - and Bush was only president for 7 1/2 months before it happened. Also, the preparation that is required to demolish a building would certainly have been noticed - not only that, but there is no way a building prepared would be able to function as a working office building. Finally, how do you explain the planes themselves - the families of the people who were on them, not to mention Bin Laden fucking admitted to doing it! This is again something the conspiracy theorists have in common with fundies - they ignore evidence that goes against their bullshit and dispense with logic, common sense and even the definitions of words.

You're all wrong of course.

The Dark Force controls all

Actual working physicists disagree with your theory, which ignores many factors.

On 9/11 several Israelis were arrested for

• Celebrating and videotaping the collapses of the towers.
• Driving a truck bomb toward the city.

But don't worry, religious people from Israel would never want to harm the USA.

Thanks to the Bush admin, they were freed ... after failing numerous polygraphs.

I'd love to face the truth. I just don't believe anyone knows what it is. The government's story is riddled with holes (as you have shown) and your story is also riddled with holes (as others have shown you).

Give me something airtight.

For the record, I'm a LIHOP person. I don't think the government made it happen but I can believe they made it easier for those that did it.

Yes, and vastly more agree with me. Remember, we are discussing whether an aircraft is capable of bringing down the WTC by itself. I am telling you that this is perfectly possible and have outlined the manner in which this occurs. You have asserted the typically conspiratological adage "fire can't melt steel" as if this were actually an argument against the ability of a plane to induce the collapse of WTC1/2, demonstrating how simplistic your understanding of basic thermal physics and third-order calculus is.

Again, you can't effectively use thermate (or thermite) combined with an explosive. You just can't.

Why? Because thermate (and thermite) are incendiaries. They take time to burn. They don't produce a concussive explosion. Solgel would concuss, but at the expense of the thermate.

And it doesn't make sense to cut support beams if you are going to melt them with thermate. It only makes sense if you are going to use an explosive (which would negate the effect of the thermate). And, cuts to the beams would weaken the entire structure, making it unsuitable for occupation. It could collapse as people are using it, causing vibrations, increasing its lateral stress, and so on.

Buildings have collapsed in the past due to fire. The collapses have been only partial collapses, true. But entire sections of building have collapsed due simply to fire.

Couple that with an impact near the top of the building, and you've got a recipe for disaster, literally. (Finally! A sentence in which the word "impact" is used properly!) And, as the second tower collapsed assymetrically due to the offset impact of the second aircraft, it blows your "controlled demolition" hypothesis all to hell. (Pun/simile intended.)

I know we haven't been told the whole story. The explosives in the basement (if they really were there) could very well have been placed there beforehand by those involved, very much like the attempt in 1993. There are holes in the official narrative. But the conspiracy you suggest neither makes sense in the execution, nor in the motive, nor in the evidence as it's played out. Nor could it be covered up as you suggest. It would require far too many people.

The Israelis were arrested, but there's no evidence they were celebrating. It seems they may have been working for Mossad (the Israeli secret service), but they were merely taping the event, after it initiated. It makes no sense for Isreal to have instigated it; not because they have nothing to gain from it, but because they have everything to lose.

So, what it comes to is this: the towers could very well have fallen due to the impacts of the planes, and subsequent fires. We have motives for al Queda, as well as a narrative that supports that hypothesis. We have motives for G.W. Bush (though of a highly unlikely nature), but the narrative doesn't support it. Most of the evidence you've presented is either fallacious, or at least suspect, while the rest merely indicates areas of uncertainty for everyone.

Your physics is poor, which is the foundation of your argument.

Rationality indicates there is not enough contrary evidence to discredit the official explanation. There are holes in the narrative, but nothing contradictory.

I guess that leaves us where we started: with you believing one thing based on meager evidence and vast speculation, and on us believing something else, based on better evidence and less speculation.

Really? There are videos showing thermite going through car engines in less than a second. You must not be speaking from experience.

That's a key point you're glossing over: Partial collapses are nothing like what happened to WTC 7 or the twin towers. Why are you being manipulative here? Don't you want to get at the truth?

So the billions that Halliburton has made and the oil companies isn't a motive? So the plans for world empire aren't a motive. So the boon for Israel, which controls the media and Congress, isn't a motive? Holy crap, HOW NAIVE ARE YOU?

