From WTC to WTF: What's your take?
Offline Lately, I have spent some time researching what's on the internet (A LOT!) about the 9/11 events.
I remember well how, at the time, I was watching the television with a friend and business associate. When the twin towers collapsed we looked at eachother in disbelief. There was no doubt that it was somehow a rigged demolition - but we had no idea how they - whoever they are/were - pulled that off. It was just one of those "WOW!" moments. (It should probably be mentioned that at the time, we were running a construction company and that we did a bit of demolition ourselves, so it is fair to say that we both had, and still have, quite a good and hands-on "feel" for how construction materials behave, even though none of us are accredited physicists or engineers.)
As the days went by it became blatantly clear that something sinister was going on. The "explanations" that came out defied as well common sense as known laws of physics. How could the plane that hit the Pentagon simply "evaporate", titanium-steel-alloys and all, but still leave behind DNA material enough to identify the passengers? And that alleged plane crash in Pennsylcania was even more mysterious. Where's the fucking plane?!?
In the months that followed, things got really ugly. An Orwellian "war on terrorism" was launched - and it was declared that America is above international law. Even above its own law! We saw the pictures from Guantanamo Bay. It was like a twisted parody on the movie "Wag The Dog" but it was undeniably real: America had fallen into the hands of a small cabal of so-called neocons, who, true to the teachings of their master and guru Leo Strauss, churned out one wild-eyed fantasy story of conspiracy more phantasmagorical than the next, in a propaganda operation nobody had seen the likes of since the days of Josef Goebbels.
It still goes on, almost ten years later. To this day, nobody as been able to offer a credible explanation for what really happened on that day. But there is a grass root sort of movement who refuse to swallow that ridiculous canard that is the "official" story. Among, frankly, untold amounts of completely idiotic speculations, there are serious people who patiently work towards what should have happened right away: A meticulous criminal investigation, based in scientific principles, under the leadership of a grand jury, which can once and for all establish an explanation that satisfies.
For instance, how can an anisotropic, organic process of fire lead to a symmetric, global collapse of tensile strength in a steel construction? It flies in the face of well known principles of thermodynamics, as well Newton's law of inertia. But most importantly: Why is this issue allowed to remain unresolved for all this time, creating a political state of tension that threatens to rip America apart? Sensible questions that have been raised by inquiring minds, most of them based in critical professionalism, are being met with vile accusations of being "unpatriotic". WTF is going on?
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
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1180 architects and engineers is really not significant. The engineering and architectural community at large accepts all the important parts of the official story, and if they wanted to, I'm sure they could compile a list of over 1000 engineers and architects named Steve that support it.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
You also need to take into account that this is only the architects and engineers who are willing to publicly sign a petition for a very unpopular movement to reinvestigate the event. It takes balls to do that. It could endanger someones career to do so at this point in history.
It's not as though all the other architects and engineers have signed something in support of the official story.
And as atheists, aren't we used to being in the minority opinion. And questioning what we're told by the majority? Argumentum ad populum.
"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King
Collapse from the point of the aircraft impacts, falling down onto and through the undamaged floors below with increasing force. How could any conspirator know from which point the buildings would collapse and position their explosives just so in order to hide the fact they were bringing the building down with bombs? They could not know.
This is from Wiki and suggests the nature of the construction was biased to the perimeter.
"The towers were designed as "tube in tube" structures, which provided tenants with open floor plans uninterrupted by columns or walls. Numerous, closely-spaced perimeter columns provided much of the strength to the structure, along with gravity load shared with the steel box columns of the core. Above the tenth floor, there were 59 perimeter columns along each face of the building, and there were 47 heavier columns in the core. All of the elevators and stairwells were located in the core, leaving a large column-free space between the perimeter that was bridged by prefabricated floor trusses.
After the planes hit the buildings, but before they collapsed, the cores of both towers consisted of three distinct sections. Above and below the impact floors, the cores consisted of what were essentially two rigid boxes; the steel in these sections was undamaged and had undergone no significant heating. The section between them, however, had sustained significant damage and, though they were not hot enough to melt it, the fires were weakening the structural steel.
As a result, the core columns were slowly being crushed, sustaining plastic and creep deformation from the weight of higher floors. As the top section tried to move downward, however, the hat truss redistributed the load to the perimeter columns. Meanwhile, the perimeter columns and floors were also being weakened by the heat of the fires, and as the floors began to sag they pulled the exterior walls inwards. In the case of 2 WTC, this caused the eastern face to buckle, transferring its loads back to the failing core through the hat truss and initiating the collapse. The section above the impact area then tilted in the direction of the failed wall. In the case of 1 WTC, the south wall later buckled in the same way, and with similar consequences.
The collapse of the World Trade Center has been called "the most infamous paradigm" of progressive collapse. In the case of both towers, the top section tilted towards the face that had buckled, behaving largely as a solid block separate from the rest of the building. It fell at least one story in freefall and impacted the lower sections with a force equivalent to over thirty times its own weight. This was sufficient to buckle the columns of the story immediately below it; the block then fell freely through the distance of another story. Total collapse was now unavoidable as the process repeated through the entire height of the lower sections. The force of each impact was also much greater than the horizontal momentum of the section, which kept the tilt from increasing significantly before the falling section reached the ground. It remained intact throughout the collapse, with its center of gravity within the building's footprint. After crushing the lower section of the building, it was itself crushed when it hit the ground."
This makes sense to me. It's important to bear in mind that those buildings were full of flammable material that would have burned furiously. The fuel load of the building itself needs to be taken into account. Everything from carpets to computers would have burned.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
What boggles my mind is that people give a damn about what happened on 9/11. There is perfectly good evidence that the key people in the Clinton and Bush administration commited the crime of aggression on a sovereign country, which should give them death penalties according to US law and the principles of Nuremberg trials, if those ever meant anything. Even propagandists that supported the Nazi line were hanged back then, which should make Fox nervous.
A million people dead in Iraq as a result of the war according to Lancet years ago, 500k children dead due to sanctions and bombing raids before that - if they crashed WTC, that's like accusing Al Capone of tax evasion.
Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
It's even more important to bear in mind that they were, in fact, not.
http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/ibp/irc/bsi/87-flammability.html
http://aec.ihs.com/collections/abstracts/icbo-standards.htm
There was very little flammable material in those buildings, for several reasons. (A fact which everyone can witness with their own eyes in, quite literally, miles of live video footage from the disaster. Thick, black smoke is indicative of oxygen-starved, low temperature flames that are in the process of dying out.) If you consider both the official building codes of public safety and the private insurance underwriters' requirements of salvageability, it makes sense to demand that whatever is in the interior of high-rise buildings has as low a combustion value as pragmatically possible. Hence, you will not find flammable furniture, carpets or curtains in high-rise office buildings. This is, quite simply, illegal. There are of course some things that will burn, but nothing that will allow flash-flames to migrate very far from the source of ignition.
As for the buildings themselves, they were constructed from steel and concrete, with the gravitational load focused on the core columns and the structural resistance to wind, earthquakes and various forms of impact (bombs and aircraft were explicitly mentioned) focused on the external grid - in what was, at the time of construction, spoken of as "the first true 21st century buildings". Steel and concrete aren't flammable. Also, due to the great practical difficulties with putting out any hypothetical fires at such heights, great care was taken in reducing the flammability of the buildings to an absolute minimum.
It should also be mentioned that pyroclastic clouds of the types that were there for everybody to observe during and after the buildings collapsed have only two sources that are known to mankind: Volcanic eruptions and the use of explosives (where the latter will crush solid objects to micron-sized powder through shock waves). Mechanical damage to concrete will produce some dust, but nothing like those clouds that covered pretty much all of lower Manhattan with a several inches thick layer of very fine powder.
But the "smoking gun" is of course the speed of the collapse. It is nothing short of science-fiction to claim that all the structural integrity of a building will magically disappear in a symmetrical fashion and at free-fall speed without some external force (such as explosives) at work. There will be local resistance in the materials which will slow down the collapse and make it appear asymmetric and disorderly. Steel and concrete does not simply fall straight down and in on itself like that, leaving all the core columns chopped up into convenient 30-foot lengths, ready for transport. Nor does all the concrete simply pulverize. You'd also expect to find some identifiable pieces of carpets and furniture among the rubble.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
I think this boggles a lot of people's minds. Most are happy with simply accepting the official cock-and-bull story, thinking it anything from silly to sinister to be questioning the authorities like that. The *authorities*, on the other hand, have, rather than conducting a proper investigation, exploited these events for political purposes, naming anyone who dare question anomalies and inconsitencies "a conspiracy theorist" and pretty much threatening them with as well public ridicule as professional carreer damage. But these are intimidation tactics, quite unbecoming of someone who allegedly values *freedom*.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
There are some ways that this could have happened, so it is a mistake to say that they could not. It would require the airplanes to be under the control of or in collusion with whoever had rigged the buildings for collapse. If the collapse sequence initiated at somewhere around the impact level, who is going to see the details in the clouds of pyroclastic dust? However, it is not necessary to have an alternative detailed theory of the events in order to demand a new investigation. That would be conjecture.
Once you remove the physically impossible from the story, it leaves many questions about how this could have been done. hmmmm.... sort of like taking miracles out of a story.
The official story (actually stories) of the failure of the World Trade Centre buildings are not at all independent of the government, which could potentially be involved.
And what would one expect from Wikipedia? It is one version of the official story, which downplays the structural significance of the massive core without actually denying its existence.
Everyone is free to believe what they choose to believe. But they are not free to create their own facts or recreate physics and engineering to suit their conclusion. (Hey doesn't somebody have a quote like that as a footer?) That's what crime scene investigations are for - to generate factual evidence. And regardless of who destroyed the World Trade Centre buildings (all three), it was one of the most important crime scenes in history. It should have been treated as such, rather than as a top-secret clean-up and salvage operation.
The reason I transitioned from a believing Christian to an athiest is that I have always tended to question things.
There is a lot of 'argument from incredulity' going on here.
"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King
Who cares about a bunch of fucking technocrats? Chickens coming home to roost never made me sad; it only made me glad. One might say it's not about the people it's about justification for legitimizing bad policy, but if that's the case then why look for some conspiracy? Why not just argue against bad policy? Maybe you do think it's justification, which would make it a simple case of 'If you don't change direction then you might end up where you are headed.' A shadowy cabal or guild of calamitous intent can't force people to jump on every stupid bandwagon without regard for themselves or others.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
@Marquis: Why aren't you asking a community with the appropriate expertise in this area? Go find an engineering forum that won't ban you for asking about it. Or an anti-truther website like http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/1227842 or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories#External_links
All you're going to do here is post miles of problems from truther websites, forever. It isn't going to matter what anyone here says. If you've investigated both sides of the 9/11 truther debate, you've already made up your mind. If the bulk of the engineering community can't convince you the towers went down without explosives, what are we going to say to convince you?
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
I am not asking to be *convinced* - and certainly not by some popular geek "nuts and bolts" magazine like Popular Mechanics. WTF? Is this your source of engineering authority? Are you serious? What I would like to see is, as I have mentioned already, a very thorough criminal investigation, under the leadership of a grand jury, which allottes the time needed to meticulously walk through all available forensic evidence, the science hereof, and all eyewitness reports, expert reports, and analyses of the physical properties of the events, independent of what the public "believes" (or even wants) to be true, much less what that criminal gangster government you had at the time advocated, as pretext for their criminal wars that lead to the murder of hundreds of thousands of people - and may possibly even lead to the downfall of the United States as we know it. PLEASE try to see how serious the matter is. Please?
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
Which is why I wrote the rest of my post? Why are you asking this here, when no-one is going to be able to say anything you've not already seen?
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
Spoken like a true believer!
(Whatever you do, do *not* challenge the authorities!)
