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"Willyloman" Exposes Lying Berkeley Prof!

gretavo's picture
Submitted by gretavo on Wed, 2008-07-23 18:03.

Another 9/11 Apologist Exposed

Posted by willyloman on July 23, 2008

by Scott Creighton


Thanks to 9/11 Blogger and AJFan, I just listened to one of the most amazing pieces of abject fabrication I have heard on any radio station; and that includes Bill's show.


Professor Muller (at about 7:30) is led by Boston Public Radio host Tom Ashbrook  to the subject of what future presidents should know about the physics of terrorism; specifically, how did those buildings come down? 


Professor Muller is currently with the University of California, Berkley and also a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group which brings together top scientists as consultants for the United States Department of Defense. So he shouldn't be too biased, eh?


He writes a monthly column for MIT's magazine and by all accounts, he is a very smart man (you can tell by how he holds his glasses there). So, let's see what he says in the interview about the physics of 9/11, shall we?

 


This is part of what he says during that interview:


TNT is uh, a (sic)explosive, releases a certain amount of energy, I like to measure the energy in food calories, per gram or per pound.  If we compare the energy released by gasoline, many people are surprised to learn that gasoline releases more energy, 15 times the energy of TNT.


The planes carried about 60 tons of jet fuel, and if you multiply that by about 15 to get a sense of it, it was about 900 tons of TNT or the equivalent. 2 planes=1.8kila tons. That's why there was so much damage done.


First, let me say that jet fuel isn't gasoline, though Muller interchanges the two during his talk. The jet fuel used in these planes was Type A jet Fuel. The most common fuel is an unleaded/paraffin (kerosene) oil-based fuel classified as Jet A-1 (otherwise known as AVTUR), which is produced to an internationally standardized set of specifications. Wiki, here.


Now, aside from the equation of "15 times the energy of TNT" statement he makes, which I don't know whether that is true or not of gasoline, since we are talking about Type A Jet Fuel, I don't think it makes a difference. But I want to work out the math for you, and then show you a video real quick.


But, since gasoline is derived from oil, even though it does have several additives that make it more volatile, we can basically derive that the energy output would be close that of oil when compared to TNT.


"A ton of oil equivalent or tonne of oil equivalent (TOE), a conventional value of 10 Gcal (IT) = 41.868 GJ ˆ 10.0067 ton of TNT." Wiki, here.


So, we are looking at something akin to a 10 to 1 ratio as opposed to a 15 to 1 as he claims, depending on the additives. But he is the professor, not me, so I will yield to his pedigree on this one.


Let's "do the math" shall we? He says there were the equivalent of 900 tons of TNT on each plane, and that is what caused "all the damage". Well, 900 tons (Short Tons) equals 1,800,000 lbs. That is nearly 2 million lbs of TNT¦ per plane. Wanna see what 1 million pounds of TNT does? Almost HALF of what Muller says is the same as what the planes did to the Trade Center? Take a look¦

Feb. 1965. 1 million pounds of TNT detonated to simulate a nuclear explosion. Half of the explosive energy that Muller suggests was released in EACH of the plane crashes.


Half (meaning that by Mullers calculations, the explosions of the plane impacts were twice this size. Did they LOOK twice this size?)


This link is a MUST SEE. it is a 50 ton test from 1963. Remember that Muller said that EACH plane carried the equivalent explosive energy of 900 tons of TNT. So watch what 50 tons does, and tell me, just how accurate Professor Muller's math really is.


http://www.sonicbomb.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=126


In the 1st video you can see how the blast wave sweeps over the land and water then nearly crushes the battle ships anchored 1000 meters away. Clearly this is NOT what we saw when those planes hit the towers. If it had been, it would have blown the tops off those buildings immediately.


Now, this IS  what we saw on Sept. 11th. It is the actual damage done to the building after the plane hit.

When the planes hit the buildings, the vast majority of the Jet Fuel was burned in the initial fireball; meaning that most of the energy was spent AT THAT MOMENT, according to both NIST and FEMA and many other scientists who have studied the attacks.

You can clearly see it in the videos; the orange fireballs are mainly OUTSIDE the buildings, so the destructive force is exerted AWAY FROM the interior columns.
Perhaps that is why the buildings REMAINED STANDING for so long, Mr. Muller.

Well, now that we have that straight, and we can pretty much tell Muller's numbers must be WAY off; let's see what else he had to say.


