A supposedly rare video of a plane crashing into the South Tower of the World Trade Center is spreading across the Internet along with commentary that claims the footage has been faked and thus is evidence supporting the fringe conspiracy theory that no planes crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11th 2001.
conspiracy video –
conspiracy message –
collected June 2014
The video offers two points of evidence – firstly the commentators opinion that the way the plane appeared to “slice” through the building would not be possible, and secondly because an apparent “CGI glitch” that caused a portion of the plane’s wing to disappear as it passed a building.
Since the first point consists entirely of the opinion of the narrator – who does not appear to be an expert in any relevant field to form an educated opinion, nor does he offer any evidence to back-up his opinion – it is impossible to debunk his claim other than to say that countless experts in the relevant fields have not come to the same conclusion as the narrator.
On the other hand, the second point made in the video does show what the narrator describes as “evidence” to support his claims. On first glance there does indeed appear to be a discrepancy in the video as a portion of the wing does appear to vanish as it glides past a building supposedly in the background of the video.
However on close inspection the “glitch” isn’t a glitch at all, just an example of an illusion created by the position of the camera, the size of the World Trade Center and some suggestion by the narrator.
Upon watching the video the narrator immediately states that the brown building on the left side of the image is in the background, behind the WTC, which seems plausible to the viewer since the building appears much smaller.
However in reality the building is in the front of the WTC, and is simply just much smaller. It is difficult to determine which building is closer when watching the video because of the angle of the camera, where the side of the left building ends at the same point the side of the WTC North Tower begins.
Take a look at the photo below which was taken in the same general area as the video but at a slightly different angle, showing that the left building is in front of the World Trade Center.
With that information it is clear that the wing of the plane disappears because it is actually behind the left building, which is at the forefront of the video and not in the background as originally suggested by the narrator.
Thus the video has been debunked.