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
I myself am quite suspicious of authority and even other individuals around me. I also thought the histrionic and emotionally-unstable response demonstrated in the wake of 9/11 by fellow American citizens was both highly unnecessary and completely absent of reason and/or rationality. (Fyi; I haven't told many people this outside of RRS/RDN)
But then, even I know enough to say that what's being suggested here hasn't much in the way of conclusive *fact* supporting many of the assertions made here. It's mostly highly speculative discussion, at best.
To quote Julia Roberts from the movie Conspiracy Theories -"They, who?"
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
You say this when I have not even ventured an opinion on the subject? Nice rebuttal.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
You are correct. That was unnecessary and flippant. I apologise. However, I cannot answer your initial question with anything but "curiosity". I simply am curious about how many "rational responders" who has given any thought to these matters.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
Fair enough.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
However, I don't see that "the bulk of the engineering community" is supporting the NIST report.
Most are quiet. Intimidated. The report is *bullshit* and so is the "Popular Mechanics" debunking project.
We may however agree that if you know what's good for you, you leave these matters alone.
Kind of like what it must have been, back in medieval times, if you tried to confront *the church*.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
Is the 1,000 signature petition the only proof of the statement you just made? From a laypersons perspective I'm not seeing anything in your arguments that doesn't have a plausible explanation even from the posters here, none of whom are experts on the subject of explosives demolition.
The only thing I can see is about the molten steel, but when I searched for that I only saw stuff about people seeing 'red hot' steel, which is obviously a different thing. Are there pictures or videos of molten steel at the site? Was the thermal imaging taken over the site, as mentioned by another poster, not good evidence for some reason?
I guess the thing that gives me a knee-jerk reaction to what you are saying is when you say things like, "The NIST report is bullshit and so is the "Popular Mechanics" debunking project." but your examples, to me, seem like things that are not that mysterious. Like you talk about ejected materials, someone points out that there would be a lot of airflow from the building when it collapsed, and you just skip it and talk about molten steel. Or when you say the speed of collapse is the smoking gun and someone says it isn't, and further the people saying it is a smoking gun are not even engineers, you just ignore that too.
I mean, just above you skipped Atheist Extremists post almost entirely, and focused on the one bit you had some dirt on.
To me, when people do this is it because they *want* to believe something, and I can understand why other posters are saying the 'tone' of your arguments matches what we see theists doing here so often.
I say this as a lay-person with almost no knowledge of the engineering details, I am commenting exclusively on the style you are using to push your hypothesis.
I think what I would like to see is a list of arguments about why the tower collapse (or whatever the issue) is impossible, and number them. Then people can respond, by the number, and if someone gives a plausible explanation we can remove that argument and focus on the next thing.
You can either be insulted and get defensive, or you can take my post as I meant it to be taken; as constructive criticism.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/911/911-maps.html
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0429/thermal.r09.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1634-ground-zeros-fires-still-burning.html
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/eyewitnesses.html
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/dust.html
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/residues.html
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
http://www.debunking911.com/moltensteel.htm
There, the debate is solved, we linked towards webpages with alternate viewpoints.
I don't understand this shit, I already told you that. You keep listing examples and people keep giving counter-examples, but I'm not really seeing a 'discussion'. You even seemed to make a parody out of the criticism I leveled at you in my last post by picking a single issue and ignoring the rest.
And I don't get the total incredulity of what happened anyway. It isn't like there is a huge case-study of full and functioning skyscrapers being hit by planes to go on, is there? Here is what it boils down to: Are you actually an engineer qualified to do this kind of research who has valid claims backed by evidence, or are you someone who is linking to 9/11 'truth' websites because you have a gut feeling there is something wrong and you've found sources that match your bias? If you can handle that level of introspection, please be honest.
If the former, list your points of contention in a numbered fashion and I'm sure there are board members who will be willing to debate you. If the latter then let me know so I can leave and spare myself the wasted energy of watching groups of people post links at each other for the next two weeks.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
Even if you interpret every puff of smoke as evidence of an explosion, there was not remotely enough indication of the scale of explosion needed to generate the amount of pulverised material seen.
High explosives do not reduce all that much of the material they impact to fine powder, except perhaps for stuff very close to the explosives, especially when the material is in big chunks, or is soft like flesh and furnishings. Shock waves do not propagate in soft materials, or very far into materials which they are strong enough to pulverise. There would be significant amounts of powder/dust generated, of course, depending what materials are involved, but they still don't turn a major proportion of the demolished material into powder.
The massive amounts of fine powdered ash generated by volcanoes is due to the effect of the high temperatures involved, with the explosions blowing already molten material into a mist which cools into fine particles, NOT shock waves. Some material is ejected in vaporised form and then condenses into powder.
I have watched enough real explosions on Mythbusters to know this
. Nor do they generate massive fireballs by themselves - that is a Hollywood convention. The contrast between a car blown up with small charges and lots of cans of gasoline, generating the 'normal' fireball, and one blown up by serious explosives, was dramatic. Real explosives reduced it to small pieces, but nothing like fine powder.
It would have needed the whole building to be totally enveloped by a massive explosion, to generate any significant quantity of powder, and then we would have had solid debris from the outer parts of the buildings flung out over most of Manhattan.
Whereas anything caught between the massive (and continually accumulating) amount of collapsing concrete and steel and the next uncollapsed floor would indeed be pulverised. That is the obvious mechanism for generating all the powdered material. The shock of each successive impact would help to further pulverise the material in the lower layers of the falling mass as well.
The failure to appreciate this blindingly obvious fact, and instead try and find a cause aligned with the 'demolition' theory, even when it is a real stretch, is just one example of a poor understanding of the processes going on here, and an inclination toward the conspiracy/truther scenario, even if subconscious, so your 'common sense' is quite untrustworthy here.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I get it now. You are joking. That last post was so over the top that this has got to be in jest. This is all a big game in which you pretend that there is a massive conspiracy in which some vague malevolent group feeds us lies and oppresses those who know the truth. You get to have fun playing this character who is hyperventilating about how sinister the *authorities* are and how anyone who isn't as bad of a conspiracy theorist as you are must be blindly following government lies or must be too scared to proclaim the truth.