Once again you're being dishonest. Why? Eyewitnesses said they were high-fiveing. They admitted as much to the cops, and on Israelis TV.

The explanation I heard for the "molten" steel was that the fires caused a chemical reaction in large battery boxes located on that floor for an uninteruptable Power Supply (UPS) feeding a rather large computer network. The batteries caught on fire and the electrolytic components burned resembling slag from a blowtorch. Maybe somebody with a chemistry background could verify this.

You're right the government lied about WMDs so why not lie a little about 911. However the LIHOP makes the most sense. Someone in some aspect had an idea something was going to happen. The following article is about Willie Brown flying on the morning of 911. Since this was written he has refused to talk much about it and it's interesting that he and Condi Rice were very close having worked at Chevron together.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/12/MN229389.DTL

I sincerely doubt you've ever taken a science course. You're no more credible than a creationist and you use the same tactics.

And solgel explodes in far less than a second.

[edit addendum]

That's the difference between an incendiary and an explosive. Perhaps now you see why the distinction is important?

[end edit]

What's your personal experience, since that seems important to you?

Of course I want the truth. WTC 7 was not strictly a fire collapse. There was structural trauma due to debris (which you ignore) preceding the fire. WTC 1 and 2 were compromised due to the energy released during the impact of the planes (which was not insignificant) and suffered progressive collapse. This is evidenced by the top-down collapse of the towers, rather than the bottom-up collapse as would've happened if it were a controlled demolition.

Well, pretty naive, admittedly.

The problem as I see it is, there is no evidence that Israel controls congress or the media. Last I looked, big business controlled the media (hey, Mr. Murdoch, how ya' doin'?). Although congress falls in line with support for Israel, that probably has more to do with the US as being a key figure in setting up the country of Israel after WWII, and the fact that a lot of religious folks see Israel as a seat of Judeo-Christian power in an otherwise Muslim Middle East.

As far as the corporations go. I definitely see some war profiteering going on, at a minimum.

But as any murder mystery writer knows, it's not just enough to have a motive. You also have to establish an alibi; and so far, everyone has a great alibi. al Queda took credit for the attack, making them prime suspect #1.

No, I'm not.

First, you have to realize that, in the hours, days, and years subsequent to the attacks, tempers and suspicions ran high. The Israeli agents (we'll assume they were, since it seems that way) were caught videotaping the event. They weren't as distraught as those around them. Their job was to capture the event on film (which started after the attacks began, indicating they didn't know it was coming, but suspected something might happen). Any "high-five" could be simply because they caught the second plane striking the second building. A smile at a single good fortune would be interpreted as "celebration." So eye-witness accounts of middle-eastern-looking folk "celebrating" is far from damning.

The only thing they admitted to on Israeli TV was taping the event, which they were doing for Mossad. They did not admit to celebrating, that I've seen.

Here's the problem with the Israeli conspiracy theory: if they were caught out, they would lose everything. The backlash in the US would require the US government to pull all support of Israel. Right now, the only thing standing between Israel and the biggest block of Muslim anger is twelve nukes and a large chunk of US money and hardware. That's it. Should the US population find out that Israel engineered 9/11, it wouldn't be more than twelve weeks before there was nothing left of The Holy Land except The Holey Land.

Meanwhile, what would they gain? Iraq had nothing. It was the most progressive country in the Middle East, bordering on downright liberal (in relation to the other countries in the area). If any country posed a threat to Israel, the US would step up to defend it. So they had very little to gain whatsoever. In fact, with anti-American sentiment running high in the middle east right now, Israel is at its most vulnerable.

So, no. I'm not being dishonest. I'm looking at the evidence, the possible motivations, the misinformation and subterfuge, and coming to the conclusion that Halliburton and Cheney didn't have the resources to both pull it off and cover it up; that Israel had more to lose than to gain; and the official story doesn't quite add up, but makes more sense than anything presented as an alternative.

It's not nearly that fast:

"350 g of thermate-TH3 charge is capable of burning through a sheet of 1-inch thick steel plate in about 8 second reaction time."

Read more here: http://www.dodtechmatch.com/DOD/Patent/PatentDetail.aspx?type=description&id=6766744

Well, she did tell him she was a virgin, and that she and 39 of her best virgin friends would meet him after work.

Guess he's in for a surprise.