So what/where is the physical evidence to support the official story for the WTC collapses?

aka the sledgehammer/pancaking/pile driver theory? whatever they're calling it these days. what actual evidence is used to support the NIST's 'scientific' report of how the buildings collapsed?

you know, because a proper scientific analysis of a crime scene actually involves such things as collecting and analyzing the physical evidence on the scene. That's just standard with any proper investigation, especially at a murder scene. did the NIST investigators and scientists collect, analyze any of the collapsed structures at Ground Zero? what, if any, of the steel beams, concrete, dust and other materials at Ground Zero has been collected and tested? what items were tested, for example, for explosive residue to rule out the use explosives, if any?

it's been what, eight or nine years since 9/11? So there should be plenty of physical evidence by now. so uh, you know, let's see it.

Nist cannot even tell you exactly how many columns were taken out by the planes or how much the structural damage they claim contributed to collapse contributed to collapse.
An important part of the mathmatical equation LEFT OUT. Nor do they explain while the upper building is losing mass as it falls it gains mass as it falls.
At least enough mass to gain the momentum needed to fall at "near " freefall speed while encountering the large weight bearing columns in the lower building with little to NO resistance.

and doesn't it gain one floor's worth of mass as the collapse progresses? It seems logical to me that 30 stories have less mass than 99 stories. The mass of each floor is primarily resident in the structural steel and the contents of the building. Those big billowing clouds of gypsum and light weight concrete don't represent much mass at all.

We know that the towers fell at about 60 percent of free fall - the pictures and videos of the debris falling faster than the collapse zone bear that out.

sideways. Not only that THE HEAVIEST GIRDERS were the weight bearing ones at the bottom. And concrete and drywall do not represent much weight? Are you serious? Really??
Ever pick up one drywall board by yourself?????? And you know there was nowhere near 90 stories bearing down on thirty.
Look at the video for heavens sake. Besides that though good rebuttal.

what do you think filled that 6 story subterranean hole below the WTC? The ones at the top were still damned heavy. And don't forget the contents of the tower. As for the dry wall and concrete, yes it was heavy - some was ground up and created the dust cloud. The rest fell downwards, adding their weight to the collapse.

Let me restate my weight comment - the 70th floor had the mass 40 floors crash into it. The 10th floor had the mass of 100 floors crash into it. Since 100 floors weigh more than 40 floors, how can you argue that the collapse was losing mass as it progressed? Even if it lost some fraction due to ejecta, every floor it gained more than it lost.

And you have overlooked some basic physics here: F = mg. Not only is the mass growing but since g the acceleration due to gravity(32 ft/s²), every second gravity adds to the force of the collapse.

People sifting tru the rubble say the largest piece of office equipment found was half a telephone keypad. How much more could you grind it up?
Where in the NIST report does it say they know how many floors were collapsing onto the rest of the building after they make the initial claim about the top part that feel being thirty stories high?
Remember you (nist) is also saying this all happened at "near " freefall speed with no resistance from the heavy weight bearing columns at the bottom.

even ground up it still weighs the same.

We know how many floors collapsed into the ones below because we know what floors the planes flew into. It is not rocket science.

Those heavy weight bearing columns don't do a lot good when your much weaker horizontal floor trusses are failing like a house of cards. Don't you remember how the central core columns remained standing for a brief second after the collapse?

And the decelerate as some of the mass is lost on top( and its clear looking at the video large amounts of mass is being lost from the position over the core columns) and it encounters the massive weight bearing columns at the bottom. Instead there is no struggle between these opposing forces whatsoever just one uninterrupted fall at free fall speed.

congratulations.

remember that most of the wreckage went straight down.

And losing mass on top does not mean it decelerates - the acceleration of gravity is a constant.

Those heavy weight bearing columns don't do a lot good when your much weaker horizontal floor trusses are failing like a house of cards. Don't you remember how the central core columns remained standing for a brief second after the collapse?

Do not forget the towers were over engineered to bear and redistribute up to 2000 times more weight than it needed to.
This was a new design and they wanted to make damn sure it could with stand a hell of a lot. The upper floors clearly disappear before our very eyes in the video.
There is just no way the mass is as much as when the collapse started. The mass is clearly moving outward as it is expelled out.
You claim that what was created from the towers falling in the crater was extensive but it should have been stacked stories higher if the the mass you say was bearing down on the lower building was there at the end.
Sorry it just does not make sense to me for this to have happened the way you claim.
But kudos for presenting your beliefs in a non offensive manner.

and you also need to understand the difference between static and dynamic loading.

No - most of the upper structure did disappear. You are looking a large dust cloud. The steel is where the weight was.