Well, at this point it is clear that you were messing around and we all fell for it, or you have shit for brains.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
Hey Bob - I really hate to contradict you - that's not sarcasm. You are really brilliant (that's not sarcasm either), which I'm sure you are aware of. However, here is some of what I have gleaned from science-based analysis.
Since most of Manhattan was covered in a thick layer of dust from the event, there are many sources of dust samples. These, unlike the vast majority of the solid remains of the WTC buildings, are available for independent analysis. These have been shown to contain relatively large amounts of unreacted nano-thermite en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano-thermite, an exceptionally exotic explosive that is never used in conventional demolitions or in non-military applications. This is not in trace amounts. I did read the scientific paper and the samples that they used were collected from multiple locations across residential areas of Manhattan (I'm going from memory here). I'm accustomed to reading scientific papers. The research by this group also found microspheres of iron in the dust from the WTC. This is also not in trace amouns, but in relatively large amounts. Iron is one of the chemical by-products of the extremely exothermic reaction of nano-thermite, and since the reaction creates enough heat to melt iron, it is the most plausible explanation for the iron microspheres in the dust.
There is no other plausible explanation for why unreacted nanothermite and iron microshperes are found in abundance in the WTC dust from multiple sample locations. Other than saying it's all make up.
So the evidence-based analysis of the event strongly suggests the use of nano-thermite as a major component of the event (though not necessarily exclusive). Your observations of C4 or dynamite -- based explosions are not necessarily applicable. Apples and Oranges.
The official investigation into the event never tested for any explosive residue because they said there was no need to do so. They already had the official story and explosives were not part of the official story.
The nano-thermite reaction could create the temperature necessary to produce a pyroclastic dust cloud much like what happens with a volcano, as you pointed out. Conventional explosives (C4 or dynamite) would not, on their own, cause this effect.
This contention is certainly not obviously true to me. Though I am no expert on this.
Many architects and engineers find this official explanation to be completely unsatisfactory (more than 1000 on the petition), and professionals have spent quite a lot of time debunking it. The official story is not the only possible explanation for the physical effects. I do not claim to be an expert in this field. But I have made the effort to read the fact-based (rather than wild conjecture -- based) information available on the net.
Is this an Ad Hom? I don't know about Marquis, but I had no pre-conceived desires to believe anything. I find the alternative possibilities for responsibility to be appalling. I had no desire to find alternative villains.
With deepest respect, Bob
Lana (fortitude)
"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King
Your posts suggests more than just curiosity. You're looking for a specific type of answer, in this thread. Only one such response with an answer that is complimentary to your belief will satisfy your 'curiosity'.
You certainly aren't the first person to question the "Establishment's" response to 9/11 or the two wars following that calamity, nor will you be the last
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
Whichever way you turn it, this is a suckful topic. I made the mistake of looking at the footage of the WTC collapses again in an attempt to ascertain their apparent falling speed. That was bloody stupid. Whether it's this shit or the war on iraq that drags on and on, the whole fucking mess is a crime against humanity. If there's one thing the bible gets right it's a sense of disappointment in the failure of humans to consistently live up to their better natures. Whatever happened on 9-11 it's a nightmare that scarcely bears thought. If there are any real doubts conduct more tests. Conduct a thousand independent tests. Regardless of what is uncovered the underlying answer will stare you in the face. Humans are nasty pieces of work.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
I don't see that the characteristics of nano-thermites would address my objections at all, certainly irrelevant to the issue of pulverising effects.
The finer particles would obvious accelerate the basic thermite reaction, but that is a relatively slow reaction to start with, compared to conventional explosives. Ordinary thermite really hardly counts as an explosive - it is a source of intense heat, hence the name. I can see how an accelerated thermite reaction would be a good way to weaken by heat, or even melt through, large steel structural elements, better than conventional HE, since steel tends to be resilient rather than brittle like concrete.
Whether nano-thermites, or any other explosive, were actually used to trigger/accelerate/control the collapse is a separate argument.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Mixing the reaction components at the nano level apparently has a dramatic effect on the speed of a thermite reaction. The reaction requires a high-temperature detonation or energy input to start the reaction, which perhaps is why we think of it as a slow reaction. It is, however, really difficult to predict conclusively how the unreacted nano-thermitic materials would have behaved or could have been deployed in a WTC demolition scenario, based on their behavior in very small quantities in a lab.
"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King
Sorry. I seem to go in for suckful topics. Death, suffering etc. Maybe it's a personal failing. I'm really not a depressing person.
"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King
I did not mean to imply that the official story is definitely correct because it is supported by the majority of engineers and architects. In fact, I would not have stated this if I had not been responding to your own appeal to authority, that you have 1180 engineers and architects.
Also, notice my reference to Project Steve. Natural scientists, by gathering over 1000 scientists named Steve that support evolution, are mainly poking fun at the Creationist's list. They are not implying that this proves the validity of evolution.
And in this post, you also wrote, "I think you overestimate the amount of thought most people, including architects and engineers, would have put into it. People are generally happy to accept what they are told by officials and the media. As long as the media and the government story coincide, as they very much did following 9/11, who is going to go digging for an alternative? Only a small minority of people." If I interpret that the same way you interpreted my post, then you've committed another red herring.
Btw, if argumentum ad populum is such a useless argument, why are you inserting all these qualifers to try to undermine the credibility of the majority? I think it's because despite how unpopular appeals to authority, popularity, etc. are, they are not completely negligable. If a position in an engineering related debate is not supported by any engineers, then that suggests that it's unsound. If a position is supported by the vast majority of engineers, that suggests that it is sound. The reason these are not good arguments is that they are only true most of the time.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
aw shit. i used to dig this kind of stuff. i take it you're a fan of alex jones?
all i can really say is that bush and cheney couldn't even handle a little war in iraq; there is no fucking way they were smart enough to pull this one off. if there was a conspiracy, then it is probably a lot less complex and sinister than most think. i mean, shit, one of the pilots went to flight school, but told the instructor he didn't need to know how to land the plane; he just needed to know how to take off and increase the speed. the law that stated that you could bring a knife on board as long as it was under 3 inches wasn't too smart, either.
as for the collapse, there have been constant debates over how fast the towers fell, how they fell etc.; all claims have been rationally rebutted by scientists from many different fields.
of course, i am just a henchman for global killers, so i guess my opinion has no value in this argument.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." -George Bush, Sr.
