141 replies to this topic

[W Tell]

NavyDoc, on 18 June 2012 - 01:49 PM, said:

Occam's razor. We know that fires blow out windows all of the time. This phenomenon is see by fires frequently.  The simplest answer is that this window was blown out by the fire, rather than some sort of charge.

I know what you're saying. Two things bother me though. First it's obvious the fires are above that floor. Second, fires do blow out windows, but I haven't yet seen one force air out like that.

[W Tell]

Chrlzs, on 15 June 2012 - 12:16 PM, said:

I await clarification.. after which I'm happy to go through what sort of information would be required to actually analyse this video.  And then the readers will be able to judge who is able to swim at the deep end, and who is just poking their toe into a puddle while claiming to have won the last Olympic 50m freestyle..

Good lord.

Just get on with it.

[psyche101]

W Tell, on 18 June 2012 - 11:27 PM, said:

Now that is some food for thought. I've never tried to open the door to the stairwell. Could there be so much pressure in the stairwell, that when released, that it would create that much force?

Not just the stairwell, but the entire building, each floor is pressurised, any imbalance could possibly have some dramatic repercussions. I would have to know more about specific conditions, but it strikes me as quite plausible given the situation. Fire eats oxygen as well, which I guess might have some type of flow on effect.

If you have the opportunity to enter a High Rise, give it a go, you will be able to open it because the pressures are stabilised, but it will require more force than you would usually require to open a door. The difference will be noticeable.

Edited by psyche101, 19 June 2012 - 12:14 AM.

[psyche101]

DP

Edited by psyche101, 19 June 2012 - 12:13 AM.

[Chrlzs]

W Tell, on 18 June 2012 - 11:46 PM, said:

Good lord.
Just get on with it.

Just call me ChLrz..  And yes, certainly, seeing you asked so nicely.  Given your (lack of) further comments on the video, I think it's fair to assume you have nothing more of substance to provide regarding the video..  So let's begin.  Others are welcome to chip in with stuff I may have missed, or not thought of.

First up, I'd make the point right from the start, there should be a realisation that MANY, perhaps MOST one-off situations like this one, will simply NOT be accompanied by enough information to allow a conclusive analysis.

OK, let's get serious..  Here's a quick off-the-top-of-my-noggin outline of what would need to be done..  E&OE.

1. Introduce the topic and 'purpose'
Before even beginning, there is the simple question of what is the point of the claim/video, and any analysis thereof?
I'm still not entirely sure what the point is, but it does seem to be clear that a couple of posters believe this might be evidence of conspiracy in some form or other (I'll talk about "confirmation bias" a bit later, maybe..).  However, that angle does seem to be jumping the gun..

2. Present the available information
Here's where you answer the what, where, when, who, how, why type questions.  Things like when was the video shot, precisely?  Where is the scene (what building/floor)?  What equipment was used, and what settings?  Why was this area being filmed?  If it is cropped and enlarged, what algorithms were used?  What post-processing was used and how has the footage been re-encoded?  You should also present some provenance if available.  How could the above 'facts' be verified or checked? - is the original footage available, and if not or it is unknown, why is that? Now that is just the information about the video...  Much less than half of what we need to know...
Then we need to know about that location - by using the information we already have (?) in regard to the floor and particular window/panel in question, the floor plan could be viewed to identify things like whether it is large or small room, where aircon ducts run (to be compared to where the strike damage was), whether it was directly in line with a corridor to a lift shaft, and so on.  Then we would also look at the nature of the internals - was it an open plan office, were there partitions, suspended ceilings?  What sizes of partitions and ceiling panels were there?  What sort of furnishings (eg curtains) and what colours were in the area?  Were there any potential sources of 'explosive' air pressure variations (other than falling walls, ceilings, aircon ducts, corridors, etc) in the area, like cleaning chemicals, solvents, paints, pressurised gas cylinders (eg oxygen or other gases for medical facilities, or propane for kitchen/cooking facilities) and so on.

Next we would look at any related observations - is there other footage showing this area at the same time?  Corroborative reports of a body/bodies falling or landing beneath that area?  Were people known to be in that area of the building at that time?

Let's move on, but there is more I haven't even touched upon..

