Over the years a number of seemingly intelligent conspiracies have been brought to light over the terrorist incident surrounding the September 11 attacks of 2001 in New York, but as someone who remained sceptical I've realized these theories do not stand up scientifically.
I suppose the simplicity test is the first test one must consider. For instance, the Pentagon - simplicity. The "missile theory" is an example of a very bad argument which would never pass this test. Because radar data corroborates the plane's crash (and also so does the ground-zero damage) it would be far more complicated for the terrorists to detonate a missile than crash a plane (while hiding the original plane, etc).
The same test can be applied to the "controlled demolition" theory of the twin towers. That is, if an overly-complicated and elaborate plane existed to demolish the buildings using explosive charges placed in the buildings themselves; then it would be unnecessarily complicated to additionally crash planes into the building. You would do one or the other, but not both.
7WTC was the other building to collapse on the day, and does look un-mistakenly like a typical controlled demolition. However, taken into context it doesn't pass the test either: there is no advantage for the terrorists in destroying an already evacuated and empty building; they would have collapsed it earlier if they used controlled demolition in order to inflict maximum casualties. There was no guarantee the building would sustain the damage that it did. And most obviously: why go to the trouble of planting explosive charges as well as crashing hijacked planes?
So in conclusion - while there are legitimate questions to be asked over this incident - there is no physical scientific evidence that anything beyond a terrorist attack brought down the WTC buildings (and inflicted damage to other WTC buildings), or that anything other than a plane hit the pentagon.
I suppose the simplicity test is the first test one must consider. For instance, the Pentagon - simplicity. The "missile theory" is an example of a very bad argument which would never pass this test. Because radar data corroborates the plane's crash (and also so does the ground-zero damage) it would be far more complicated for the terrorists to detonate a missile than crash a plane (while hiding the original plane, etc).
The same test can be applied to the "controlled demolition" theory of the twin towers. That is, if an overly-complicated and elaborate plane existed to demolish the buildings using explosive charges placed in the buildings themselves; then it would be unnecessarily complicated to additionally crash planes into the building. You would do one or the other, but not both.
7WTC was the other building to collapse on the day, and does look un-mistakenly like a typical controlled demolition. However, taken into context it doesn't pass the test either: there is no advantage for the terrorists in destroying an already evacuated and empty building; they would have collapsed it earlier if they used controlled demolition in order to inflict maximum casualties. There was no guarantee the building would sustain the damage that it did. And most obviously: why go to the trouble of planting explosive charges as well as crashing hijacked planes?
So in conclusion - while there are legitimate questions to be asked over this incident - there is no physical scientific evidence that anything beyond a terrorist attack brought down the WTC buildings (and inflicted damage to other WTC buildings), or that anything other than a plane hit the pentagon.