NWO = cheap christian excuse for return of the anti-christ
Well, it occurs to me that with all of the video cameras in the world, we should be able to look at some building collapses that are not the result of intentional demolition. From those, we could expect to get an idea of how a building ought to fall down.
Now here I will consider that any precedent will never be quite accurate as far as modeling exactly what happened on the morning of 9/11. There simply has never been another collapse quite like that. However, if we see the features that we see with the WTC, that will point out that these things are at least possible.
First up, we have Liege Belgium. Here we see material thrown out away from the footprint of the building, the roof line coming down at a speed that shows no mechanical resistance from the materials on the lower levels and thick clouds of smoke that travel quite a distance.
Next we have a building in NYC that went down after a fire. Again, no mechanical resistance and thick clouds of smoky looking dust.
Third, we have a building in California that collapsed after being hit by an airplane. The first thing that we see is what looks like explosions coming from different parts of the building. After that, the actual fall is quickly obscured by the thick dust cloud but for a few seconds, we see the collapse proceeding at what we now know to be a fairly normal rate with no appearance of mechanical resistance.
Now, does any of this prove that the WTC was not brought down with explosives? Of course not. What it does serve to show is that when buildings fall for other reasons, it is entirely expected that we would see the very things that the truther movement use to claim that the buildings were intentionally demolished.
=
I think what I saw most apparently in the collapses, other than their speed, was the only partial collapse of buildings. Because some parts of buildings are more damaged than other parts due to a collision and/or fire, a collapse will take place on the most damaged portions first and in a very unsymetrical manner. One also gets the impression from at least a couple of the buildings that these were not modern steel and concrete buildings, but some other type of construction. Wood would of course be much more susceptible to fire and collapse than steel. Also, most of the debris is falling through burned out levels below or away from the building and away from the remaining undamaged structure. Debris is following the paths of least resistance, which has it falling away from or along undamaged or less damaged portions of the buildings. And I don't think the speed (meters per second) of collapse is actually as fast as the WTC buildings but only appears to be because of the vast difference in scale of the buildings. That is, of course, just a visual guess and I don't intend to try to prove it.
One of the opinions about this I have heard from 'truther' firefighters is that if the firemen had any expectation that the steel-framed building was in danger of collapsing in the manner it did, there would not have been so many (or any) rescue workers in the building when it did collapse.
"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King
The main reason that I jumped into the fray was the assertions that, to paraphrase, the 'truth' movement consists solely of the tin hat brigade, who have great enthusiasm for any loony conspiracy theory. The portions of the movement that I have been following have a degree of credibility and scientific-based rigor that I don't see among the 'tin hat brigade' types, that are of course enthusiastic about this particular storyline. It is also a portion of the movement that is attempting to do credible scientific research on the subject, given very little crime scene material to work with.
So I don't expect anyone to be exceptionally impressed that 1180 architects and engineers don't buy the official story. It was not meant as an appeal to authority in that way. The point was that the movement has a growing credible component (unlike creationists
) that is much less easily dismissed than the 'tin hat brigade' and the Alex Jones enthusiasts.
"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King
Okay. So, I don't think I disagree with you "that much." I think the "truth" movement is probably more credible than the vast majority of conspiracy groups, even if I still disagree with them. Overall, I've simply found the more mainstream explanations to be much more likely and sensible.
So, I would not be opposed to an independent investigation into 9/11. I also don't like that the professor from Brigham Young University got fired for raising questions about 9/11, especially considering that this occurred because he supposedly conducted some research into it (they're Mormons though, what can you do?).
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
The 'near free-fall' thing in particular, and the clouds of whatever ejected from lower floors, are clearly not good evidence as such of demolition.
If they got close to free-fall with a much smaller amount of weight in the falling part, that is very strong evidence that the WTC rate of fall was NOT a mystery.
It is a direct consequence of the math of momentum and acceleration that the greater the total falling mass, the less it would be slowed by hitting the remaining part of the structure. So the bigger the building, the closer it would approach free-fall speeds.
So what are the arguments?
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
The fishiest thing to me, was the pentagon hit. Explainable but still a little fishy to me. But I think a massive scale conspiracy by our own govt. is unlikely. Any screw up's or leaks and the whole thing would be blown, then what? Surely they aren't that stupid. But I do think it was an opening bush wanted, to give him the excuse to finish what daddy started.
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
Here is a technical article, a debate, and a news article talking about the impact between the upper and lower portions of the buildings and what effect that would have.
This is an analysis of the momentum transfer of the upper storeys of WTC 1. www.journalof911studies.com/articles/Journal_5_PTransferRoss.pdf
This 'momentum analysis' even allows for argument sake that somehow the upper floors were relieved of all of the columns on a single or even multiple floors due to the combination of collision and fire.
There is also this debate giving the arguments for each side. journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/Roberts_AnnotatedJones-RobertsonTranscript.pdf
In the debate, Jones refers to the Ross article, linked above, and says"The other paper I'd like to refer to regarding the Towers is a paper by Gordon Ross, a mechanical engineer out of the United Kingdom. His point is that even if we allow that the towers could begin to collapse .... that does not mean that they would continue a complete collapse in ten seconds. Instead, the remaining structure below the upper block would halt or significantly slow down the collapse and the motion of the upper floors."
For a less technical comparison of the two competing theories, here is a news article written by a civil engineer.
www.vermontguardian.com/commentary/032007/TwinTowers.shtml
"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King
The analysis mentioned in my previous post allows for the build up in momentum of a solid block of the tops of the towers. NIST (author of the official story) has estimated that 15% of either towers' columns were destroyed by the aircraft impact. The momentum to provide the jolt requires more than 15% of these massive columns to be removed. And these columns were intact and unheated in all the lower undamaged levels.
