WTC Collapses

Discussion in 'Pseudoscience Archive' started by scott3x, Nov 14, 2008.

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How do you think the World Trade Center Collapsed?

  1. Terrorist controlled aeroplanes crashing into them (like on the footage)

    18 vote(s)
    43.9%
  2. Remote controlled aeroplanes to manipulate a war on false grounds

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  3. Demolitions charges rigged by the government to manipulate war

    9 vote(s)
    22.0%
  4. Allah!

    2 vote(s)
    4.9%
  5. People keep flogging a dead horse!

    12 vote(s)
    29.3%
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  1. scott3x Banned Banned

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    3,785
    I've updated and slightly changed the url of my WTC web site to include a fair amount of the materiel that has been posted here. Not quite done yet, but perhaps done for the day:
    http://scott3x.tripod.com/911/wtc/index.html
     
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  3. shaman_ Registered Senior Member

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    A fine collection of debunked arguments there scott.
     
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  5. scott3x Banned Banned

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    3,785
    Must have taken you a long time to come up with such a fine argument there shaman

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Personally, I think the whole 'building was brought down by planes and fires' argument is killed by this simple statement made by psikey:
    ***************************
    m1 is the mass of the falling top portion of the tower. v1 is the velocity at which it would hit the lower intact portion, in this case 44 mph or 64.5 ft/sec. m2 is the mass of one level of that lower portion which has a velocity of ZERO. So the velocity of the combined masses after the mash up will be v3 = m1*v1/(m1 + m2). So v3 is going to be smaller than v1. THE FALLING MASS WILL BE SLOWED DOWN BY MASS ALONE. That does not count the energy lost to crush each level.
    ***************************
    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2090944&postcount=33

    But I figured I'd refute a bunch of other claims as well anyway.
     
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  7. scott3x Banned Banned

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    3,785
    Yes, I agreed that the steel reached temperatures well over 250C. But it's understandable that Ryan was misled in this regard. Mr. Ryan explains in his letter to Frank Gayle of NIST:
    "Your comments suggest that the steel was probably exposed to temperatures of only about 500F (250C), which is what one might expect from a thermodynamic analysis of the situation."

    You see, the fires should have only brought the steel to around 250C/500F and at the time NIST was apparently turning a blind eye to any evidence that suggested otherwise. Since then, NIST has admitted that the temperatures got hotter, but the fact remains that if the fires alone were responsible, it shouldn't have gotten any hotter. Given this fact, his views on the subject make perfect sense:
    *******************************
    Ryan wrote that the institute's preliminary reports suggest the WTC's supports were probably exposed to fires no hotter than 500 degrees [F] -- only half the 1,100-degree temperature needed to forge steel, Ryan said. That's also much cooler, he wrote, than the 3,000 degrees needed to melt bare steel with no fire-proofing.

    "This story just does not add up," Ryan wrote in his e-mail to Frank Gayle, deputy chief of the institute's metallurgy division, who is playing a prominent role in the agency investigation. "If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I'm sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers.

    He added, "Alternatively, the contention that this steel did fail at temperatures around (500 degrees [F]) suggests that the majority of deaths on 9/11 were due to a safety-related failure. That suggestion should be of great concern to my company."

    ****************************************
    http://www.wanttoknow.info/911kevinrryanfired
     
  8. shaman_ Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,467
    Ryan was not misled. Ryan chose to ignore all the evidence that the fires reached higher temperatures.

    He is focusing on one piece of research and ignoring the rest. This is what you conspiracy theorists do.

    Based on what? You have picked this number from the samples.

    Jet fuel burns much hotter than that.

    The Cardington tests for office fires all achieved temperatures much hotter than that.

    Several steel structures have collapsed due to fire giving indications of temperatures much hotter than that.

    How do you explain the bowing seen towards the end?

    NITS’s own simulations predicted temperatures much hotter than 250C.

    Molten material was reported at WTC5. Are you going to claim that explosives were involved?


    All the other evidence confirms that the temperatures were near 1000C.

    So when the McCormick Place in Chicago collapsed due to fire, there must have been explosives involved.

    Only to the ignorant.

    Ryan was wrong. He was a lab manager at Underwriters Laboratories. His area was environmental testing, not structural certification or fire engineering. It doesn’t matter how many more times you post this letter over and over, he is still wrong.
     
  9. shaman_ Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,467
    Actually it was an observation, not an argument.

    What is the point of that site? You are recording your words but exclude the posts which completely discredit them.
     
  10. scott3x Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,785
    Do you have any evidence to support your claim? To me it seems clear that he was informing himself from Frank Gayle's interim NIST report that he had just received.

