United Airlines Flight 175 and the South Tower (2WTC)

So, the plane flown by hijacker Mohammed Atta has crashed into the North Tower.  At this time, most people think this was just some sort of aviation accident, and nothing more.  There are some that think it was done on purpose because it was clear skies that morning.  Unfortunately, however, the thoughts of an accident will be put to bed about 17 minutes after the crash of Flight 11.

And just to get it out of the way immediately, here is the flight manifest that shows all of the hijackers were indeed on board UA175:

HOW DO WE KNOW THIS PLANE WAS REALLY A PLANE, MAN

The same skepticism for AA11 arose for UA175.  However, unlike AA11, UA175 was captured on cameras, camcorders, and TV cameras for the entire world to see.

Here is a still from one of those videos, less than a second before impacting the South Tower:

Now, here is United Airlines commercial airliner take note of the paint scheme:

As a bonus for you, here is the very same UA175 pictured in 1999:

Again the paint matches the object that is a split second from crashing into the South Tower.

The colors on the wings, engines, the split on the fuselage, and the tail markings are all consistent with a united Airlines commercial jet.  Now, let's take a look at the bottom of the plane.  This picture spawned conspiracy theories about a pod being attached to the bottom of the plane, and then shot a missile into the tower a split second before impact:

Truthers jump to the conclusion that this clearly shows something on the bottom of the aircraft, as noted with the break in the white stripe going down the middle of it.  Now, here is the bottom of another United Airlines jet:

Looks fairly identical, yes?  That's because this "pod" is nothing of the sort.  What they believe to be a pod is actually a housing compartment for the middle/rear landing gears for the plane.

For the TV fakery crowd, there are simply too many videos of the plane hitting the building, at too many angles, for it to be faked.

This one caught the longest showing of UA175, from a a news camera on top of one of the buildings:

Here are more angles, some from the news, others from random people on the ground:

Notice again that the paint scheme matches United Airlines.

This is a video from pretty far away, they were just filming driving down the street at the North Tower being on fire and catch the plane on tape hitting the South Tower.  Notice the delay in the camera picking up the plane engine sounds.  This is due to the delay of sound travel to that distance, and makes it even more believable that it is authentic.

I could go on with this, possibly with hundreds of different videos showing the same thing: United Airlines Flight 175 hitting the South Tower.

DAMAGE AND DEBRIS

Like with AA11, UA175 had ample debris survive the crash.  Here is a rather large chunk of the fuselage, found on the rooftop of WTC5:

One of UA175's engines found at the intersection of Church and Murray Street.  

Landing gear that apparently the evil government forgot to pick up years after the attacks, wedged between two buildings:

Other engine parts:

For the damage done, it is very similar to the North Tower, since they are both plane crashes with a full tank of jet fuel and traveling an an extremely fast speed.  The primary difference here is where it was hit.  This will explain why the South Tower was the second building hit but the first to collapse.

AA11 hit the North Tower pretty much right in the middle fairly symmetrical, between the 93rd and 98th floors.  UA175 hit the South Tower between the 77th and 85 floors.  It also hit towards the right corner of the building, causing more awkward stress on the building to redistribute the weight to non severed perimeter and core columns.  There is also more weight bearing down on the impact zone, having 25 floors above it, where as the North Tower impact area had 11 floors.

Again, it is a plane shaped hole, and goes inward.  I don't think it is necessary to go through this song and dance again from the North Tower.  

THERMITE THEORY

There is, however, one this I want to davel on from pictures of the South Tower burning: the thermite theory.  Truthers link to the video this still was taken from to make the conclusion that it was melted steel, and that the only way this could've occured is with thermite.

The thermite theory was created and pushed by BYU physics professor Stephen Jones.  His paper on the subject was never peer reviewed by any respected science journal, and when the BYU science department put him on paid leave so his peers could review his paper, he abruptly quit his tenured post at the university and took his paper with him. He then submitted his paper to the now infamous Bentham Science, who pretty much accepts any papers, n matter how full of jibberish and nonsense it has. There is probably good reason for this, since he most likely wasn't going to get the good marks he wanted from the process.  Probably to be expected from the man whose big claim to fame before thermite was writing a paper on how Jesus Christ visited the Americas.

