Judging 9/11 by the Science: The Power of Basic Physics

Blog4Brains.com,

I know what you mean, there is so much distracting material about this event and it really comes down to one thing and one thing alone: was it possible for these buildings to collapse entirely based on the collision with airplanes alone? If the Ross' science is legitimate, and it seems to be in every real way, the answer is a definitive no. That's something that I can sleep with.

What if multiple floors collapsed at the same time? It is easy to remember (and to confirm with a quick google search) that the planes did damage to multiple floors.

The planes certainly did to damage to multiple floors, which raises two important points. 1) the fires were distributed in patches over three or so floors, there was not one concentrated source of fire. Check out the NIST reports for a reasonably accurate rendition of where the fires were, though their temperature assumptions are questionable. 2) The damage was distributed over the same general scope, making it that much harder for any given floor to collapse entirely and symmetrically.

I think that the two key things to look at are symmetry and acceleration. Ross' calculations, which very generously assume that one whole floor just up and disappeared in an instant, including the exoskeleton, I think gives is a reasonable model for total acceleration of the three partially damaged floors. If that's a reasonable assumption, then something's very wrong with the pancaking hypothesis.

That's the thing, though. If one whole floor were to indeed just up and disappear, none of the infrastructure surrounding that floor would have been damaged until the collisions from the partially collapsing building started. It would seem to me that, as there were likely more than one floor severely damaged, the collapse would have had time to accelerate before it started to encounter sound architecture.

That's true, the point that I am making is that although partial damage on multiple floors would make it easier for mass to accelerate through those floors its partial nature would have prevented acceleration equivalent to three whole floors of unimpeded acceleration. My guess - and it's only that, based on a layperson's examination of the evidence - is that you would probably wind up with about the same acceleration through three partially damaged floors as you would through one completely absent floor before meeting relatively sound construction. In the instance of the 2WTC tower the question is componded by the asymmetrical motion of the top of the tower as the lower sections began to collapse: it started to lean towards the south, which would have reduced the acceleration of its mass downwards and increased it laterally. Yet we see this motion arrested for unknown reasons as the rest of the tower goes down.

I have not seen any evidence to date that would indicate that the temperature of the steel in vertical members in either tower reached levels sufficient to turn the core or the exoskeleton in to resistance-less structural elements. What would be useful is to have a model that takes into account all acceleration actually witnessed that accounts for all of the mass in motion accurately. If such a model cannot correlate with the NIST science, then we have a problem.

As for the NIST science, there is this recent article to consider:

James Quintiere, Ph.D., former Chief of the Fire Science Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has called for an independent review of NIST's investigation into the collapses of the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11.

Dr. Quintiere made his plea during his presentation, "Questions on the WTC Investigations" at the 2007 World Fire Safety Conference. "I wish that there would be a peer review of this," he said, referring to the NIST investigation. "I think all the records that NIST has assembled should be archived. I would really like to see someone else take a look at what they've done; both structurally and from a fire point of view."

"I think the official conclusion that NIST arrived at is questionable," explained Dr. Quintiere. "Let's look at real alternatives that might have been the cause of the collapse of the World Trade Towers and how that relates to the official cause and what's the significance of one cause versus another."

If a former government scientist responsible for fire investigations questions the science of the NIST report, I think that it's safe to say that the public should have some skepticism regarding its science.

bluejohnnyd,

The NIST has some pretty good approximations in their report of probable internal damage, while there was estimated partial core damage in no instance was there complete core severing. Their estimate on 1WTC at the point of greatest impact (Chapter 2, p.23) was 6 of 47 core columns severed and 3 heavily damaged columns (this is worst case scenario - see Chapter 6. p.114 for another scenario calculating far less serverage). Combine those and assume total loss and it's still less than a 20 percent loss of core. So whatever happened had to overcome about 80 percent of an intact core on the damaged floors. Could fire have weakened the core of 1WTC? Check out Chapter 2, page 31. The hottest estimates of hear 900 degrees Celsius was in a patch of flooring on one floor of the south side of 1WTC - the core area was estimated to be between 2-300 degrees - warm, but still well below failure temperatures, no doubt in part because of the heat sinking factor.

On 2WTC the NITC claims severing of 10 out of 47 core columns with one heavily damaged (Chapter 3, p.40). The affected columns were almost all on the southeast corner of the core. This represents about 24 percent of the core. I find this to be a highly problematic estimate - the NIST diagrams show the plane entering the building at a 90 degree angle - yet all photographic evidence indicates that the plane entered at an angle directing the impact to the right side of the core. However, even taking these estimates, 75 percent of the core remained on heavily damaged floors in 2WTC.

And what of estimated fire temperatures in 2WTC?

There are none.

Hmm.

And yet this was the tower that collapsed first.