    He was focusing on Frank Gayle's interim NIST report. If anyone was at fault for allegedly not noticing that the steel had gotten hotter then 250C, it was NIST's. They're the ones who were on the scene, not Kevin Ryan.
     
  11. psikeyhackr Live Long and Suffer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,223
    I don't call asking someone that if a skyscraper has to hold up its own weight then don't the designers have to figure out how much steel and concrete to put where A TREATISE.

    I expect grade school kids to understand that information is necessary. So I expect people to regard it as peculiar that we don't have it. And after SEVEN YEARS!?!?

    psik
     
  12. scott3x Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,785
    An essay then. In any case, it's too much for people here. Surely you realize this?


    It's one thing to understand that a building has to be built in a way so that it doesn't fall down. It's another thing to persuade people that a plane won't make it auto destruct.


    After seven years, we atleast have more then 500 architects and engineers calling for a new inquiry into the WTC collapses. Most people aren't either, however, and simply don't understand what's so important about steel and concrete; to be honest with you, I still don't really understand it myself.

    I -did- understand your point on kinetic energy. To be specific:
    ***************************
    m1 is the mass of the falling top portion of the tower. v1 is the velocity at which it would hit the lower intact portion, in this case 44 mph or 64.5 ft/sec. m2 is the mass of one level of that lower portion which has a velocity of ZERO. So the velocity of the combined masses after the mash up will be v3 = m1*v1/(m1 + m2). So v3 is going to be smaller than v1. THE FALLING MASS WILL BE SLOWED DOWN BY MASS ALONE. That does not count the energy lost to crush each level.
    ***************************
    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2090944&postcount=33

    However, it seems that this bit of info is beyond virtually everyone here. I guess it needs to be broken down further for them.

    Perhaps the simplest way of doing it would be to say:
    The towers couldn't have pancaked down. Why? Because the -only- way they could have fallen down as fast as they did is if floors well below the supposedly 'pancaking' part had already begun to fall.
     
  13. scott3x Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,785
    The number is apparently what NIST was suggesting in its interim report and was certainly a number that Kevin Ryan felt was reasonable. He says as much in his letter to NIST's Frank Gayle:
    ***********************
    Your comments suggest that the steel was probably exposed to temperatures of only about 500F (250C), which is what one might expect from a thermodynamic analysis of the situation.
    ***********************
    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2090188&postcount=24
     
  14. scott3x Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,785
    Yes, jet fuel burns up to 1500F/815C. I have it on good authority that the jet fuel fires played almost no role in the collapse of the World Trade Center. However, I can't say that I understand the math and since it seems math is -not- the forte of this forum, you can only look at the numbers if you wish:
    http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/guardian2/wtc/how-hot.htm


    Quoting Headspin:
    ***************************
    Wasn't the point of the cardigan tests to see how steel and building behaved at various temperatures, rather than to see what temperatures would be reached?

    Weren't the Cardigan temperatures the input data, rather than the output data?

    If i do tests at various temperatures, I cannot conclude the temperatures reached were those temperatures at some other fire event. What I can conclude is how the steel behaves at certain temperatures.

    ***************************
    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2083979&postcount=2240
     
  15. scott3x Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,785
    As steel structure is not the same thing as saying a steel framed high rise. No steel framed high rises have ever completely collapsed due to planes and/or fires alone before or since 9/11:
    http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/collapses.html
     
  16. scott3x Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,785
    9/11 Research explains it thusly:
    ********************************

    Bowed Columns, or Refracted Light?


    This illustration is in the slide presentations predating the Report, and is included in the final Report (p 33/83). NIST assigns inward displacements of every fifth column at each floor based on their appearance in the photograph.

    A key part in NIST's theory of the collapse initiation is that the perimeter columns on one of the faces of each Tower bowed inward, pulled by sagging trusses. The Report contends that the columns on the south face of the North Tower bowed inward in the moments before its collapse and that the columns on the east face of the South Tower bowed inward some time before its collapse. As evidence for the supposed bowed columns NIST cites photographs. The Report includes one annotated photograph allegedly showing bowing in the North Tower, but no such photographs of allegedly bowing of columns in the South Tower. There are two photographs of alleged South Tower column bowing in an earlier slide presentation.

    NIST fails to consider an alternative explanation for the bowed appearance of columns in its selected photographs of the Twin Towers: light refraction caused by the layer of hot air adjacent to the Towers. Such atmospheric conditions would refract light in a way that is consistent with apparent distortion of the columns seen in the photographs.