"Gasoline, in my mind, is the most dangerous thing, the thing that is the greatest danger for a future terrorist attack.


The lack of terrorism, since 9/11, something I said in my class… as I told my students, as we learned last week, gasoline has 15 times the energy of TNT. Let me describe to you how the building collapsed; what happened. Basically I got it all right."


'Lack of terrorism since 9/11'? What do you call the anthrax attacks of late September 2001? I would call them terrorism. But that's just me.


"Once the fires weakened the steel and when that happened the upper floors collapsed on it like a sledge hammer."


Oh jesus¦ he got it all right huh? He's been soooo wrong so far.


Let's see. Aside from the fact that if his numbers had been correct with the 900 tons of TNT equation, then the plane crash would have blown the tops of the buildings to Jersey, let's look at the rest.


"The fires weakened the steel". Very simple; A-36 structural steel melts at 2,750 deg F. and it starts to lose structural integrity at around 1,475 deg F (but that doesn't mean it fails at that temp as the UL tests proved). But that is INTERNAL TEMPERATURE of the core of the steel. meaning, that the EXTERNAL TEMPERATURE  would have to remain at least that hot for a prolonged period of time in order to heat the core of the steel to that point.


The thicker the steel, the longer it takes to 'weaken' it. Seems simple, right?


NIST and FEMA both said that the hottest exterior temperatures of the steel they tested was around 650 deg. F, no where NEAR hot enough to cause that kind of CORE STEEL TEMPERATURE. There may have been patches of fires that heated the steel beyond 650 deg. F but, remember that the steel isn't sitting there by itself. It was designed as a heat sync; meaning that it was all interconnected, and the heat energy transferred throughout the steel structure so that the steel would not reach that point quickly. That is how it was designed.


Perhaps that explains why the Underwriters Laboratories truss-test showed no significant weakening of the steel assemblies when they burned at hotter temperatures than were possible in the towers, for a longer period of time. But hey, that's just me being a stickler for experiments and physics.


"I don't think that Osama bin Laden expected that building to collapse. I don't think anybody did."


Wow, does he get anything right?


Not only did the owner of a controlled demolition company (that was brought on the site right after 9/11 to "clean up") call people in New York (by his own admission) while while the buildings were still standing to tell them to leave the area because he knew the buildings would collapse, but also, the Fire Chief at the time reports that an engineer who specializes in demolitions, who just happened to be there, told him that Building 7 was going to collapse.


So, yes, people knew the buildings were coming down. You can see video still of fire fighters walking away from building 7 saying that they found explosives in the building and it was going to collapse.


So, Professor Muller, you got zero correct. ZERO. And considering that you are a lot smarter than that, I have to surmise that you didn't just blurt out those horrible fabrications for the fun of it.


You see, this is what should happen when someone obviously tries to advance their career by parroting the "official conspiracy theory" to give it credibility; we should launch like a pack of well informed wolves on his story leaving nothing but the rotting carcass of his career.


Because what he is really doing is trying to turn a profit from the tragedy of 9/11, all the while hoping people who are smart enough to see through his bullshit won't take the time to expose it. Well, once again, he made a vast miscalculation.


The interview is recorded and available as a MPEG, here.

This entry was posted on July 23, 2008 at 3:21 pm and is filed under 9/11 Truth. Tagged: , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to Another 9/11 Apologist Exposed

  1. Real Truther Says:
    July 23, 2008 at 6:01 pm

    Very interesting, WL! Notice he "innocently" throws in that he likes to talk about energy in terms of "food calories". think about that--why would he?! Well, consider this from wikipedia:

    Explosives usually have less potential energy than petroleum fuels, but their high rate of energy release produces the great blast pressure. TNT has a detonation velocity of 6,940 m/s compared to 1,680 m/s for the detonation of a pentane-air mixture, and the 0.34-m/s stoichiometric flame speed of gasoline combustion in air.
    Explosive force is released in a direction perpendicular to the surface of the explosive. If the surface is cut or shaped, the explosive forces can be focused to produce a greater local effect; this is known as a shaped charge.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosives

    Basically to suggest that you can compare these two in terms of their destructive capability is patently absurd and yes, he should be fired by Berkeley for a) being stupid or more likely b) being a lying apologist for the 9/11 murderers and cover-up.