3. Apply forensic investigative techniques as applicable
Without going into too much depth, some techniques that might be applicable include slow motion analysis of the video, along with appropriate (non-destructive/non-additive) processing to enhance details.  Doing so would require genuine expertise (not some moron adjusting the RGB sliders or using unsharp mask in his pirated copy of Photoshop..) along with access to the original footage - Youtube re-compressed videos are pretty much useless for this.  It is also where you would try to identify how much air was being moved, and at what speed - for estimating that we would need to know exactly what the 'thing' was, and how much it weighed...  Then you would consider all the possible sources of the burst of air.  Some might be eliminated.. but not by handwaving - you would need to  'run the numbers' and provide proper analysis..

4. Develop & present the hypothesis/es
Here you would bring together all the available information gathered above in a logical and coherent fashion, and offer hypotheses (or a single hypothesis) and give full reasoning for why each hypothesis was deemed proven/likely/possible/impossible.  Again, handwaving doesn't count - and incredulity from ignorance is worthless.


Anyway, I'll pause there...  I have lots more if anyone is interested - but I think by now you can look back at the posts on this thread and see for yourself how much of what I have pointed out was done... or even considered.  You will also see the lengthy and wild handwaving I referred to.  No numbers.  No logic.  Just "Omigod, that could only be..."..  Ill-considered rubbish.

Of course all of this may look pretty daunting, and indeed gathering enough information for any reasonable analysis is very unlikely to ever happen - much of that information will now be impossible to gather or test, and probably wouldn't have been available even if we had unlimited access to every bit of data during/immediately after the event anyway.  So, imnsho, it's a complete waste of time trying to come to any conclusion about what the video shows.  Something gets blown out of a window, because some air rushed out.  Yup, I can see that.

We don't know what the something is.
We don't know where we are looking.
We don't see any footage from any other angle.
We don't know how much, or little air was expelled.
We don't know what might have caused it.
We don't know what was behind that panel/window.
And so on, as per above..

About all we do know for sure is that the person who posted this at Youtube is absolutely certain about what happened!!!!1!!1!!
.    Yet he is a bit shy about providing all/any of the information I have outlined above - rather like certain posters here..

[protostar]

Excellent post Chrlzs

What difference would the colour(s) in the room make though?

[W Tell]

Chrlzs, on 19 June 2012 - 10:33 AM, said:

Anyway, I'll pause there...  I have lots more if anyone is interested - but I think by now you can look back at the posts on this thread and see for yourself how much of what I have pointed out was done... or even considered.  You will also see the lengthy and wild handwaving I referred to.  No numbers.  No logic.  Just "Omigod, that could only be..."..  Ill-considered rubbish.

Of course all of this may look pretty daunting, and indeed gathering enough information for any reasonable analysis is very unlikely to ever happen - much of that information will now be impossible to gather or test, and probably wouldn't have been available even if we had unlimited access to every bit of data during/immediately after the event anyway.  So, imnsho, it's a complete waste of time trying to come to any conclusion about what the video shows.  Something gets blown out of a window, because some air rushed out.  Yup, I can see that.

We don't know what the something is.
We don't know where we are looking.
We don't see any footage from any other angle.
We don't know how much, or little air was expelled.
We don't know what might have caused it.
We don't know what was behind that panel/window.
And so on, as per above..

About all we do know for sure is that the person who posted this at Youtube is absolutely certain about what happened!!!!1!!1!!
.    Yet he is a bit shy about providing all/any of the information I have outlined above - rather like certain posters here..

Can't believe I wasted any time on your posts. You could have just said "I don't know either, but it could have been anything" and it would equal what was posted.
Good day.

[Wandering]

W Tell, on 20 June 2012 - 02:03 AM, said:

Can't believe I wasted any time on your posts. You could have just said "I don't know either, but it could have been anything" and it would equal what was posted.
Good day.

That wouldn't make him sound as smart as he likes to sound though would it? Don't hold out any hope for a real answer though. Ch(L)rz is prone to abandoning threads...Right Ch(L)rz? Still waiting for your homeopathy study.

[Colonel Rhuairidh]

Wandering, on 20 June 2012 - 02:17 AM, said:

That wouldn't make him sound as smart as he likes to sound though would it? Don't hold out any hope for a real answer though. Ch(L)rz is prone to abandoning threads...Right Ch(L)rz? Still waiting for your homeopathy study.

