Loose Change

[LordoftheLeftHand]

7 World Trade (and 1 and 2, for that matter, but let's leave them out for now because they got hit by planes) was different. It didn't have spaced out columns like in traditional steel structures. All the "columns" were in the very center of the building. Here, I would expect that a catastrophic failure would look a lot like a controlled demolition. Why? Because wherever the failure occurred, it would have to be near the center of the building, and the columns' neighbors (the next ones to fail) would also be at the center, and so on until the last column failed. So the only direction for the building to be pulled is "in," not "toward the north" or whatever. And the only way for the building to fail is for all of it to fail -- no partial collapses unless the failure were very high in the structure.

Wow, I agree with Manny! I guess nothing is impossible. Of course this isn't the politics section either...

LLH

 

[senorpogo]

I may have missed it in the multitude of arguments being tossed around, but has it been mentioned that debris ignited diesel fuel lines that ran in the base of WTC 7? Doesn't that explain why it collapsed?

 

[WildCat]

I may have missed it in the multitude of arguments being tossed around, but has it been mentioned that debris ignited diesel fuel lines that ran in the base of WTC 7? Doesn't that explain why it collapsed?

The LC lunatics aren't impressed by such things, not even the fact that one generator was supplied by an enormous pressurized fuel tank in the basement of WTC 7.

 

[bunker]

If I am reading your interpretation correctly, you are saying that there would be insufficient energy left over, after floor x and x-1's concrete had been crushed to allow for floor x-1 to collapse. This would be incorrect, as there is nothing preventing floor x-1 to collapse prior to the complete crushing of the concrete. All is needed is for there to be sufficient force to cause x-1 to lose structural integrity. The concrete from floor x and x-1 can finish being crushed any time between floor x-1 and ground level.

Granted, not all the concrete needs to be pulverized right away, but from the video, I think we can agree that at least some it was being pulverized immediately. But, yes, it's hard to say how much from each floor.

I think perhaps my problem is that I'm looking at this event not so much as a collapse, but more like a "vertical collision". In the case of WTC1, we have a 14 story building colliding with a 96 story building. Floors 96 and 97 hit each other ejecting quite a bit of material outward. That material is no longer having any effect on the building, and that's something Dr. Greening leaves out of his calculations. How much material that debris constitutes I am not qualified to estimate, and therefore I can't say what effect this has on available KE, except that it is something negative. It sure looks like a lot of material, but I'm not silly enough to claim my perception as evidence. (That's NOT directed at anyone.)

Using the Dr.'s number of 629 MJ per floor and 2.4 GJ available KE for the first collapse, then adding the pulverization of at least 10% of the concrete of each floor, 290 MJ, we end up with 1.8 GJ consumed in the initial impact. That's at least 75% being taken out of this mass' momentum. These numbers aren't exact of course, but it seems like if they are even in the ballpark, this doesn't look like a slam dunk case for a gravity-only collapse.

I'll give you an example I've been thinking of for a while. Imagine a duplicate of WTC1 (this works for WTC2 also). Imagine both copies of the building are damaged and burning identically. Now imagine we have the ability to pick up the damaged 14 floor portion of each building, completely separating them from the lower sections. We hold these structures in our God-like hands just a few feet off their original resting places. Now, we are about to drop these top sections straight down, but while one is going to drop straight back on to its remaining tower, we move the other one over and out of the way, so that it drops straight to the ground.

Which one will hit the ground first? The answer is obviously the one that drops straight to the ground, but the question is how much faster would you expect it to get there? How many thousands of times more resistance will 96 stories of steel and concrete offer over the resistance of air? I can't answer this as it is beyond my ability, but I will say that this example, along with Dr. Greening's theory, imagines the top section as a giant anvil, which of course it is not. It is just as fragile as the object it's hitting, just as capable of absorbing energy.

That brings me to another problem with this paper. Toward the beginning, Dr. Greening proposes a two-stage collapse scenario, where the top of each building crushes the bottom in the first stage, and then the top crushes itself in the second stage. He says this second stage adds 1 - 2 seconds to the collapse time. I know I keep harping on the 3rd Law of Motion, but, you know, it's the Law, one that you can't fight.

ETA: It, I believe, is also needed to take in to account the energy input into the structure from the impact of the aircraft themselves and the effect of that on load bearing structure.

Dr. Greening addresses that, but I haven't reviewed that section enough to comment.