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gretavo's picture

ramuller@lbl.gov yeah nice

Submitted by gretavo on Wed, 2008-07-23 18:14.

ramuller@lbl.gov

yeah nice email address for a berkeley prof, eh?

So here's why he talks in terms of food calories:

One food Calorie (1 kcal or 1,000 calories) is the amount of digestively available food energy (heat) that will raise the temperature of one kilogram of water one degree Celsius. Some advocate the convention of the capitalizing the C in these so that one food Calorie is equal to 1000 lowercase calories, but that convention is not generally followed.

See, you could absolutely heat tons more water with gasoline than you could with explosives. But break apart a building? You want detonation velocity for that. So who's going to email him? Cass?

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gretavo's picture

and who is host Tom Ashbrook?

Submitted by gretavo on Wed, 2008-07-23 18:31.

A dynamiter in an oil field? Wow! You'd think he would be the PERFECT person to correct the good Prof!

Tom Ashbrook

On Point

Tom Ashbrook is an award-winning journalist brought to radio by the attacks of September 11, 2001 after a distinguished career in newspaper reporting and editing.

Ashbrook was raised on an Illinois farm, attended Yale University and worked as a surveyor and dynamiter in Alaska's oil fields before turning foreign correspondent. He spent ten years in Asia, based in India, Hong Kong and Tokyo. At the Boston Globe, he directed coverage of the end of the Cold War and of the Gulf War, serving as deputy managing editor until 1996.

He was awarded the Livingston Prize for National Reporting and named a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University before taking a four-year plunge into Internet entrepreneurship, chronicled in his book The Leap. Ashbrook was enlisted to host emergency coverage of the 9/11 attacks and world response for National Public Radio through WBUR, Boston, which produces On Point.

http://www.wbur.org/inside/personality/detail6477.asp

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gretavo's picture

email exchange with richard muller

Submitted by gretavo on Thu, 2008-07-24 18:24.

Dear WBUR,


I was surprised to learn that a Berkeley professor of physics, Richard Muller, made the following statement on one of Tom Ashbrook's On Point broadcasts:

“TNT is uh, a (sic) explosive, releases a certain amount of energy, I like to measure the energy in food calories, per gram or per pound.  If we compare the energy released by gasoline, many people are surprised to learn that gasoline releases more energy, 15 times the energy of TNT.

The planes carried about 60 tons of jet fuel, and if you multiply that by about 15 to get a sense of it, it was about 900 tons of TNT or the equivalent. 2 planes=1.8kila tons. That’s why there was so much damage done [to the Twin Towers].”

This is an extremely misleading comparison as you can see below. 

One food Calorie (1 kcal or 1,000 calories) is the amount of digestively available food energy (heat) that will raise the temperature of one kilogram of water one degree Celsius.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_calorie

Explosives usually have less potential energy than petroleum fuels, but their high rate of energy release produces the great blast pressure. TNT has a detonation velocity of 6,940 m/s compared to 1,680 m/s for the detonation of a pentane-air mixture, and the 0.34-m/s stoichiometric flame speed of gasoline combustion in air.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosives

So why does Dr. Muller like to measure energy in food calories when comparing the destructive potential of gasoline and TNT?

Of course you could heat more water with gasoline than you could with explosives. But to break apart a building? You need detonation velocity for that.  I notice on Mr. Ashbrook's bio that he has experience with dynamite in Alaskan oil fields--how is it that he failed to correct the physics prof on this seemingly simple point?

Given the importance to our country of having the best possible understanding of what happened to the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and the fact that over 400 building professionals have signed the petition of the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (ae911truth.org) calling for a new investigation into possible use of explosives and/or incendiaries in the towers, I feel that clarification from WBUR, Mr. Ashbrook, and Prof. Muller is in order.

With kind thanks,

Gretavo


On 7/23/2008 3:08 PM, Richard Muller wrote:

Of course you could heat more water with gasoline than you could with explosives. But to break apart a building? You need detonation velocity for that.


No.  Slow burn to weaken the building is far more destructive.

If you want to destroy an automobile, you can do it with 1 pound of TNT.  But you can do far greater destruction by feeding teenagers with one pound of chocolate chip cookies, and give them sledgehammers.

TNT breaks material because it releases the energy so quickly.  That is important for rock, but is wasteful when destroying buildings.

This is all in my book.  I think you would enjoy it.