The lower portions of the building had supported the 'massive' weight of the upper portions of the building in a completely satisfactory manner, as designed, since it was built. So the mass of the upper portion is inconsequential in determining the potential damage to the lower structure. It only is the increase in loading due to acceleration that is at issue. And this would be dependent on the distance it fell and any resistance (mechanical or other) countering its acceleration. So, even though I feel completely out of my depth ...,
Acceleration rate does not depend on the height from which an object falls or the mass of the object. It is affected by resistance. And in order for something to fall at close to free-fall acceleration (the acceleration of a free object in air), it has to encounter negligible resistance. A massive skyscraper that is still 90 some odd storeys high is not negligible. Not even close to negligible.
Many continuous unheated, undamaged highly resilient steel columns supported the building in the lower levels (47 heavy core columns, 240 perimeter columns) and were available to absorb the impact of any falling upper levels throughout their length.
That is why the near free-fall rate of acceleration of the collapse is a problem.
"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King
"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King
Bobspence stated free fall speed, not free fall acceleration. I believe even if it is not near free fall acceleration, it can still approach terminal velocity.
The fact that it's a massive 110 story tall skyscraper would make it much easier to achieve free fall speed, not harder, so I'm not sure why you're using this argument. Not only do you have a far greater distance to fall, you have much greater momentum due the enormous mass.
Just intuitively, I don't see how that is a problem. Once the falling mass begins building momentum, it should not be difficult to smash through all the support structure, if that is what happened.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
From my perspective, the most interesting aspect of "the 9/11 complex" is the relative toxicity of the debate. I am assuming this is because of all the feelings which is stirred up - so let me say: I have no feelings about 9/11. I am stone cold rational (or at least so I think) about it. It is not news to me that the human being is a vicious predator ape and (more often than not) a lying, thieving, murderous creature. I have always known this. So it doesn't surprise me nor shock me when "we" commit atrocities, and/or lie to cover our tracks, and/or take advantage of tragedy to support our personal goals of immideate gratification at the cost of long-term "greater good". Nothing about the 9/11 complex is surprising to me. Up to and including ad hominem character assassination attempts directed towards me with claims that I am stupid, insane, or worse. But I don't feel insulted. Only amused. And a little embarrassed on behalf of people who lack the professional debating skills to stick to the matter, as well the plain courtesy of refraining from dishonourable conduct such as name-calling.
As I have already mentioned, my "credentials" are 15 years of hands-on experience with construction and demolition. I'm not an architect or engineer though, I'm a businessman. At the most, I employed more than 100 people in the demolition business. You might of course raise the argument that this doesn't make me qualified to have an opinion on structural properties of bulding materials, but I beg to differ. For instance, a race car driver knows a lot about the performance of vehicles, because he has a *feeling* for them, even if he's not able to pick apart and reassemble an engine, much less explain the theoretical physics behind it all. We can say that a considerable lot of practical experience gives you a *feeling* for how different things behave under different conditions, and also quite some insight into what is and what isn't *possible*.
Anyway, my problem with this all begins with the 19 hi-jackers that were named. It was well known within two weeks after the events that at least six of the people that were publicly named were alive and well. Why did they still name the same people, with photo and all, several years later, in the 9/11 Commission Report (CR)? That's worse than just *wrong*, that's criminal. It also raises the question of how valid anything else that is stated in the CR is, when they can't even get *that* right. Moreover, it raises the question of whether there actually *was* any religiously motivated "suicide bombing" since going in under a covert identity severely deviates from all known cases of modus operandi of such incidents so far. Suicide bombers have always taken great care in recording their final words to friends and family, their declaration of intent and mission, etc. Why kill yourself under a false name? That doesn't even make any sense. Something is not right about this. More investigation is needed.
My next problem is the hush-hush and secrecy demonstrated by the US Government. Why was that necessary? After all, the events and their immideate physical consequences had already been broadcasted on live television to millions, if not billions, of people. Why not keep it out in the open? It takes an idiot of monumental proportions to think that any cover-up was going to fly at that point in time. What that has done is to undermine the popular trust which is the essential claim to legitmacy that a democratic government is resting upon. We can say with some certainty that *sloppy political handiwork* has been the main characteristic of the whole 9/11 complex. (Which is my main reason for thinking that this was probably not a false flag operation conducted by the US Government: They quite simply didn't have the personal and professional competence needed to carry out anything of such a magnitude.)
What cannot be debated is that *somebody* planned and carried out these atrocities. One would think that a careful "CSI" type of approach would be the proper thing to do, in order to establish an irrefutable criminal case, based in technical evidence, while at the same time conducting a vigilant investigation of all leads with respects to who the perpetrators might be. But that didn't happen. Within just a few days, a list of suspects were published. And that list has been the *official* story ever since. Meanwhile, the forensic evidence were being destroyed. Why? The "Occam" approach suggests that the politics of the matter were given priority over the actual facts, so that for instance the CR stated that documented leads about who financed the operation were not considered important. (I am specifically referring to the wire transfer of 100,000 dollars to lead hijacker Mohammad Atta from the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, General Mahmud Ahmed.) How can that *not* be considered important?!? It boggles the mind. But it definitely fits with an all-too-common pattern of brushing away *inconvenient* facts in order to establish a story which supports a political agenda which already existed. (Such as was the case with the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City 15 years ago, where all direct witnesses observed *two* explosions, but the official story of the lone wolf perpetrator needed only *one*, so it was decided that there was only one explosion - and that this was carried out by Timothy McVeigh alone - even though explosives experts, such as General Benton K. Partin, vehemently protested that it is possible to do that kind of damage to a bulding with just an ANFO bomb.)