I'd also like to note, for those who chide anyone questioning the collapse of WTC7, even Dr. Greening at the end of an addendum titled Energy_Transfer_Addendum.pdf (can't post links yet) writes:

"Finally, let me say that although I have not done any calculations for other WTC structures, the collapse of WTC 7 is a problem! I say this mainly because WTC 7 was not hit by an aircraft; therefore I admit it is very surprising that this high-rise building should have collapsed without being subject to an aircraft impact." (Underline original)

I don't bring this up to be confrontational, just appealing to our senses of civility.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

...Personally, it isn't likely that anyone, whether they're considered to be an "expert", or whether they have a PhD behind their name is going to convince me that the WTC 7 building wasn't a controlled demolition. My own intelligence and intuition are paramount on this matter.

"Intuition?"

Reminds me of the optical illusion* where, if I remember it correctly, there's a gray square that sure looks gray, seems gray, and pretty much is gray. Except it isn't.

Our senses can be notoriously unreliable.



*Randi once showed this in one of his weekly commentaries.

 

[delphi_ote]

However, according to Newton's Third Law of Motion, it seems undeniable that the available KE is being applied to both the impacted and the impacting floors. If one floor is absorbing this energy, the other floor must do the same, so that brings us to 1.258 GJ being absorbed, or 52.4% of available KE.

Yes, I am still nervous.

You did not read the paper closely enough. The author assumed a totally inelastic collision. This means the two bodies join as one and dissapate a certain amount of energy as heat.

Thus, in the case of one floor collapsing onto the floor below, 50 % of the kinetic energy is dissipated as heat! However, we have shown that as we increase the number of collapsing floors, the fractional loss of kinetic energy, fc, decreases as 1/(1 + N), where N is the number of falling floors.

So then this combined mass accelerates under gravity to transfer its energy to the next floor, and that combined mass to the next floor... and so on and and so on. The energy is not transfered to one entity by another as in an elastic collision. It is disappated as heat during the inelastic collision itself into the structures.

Edited to clarify a bit.

 

[delphi_ote]

That material is no longer having any effect on the building, and that's something Dr. Greening leaves out of his calculations. How much material that debris constitutes I am not qualified to estimate, and therefore I can't say what effect this has on available KE, except that it is something negative. It sure looks like a lot of material, but I'm not silly enough to claim my perception as evidence. (That's NOT directed at anyone.)

It's a small enough mass to be blown into a large cloud around the structure and float slowly down to the ground. I'd imagine the effect of losing that mass is negligible.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

Found it! (Re: Post 745 above.*)

My memory of the illusion was flawed. Still, my "intuition" tells me they're not the same color. And I'm mistaken there, too.



*Post 745?!

 

[delphi_ote]

Which one will hit the ground first? The answer is obviously the one that drops straight to the ground, but the question is how much faster would you expect it to get there? How many thousands of times more resistance will 96 stories of steel and concrete offer over the resistance of air? I can't answer this as it is beyond my ability, but I will say that this example, along with Dr. Greening's theory, imagines the top section as a giant anvil, which of course it is not. It is just as fragile as the object it's hitting, just as capable of absorbing energy.

At least part of the "anvil" is assumed to fragile and absorbing energy, because each floor crushed becomes part of the "anvil." Once again, it's an inelastic collision. You could just as well assume half of a floor in the upper structure is crushed and half a floor in the lower structure is crushed. The mass falling is the same, the energy transfered into the structure is the same, and the time to fall is only slightly longer (because his simplified calculations assume that the "anvil" stories collapse at free fall. You could instead calculate how much of them isn't crushed during the fall and then calculate how long it takes that smaller structure to fall at free fall.)

The author does address this in his conclusions section:

The calculated times represent the minimum theoretical times of building collapse. If shorter times are to be physically achieved they must involve an unknown additional source of energy acting in a downward direction. Such a source of energy does not appear to have been involved in the collapse of the twin towers.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

This one's a favorite. What does your "intuition" tell you is happening there?

 

[Indolent Wretch]

Hmmm I wonder

I wonder if any major world event has EVER happened without there being a conspiracy theory about it.

My guess is that there is probably only 1, and that's obviously the most important one!

 

[RayG]

I wonder if any major world event has EVER happened without there being a conspiracy theory about it.

My guess is that there is probably only 1, and that's obviously the most important one!