Another problem with NIST column damaged diagrams: they show COMPOSITE estimated damage across all potentially damaged floors. They do not show floor-by-floor estimates. This would undoubtedly show the total percentage of columns on each floor to have been severed in the core to be much lower.

So you see, we're left with fires that didn't melt core components, fires that were relatively brief and focused of potentially high temperatures in only parts of particular floors, damage and fires that are highly asymmetrical, most especially in 2WTC, and yet highly symmetrical collapse.

And for those wanting more ambiguity to contemplate, the NITC report mentions:

At 10:06 AM , an NYPD aviation unit advised that WTC 1 would come down and that all emergency vehicles should be moved away from it.

This Now mind you this is a few minutes after 2WTC had come down, so there was legitimate concern. But with 90 percent of the building undamaged beneath the fires, how could this prediction be made by a NYPD aviation unit - not a NYFD unit?

Anyhow, that's just intriguing, neither here nor there from a scientific standpoint.

There is a very important scholarly request for the NIST report to be revised by Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice. This report notes that the worst-case scenarios described above presumed minimal ejection of aircraft materials from the impact from the building, including major components such as jet engines. Yet major components such are jet engines were indeed found well away from the buildings. In other words, the worst case estimates of mass absorbed by structural components do not match the physical evidence. The S911TJ document also notes:

The second "key observable" that the less severe case did not match was that "the towers would not have collapsed had the less severe damage results been used." This justification for excluding the less severe case is invalid because it is based on false logic (namely, begging the question) and is a classic example of faulty scientific analysis. The main goal of NIST's investigation and analysis was to determine the cause of the collapse of the Twin Towers. This means that NIST is not logically or scientifically permitted to assume that the cause of the collapses was airplane damage plus fire, and only choose computer models to fit that assumption. If the Towers did not collapse solely due to impact damage plus the resulting fires in NIST's computer simulations, then the impact of the airplanes and the resulting fires were not the sole cause of the buildings' collapses. It is not scientific to selectively choose only those computer simulations that result in a preordained conclusion. To do so is to invite the accusation of political expediency.

In other words, the NIST knows that the towers could not have collapsed using their model if lower estimates of damage were in fact valid. Since the physical evidence for lower damage did not match their collapse theory, they changed the presumed physical evidence to match the theory.

At minimum, these issues require scientific resolution. If the science points to a lack of credible evidence that would point to the reasons for these buildings collapsing then we need to consider what to do next.

I've tried to provide this in as objective a manner as possible. I hope that this helps to further your consideration of the matter.

Glad that it helped.

As a follow-up, here's the NYFD radio calls from 2WTC shortly before its collapse (about 9:52AM): you'll note that firefighters from Ladder 15 have just arrived on the 78th floor and report a "couple of pockets of fire" that should take "a couple of lines to knock down." You can forward to the 2:37 mark to hear this specific call.

Thanks.

DeWayne,

All potentially valid outlooks, the problem we have is that we do not have at this time evidence sufficient to prosecute any one should there have been in fact such a collusion. Intriguing theories, interesting observations based on very small samples of materials, but no comprehensive evidence.

I saw the movie "The Kingdom" last night which dramatized the FBI involvement in the investigation of attacks on a US compound in Saudi Arabia. Significant evidence was obtained in a matter of days. In 1993 the bombing of the WTC was investigated and evidence collected rapidly to build a case that was prosecuted successfully. No such in-depth investigation was done on the WTC site in 2001.

I don't trust the idea of thermite being used; while it definitely has teh temperature necessary to cut the beams, the amount necessary to cut through even one of the main support columns would be immense. Not impossible, but wildly impractical.

The 47 core columns were large but not of unusual size individually, 54x22 inches up to the 66th floor. Compare to data from an office building design project specifying a range of possible beam sizes - this would be well within the size of typical beams (see p.5).

So although I am no expert on demolition, if the beams were in the range of normal office construction I would assume that explosives could be used to sever such beams as easily as any other building using similar materials.

bluejohnnyd,

Thermite is used commonly in building demolition, I agree that explosives is probably not the most exact description of what thermite does, it's more of a cutting operation, not an explosive function, kind of a high-speed torch effect through high-temperature combustion. It's my understanding also that termate, a more explosive and hotter burning variant of thermite, is used in demolition when heavier materials pose a challenge. Dr. Stephen Jones has a simple explanation of these materials in this short video, I don't endorse or oppose his work but it does indicate that there are some open questions in what little physical evidence exists.

I offer no support one way or another for the demolition theory, but from the photos I have seen of thermate charges installed they are not so large that they couldn't be managed fairly easily by any demolition crew. As to how this could happen, any number of theories exist along with some potential eyewitness testimonies, but it's all unproven. We have only visual evidence that could be interpreted as coming from detonation charges.