Richard Muller

Thank you for the quick reply.  I will take as joke your sledgehammer scenario, since it's clearly not accurate--the teenagers would tire well before the car.  :)

Let's put it this way--assuming you are correct that 60 tons of jet fuel can release the same amount of heat as 900 tons of TNT, this comparison is extremely misleading because the unsuspecting listener will assume that you mean that the destructive capacity is similarly equivalent.  But if you had put 900 tons of TNT in the towers, i.e. 4.5 tons of TNT per floor of each, the explosions would have dwarfed what we saw in the explosion of each airplane after impacting the tower, no?  Of course it would have.

You seem to be conflating the potential energy of the jet fuel with the potential energy contained in the building due to gravity.

But here is what you said:

The planes carried about 60 tons of jet fuel, and if you multiply that by about 15 to get a sense of it, it was about 900 tons of TNT or the equivalent. 2 planes=1.8kila tons. That’s why there was so much damage done.

If what you're arguing is that the jet fuel contained enough energy to release the buildings' potential energy then you should make that argument, not suggest that 60 tons of jet fuel is in any way by itself comparable to 900 tons of TNT.

But if you had put 900 tons of TNT in the towers, i.e. 4.5 tons of TNT per floor of each, the explosions would have dwarfed what we saw in the explosion of each airplane after impacting the tower, no?  Of course it would have.


Such an explosion probably would NOT have brought down the tower.  It would have destroyed the walls, but largely expanded around the columns, leaving them intact.

It is very hard to destroy a column with an explosion.  Slow heat works best.

That's pretty amazing, since the Murrah building in OKC was hit by the equivalent of only 2 tons of TNT parked across the street from it!  So 1/3 of a 9 story building can be taken out by 2 tons of TNT but a 100 story building can't be taken out with 450 tons of TNT?  That doesn't really make sense does it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKC_bombing

Bombing

At 9:02 a.m. CST, the Ryder truck, containing about 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, nitromethane, and diesel fuel mixture, detonated in front of the north side of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.[7][8] The blast destroyed a third of the building[9] and created a thirty-foot (9 m) wide, eight-foot (2.4 m) deep crater on NW 5th Street next to the building.[10] The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings in a sixteen-block radius,[11] destroyed or burned 86 cars around the site, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings[12] (the broken glass alone accounted for 5% of the death total and 69% of the injuries outside the Murrah Federal building).[13] The destruction of the buildings left several hundred people homeless and shut down multiple offices in downtown Oklahoma City.[14]

An aerial view of the destruction

An aerial view of the destruction

The shaped charge[15][16] effects of the blast were equivalent to over 4,000 lbs (1,814 kg) of TNT,[17] and could be heard and felt up to fifty-five miles (89 km) away.[14] Seismometers at the Omniplex Museum in Oklahoma City (4.3 miles/7 kilometers away) and in Norman, Oklahoma (16.1 miles/26 kilometers away) recorded the blast as measuring approximately 3.0 on the Richter scale.[18]


  2. ^ "Chicago Sun-Times". Conspiracy buffs see Padilla, Oklahoma City link. Retrieved on 2007-05-25.
  3. ^ Thomas, Jo (1997-04-30). "For First Time, Woman Says McVeigh Told of Bomb Plan", The New York Times. Retrieved on 2008-02-27. 
  4. ^ a b c d The Oklahoma Department of Civil Emergency Management After Action Report (PDF), Department of Central Services Central Printing Division, 1996. Retrieved on 2007-02-02. 
  5. ^ City Of Oklahoma City Document Management (1996). Final Report: Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building Bombing April 19, 1995. Stillwater, OK: Fire Protection Publication, 10-12. ISBN 0879391308. 
  6. ^ "Forensic Engineering" (PDF). Blast Loading and Response of Murrah Building. Retrieved on 2007-02-02.
  7. ^ a b c "Terrorism Info" (PDF). Oklahoma City Police Department Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building Bombing After Action Report. Retrieved on 2007-02-03.
  8. ^ "Safety Solutions". case study 30. Retrieved on 2007-02-03.
  9. ^ a b "U.S. Department of Justice". Responding to Terrorism Victims: Oklahoma City and Beyond. Retrieved on 2007-01-31.
  10. ^ http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mcveigh/lorifortiertestimony.html
  11. ^ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F07E4DB1031F933A05757C0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
  12. ^ Mlakar, Sr., Paul F., W. Gene Corley, Mete A. Sozen, Charles H. Thornton (August 1998). "The Oklahoma City Bombing: Analysis of Blast Damage to the Murrah Building". Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities 12(3): pp. 113–119. 
  13. ^ T. L. Holzer, et al., "Seismograms Offer Insight into Oklahoma City Bombing", EOS Transactions (Transactions of the American Geophysical Union) 77.41 (1996): 393-99. See also AGU.org cross-reference.
     

can't be taken out with 450 tons of TNT?  That doesn't really make sense does it?


