I'll explain the steel-sulfur eutectic first:
A eutectic alloy is a mixture of a metal with another substance with a melting point below the melting point of either substance. In the case of an iron-sulfur mixture, the eutectic melting point can be very low, ~1000 C. The reason for the lower melting point is that the two mixed substances have atoms of different sizes. When the material solidifies, they disrupt each other's crystalline structures, and the resulting microstructure is less stable than pure crystals of either substance would be. In the WTC, the molten material would not be steel, it would be an iron-sulfur mixture, with a much lower melting point. I hope that helps.
In regards to tracking airplanes, it certainly helps air-traffic controllers if the airplanes in question had working transponders. The terrorists, or whoever was controlling the airplanes, disabled the transponders. The transponders are like homing beacons on the airplanes, transmitting signals that keep everyone else aware of their location. Without them, an airplane must be tracked by radar, so the signatures of thousands of other airplanes would have to be filtered out from the radar sweep. If radar coverage is not complete, it is that much more difficult. For comparison, imagine that there is a crowd of thousands of people who appear identical, and one of them is the one you're looking for. If he is not shouting his name to you, it's difficult to distinguish him from the rest. If you are forced to close your eyes intermittently, it can get pretty difficult.
Regarding the nature of the collapse, it seems odd to simultaneously argue that the WTC towers collapsed too neatly into their footprints, like a controlled demolition, and that a great deal of material was ejected sideways(very unlike a controlled demolition). Nevertheless, the seismographic data stands. Steven Jones uses the same seismographic data to confirm the duration of collapse in his video, even though that data also strongly refutes those who claimed to hear explosions as well as the theory of explosive-induced collapse.Quote:
From Popular Mechanics, referring to 9/11 commission findings
On 9/11 there were only 14 fighter jets on alert in the contiguous 48 states. No computer network or alarm automatically alerted the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) of missing planes. "They [civilian Air Traffic Control, or ATC] had to pick up the phone and literally dial us," says Maj. Douglas Martin, public affairs officer for NORAD. Boston Center, one of 22 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regional ATC facilities, called NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) three times: at 8:37 am EST to inform NEADS that Flight 11 was hijacked; at 9:21 am to inform the agency, mistakenly, that Flight 11 was headed for Washington (the plane had hit the North Tower 35 minutes earlier); and at 9:41 am to (erroneously) identify Delta Air Lines Flight 1989 from Boston as a possible hijacking. The New York ATC called NEADS at 9:03 am to report that United Flight 175 had been hijacked — the same time the plane slammed into the South Tower. Within minutes of that first call from Boston Center, NEADS scrambled two F-15s from Otis Air Force Base in Falmouth, Mass., and three F-16s from Langley Air National Guard Base in Hampton, Va. None of the fighters got anywhere near the pirated planes.
It's true that thermite/thermate can cut through steel, but the mechanism is heat-transfer that melts the steel. It wouldn't produce audible explosions as it melted steel columns, would it? Furthermore, how could thermite/thermate cut all of the core columns simultaneously, since the most severely damaged ones (mainly on one side of the building) would melt through far faster? Wouldn't thermite/thermate cause the structure to topple on its side? Furthermore, what explains the bowing effect observed in the footage?
Sorry for the long posts, but you brought up many very good points.