No - the pile was over 10 stories high. You just forgot about the 6 story hole that the WTC were build over. Most of the debris was below street level.


So tell me - what made all that mass disappear? How many energy was required?

That's ridiculous.

it was commission nearly a year after 911 to do a structural analysis of the collapses in order to revise US building and fire safety codes.


Here is the steel they used for their study.

http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-3B%20Steel%20Inventory.pdf

" all the evidence was recycled".

Simple questions. How many of you "truthers" have ever seen this? How many of you have even looked for it! How many of you have actually read the NlST Report?

where in my OP does it say anything about the evidence being recycled?

n/t

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxycV4fNPnQ">Rudy Giuliani & the Feds Destroyed WTC Evidence

so the NIST collected some 236 solid samples of the WTC steel. They then go on to identify from where each of the pieces originated from, using the identifying stamping marks on the steel. The stampings on the steel tells you what Tower the steel is from, and from which area of the tower. Any idiot can do that. So what? What does that prove, if anything?

The NIST paper goes on to conclude in the summary section on page 55,




1) how can any legitimate scientist jump to such a conclusion, when throughout the whole process as outlined in the paper, they've done nothing more then to identify from which building and floors each of the steel samples came from?

2) the pdf is titled 'Steel Inventory.' all of the samples they collected were solid pieces of steel. but the buildings weren't just made of steel. and much of it was not in a solid state after the collapse. the towers were also composed of tens of thousands of tons of concrete, which thy seem to ignore. where are the concrete samples? how did 110 floors each, 200,000 tons of steel plus hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete manage to get reduced into a pile of rubble no more than 3 or 4 stories high?

3) the NIST states the samples they collected are 'representative of the 200,000 tons of steel used in the construction of the towers.' that is patently false, because they fail to mention anything about the tons of dust that engulfed the whole of lower Manhattan after the towers collapsed. why do they fail to collect dust samples for inclusion in their report? why are they ignoring the massive quantities of dust piled inches high all over lower Manhattan?

4) where does it say anything in their report about testing for explosive residue? oh that's right, they failed to do testing of any kind for explosive residue, as they freely admit to on the NIST FAQ page.








* see question 12 of http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm">NIST FAQ.

Was the steel tested for explosives or thermite residues?
'NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel.'


that's not science, it's folly. lol.

I'm sure they'll take your call.

...returned any of my emails asking them the same questions.

n/t

hmmm.

how many phone calls/e-mails do you think they get in a week from "truthers" asking questions that have not only been repeatedly answered, but who haven't even read the NIST Report? More importantly, why do you suppose the vast majority of the scientific community doesn't see it your way?

Which callers would disturb NIST the most? The "truthers" who don't buy their snow job, or the gullible dummies who do?

but that's just a guess.

Like this:

"More importantly, why do you suppose the vast majority of the scientific community doesn't see it your way?"

How do you know this? Have they been polled? No. You base this oft repeated logical fallacy on the assumption that silence = tacit support of the OCT.

3,000 of their fellow citizens were murdered that day. Do you really expect us to believe that there are the huge, gaping holes in the 9/11 investigations 'truthers'' would have us believe and not even a plurality of the scientific community would just sit quietly by?

Your capacity for self-deception is breath-taking.

We all pretty much knew WMD was a total lie used to justify 2 wars. How many who knew, in government, or the military, lifted a finger to expose the lie and stop wars that have shed hundreds of thousands of innocent lives? How many? Hell, what did you do to take on the government, Mr. Conscience? As usual, your reasoning is simplistic bullshit.

I see you can't answer the question.

regarding the conscience of the scientific community. But you knew that.

If you only got 1% to sign up, you'd have 1400 new members.

and you should try something legit instead.

but it's also clear they are not flocking to AE911truth. Why do you think that is? It's been 8 fucking years, dude.

I'm not a member of any AE911truth organization either. You know what I think about 9/11, and all I do about it is occasionally brawl with you guys in here. Honestly, one of the reasons I'm not more active is because, regardless of my suspicions, I don't have all the information *I* require to confirm my position. Many in the scientific community could be like me; full of doubt, but unable to take a firm stand without access to *all* the information. And, if you claim we know all we need to know, you'd be wrong. You just know all you need to feed your bias.

Instead of allowing for the possibility that Official Story Supporters might be mistaken, they're frequently quite close minded to alternative possibilities. When the insults start to fly, I generally tend to take a break. I commend your wish to learn more of what happened on that day. I think the key at times may be to focus less on the people who go off on insulting tangents and more on the people who are more civil.

In fact, I typically encounter closed-mindedness in the "truth movement" rather than in skeptics, frequently expressed like "I don't know what happened, except that it wasn't how the 'official story' says it did." Call me crazy, but that seems to be "close minded to alternative possibilities" to me.