    ********************************
    http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/nist/index.html#bowed
     
  17. scott3x Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,785
    Those simulations came after the 2004 report. Those simulations are, shall we say, somewhat suspect. Steven Jones points this out in his article "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?":

    ************************************
    The computerized models of the Towers in the NIST study, which incorporate many features of the buildings and the fires on 9-11-01, are less than convincing. The Final report states:

    The Investigation Team then defined three cases for each building by combining the middle, less severe, and more severe values of the influential variables. Upon a preliminary examination of the middle cases, it became clear that the towers would likely remain standing. The less severe cases were discarded after the aircraft impact results were compared to observed events. The middle cases (which became Case A for WTC 1 and Case C for WTC 2) were discarded after the structural response analysis of major subsystems were compared to observed events. (NIST, 2005, p. 142; emphasis added.)​

    The NIST report makes for interesting reading. The less severe cases based on empirical data were discarded because they did not result in building collapse. But ‘we must save the hypothesis,’ so more severe cases were tried and the simulations tweaked, as we read in the NIST report:

    The more severe case (which became Case B for WTC 1 and Case D for WTC 2) was used for the global analysis of each tower. Complete sets of simulations were then performed for Cases B and D. To the extent that the simulations deviated from the photographic evidence or eyewitness reports [e.g., complete collapse occurred], the investigators adjusted the input, but only within the range of physical reality. Thus, for instance,…the pulling forces on the perimeter columns by the sagging floors were adjusted… (NIST, 2005, p. 142; emphasis added.)

    The primary role of the floors in the collapse of the towers was to provide inward pull forces that induced inward bowing of perimeter columns. (NIST, 2005, p. 180; emphasis added.)​

    How fun to tweak the model like that, until the building collapses — until one gets the desired result. But the end result of such tweaked computer hypotheticals is not compelling, sorry gentlemen. Notice that the “the pulling forces on the perimeter columns by the sagging floors were adjusted” (NIST, 2005, p. 142; emphasis added) to get the perimeter columns to yield sufficiently — one suspects these were “adjusted” by hand quite a bit — even though the UK experts complained that “the core columns cannot pull the exterior [i.e., perimeter] columns in via the floor.” (Lane and Lamont, 2005; emphasis added.)

    ...So how does the NIST team justify the WTC collapses, when actual models fail to collapse and there are zero examples of fire-caused high-rise collapses? Easy, NIST concocted computer-generated hypotheticals for very “severe” cases, called cases B and D (NIST, 2005, pp. 124-138). Of course, the details are rather hidden to us. And they omit consideration of the complete, rapid and symmetrical nature of the collapses.

    Indeed, NIST makes the startling admission in a footnote on page 80 of their Final Report:

    The focus of the Investigation was on the sequence of events from the instant of aircraft impact to the initiation of collapse for each tower. For brevity in this report, this sequence is referred to as the “probable collapse sequence,” although it does not actually include the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached…(NIST, 2005, p. 80, fn. 12; emphasis added.)​

    Again, on page 142, NIST admits that their computer simulation only proceeds until the building is “poised for collapse”, thus ignoring any data from that time on.

    The results were a simulation of the structural deterioration of each tower from the time of aircraft impact to the time at which the building became unstable, i.e., was poised for collapse. …(NIST, 2005, p. 142; emphasis added.)​

    What about the subsequent complete, rapid and symmetrical collapse of the buildings? What about the observed squibs? What about the antenna dropping first in the North Tower? What about the molten metal observed in the basement areas in large pools in both Towers and WTC 7 as well? Never mind all that: NIST did not discuss at all any data after the buildings were “poised for collapse.” Well, some of us want to look at ALL the data, without computer simulations that are “adjusted,” perhaps to make them fit the desired outcome.
    ************************************
    http://physics911.net/stevenjones
     
  18. scott3x Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,785
    Looks like it may well have been the case:
    ***************************
    5 and 6 World Trade Center

    What Caused the Large Holes Visible from Above

    Some reports suggested that explosions were responsible for the holes in WTC 6 and WTC 5. 1 The depths of the holes have been cited as evidence of this, as have their clean profiles...

    ***************************
    http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/wtc6_5.html
     
  19. scott3x Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,785
    It's quite possible that steel was vaporized, never mind that it reached 1000C:
    Scarred Steel Holds Clues, And Remedies, New York Times, October 2, 2001

    A NATION CHALLENGED: THE SITE, New York Times, November 29, 2001


    However, NIST turned a blind eye to this back in 2004 and to this day it seems to have a hard time even admitting that much of the steel got beyond 250C:
    Imagined Heat


    I assume the reason is that in 2004, it was suggesting that -no- steel had gotten past 250C, despite the reports from the New York Times stating that WTC investigators Dr. Barnett and Dr. Abstaneh-Asl had claimed that there was vaporized/evaporated steel way back in 2001. Perhaps they don't want to look like they change their opinion with the changing political currents.
     