If the TNT were spread throughout the building, it would kill all; it would "take out" the building.   But the building would not collapse.  To do that, you need to destroy the columns.  Putting the TNT into intimate contact with the columns would do that.

Remember, the jet fuel for each plane was 60 tons, equivalent to 900 tons of TNT.

Some buildings, especially smaller ones, use the walls as part of the structure.  Those are particularly easy to destroy.  But skyscrapers usually hang the walls on a frame, and that frame is much harder to destroy.

But what about the Murrah building?  The explosives were parked across the street, not in intimate contact with the columns...  but of course that's a bad example since the explosives WERE in fact in intimate contact as it happens... :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWwrEEP8EBk

But what about the Murrah building?  The explosives were parked across the street, not in intimate contact with the columns...  but of course that's a bad example since the explosives WERE in fact in intimate contact as it happens... :)

There were no explosives.  Lots of jet fuel spilled and burned on the ground.  That building was destroyed in the same way.


THE END

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gretavo's picture

Berkeley Physics Dept. Contact Info

Submitted by gretavo on Mon, 2008-07-28 18:05.

Chairman: Frances Hellman
fhellman@physics.berkeley.edu

Richard Fuller's directory page: https://calnet.berkeley.edu/directory/details.pl?uid=3262

Physics Dept website: http://physics.berkeley.edu

BetterBadNews is I think produced out of UCBerkeley, maybe they should be encouraged to cover Prof. Food Calorie...

http://www.youtube.com/user/betterbadnews

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gretavo's picture

He's Back! Richard Muller, Of the "Destructive Calories" Theory

Submitted by gretavo on Tue, 2009-03-10 20:20.

Chairing the session which includes two other talks (the three talks making up one of three "plenary sessions") is none other than Cherry Murray, who has just been announced as the Dean of Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (see http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2009/03.12/99-seas.html )

Session P1: Plenary Session II
8:30 AM–10:18 AM, Monday, May 4, 2009
- Plaza Ballroom ABC

Sponsoring Unit: APS
Chair: Cherry Murray, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Abstract: P1.00003 : A Physicist Looks at the Terrorist Threat
9:42 AM–10:18 AM

Preview Abstract

Author:
Richard Muller
(University of California at Berkeley)

Many people fear a terrorist nuclear device, smuggled into the United States, as the one weapon that could surpass the destruction and impact of 9-11. I'll review the design of nuclear weapons, with emphasis on the kinds that can be developed by rogue nations, terrorist groups, and high-school students. Saddam, prior to the first gulf war, was developing a uranium bomb, similar to the one that destroyed Hiroshima. His calutrons (named after my university) were destroyed by the United Nations. The North Korean nuclear weapon was, like the U.S. bomb used on Nagasaki, based on plutonium. Its test released the energy equivalent of about 400 tons of TNT. Although some people have speculated that they were attempting to build a small bomb, it is far more likely that this weapon was a fizzle, with less than 1 percent of the plutonium exploded. In contrast, the energy released from burning jet fuel at the 9-11 World Trade Center attack was the equivalent of 900 tons of TNT for each plane -- over twice that of the North Korean Nuke. The damage came from the fact that gasoline delivers 10 kilocalories per gram, about 15 times the energy of an equal weight of TNT. It is this huge energy per gram that also accounts for our addiction to gasoline; per gram, high performance lithium-ion computer batteries carry only 1 percent as much energy. A dirty bomb (radiological weapon) is also unattractive to terrorists because of the threhold effect: doses less than 100 rem produce no radiation illness and will leave no dead bodies at the scene. That may be why al Qaeda instructed Jose Padilla to abandon his plans for a dirty bomb attack in Chicago, and to try a fossil fuel attack (natural gas) instead. I will argue that the biggest terrorist threat is the conventional low-tech one, such as an airplane attack on a crowded stadium using the explosive fuel that they can legally buy at the corner station.

http://www.aps.org/meetings/april/events/plenary.cfm

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