FROM THE MOMENT the first airplane crashed into the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001, the world has asked one simple and compelling question: How could it happen?

Three and a half years later, not everyone is convinced we know the truth. Go to Google.com, type in the search phrase "World Trade Center conspiracy" and you'll get links to an estimated 628,000 Web sites. More than 3000 books on 9/11 have been published; many of them reject the official consensus that hijackers associated with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda flew passenger planes into U.S. landmarks.

Healthy skepticism, it seems, has curdled into paranoia. Wild conspiracy tales are peddled daily on the Internet, talk radio and in other media. Blurry photos, quotes taken out of context and sketchy eyewitness accounts have inspired a slew of elaborate theories: The Pentagon was struck by a missile; the World Trade Center was razed by demolition-style bombs; Flight 93 was shot down by a mysterious white jet. As outlandish as these claims may sound, they are increasingly accepted abroad and among extremists here in the United States.

To investigate 16 of the most prevalent claims made by conspiracy theorists, POPULAR MECHANICS assembled a team of nine researchers and reporters who, together with PM editors, consulted more than 70 professionals in fields that form the core content of this magazine, including aviation, engineering and the military.

In the end, we were able to debunk each of these assertions.........

http://tinyurl.com/5ec4a

I already read it...all it does is just repeat the official theory, and leaves the questions unanswered. It also leaves out a lot of facts for their convenience.

Okay. Let's explore it. Give us one question that it leaves unanswered and let's discuss it. Okay?

Still waiting.........

Alright, I'll start off a couple and go on from there once I have more time.

In the WTC 7 section, it says the collapse was a "total progressive collapse". These collapses in steel buildings are only theory, and have no historical precendent to feed off of. Not once in history has a steel-framed building outside the alleged WTC's collapse, collapsed from total progressive collapse. And its theory is weak at best. Any damage from debris to the building could in fact damage the building, and I don't deny that. But its not enough to make the building collapse. Popular Mechanic shows a picture of WTC 7 being surrounded by dust, yet buildings even closer to the twin towers that suffered even more severe damage from debris did not collapse. Then there's the argument of the fires.

Even if fires were to happen in WTC 7, and even if the rare event were to happen and they were hot enough to bend and warp support columns, there wouldn't be an even straight collapse. It would topple and fall in an uneven way because the fires would bend the columns unevenly. WTC 7 fell at near free-fall speed, straight down. Suggesting all support columns were simultaneously severed (or imploded). This fall is characteristic of controlled demolition.

Popular Mechanic puts to rest complaints that the fire wasn't hot enough to melt the steel, because the steel doesn't need to melt, but only be warped. This is true, but it fails to mention that pools of molten steel were found under the rubble piles all over the collapse site by rescue and clean-up workers. This melted steel was found even days after collapse. This molten steel found in the basements, and even found on video dripping from the WTC as it stood, is characteristic of the use of thermate, or explosive thermite. To test this hypothesis, Brigham Young University physics professor Steven E. Jones got a hold of structural steel residue from the twin towers and had them undergo chemical analysis. The material has been indentified as thermate (the controlled demolition explosive thermite plus sulfur). Sulfur causes the thermite to burn hotter, cutting steel quickly and leaving trails of yellow colored residue, which was found at the WTC sites.

Popular Mechanic completely disregards the molten steel, and the scienfitic evidence that is quickly putting to rest the theory of the WTC's undergoing total progressive collapse.

What about all the jet fuel?

CLAIM: The first hijacked plane crashed through the 94th to the 98th floors of the World Trade Center's 110-story North Tower; the second jet slammed into the 78th to the 84th floors of the 110-story South Tower. The impact and ensuing fires disrupted elevator service in both buildings. Plus, the lobbies of both buildings were visibly damaged before the towers collapsed. "There is NO WAY the impact of the jet caused such widespread damage 80 stories below," claims a posting on the San Diego Independent Media Center Web site (sandiego.indymedia.org). "It is OBVIOUS and irrefutable that OTHER EXPLOSIVES (... such as concussion bombs) HAD ALREADY BEEN DETONATED in the lower levels of tower one at the same time as the plane crash."

FACT: Following up on a May 2002 preliminary report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a major study will be released in spring 2005 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST shared its initial findings with PM and made its lead researcher available to our team of reporters.

The NIST investigation revealed that plane debris sliced through the utility shafts at the North Tower's core, creating a conduit for burning jet fuel--and fiery destruction throughout the building. "It's very hard to document where the fuel went," says Forman Williams, a NIST adviser and a combustion expert, "but if it's atomized and combustible and gets to an ignition source, it'll go off."

Burning fuel traveling down the elevator shafts would have disrupted the elevator systems and caused extensive damage to the lobbies. NIST heard first-person testimony that "some elevators slammed right down" to the ground floor. "The doors cracked open on the lobby floor and flames came out and people died," says James Quintiere, an engineering professor at the University of Maryland and a NIST adviser. A similar observation was made in the French documentary "9/11," by Jules and Gedeon Naudet. As Jules Naudet entered the North Tower lobby, minutes after the first aircraft struck, he saw victims on fire, a scene he found too horrific to film.

"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."

Like I said, Popular Mechanics is right when they say that structural weakening can be caused by the warping of the support columns, not their melting. But this doesn't create a free-fall straight down into the building's own footprints. It would fall unevenly because the fires are uneven. And plus, the fires were at the top so a full collapse of the building is highly unlikely even if there was warping going on.

Like I said, Popular Mechanics doesn't mention the fact that pools of molten steel were found in the basements. And distinct traces of thermate was found in the residue, proving the existence of an incendiary. Don't simply re-quote Popular Mechanics, that doesn't get us anywhere because I already read it, and I already pointed out the things it left out for it's convenience as you asked.

And in fact Popular Mechanics only hurts its own argument because they were asserting steel doesn't melt in building fires. And had credible people quote that steel doesn't melt in building fires. Yet melted steel was found.

so Finding melted steel proves what? I can see how the floors were weakened and just fell on top of themselves and collapsed. No problem.