.. wheras those who wish to promote conspiratorial theorising never let go and bang on endlessly until all the Skeptics have been converted to the indisputable rightness of their arguments? It rarely works like that; most people, when they feel that they are flogging a dead Horse, decide at some point that there's no point trying to argue any more, and just leave people to it.

[Chrlzs]

protostar, on 19 June 2012 - 03:55 PM, said:

Excellent post Chrlzs

What difference would the colour(s) in the room make though?

Glad you asked!  The reason I mentioned that was because it might help identify the 'thing' as a curtain, tablecloth, wallhanging, etc..

[Chrlzs]

**** This part, down to the line of asterisks, is offtopic, just for he who hath wandered in.. ****
Homeopathy study?  You mean that silliness about your 'Mom'?  How is that relevant to this thread?  If you are seriously still waiting for proof that homeopathy is 99.99% bovine excrement, you could start here http://onlinelibrary...02.01699.x/full
You might need to go visit a library to read the whole thing, but the abstract should give you a bit of an idea:

Quote

The results of these re-analyses demonstrate that the more rigorous trials are associated with smaller effect sizes which, in turn, render the overall effect insignificant ... Collectively these re-analyses imply that the initial conclusions of Linde et al. was not supported by critical evaluation of their data.

Do you want more?  (in other words, is there no end to your laziness/unwillingness to do your own research anywhere but conspiracy sites/intense desire to point score/ad hominems?).  I'll let the readers decide if I'm a pretender - they seem to actually read what I post and consider it / debate it sensibly, rather than shoot from the hip and let personal anger/dislike influence their decision.. {or in your case, perhaps (misplaced) 'derision'..}  If you wish to take the homeopathy thing further, please POST ON THE RELEVANT THREAD. **** End Offtopic. ****
*****************************************************************************
Now, Wandering, would you like to add anything of value and on topic to this thread?  Would you like to dispute any of what I posted?  Would you like to add anything I've forgotten?

There's plenty more, but unless someone is willing to actually debate rather than offer one-line demonstrations of their disinterest/ineptitude, I don't think it's worth going much further.  If you wish to call what I posted above, 'abandoning' the topic or that I'm trying to sound smart.. well, let's compare it to what YOU just posted, shall we?

[Chrlzs]

W Tell, on 20 June 2012 - 02:03 AM, said:

Can't believe I wasted any time on your posts. You could have just said "I don't know either, but it could have been anything" and it would equal what was posted.
Good day.

It's ok, W Tell, I'm sure nobody noticed that you just edited out all the parts of my post that you didn't want to address..

I won't tell anyone - your secret's safe.

[W Tell]

Chrlzs, on 20 June 2012 - 10:08 AM, said:

It's ok, W Tell, I'm sure nobody noticed that you just edited out all the parts of my post that you didn't want to address..

I won't tell anyone - your secret's safe.

And I won't tell anyone you didn't bring anything to the discussion. I only quoted what was pertinent.

You wanted to play Sherlock. You're asking all the right questions, the same questions asked when any claim is made, but you failed in the follow up. You didn't answer a single one of them.

The way you were acting, I thought you might have had some answers.

So... you could have saved everyone time just by saying "I don't know either. It could have been anything".

[W Tell]

Chrlzs, on 20 June 2012 - 09:19 AM, said:

Glad you asked!  The reason I mentioned that was because it might help identify the 'thing' as a curtain, tablecloth, wallhanging, etc..

In what ways would color help identify tapestries from business suits? If it was bright orange or had a red and white checked design, you might be onto something.

[Colonel Rhuairidh]

W Tell, on 20 June 2012 - 11:21 PM, said:

And I won't tell anyone you didn't bring anything to the discussion. I only quoted what was pertinent.

You wanted to play Sherlock. You're asking all the right questions, the same questions asked when any claim is made, but you failed in the follow up. You didn't answer a single one of them.

But (as I remarked before), the irony with this statement is that that's all that those who wish to promote any kind of Conspiracy about anything at all ever do; they only ever say "something doesn't look right here", or produce vague and fuzzy photos that really could be anything, and certainly do not offer any vaguely plausible outline of what might have happened according to their favoured theory. They only ever say "think for yourself" and talk about Sheeple.They never answer a single question anyone ever asks them about how their preferred theory might have been done.