  20. scott3x Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,785
    The McCormick Place was a steel structure, not a steel framed high rise. 9/11 Research makes quick work of the comparison:

    ****************************
    The McCormick Place Roof Collapse

    The Most-Cited Example of a Fire-Induced Collapse of a Steel Structure

    Thermal weakening of structural steel is a crucial element of the official theory of the collapse of the Twin Towers and Building 7. Since there are no examples of steel-framed buildings totally collapsing due to fire stress (outside of these three alleged examples) defenders of the theory frequently cite the McCormick roof collapse incident.

    McCormick Place is a warehouse-type building that housed a large exhibition hall. It had a long-span roof supported by web trusses. When a fire broke out in an exhibition with many flammable displays it rapidly spread, and a portion of the roof collapsed within 30 minutes.

    Comparisons of the McCormick Place incident to the collapses of the Twin Towers are sometimes made because the floor diaphragms on that constituted most tenant-space floors in the Towers were also supported by web trusses.

    The first fact that should be noted in regard to any such comparison is that the McCormick Place incident was not a total building collapse -- it was only a roof collapse. Much less was it the total collapse of a high-rise building. Any comparison of it to the Twin Towers is limited to the Towers' floor diaphragms. FEMA blamed the heat-induced failure of the Towers' floor diaphragms, but failed to provide a convincing explanation of how floor failures could have led to total building collapse. Moreover, the alleged failure of the Towers floor trusses has lost relevance with NIST's endorsing the column failure theory to the exclusion of the truss failure theory.

    Furthermore, the comparisons of the roof trusses of McCormick Place to the floor trusses of the Twin Towers is limited by the following facts:

    * The floor trusses were insulated, unlike the roof trusses.
    * The floor trusses spanned at most 60 feet, apparently much shorter than the roof trusses.
    * The floor trusses had to support the floor loads of the concrete slabs and office furniture, whereas the roof trusses only had to support snow loading.
    ****************************

    http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/mccormick.html
     
  21. scott3x Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,785
    When he was fired, he had been promoted to the top management job in his division, Environmental Health Laboratories, overseeing all company functions. I'm not sure if his division dealt with steel, but what I -do- know is that what you know isn't necessarily a part of your job description; what happened on 9/11 captivated the attention of many people and seeing as how the company he worked for had certified the steel, the issue of how the steel held up was of a more then a passing interest to him. He explains his learning of the subject in the years following 9/11 in his article "Propping Up the War on Terror":
    ******************************
    NIST and Underwriters Laboratories

    In August 2004, Underwriters Laboratories evaluated the Pancake Theory by testing models of the floor assemblies used in the WTC buildings. Despite all the previous expert testimony, the floor models did not collapse. NIST reported this in its October 2004 update, in a table of results that clearly showed that the floors did not fail and that, therefore, pancaking was not possible.14 NIST more succinctly stated this again in its June 2005 draft report, saying: "The results established that this type of assembly was capable of sustaining a large gravity load, without collapsing, for a substantial period of time relative to the duration of the fires in any given location on September 11th."15

    At the time of the floor tests, I worked for Underwriters Laboratories (UL). I was very interested in the progress of these tests, having already asked some sensitive questions. My interest began when UL's CEO, Loring Knoblauch, a very experienced executive with a law degree from Harvard, surprised us at the company's South Bend location, just a few weeks after 9/11, by saying that UL had certified the steel used in the WTC buildings. Knoblauch told us that we should all be proud that the buildings had stood for so long under such intense conditions. In retrospect it is clear that all of us, including Knoblauch, were ignorant of many important facts surrounding 9/11 and did not, therefore, see his statements as particularly important.

    Over the next two years, however, I learned more about the issues, like the unprecedented destruction of the steel evidence and the fact that no tall steel-frame buildings have ever collapsed due to fire... Perhaps most compelling for me were the words of a genuine expert on the WTC. This was John Skilling, the structural engineer responsible for designing the towers.17 (The NOVA video, incidentally, gave this credit to Leslie Robertson. But Robertson, who never claimed to have originated the design, was only a junior member of the firm [Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson], and Skilling was known at the time to be the engineer in charge.) In 1993, five years before his death, Skilling said that he had performed an analysis on jet plane crashes and the ensuing fires and that "the building structure would still be there."18

    By 2003, all of this information was available to anyone who cared. The details were, without a doubt, difficult to reconcile with testimony from officials, reporters, and scientists who were supporting the official story. But in November of that year, I felt that answers from UL were needed. If, as our CEO had suggested, our company had tested samples of steel components and listed the results in the UL Fire Resistance Directory almost forty years ago, Mr. Skilling would have depended on these results to ensure that the buildings were sufficiently fire resistant. So I sent a formal written message to our chief executive, outlining my thoughts and asking what he was doing to protect our reputation.