Anyways, his paper's thesis is that the dust samples he collected from various points of origins(last time I read it he never established a solid chain of custody, a big nono) that are claimed to be from the WTC site from the 9/11 attacks contained traces of thermate, which is thermite with sulfur deposits and barium nitrate.  Some problems with this analysis occur.  First, with the sulfur, the WTC towers used sulfur drywall.  So of course sulfur is going to be found in any dust of the WTC.

Chemist Frank Greening argues that with the drywall and all the fires, then after the collapses and water/other chemicals brewing under the rubble, that sulfur would be abundant there.

Jones also claims to cite an EPA report by Erik Swartz that states there was a presence of 1, 3 diphenylpropane, would suggest the presence of thermite.  What Jones fails to mention, though, is that Swartz says that the reasoning for the presence of these ingredients is from the burning plastic of all the computers in the buildings.

He also cites a post-9/11 government report on dust samples in lower Manhattan, and feels it also concludes to his findings of thermite.  What he fails to mention is that the report states that the presence of manganese, aluminum, and barium are consistent with their presence in building materials.

So far his claims aren't holding much water if the levels of said items are normal for the area and what was in the buildings.  If thermite was used those levels would be much higher.  But let's put thermite to the test.  Let's look at a video or two of thermite on a steel beam, shall we?

The following two videos are by Van Romero, an explosives expert at new Mexico Tech.  In the first video is just regular thermite placed on a steel beam.  The second one is with thermite painted onto a steel beam:

Both look pretty violent, right?  But did it burn hot enough, and even more importantly, long enough, to do any real damage to the beam?  Van Romero gives his conclusion:

Short and sweet?  "Nope."

Now, maybe that just wasn't enough thermite to be able to do anything to the steel beam.

James Millette, then executive director of MVA Scientific Consultants, with a bachelors in physics and a master's and PhD in environmental science, elected to either refute or confirm Jones' findings.  The problem?  Jones and his associates refused to hand over their dust samples.  So like a boss, Millette went to NYC and got his own.

His findings are not quite as fanatical as Jones.  The red/gray chips that Jones touted as proof of thermite, Millette claims, is this: the grey side is consistent with carbon steel.  The red side contained elements for essentially primer paint.  His conclusion:

"The red/gray chips found in the WTC dust at four sites in New York City are consistent with carbon steel coated with an epoxy resin that contains primarily iron oxide and kaolin clay pigments.

There is no evidence of individual elemental aluminum particles of any size in the red/gray chips, therefor the red layer of the red/gray chips is not thermite or nano-thermite."

Link to the paper here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/64959841/9119ProgressReport022912_rev1_030112webHiRes.pdf

So no evidence of bombs, no evidence of thermite, damage consistent with that of a plane crash and footage/photos/stills that show a consistency with a United Airlines jet.  SOunds like the official story is winning again.

AND I'M FREE, FREE FALLING (AGAIN)

Just to be absolutely sure about the lack of a controlled demolition, let's look at the time it took for the South Tower collapse.  Again, for it to be free fall, the entire building would have to collapse in less than ten seconds.

From ABC News:

Collapse starts at about 1:59.  You can see the collapse still going after 2:09 has elapsed.  The building as a whole doesn't even get all the way behind WTC7 until 2:16.  So it's at least 17 seconds.

Here's another view:

Collapse starts at :04.  By 0:14, there is still a good amount of the core and perimeter columns still collapsing.  I guestimate here that it stops at 0:26, or 22 seconds.

One more, this one has the collapse starting right at the start:

As you can see, by 11 seconds, the camera turns back and you can still see at least forty stories of the building still in tact.

So again, this building didn't fall at free fall speeds, either.  Sorry truthers.