NIST did not start their investigation until nearly a year after the collapse. The FBI did the criminal investigation. NIST did not do a criminal investigation - their job was to model the collapse to help improve building codes.

The concrete was lightweight un-reinforced concrete used for the floors. It was non-structural and non-load bearing. NIST merely had to account for its weight.

The pile was much taller than 4 stories - there were 6 subterranean levels below the WTC. Much of the rubble pile was below street level. And think for a second - each floor was about 12 feet high. Each had a 6 inch floor - the rest was air. Remember - 90 percent of the WTC was air. Empty space is what makes money in a high rise and the WTC had an innovative design specifically to maximize open space. So the rubble pile was at least 10 stories high.

What does the dust have to do with modeling the collapse? Considering they started a year after 911, it should be clear to most that NIST was not doing a criminal investigation. It was the FBI's job to test for explosives.

I said nothing about a criminal investigation in post 6. Its all about the evidence, or lack of, used as a basis for their conclusions. and in any case the forensic evidence is a big part of any legitimate investigation, whether it be criminal, scientific, or whatever. but that's beside the point. Three buildings literally turn into dust in front your eyes in a matter of seconds, and you think that has nothing to do with how they collapsed? really? damn those inconvenient 'details' eh? lets just all close our eyes and pretend they never existed!

I think it was the KE of the building. Can you show me why it can't be the cause?

I didn't know the FBI were experts in building collapses.
was it the FBI's job to test the dust samples too? how about the concrete?

"Empty space is what makes money in a high rise and the WTC had an innovative design specifically to maximize open space. So the rubble pile was at least 10 stories high."

You're not getting the point. The point is, why did these 110 story towers collapse at all, and so completely within a matter of seconds?

then ask yourself, if your suspicions are so valid, why isn't the scientific community jumping on board?

ASCE alone has 130,000+ members.

weakened the structures ability to hold the weight of the building above the impact zone. Once all that massive weight started falling there was nothing in the world that was going to stop it.

But not at freefall speed. Certainly not.

there are pictures and videos clearly showing debris hitting the ground before the collapse zone does.

what is "propelling" them downward?

Here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x256479#256713

where I remotely did what you accuse me of?

but can you help VVL clarify his views on whether or not the debris was propelled downwards? In the thread I linked to in post #83 he is of the opinion the debris was propelled downwards, now (Post #80 this thread) he seems to be ridiculing the very idea. You're all about logic, truth, and consistency aren't you?

You might want to start with Spooked, Kalun and MMM.


P.S. You're going to be a WHOLE lot busier than me, dude.

are making VVL's self-contradictory argument that the debris was both propelled and not propelled by something ahead of the collapse front. Meanwhile, can you straighten out VVL? Thanks.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Truther: "the debris was propelled downward"

Me: "Yes it was propelled by gravity"

''truthers'' make self-contradictory arguments all the time, not that I'd expect you to notice them.

His reasoning that the debris is moving downward faster than the collapse front because it is being propelled by somthing OTHER than gravity.

In another thread you clearly say gravity propelled the debris downward (Posts 74, 75, and 77):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x256479#256713

In this thread (Post 80) you clearly ridicule the idea that anything propelled the debris downward:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x257950#258149

Which is it? Was the debris propelled downward, or not? You are clearly on both sides of this question.

You are joking right?

would gravity propel debris downward at a rate faster than that of free fall?

You are confusing the argument.

as in kaboom.

Watch the video again deadeye.

for sure or how much structural damage was done to the building. Yet they can say it contributed to the fall?
A guess is good science?

No?

and the concrete was fairly light weight. Where was the overwhelming mass left as the concrete disapeared into the air as dust?
You are basically saying the weight of the much smaller core girders over powered the weight bearing abilty of the much thicker heavier lower girders.
At free fall speed.

and who says that all the concrete disappeared into the air? Sounds like a straw man to me.

Learn the difference between static and dynamic loading and you will see why structural engineers were not surprised by the rapid collapse.

Those heavy weight bearing columns don't do a lot good when your much weaker horizontal floor trusses are failing like a house of cards. Don't you remember how the central core columns remained standing for a brief second after the collapse?

""It was the FBI's job to test for explosives.""

how come they didn't? After all over 100 firefighters said they heard numerous explosions.

How come NIST didn't test for explosives? They could have, the dust is still there. If they supposedly were modeling a collapse couldn't explosions possibly play into it?

I'd like to see someone, anyone in the OCT community give it a shot.

This ought be good.

Based on their modeling, they determined that the probable collapse sequence was progressive failure primarily due to fires.