Speaking of bombs in buildings, only a fool would think that every exotic weapon available to various intelligence services in various nations are commonly known to the public, or even to explosives professionals in the private business sector. For instance, in the late 70's, a certain Michael Riconosciuto invented, as a spin-off product from the nuclear program, an exotic dual-gas composite piece of devilry called "the electro-barometric bomb", which allegedly is no larger than an average pineapple but packs the blasting ( "crushing" ) power to completely pulverize several stories of structural concrete, leaving only the rebar behind. But this is just an example pulled out of memory. I'm not a weapon's expert. I just happen to know that there exists things that are *not* on the market which may be described as cutting-edge destruction technology. And dust samples collected from several different locations on lower Manhattan in the days and weeks following the 9/11 events uniformly show that some really nefarious things were going on with those buildings.
But it wasn't just the WTC buildings that were struck on that day. Nor were they the only "mystery" which still remains unexplained. You have to ask yourself how a Boeing 767 is able to *both* disintegrate upon impact *and* punch through 6 walls of reinforced concrete at the Pentagon. And how could Flight 93 disintegrate? (When for instance the 747 that was blown up in mid-air above Lockerbie in 1988 demolished entire city blocks with falling wreckage that remained relatively intact.) It flies in the face of *common sense*. But what's more sinister is that it fuels the agenda of every Tom, Dick and Harry in the "conspiracy theory business", such as David Icke and Alex Jones. What's the big secret here? Why does the *official* flight data from Flight 77 show a different path than the simulation offered by the CR? Why does the very same *official* flight data show that the cockpit door was never opened during flight? Questions like these shouldn't be allowed to hover around out there. This is, at best, flagrantly irresponsible.
Lastly, I will say - again - that I'm not in support of *any* of the theories concerning "whodunnit?", neither the official bag of lies, nor the wild-eyed speculations that are hovering around out there. As I have already stated, it is, in my opinion, irresponsible (even irrational) to play the point-and-blame-game before it has been established beyond all reasonable doubt what actually happened.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
*face twitches*
Humans... (begins whispering)
...they can't handle big explosions, y'know? Set's them off balance, it does!
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
Mr. Simmons, there are buildings and there are buildings.
The first two examples shown are typical for construction techniques from late 19th and early 20th century, using wooden beams as floor separators, and plastered brickwork as load-bearing construction, whereas the third (the plane crash) building has plaster facade-work typical of the 60s and 70s - all of which produces *a lot* of dust when being torn (or falling) down, because the plasterwork is mostly done with lime-based cement (which pulverises easily) and not structural concrete (whick breaks up into chunks). The question of *dust* under such circumstances is a function of what bulding materials that were used. Lime based masonry is *notorious* for its corrosive (and quite toxic) dust, and this is always a problem during demolition (which is why it is nowadays normally performed under heavily soaked textile covers which is also constantly hosed down with large amounts of water).
It is a bit of a problem here and now, debate-wise, that I only know Norwegian codes and terminology for material hardness and plasticity, so all I can say is that there are some important differences between the MP40 (or 65) type of structural concrete that you use in steel buildings and the lime-based (and/or gypsum) cement you use for either plastering or brick work. Structural concrete *cannot* pulverise unless you use explosives (or heavy hammering by machines). It's impossible. It will break and splinter, yes, but it won't *disintegrate* the same way that lime-based plaster will do.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
Ok then - we need to clear up some definitions. For the first part of their decents, all three towers were collapsing at a rate very close to free-fall acceleration, which is not the same as terminal velocity. Terminal velocity is the speed at which a falling body no longer can accelerate. Terminal velocity has nothing to do with the 'truther' assertions. It is free-fall acceleration that is implicated and has been admitted by NIST.
Sure - if you dropped something off of a high tower, it would reach freefall acceleration in air if it was unimpeded. It would also reach terminal velocity. It is encountering negligible resistance. However, dropping the same object through a structure designed to hold that weight with large margins of safety would not be expected to have the same effect. It would not be expected to travel through the 90 storeys at the same rate as it would travel through air. It is impossible for it to do so (unless the underlying structure was simultaneously being destroyed by explosives). The energy or force of the momentum should be absorbed by the underlying structure, perhaps causing some crushing of the first couple of floors. I hope that somebody can understand the distinction here.
This narrative about how the collapse was inevitable is so drilled into our consciousness by the shock and awe of the event, it is hard to make it clear that this was not inevitable.
No steel framed skyscraper has ever completely collapsed before 9/11, even though some have been damaged by very severe fires and completely gutted. Comparing the WTC collapses (all three) with collapses of wood or concrete structures is wrong.
"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King
I wanted to add somehing about the staggered truss system of very tall buildings with open floor plans such as was used in the WTC towers and building 7. The pancake model of collapse is flawed by an "either-or" paradox, which dictates that you cannot possibly have *both* a global collapse of weight *and* a local failure of staggered trusses (because the staggered truss system requires that the bearing truss is welded to the enforcment rebar structure of the concrete floor). You'd have to violently and suddenly remove *all* the concrete in order to facilitate a collapse of the trusses. This could be done by explosives, and/or mechanical hammering, but even still you'd expect to find large chunks of floor material in the rubble afterwards, partially held together because of the elasticity of the steel, partially because the durability (hardness) of the concrete. This, again, is one of the common challenges of demolishing newer (built after the 50s) buildings. They do not simply *break* and collapse.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
Here is an article by Richard Gage of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth published in the 'World Architecture News'. www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php
Following the article are a long series of comments. The vast majority of those commenting in this specialized architecture news site are in support and agreement with the analysis and conclusions of Richard Gage's group. This is not a 'truther' site.
Watching this reminds me a lot of debates between christians and atheists. Christians are in an indefensible position, but will use equivocation and obfustication to create just enough confusion in their rebuttals that the majority of people throw up their hands and say it's over their heads.
I think that's why I'm interested in what this group makes of evidence and science-based debate on this subject. Even though it has not much to do with our favorite whipping boy - Christianity.
I had hoped to see some rational responses out of this group, since we are so proud of our rationality. I'm starting to get disappointed
.
"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King
I'm seeing that a lot from everyone on this topic. So here is my position on the subject.