    Knoblauch's written response contained several points. He wrote: "We test to the code requirements, and the steel clearly met those requirements and exceeded them." He pointed to the NYC code used at the time of the WTC construction, which required fire resistance times of 3 hours for building columns, and 2 hours for floors. From the start, his answers were not helping to explain fire-induced collapse in 56 minutes (the time it took WTC2, the South Tower, to come down). But he did give a better explanation of UL's involvement in testing the WTC steel, even talking about the quality of the sample and how well it did. "We tested the steel with all the required fireproofing on," he wrote, "and it did beautifully."19

    This response was copied to several UL executives, including Tom Chapin, the manager of UL's Fire Protection division. Chapin reminded me that UL was the "leader in fire research testing," but he clearly did not want to make any commitments on the issue. He talked about the floor assemblies, how these had not been UL tested, and he made the misleading claim that UL does not certify structural steel. But even an introductory textbook lists UL as one of the few important organizations supporting codes and specifications because they "produce a Fire Resistance Index with hourly ratings for beams, columns, floors, roofs, walls and partitions tested in accordance with ASTM Standard E119."20 He went on to clarify that UL tests assemblies of which steel is a component. This is a bit like saying "we don't crash test the car door, we crash test the whole car." In any case, Chapin suggested that we be patient and wait for the report from NIST, because the investigation into the "collapse of WTC buildings 1, 2, and 7" was an ongoing process and that "UL is right in the middle of these activities."21

    For the most part, I did wait, although I shared my concerns with Chapin again at UL's Leadership Summit in January 2004. I encouraged him to ask for a company news release on our position, but this did not happen and I never heard from him again. By the time UL tested the floor assembly models in August of that year, I had been promoted to the top management job in my division, Environmental Health Laboratories, overseeing all company functions. Two months later, NIST released an official update that included the floor test results, as well as Frank Gayle's results, in which steel temperatures were predicted. These results clearly invalidated the major theories of collapse, because pancaking could not occur without floor collapse and steel does not turn to licorice at the temperatures discussed.

    After reviewing this update, I sent a letter directly to Dr. Gayle at NIST. In this letter, I referred to my experiences at UL and asked for more information on the WTC investigation and NIST's soon-to-be-published conclusions. NIST had planned at the time to release its final report in December, with time allowed for public comment. After I allowed my letter to become public,22 this date was moved to January 2005, and then nothing was heard from NIST for several months.

    Other than UL's involvement in testing the steel components, the facts I stated had all been reported publicly, but when I put them together plainly, they were considered outrageous. Five days after I sent my letter, I was fired by UL for doing so. The company made a few brief statements in an attempt to discredit me, then quickly began to make it clear that its relationship with the government, perhaps due to its tax-exempt status, was more important than its commitment to public safety...
    ******************************
    http://911review.com/articles/ryan/lies_about_wtc.html
     
  22. scott3x Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,785
    Actually I think it's clear that in the site it's I who debunk a lot of official story beliefs. It's a work in progress and clearly hasn't yet incorporated everything that's been written here, but it includes a fair amount. If you feel that any part of it is flawed, by all means, point it out to me and I'll have a look.
     
  23. scott3x Banned Banned

    Messages:
    3,785
    Speaking of kinetic energy, there's a certain point that has apparently been ignored by official story believers. Here it is again:

    The towers couldn't have pancaked down. Why? Because the -only- way they could have fallen down as fast as they did is if floors well below the supposedly 'pancaking' part had already begun to fall.

    Here is the reasoning in more depth:
    ***************************
    m1 is the mass of the falling top portion of the tower. v1 is the velocity at which it would hit the lower intact portion, in this case 44 mph or 64.5 ft/sec. m2 is the mass of one level of that lower portion which has a velocity of ZERO. So the velocity of the combined masses after the mash up will be v3 = m1*v1/(m1 + m2). So v3 is going to be smaller than v1. THE FALLING MASS WILL BE SLOWED DOWN BY MASS ALONE. That does not count the energy lost to crush each level.
    ***************************
    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2090944&postcount=33

    Here is the reasoning in even -more- depth:
    The Number ONE Smoking Gun of 9/11

    Is -any- official story believer going to tackle this issue? I admit that the last link is a little difficult to understand, but surely the first and perhaps even the second aren't so hard to understand?
     
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