-Make7
 

they can't have that. :hi:

and leaps in logic needed in an attempt to make such a model
work would twist anyone's brain into a pretzel. So far, there are no takers.

1. The actual collapse would be so chaotic and involve tens of millions of individual pieces - the science is not there to model such events unless they were simplified to the point of uselessness.

2. Regardless of what started the collapse, whether fires or CD, once the collapse started it was going to fall the same way regardless. Enormous mass and gravity limit your options - it was going straight down and very quickly.

are you a computer expert? or have they simply refused to provide the funding needed to complete the modeling beyond initiation?

secondly, it doesn't matter. Regardless of what caused the collapse, there was only one way it was going to fall. Once again, massive weights and gravity limit your options.

The collapse is a highly complex event to model. The number of known interactions are staggering and impossible to define completely without simplifying many elements. Then add in the unknown interactions, and its even more difficult.

There is no way to test a computer model against a real model to improve the model. There is no or little previous collapse data to build upon. Also at some point the law of diminishing returns kicks in and to gain a very small improvement in fidelity costs large sums of money in development. There simply is little purpose in knowing every detail in minute detail to meet the goals of the NIST.

they have supercomputers that can model a collapsing star in outer space, else known as a black hole. I don't think a collapsing star is less complex to model than a collapsing building. In fact, there are probably much more unknown variables with the former. Yes, a collapsing building is an exceedingly complex event, but there's also a great deal of redundancy after a certain point, because the floors are all doing essentially the same thing, and doing it in a straight line, straight down symmetrical pattern. It would be probably a lot harder to model a building that was collapsing on its side because the floors are coming down at a severe angle.

And I think its probably harder to model the high speed crash impact of a full size, loaded Boeing 757 in the sense that there is no repeating pattern taking place. The event seems to be a lot more random, with no repeating pattern as is the case with the symmetrical collapse of a building falling essentially straight down in a fixed, repeating pattern.


'the number of unknown interactions staggering.'

well, that's the kind of complex problems supercomputers are designed to solve. the amount of processing power these machines possess is even more staggering. A http://investors.cray.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=98390&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1301318&highlight=">Cray XT4 supercomputer has 10.8 teraflops of processing power, for example. That's over TEN Trillion calculations PER SECOND.

Please look up nonlinearity - it's impossible for traditional computing power to handle nonlinear problems of this scale. You may be impressed by 10e12 calculations/second, but that is still dwarfed by the complexity of nonlinearity. One day quantum computing might get us to a solution, but that's a ways off.

is a linear event? because that's clearly what you're doing.

if it isn't linear, then how was NIST able to model these crash events for each tower?

You can model anything you want (including very complex nonlinear systems like the weather), it's the accuracy of the model that's important.

if not, then how are they able to model such an exceedingly complex, non-linear event on a supercomputer?

I don't know anything about the particular simulation you're referencing, but there are strategies modelers can adopt to simplify a simulation to the point where it is feasible to perform on existing hardware within a reasonable time frame. These strategies have consequences, but sometimes the consequences can be minimized (depending on the type of systems being modeled).

you don't need to model every minutiae of the event to get the essential idea of how it works. you don't need to model the operation of the individual parts (pistons, fuel injectors, transmission, etc) of the engine to get an accurate modeling of the dynamics of a high-speed car crash, for example. that applies to collapsing buildings too.

With nonlinear systems, small differences in initial conditions can very quickly cause large variations in a simulation (see the Butterfly Effect). Initially, collapse initiation and progression in our case is highly dependent on the geometric configuration of the structure. Small changes in angles can cause significantly different loads on structural elements.

Obviously not everything about the collapse is this sensitive. But enough important stuff is sensitive enough that accurate simulation of the collapse is impossible given current technology and methodology.

Little story.

Attempting to form strawmen from my posts will only reflect poorly on you.

They obviously don't for the report they wrote.

n/t

that's for sure.

Yeah NIST did cheat, I looked at the modeling. They had to push the perimeter wall to get it to "buckle" it wouldn't buckle on it's own with the FEA.

And Nasa did it with the computer power of the programmable thermostat control in your house.

Just a little bit... maybe...
 

Who said they had nothing to do with it?
My point was of course they have the computers needed to get this job done.
I mean NOVA sure did when they showed the computer mock ups of the floors of the Towers pancaking.
That was science RIGHT????????

I don't think you do.

of physical evidence, of the literally millions of pieces available from the upper "blocks", was not similarly "simplified to the point of uselessness"? If you can model for initiation on the basis of such scant collection of physical evidence, why can't you model for the entire collapse sequence through further minimal collection of debris?

the official fairy tale is officially discredited and disproven.

I guess I missed where you managed to do that.