I have a degree in systems engineering. I had introductory classes in civil and mechanical engineering for non-majors. That means I know enough to know I don't know enough to have an opinion. I am not interested enough to learn enough to have an informed opinion on this subject. After all, if I were interested, I would have a civil or mechanical engr degree. Follow so far?
All objects have energy in one form or another. A stationary object - like a building - has potential energy. Different floors of the building have different values for potential energy. Potential energy = mass * height * gravity. Moving objects have kenetic energy = 1/2 * m * (velocity)squared.
My apologies for repeating the formulas, but it seems some people may have forgotten them.
Because the towers were so tall, they were very massive. Which means the energy involved was -- huge. I can't quite grasp how huge. Even if I ran the calculations and came up with some sort of valid numbers, I still wouldn't be able to visualize that much energy and it's effects. And I don't know enough about various explosives so I couldn't come up with the reasonable amount of explosives necessary to get enough damage to the underlying structure to get the building moving.
But having a large passenger jet with a full fuel load sounds like a lot of explosives to me. No, it isn't gasoline and it isn't thermite and it isn't nuclear, either. I have no clue as to why the explosive would show up in the dust. I have no clue as to why it shouldn't show up in the dust, either.
Remember the cocaine test that was supposed to tell us what paper money had ever been touched by a drug dealer(s)? Well, it was a bust because there is enough cocaine floating around in the air that almost any random sample of money has detectable limits of cocaine. I don't know the limits they were using in their tests, but odds are if anyone anywhere near or in the WTC had EVER worked with the stuff, and they were wearing the same shoes or suit or what have you, they could have left detectable amounts on the sidewalk or in the buildings.
When I don't have a clue, I stick with no opinion.
Though you might might to view this article: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/06-09-11/
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
I think the cat is out of the bag on this now though. Even if we re-built the twin towers and crashed jetliners into them just to see what would happen, it wouldn't matter. This is another Elvis or grassy knoll. It has a life of its own now. One-off events like this aren't ever going to be validated in the mind of someone looking for a conspiracy.
No-one is going to pony up for another multi-million dollar investigation after the the NIST report satisfied most and the engineering community at large isn't complaining about the basic idea that the planes hit the buildings, the fire and physical impact weakened the steel supports such that the tops of the buildings fell and the energy of that fall overwhelmed the lower supports sequentially all the way down (Gaining mass with every collapsed floor, and thereby increasing energy with every floor).
To show otherwise it seems pretty simple: You need to show, through math, that if the buildings above the plane fell by ten to twenty feet, the supports below the plane would have enough strength to absorb the energy of the impact without collapsing (factoring in the physical and heat damage of the lower floors by the time of collapse). If I had to guess, I would imagine that the energy from that kind of moving mass is far beyond what the structure was designed to support. Probably *way* beyond it.
So then all you are left with is why the top collapsed. Again, there was a fire, hot steel is not as strong as cool steel. Easy enough to do that math (for someone with the time and knowledge)...how many support columns would need to be heated or physically damaged to lower structural integrity to the failure point? Once you have that number, is there a reason a plane full of jet fuel hitting the building could not have caused that?
I'm guessing this stuff was already figured out in the NIST report though. This was a very complex and chaotic event with zero precedence. With that in mind, if someone wants to find 'evidence' of a conspiracy, they are going to find it easily. However, pointing out physical 'anomalies' to a chaotic, complex event (that cannot be duplicated) with no precedent is a hard sell when you're trying to show a conspiracy. Maybe if the two questions above are answered, and it can be shown that the collapse was physically impossible, then there might be a case. But although I've seen people claim that, there doesn't ever seem to be math behind it, just incredulity.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
Long indeed. It took me the better part of 2 hours to read through it all. It's pretty much up there with the general discussion I've been involved with so far.
However, just to pick *one* quote:
Look, the fact is that NIST tried to refute free-fall, then turned around and admitted free-fall. They have yet to explain how they initially stated that Building 7 took 40% longer that free-fall time to collapse, even though there is no video evidence to support that. In fact, video evidence seems to refute that assertion. They couldn't even get there own computer models to replicate the collapse of this building. Or even come close. We are talking about a 47 story steel-framed building reduced to a pile of rubble in 7 seconds. We are talking about two 110 story buildings designed to take a hit from a fully loaded 707 being destroyed in a way that defies logic. A smaller top section of ten floors completely destroying a lower section of almost a HUNDRED floors. How does a 10 story building crush a 100 story building? And in such a dramatic way? Its 30 ton steel columns being ejected hundreds of feet, on all four sides of the building at the same time, floor by floor. Building 7 was supposedly hit by a massive amount of debris. It stood 300 feet from the North Tower. NIST offers no explanation as to how 30 ton columns could have been ejected 300 feet, let alone how 10 stories crushes almost 100 stories. It's been 8 years and they still can't explain it. Can't explain what is not physically possible.
I have *known* in my gut that the whole scenario was just *wrong* ever since day one, since watching those building fall on live television. On September 12th 2001, I called it "an American Reichstag". I *knew* that this was going to fuck up the entire world in some really rather severe ways. My point of view has never been popular. Nor has it been of any help in my professional life. So why did I stick with it? Simple. Because I trust my gut feelings. I take some comfort from the fact that I am not insane, I am not the only one who harboured such thoughts. Nor am I the only one who will flat-out *die* before I surrender my common sense to systems of belief that require blind submission to authorities. To me it is unfathomable that people who claim to be *rational* are able to accept the official cock-and-bull story. It seems touchingly naive, and a little innocently charming, much the same way that children will be frolicking around with no thoughts to all the evils in this world, but, as I am sorry to say, insofar you are adult people it seems retarded to harbour an ability to accept conspiracy theories such as that one where Ali Baba and his 19 hijackers simply said "Open Sesame!" to the North American air space, and then proceeded to carry out the most talked about terrorist events in modern history. Sorry. No can do. I'm an adult. I am void of the ability to *believe* like that. I need irrefutable facts, not fanciful stories.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
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