Obviously?

obvious - Easily perceived or understood; quite apparent...readily apparent to a person of ordinary skill...

JFK? Bigfoot? Roswell? 9/11? Pearl Harbor? etc. etc.

Which conspiracy theory should I think is obviously the most important one?

RayG

 

[bob_kark]

This one's a favorite. What does your "intuition" tell you is happening there?

Its obvious that you've installed some kind of brain tracking device so you can stop the circles from spinning when I look at them. How else would you explain why one stops only when I focus on it, yet the rest continue to spin, magic? Sure there's some technical mumbo jumbo about how it works. But why would I choose to believe a bunch of "so called" experts when they're obviously government plants! This website proves it! http://www.RotatingSnakeHoax.com Why aren't you open minded enough to believe me?!

 

[Sultanist]

Some points you might want to consider.

Human remains of every passenger on Flight 77 except one were recovered and identified.
(I wanted to include a link here to support this but I was advised that I'm not permitted to post urls to other sites)

This can hardly be explained away (as some have have tried to do) simply by saying "the government made this up".
We're talking about a team of pathologists, dentists, anthropologists, fingerprint specialists, radiologists, DNA technologists, photographers, morticians, etc.
Were they all a part of the "conspiracy" too? And why, pray tell, would all these physicians and scientists want to be a part of a "conspiracy" to cover up the worst treason and mass murder in United States history?
And even if we stretch our imaginations to the fricking Moon, and we accept the premise that all these doctors and scientists would want to do this, what are the chances that not one of them, in the five years since this happened, has had a change of heart and ratted this out? Because not one has.

No one ever bothers to stop and ask "why"?
We know for a fact that American Airlines Flight 77 took off from Dulles on 9-11 with passengers and crew. So if it disappeared, that would mean the supposed "inside jobbers" were in control of it.
So "why". Why would anyone, terrorists, inside jobbers, or anyone else in control of a damn airliner already, not want to use that airliner on the building? Why would it not occur to anyone with an IQ greater than 50 to use the airliner they were already in control of, and instead want to use something else? And then, as if by the use of some magic, not only have to trick all the potential eyewitnesses into thinking it was the airliner, but have to convince the whole entire world that it was the airliner, and then have to cover that up for perpetuity. Not to mention that it would require making the
300,000 lb airliner and all it's passengers and crew disappear.
Why not just use the airliner to begin with. Hello!!

And remember, this is Washington DC we're talking about here. There are four and a half million people running around here.
This is 2001. And in 2001 people have camcorders. Lots of em.
Now, here you are plotting to attack the Pentagon. And you come up with this plan to hijack an airliner.
But, instead of flying the airliner into the building, you decide to make that airliner disappear. And fly something else into the building. And then have to make everyone within sight think it's the airliner you're flying into the building.
Say what? In a city of four and a half million people? Many of whom will have camcorders? When all that has to happen is someone in the vicinity of the flight path happens to have a camcorder running and pointed in the right direction. A camcorder which captures the missile. Or the "other aircraft". Or the Starship Enterprise. Or whatever it is that aint Flight 77.
And unless you're dumber than the dumbest person who ever lived, you know that if this happens, your entire plot to convince the world that Islamic terrorists attacked the United States in the most heinous mass murder in the country's history, then goes out the window.
Because once the world learns that it aint Flight 77 captured by the camcorder, then Houston you've got a real big problem. Because not only does the Pentagon attack no longer make any sense, but the World Trade Center and all the rest is then immediately called into question as well.

Then there's Flight 93. And the claims that the cell phone calls were not possible.
The problem with the cell phone calls not actually coming from the Flight 93 airliner, is that if they didn't come from the airliner, then how do we explain them?
There's no disputing that EITHER scores of friends and family members received cell phone calls from their loved ones aboard Flight 93, OR scores of friends and family members were tricked into thinking they were talking to their loved ones aboard Flight 93.
And if it's the latter, then keep in mind this is mothers and fathers talking to sons and daughters. And husbands and wives talking to husbands and wives.
So now we need an explanation for how on earth this could have occurred? How could the "conspirators" have ever managed to make this happen?
Well, only one individual has come forward with any explanation. And that of course would be "Professor" A.K. Dewdney (you see like TV preachers, many conspiracy buffs have the title of "Professor" or "Dr.").

So now I give you Professor Dewdney's and the world's only attempt thus far to explain how this was accomplished.

