This is just a brand name of a nickel-titanium alloy. This stuff has been around for ages. My orthodontist mentioned it at least 10 years ago.

It is a memory shape alloy. Another thing we crazy scientist study...

>> ^manfromx:
So NIST is saying that there is no reason to even wonder about molten steel underneath the WTC because it's already been decided that it wasn't controlled demolition and the fires weren't hot enough to make molten steel.
Their theory for why it's there are fires burning within the pile after the collapse.
Interesting theory but that's not exactly convincing either. Seems unlikely office furniture could make molten steel after the admission that jet fuel cannot.
I sure as hell don't know exactly what happened. Some things do seem odd and I think the poster asked a decent question. If the corner was weakened why did the building fall nearly straight down and not to the side at least for a distance.
Don't see why everyone has to jump on the guy without trying to understand/learn from this.



Sulfurhexaflouride gas emitted from the burning of old office equipment containing sulfur based materials makes contact with hot steel, catalyzing the binding elements that keep the base alloys in tact (charcoal, iron, and other strengthening based additives), reducing hardened steel, into not so hardened steel, reducing its maximum heat threshold, and making jet fuel quite easy to melt the resultant material.

Down she comes.

Its a primary reason that decent office supplier manufacturers no longer use sulfur based materials...it doesnt react nicely to steel when its burned.

NIST has a comprehensive report detailing how this particular structure collapsed, and how come others that have either been engulfed in flames for DAYS, OR also hit by a plane, did not collapse in the same manner.

It has to do with the way the floors were constructed around a central pillar.

Trusses linked to the outer frame, and the inner core with a few simple angle clips to hold and share the load, with no free-standing pillars like conventional towers. This gave the floors much much more open floor space than any other tower out there...with obvious advantages.

Take some of the clips out of one floor thats hooked into the outer shell, and you have to share the load of the floor on the rest of the clips.

Shock load the clips and you stress them to a point where they cant hold as much weight prior to a collapse as they used to.

Strip the fire-proofing material off the steel that was rated to handle fires much much hotter than jet fuel could possibly provide, expose said steel to a mix of noxious gasses (created by burning old office equipment) that destroyed basic bonds holding the alloys in the steel together and you turn said steel into iron...drastically lowering its strength potential.

Heat the iron up, she melts...more clips fail, floor pancakes onto one below it. The one below is shock loaded and snaps instantly.....domino effect ensues, tower collapses into its own footprint at close to free-fall.

And yes, concrete can vaporise if you provide enough force.

Other towers either hit by a plane, or had been exposed to much hotter fires for far longer, had drastically different internal designs. They had a series of cubes connecting to one another, essentially an intricate pattern of concrete covered steel beams criss-crossing their way through the entire structure.

Take one beam out (either by fire or collision)...big whoop, theres 300 others to do its job. Not so with twin towers, the clips holding the trusses were limited, and a significant portion of them on the central impact floor were taken out in the collision.

Anyone here believe in Noah's ark?
Fun fact: There are an estimated 1 to 10 million species on the planet, most of which require a second to mate with. So, this brings the estimated amount of animals onto this wooden ark between 2 to 20 million. Correct me if I am wrong, but the largest vessels on the ocean today, using the most advanced construction techniques and alloy metals, can carry 3-4 thousand passengers. Also, if the entire world is covered in water after the great flood, where does this water go? Water in our atmosphere does not escape, it remains trapped on earth as either gas, liquid or a solid. If water covers the surface of the planet, there is no place for this water to go - either it freezes, remains liquid, or evaporates enough for land to form.
Smell any bullshit?

Potential to what? Help someone that is on one of the last healthy means of transport be even lazier? This is to the bike what the drive through is to the automobile.

Anyone with a high end bike won't be owning this. When you pay $600 of $1000 for a bike, you pay for alloys that are strong and light.

And like I said earlier - this would severely reduce one's ability to make sharp turns and other quick motions - making the bike dangerous for the rider and for people around it.

Terrible waste of time, money, skill and materials.

>> ^chilaxe:
Embryo potentiality? Given the right conditions, any cell in our bodies can be the germ for a new, unique person. (Cloned humans are just twins separated by time, and even twins are unique.)
Embryos do this "naturally," but the modern world is built on bending natural phenomenon to what benefits humankind, whether it's breeding wild plants and animals into the strains we know today, alloying metals, or intervening with medical treatments.


