Pure Spew

MSNBC is spreading the spew pretty thick these days. They're pimping a BYU professor who believes that a massive conspiracy theory was involved in the 9/11 attacks and that the WTC wasn't destroyed solely by the planes that crashed into them. Transcript is from the Tucker Carlson show:

JONES: ... There are two hypotheses here. One is fire and damage caused all three buildings to collapse.

CARLSON: OK.

JONES: The other is that explosives in the buildings may have caused the collapse. And so, then we analyze and see which fits the data better, and I've done that in my 25-page paper.

CARLSON: I want to read you a quote from the 'Deseret Morning News,' a paper in Utah, from you. I'm quoting now.

"It is quite plausible that explosives were pre-planted in all three buildings and set off after the two plane crashes, which are actually a diversion tactic. Muslims are probably not to blame for bringing down the World Trade Center buildings after all."

That's, I would think, pretty offensive to a lot of the people listening. Do you have any evidence for that?

JONES: Well, not-not to the Muslims, I might say.

CARLSON: Well, that's good.

JONES: I have a lot of e-mails.

Brigham Young University Professor Steven Jones is a professor of physics. However, he's not good on the logic or facts. There's a real easy explanation for the collapse of the Twin Towers and it starts and stops with the hijackers who purposefully flew those planes into the towers. The damage caused by the impact damaged critical structural components, which were further weakened by large fires that were spread over several floors. The collapses were not caused by explosives or part of some government conspiracy.

This nutbar hasn't read Popular Mechanics, which treats this conspiracy theory for what it is - pure bunk.

"Melted" Steel
CLAIM: "We have been lied to," announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net. "The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel." The posting is entitled "Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC."

FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks."

"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent." NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.

But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832°F.

"The jet fuel was the ignition source," Williams tells PM. "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."

That's right folks, MSNBC chose to bring on a conspriacy theory crank despite the fact that professors of engineering (who actually know a thing or two about design, construction, and metal fatigue and weakness) debunk the theory that the towers collapsed due to someone setting off bombs concurrent with planes crashing into the towers.