The operatives first gathered personal data on regulars of the flight through a combination of data mining and human engineering. Then they leveraged that information by repeatedly taking the flight and engaging flight regulars in conversation to get personal details and record voice samples for study and practice.

On the big day, the operatives worked in a single "war room" with a big screen to keep them on the same page. Calls (except to strangers) were kept brief so that the callers could report details of the flight but not get into personal conversation that might alert family members to the fraud. Calls that went poorly (like the one to Mark Bingham's mother) were not repeated.

The quality of acting necessary to convince family members they were talking to their loved ones was lower than in a normal situation, given the allowance people naturally make for voice distress in stressful situations.

By George it looks like Plan 9 From Outer Space has finally come to life.

And you should be advised that the good professor has worked out the whole rest of the conspiracy as well. He calls it "Operation Pearl". And here is his own synopsis of the key elements...

1. Four commercial passenger jets (American Airlines Flights 11 and 77 and United Airlines Flights 93 and 175) take off and shortly after the pilots are ordered to land at a designated airport with a military presence.

2. Two previously-prepared planes (one a Boeing 767, painted up to look like a United Airlines jet and loaded with extra jet fuel) take off and are flown by remote control to intercept the flight paths of AA 11 and UA 175 so as to deceive the air traffic controllers.

3. These (substituted) jets then fly toward Manhattan; the first crashes into the North Tower and (eighteen minutes later) the second crashes into the South Tower.

4. A fighter jet (under remote control), or a cruise missile, crashes into the Pentagon.

5. Back at the airport the (innocent) passengers from three of the Boeings are transferred to the fourth (UA 93).

6. This plane takes off, flies toward Washington, and is shot down by a U.S. Air Force jet over Pennsylvania, eliminating the innocent witnesses to the diversion of the passenger planes.

7. Under cover of darkness later that evening the other three Boeings are flown by remote control out over the Atlantic, are scuttled and end up in pieces at the bottom of the ocean.

Another question. Why would anyone have ever had any desire or any need or any motivation to use explosive demolition on the skyscrapers to begin with? Skyscrapers they'd already attacked with 300,000 lb airliners? What on earth would ever possess anyone to do such a thing, and then risk the very likely exposure of the whole plot by doing something so unbelievably stupid as trying to get away with installing all the explosives required to collapse these towers?
Why, when there was no reason to do so?
If there had been no collapse, the buildings would have remained "towering infernos" for the rest of that day, and on into the next day? The horror we saw for the first hour and a half would have continued on for that day and on into the next day. More people jumping 75 stories to their deaths from 110 story funeral pyres. The spectacular chaos of trying to rescue the hundreds still trapped in the towers would have continued on.
And all of that would have continued to be seen on television sets across the world.
Regardless of who is responsible, the message the events of that day were designed to deliver to Americans and the rest of the world would have been delivered in spades regardless of whether the towers ever collapsed.
So the question becomes, why would anyone have ever even bothered to collapse the towers?

Consider this. Here are newspaper front pages on the morning of 9/12.
(I wanted to include a link here to support this but I was advised that I'm not permitted to post urls to other sites)

As you see, just as many front pages show the towering infernos as show a picture of a collapsed building.
The newspapers which chose to show the towering infernos had plenty of photos of the buildings after collapse. But they decided the spectacle of the towering infernos was just as, if not more, spectacular and gut wrenching as seeing a picture of a collapsed building.
What you see on those front pages is what those who did this wanted the world to see. Regardless of whoever it was who did it, terrorists or "insiders".

There's another thing so many have a tendency to overlook before buying into these 9-11 conspiracy theories.
Even if you believe the supposed "conspirators" have no morals or scrupels whatsoever, that has no bearing on their own selfish feelings of self-preservation.
This would be hand's down one of the most heinous acts of treason and mass murder in the history of the world.
If a convincing case could be made to the American people that this indeed did occur, the entire populace would descend on Washington D. C. and probably personally visit justice on those responsible. And I promise you I would be at the front of the pack.
And the point is, that anyone who would ever even consider doing such a thing knows this.
And knows it better than you and I do.
It's a completely fantastic notion that anyone would ever do this knowing the personal penalty if found out. There's nothing which could be gained by doing this which justifies that risk.
And that's mainly why it never happened.

A couple of final points.

It's claimed that Larry Silverstein was a party to the demolition of the WTC because he wanted to swindle the insurance companies.

