[lit-ideas] Re: Is it any wonder...
- From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 05 May 2006 21:21:59 -0400
Simon: For instance, nobody explained by the
debris was cleared away and sold before it was
examined. If they had, would that be proof of a
false trail?
Hey, it's New York. Of course the steel was sold
immediately. The rest of the massacre debris was
sent to the Freshkills Landfill on SI, where it
was subject to forensic analysis.
As for the structure revealing bombs or some such,
here's Michael Shermer writing in Scientific American:
The mistaken belief that a handful of unexplained
anomalies can undermine a well-established theory
lies at the heart of all conspiratorial thinking
(as well as creationism, Holocaust denial and the
various crank theories of physics). All the
"evidence" for a 9/11 conspiracy falls under the
rubric of this fallacy. Such notions are easily
refuted by noting that scientific theories are not
built on single facts alone but on a convergence
of evidence assembled from multiple lines of inquiry.
>>No melted steel, no collapsed towers.<<
For example, according to
www.911research.wtc7.net, steel melts at a
temperature of 2,777 degrees Fahrenheit, but jet
fuel burns at only 1,517 degrees F. No melted
steel, no collapsed towers. "The planes did not
bring those towers down; bombs did," says
www.abovetopsecret.com. Wrong. In an article in
the Journal of the Minerals, Metals, and Materials
Society and in subsequent interviews, Thomas
Eagar, an engineering professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explains
why: steel loses 50 percent of its strength at
1,200 degrees F; 90,000 liters of jet fuel ignited
other combustible materials such as rugs,
curtains, furniture and paper, which continued
burning after the jet fuel was exhausted, raising
temperatures above 1,400 degrees F and spreading
the inferno throughout each building. Temperature
differentials of hundreds of degrees across single
steel horizontal trusses caused them to
sag--straining and then breaking the angle clips
that held the beams to the vertical columns. Once
one truss failed, others followed. When one floor
collapsed onto the next floor below, that floor
subsequently gave way, creating a pancaking effect
that triggered each 500,000-ton structure to
crumble. Conspiricists argue that the buildings
should have fallen over on their sides, but with
95 percent of each building consisting of air,
they could only have collapsed straight down.
All the 9/11 conspiracy claims are this easily
refuted. On the Pentagon "missile strike," for
example, I queried the would-be filmmaker about
what happened to Flight 77, which disappeared at
the same time. "The plane was destroyed, and the
passengers were murdered by Bush operatives," he
solemnly revealed. "Do you mean to tell me that
not one of the thousands of conspirators needed to
pull all this off," I retorted, "is a
whistle-blower who would go on TV or write a
tell-all book?" My rejoinder was met with the same
grim response I get from UFOlogists when I ask
them for concrete evidence: Men in Black silence
witnesses, and dead men tell no tales.
Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic
(www.skeptic.com). His latest book is Science
Friction.
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