The key phrase in what you said is "given the right conditions." The embryos are already in fact growing into humans, whereas the skin cells on the end of your finger after picking your nose are not. Saying potentially, under the right conditions, those skin cells could become a human needlessly confuses the argument. In the embryos the process of new life has already begun. In the skin cells on your fingernail it has yet to begin. Like I said before, it's apples and oranges. It reminds me of the old Biblical argument against male masturbation: the idea was that you were killing off thousands of potential children every time you "spilled your seed upon the ground." But of course that view is entirely wrong since sperm in and of themselves cannot sprout new children (nevermind the fact that biologically the testes are constantly replacing old sperm all by themselves).

Your statement that cloned humans are just twins separated by time is interesting. Isn't an embryo then a fully formed human being just separated by time? That's really the big argument that's going on here.

Finally, I'm a bit chilled by how casually you threw out your last statement about "bending natural phenomenon to what benefits humankind." Certainly there must be limits to this. Are you implying that anything is ethical if it benefits humankind in some way (see below)?

>> ^drattus:
The best argument for stem cell research I can think of is that we're already destroying more than we'd ever need as medical waste from fertility treatment. The choice to me is more one of do we make use of what's already being incinerated as waste or do we try to save some lives with it instead? No need to get into the rest of it, it's a distraction.


You should read the President's Council on Bioethical Research Transcripts from 2002: http://bioethics.gov/topics/stemcells_index.html

and in particular, this transcript where a similar argument is made by Dr. Outka: http://bioethics.gov/transcripts/apr02/apr25session3.html

One of the doctors on the council astutely points out that the Nazi's used the same exact logic to experiment on Jewish prisoners. To put it bluntly, they were going to die anyway so at least they might contribute to science in some way before they did.

Again though, it all goes back to defining at what point a human being is (or ceases to be) a human being. The President's Council has pretty much stated that biology can't answer the question. It'll be up to philosophers, ethicists, lawmakers, and the citizens themselves to come up with an answer.

His statements might require some unpacking.

Flies vs. embryos? The point is that 150-cell embryos are incapable of desiring, fearing, remembering, or any degree of sentience --unlike flies, unlike anybody who's not in a brain-dead coma.

Embryo potentiality? Given the right conditions, any cell in our bodies can be the germ for a new, unique person. (Cloned humans are just twins separated by time, and even twins are unique.)

Embryos do this "naturally," but the modern world is built on bending natural phenomenon to what benefits humankind, whether it's breeding wild plants and animals into the strains we know today, alloying metals, or intervening with medical treatments.

Rembar thinks mercury alloy is absolutely safe
Rembar thinks mercury alloy is absolutely safe
Rembar thinks mercury alloy is absolutely safe
Rembar thinks mercury alloy is absolutely safe
Rembar thinks mercury alloy is absolutely safe
Rembar thinks mercury alloy is absolutely safe
Rembar thinks mercury alloy is absolutely safe!

NEENER NEENER NEEEEEEEEEENER!

This video is not the one I intended to remove, I removed it because I scanned the posters in the Science Channel and assumed another video ("The Truth about Fluoride") I had removed earlier by this same poster was this video. I should have taken the extra time and checked the title, and for that I apologize.

It's FL Lorscheider, btw, not Lorsheider. Bamdrew, I very much agree, Lorscheider's work is "focused", to be sure, and that is a concern, but I saw nothing in this video specifically that I took issue with.

Jwray, seriously, lol. "Rembar thinks mercury alloy is absolutely safe". Really? I said that? Quote me. Please. Either that, or you owe me an apology for putting words in my mouth for no other reason than building up a strawman to attack. That's low and outright dishonest, and I expect an apology. I'm serious. I'll accept that apology in email and comment form, thanks.