"In our view, Silverstein Properties knowingly and deliberately underinsured the WTC complex," Jacques Dubois, Swiss Re America Holding Corp. chairman and CEO, remarked. "We believe the record establishes that in order to save on premium dollars, Silverstein intentionally refused to insure against the risk of loss in excess of $3.5 billion."

"The evidence in today's brief reportedly reveals that Silverstein actually wanted to insure the WTC up to a $1.5 billion limit, less than half of the coverage he eventually bought. He only reluctantly agreed to obtain the higher $3.5 billion total loss limit after his lenders required it in order to protect their debt exposure."

(I wanted to include a link here to support this but I was advised that I'm not permitted to post urls to other sites)

Does this sound to you like the MO of someone who would purposely destroy his own property? When he knew full well he'd underinsured it to save on the cost of the premiums?

And lasty this...

"Indications of the Imminent Collapse of the World Trade Center Buildings
Disprove Explosives Theory"

Scientists investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 collapse of the twin towers said, "the World Trade Center towers showed telltale signs they were about to collapse several minutes before each crumbled to the ground." There would not be telltale signs if it was explosives (Controlled Demolition) that caused the buildings to collapse.

"In the case of the north tower, police chopper pilots reported seeing the warning signs - an inward bowing of the building facade - at least eight minutes before it collapsed at 10:29 a.m." New York Daily News reporter Paul Shin wrote in his June 19th, 2004 article 9/11 cops saw collapse coming.

"Federal engineering investigators studying the destruction of the World Trade Center's twin towers on Sept. 11 said New York Police Department aviation units reported an inward bowing of the buildings' columns in the minutes before they collapsed, a signal they were about to fall." - NYC Police Saw Sign of Tower Collapse, Study Says WTC photos show buckling steel columns in the minutes before the collapse of the buildings.

Several minutes before the WTC buildings collapsed, the structures of the buildings were clearly failing and the exterior steel columns could be seen buckling. This simply would not be happening if explosives caused the collapse because explosives don't go off in slow motion for several minutes. Explosives don't slowly buckle steel columns over several minutes.

Obviously, the way an actual controlled explosion happens is the explosives all go off in a matter of seconds. There simply would not be warning signs that the buildings were about to be demolished by explosives, it would of course just suddenly happen. But that is not what happened, the buildings did not suddenly collapse without any indications that they would. Instead, the fires were compromising the structural integrity of the buildings and the buildings' support structures failed. Exterior columns buckled because the fires weakened the floor trusses and the floors sagged. The sagging floors pulled on intact column connections so as the floors sagged down, they pulled the exterior columns inward. This inward bowing of the exterior columns was evident to observers such as the police helicopters circling the towers.

"The NYPD aviation unit reported critical information about the impending collapse of the buildings." They could see that the exterior steel beams of the buildings were bowing. You can see the inward bowing of the steel columns in pictures of both WTC 2, (the first building to collapse) and WTC 1 (the second building to collapse.)

(I wanted to include a link here to support this but I was advised that I'm not permitted to post urls to other sites)

 

[kookbreaker]

Welcome Sultanist, and good points to bring as well.

Did you have any trouble registering?

 

[chipmunk stew]

Welcome to the forums, Sultanist.

You raise a lot of questions. To most of them, I think most members here will respond:

I suggest that you repeat this post on the Loose Change forum and see what kind of responses you get there.

Also, you can fake links by taking out the dots or something, then someone else can reply and post actual links.

 

[delphi_ote]

Woa:
http://www15.ocn.ne.jp/~oyakodon/newversion/yudayasensou.e.htm NSFW warning courtesy of kookbreaker

 

[kookbreaker]

Whoa indeed. A NSFW comment would have been helpful Delphi!

 

[delphi_ote]

Whoa indeed. A NSFW comment would have been helpful Delphi!

Sorry. Was there something up there not appropriate for work (aside from the nutty anti-Semitism) I didn't notice?

 

[Sultanist]

Thanks kookbreaker and chipmunk stew for the welcome.
And no, can't say I had any problem with the registration.

Don't know if this has already been posted to the thread, but here's an image link I would have also included.

pentagonresearch images/023.jpg (just put ".com/" between "pentagonresearch" and "images")

The yellow dots seen in this photograph are the five light poles which were clipped by the airliner as it approached.
The blue dots are the undisturbed light poles.
I'm not aware they've invented a "missile" with a 125' wingspan?