Ok. If you have read the article you would have seen how misinformed that which you have posted is.
Really, using jet fuel to melt steel is an amazing discovery, really. It is also amazing that until now, no one had been able to get it to work, and that proves the terrorists were not stupid people. Ironworkers fool with acetylene torches, bottled oxygen, electric arcs from generators, electric furnaces, and other elaborate tricks, but what did these brilliant terrorists use? Jet fuel, costing maybe 80 cents a gallon on the open market.
Just so that you know, steel melts at 1538 degrees Celsius and the fires that "raged" were hardly above 550 °C (as evidenced by thick black smoke). With Kerozene you can reach a maximum of 900 °C in optimal conditions, i.e. plentiful oxygen supply which will be indicated by white smoke.
Not to mention the 100,000 tons of steel each building had and that heating steel is like pouring syrup onto a plate: you can't get it to stack up. The heat just flows out to the colder parts of the steel, cooling off the part you are trying to warm up. If you pour it on hard enough and fast enough, you can get the syrup to stack up a little bit. And with very high heat brought on very fast, you can heat up one part of a steel object, but the heat will quickly spread out and the hot part will cool off soon after you stop.
Am I to believe that the fire burned for 104 minutes in the north tower, gradually heating the 100,000 tons of steel supports like a blacksmith's forge, with the heat flowing throughout the skeleton of the tower? If the collapse was due to heated steel, the experts should be able to tell us how many thousands of tons of steel were heated to melting temperature in 104 minutes it took for the building to collapse and how much fuel would be required to produce that much heat. Can a single Boeing 767 carry that much fuel?
Liquid fuel does not burn hot for long. Liquid fuel evaporates (or boils) as it burns, and the vapor burns as it boils off. If the ambient temperature passes the boiling point of the fuel and oxygen is plentiful, the process builds to an explosion that consumes the fuel.
Jet fuel (refined kerosene) boils at temperatures above 160 degrees Celsius (350 F) and the vapor flashes into flame at 41 degrees Celsius (106 F). In an environment of 900 degrees C, jet fuel spread thinly on walls, floor, and ceiling would boil off very quickly. If there were sufficient oxygen, it would burn; otherwise it would disperse out the open windows and flame when it met oxygen in the open air — as was likely happening in the pictures that showed flames shooting from the windows. Some New Yorkers miles distant claimed they smelled the fuel, which would indicate fuel vapors were escaping without being burned.
Note that jet fuel burning outside the building would heat the outside columns, but would not heat the central load-bearing columns significantly. Following this reasoning, the jet fuel fire does not adequately explain the failure of the central columns.
The terrorists apparently predicted the whole scenario — the fuel fire, the slow weakening of the structure, and the horrific collapse of the building — phenomena that the architects and the NY civil engineering approval committees never dreamed of.
Even as you righteously hate those men, you have to admire them for their genius.
As for your platter theory... If we suppose the platters fell as the report says, those quarter-mile high central steel columns (at least from the ground to the fire) should have been left standing naked and unsupported in the air, and then they should have fallen intact or in sections to the ground below, clobbering buildings hundreds of feet from the WTC site like giant trees falling in the forest. But I haven't seen any pictures showing those columns standing, falling, or lying on the ground. Nor have I heard of damage caused by them. Thus my stating that the collateral damage was minimal. Can you even imagine the extent of damage if the buildings lurched down sideways smashing themselves on neigbouring skyscrapers and probably initiating a domino effect which would have left whole blocks in ruble...
Now I know those terrorists must have been much better at these things than I am. I would take one look at their kamikaze plans with commercial jets and I would reject it as — spectacular maybe, but not significantly damaging. The WTC was not even a strategic military target.
But if I were given the assignment of a terrorist hijacker, I would try to hit the towers low in the supports to knock the towers down, maybe trapping the workers with the fire and burning the towers from the ground up, just as the people in the top stories were trapped. Even the Japanese kamikaze pilots aimed for the water line.
Again, read the article!