*science

Rembar thinks mercury alloy is absolutely safe, ipso facto this is not *science, even if it's published in a peer-reviewed *scientific journal and it uses the *scientific method and it comes from the *science faculty of a respectable university, because the almighty Medical Establishment is infallible and never persisted in using an incorrect treatment for hundreds of years. Leeches? Mercuric chloride for syphilis? Never happened Science is not about unanimity of opinion. It's about the method. Mercury has been known as a neurotoxin for some time. So when you look at neurons grown in vitro under a microscope, and expose some of them to a few PPM of mercury, the mercury should cause some visible difference in structure or behavior of the neurons exposed to mercury. That's a prediction. And they verified the prediction, videotaped it, and posted the video. They even identified the site where mercury binds to a neuronal protein. Should rembar have a monopoly on *science at the sift?

http://movies.commons.ucalgary.ca/mercury/

Shape memory alloy? wow...sticky stuff... Oh, man, I remember that stuff. It got so nasty.

I agree with you(and many many other people) on the skepticism you present concerning the buildings' destruction as a result of demolition. I do not believe that it is my place, or within the scope of my knowledge, to speculate as to WHO would be responsible for such an atrocious act(if indeed it was caused by some form of controlled demolition).

The reason I do not believe 500-600 mph is sufficient speed for the aircraft to go through more than a central column or 2, is basically this:

The engine itself has a mass of about 4,000 kg spread across what is basically a 2m x 2m x 3m soda can, with internal systems that ARE meant to detach from the engine upon impact at those speeds, lowering the mass of the engine significantly, and reducing it to basically the outside shell and some structural aluminum(most of the titanium alloys in an engine are spent on things that have to withstand TREMENDOUS force - fan, compressor, and turbine blades - blades which will fly off in an impact[as a matter of fact, I think you can buy a couple as collectibles on eBay these days]).

Good explanation/vid of basic structure of an engine: http://www.geae.com/engines/commercial/genx/index.html

The outside of the engine is basically an aluminum shell, and deforms pretty much just like a soda can does - since much of the engine's mass is removed from the engine upon first impact(granted, you have titanium alloy fan blades all over the place, but much of the mass IS gone, as a safety feature of the engines), the second impact usually just deforms the last structural sections of the engine.

It is not a "solid block of titanium," or even close - Titanium is expensive to buy, expensive to machine, and relatively massive compared to the materials in the rest of the engine, and even the rest of the plane. Plane and engine manufacturers like to go lightweight and strong, which is why aluminum and titanium alloys are often used.

(continued below)...

Doc_M: 500-600mph estimate is based on min/max from NIST report, and backed up by the book "Debunking 9/11 Myths."

Also, the engines are not "solid titanium" - most of the engine's components are an aluminum/titanium alloy, which further decreases the density of the titanium(which is why "the engines...could not have gone through (more than - your edit) a central column or two" - they would have been quite shredded after going through the steel OUTER columns first - the fan blades themselves would have already ejected from the engine[as they are designed to do], and all that would have been left, after the collision with the outer columns, would have been scraps of the casing, fuel system, and the internal rotor/cooling system).

This is actually one subject I have more extensive knowledge about, even, as I did quite a lot of work on GE's GEnx series of engines. Even though they are most certainly NOT the same series present on the planes that crashed into the WTC buildings, well, look at it this way: using solid titanium increases both the weight and the cost of the engines(just for starters - if you'd like, I can list multitudes of reasons that engine manufacturers do NOT use "solid titanium").

Call it a "wild guess" if you want - if you're interested, it's actually quite easy to test what I'm saying here using simple, proven, Newtonian Physics. Check the comments section of theo47's profile for a good creative commons book on that. Take a look, specifically, at the section on "Force and Motion."

Oh, and p.s. - I have spent 40-60 hours per week for the past couple of years "thinking about" and "calculating it." If you want to debunk me, please do so - Newtonian physics is most certainly NOT difficult in any sense of the term, and heck - you'll be able to prove just how much "guessing" I have done.

Again, I repeat - more fun stuff to keep us talking...

Agree with rougy on this one - the speed required to cause almost the entirety of the plane(composed primarily of carbon fiber and aluminum) to virtually slice the central columns, after having passed through the outer steel columns, would simply be astounding(quite greater than ~500-600mph).

Density of steel is ~7.8g/cm^3 - aluminum/aluminum alloys generally run ~2.8g/cm^3. I'm not even going to go into the density of carbon fiber.

That's not to say that the engines, composed primarily of titanium/aluminum, could not have gone through a center column or two - density of titanium is ~4.5g/cm^3.

Sure, the planes have a large amount of mass, but the WTC towers weren't exactly low mass themselves.

More fun stuff to keep us talking...