...
Spire dissolves into a heavy dust
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/363814cce28d3b5a4d.jpg[/qimg]
Let's look at this series of images a little closer. I have added a few lines with Paint, to help our focus:
The first thing we must notice is that the camera isn't fixed, it pans and zooms during this clip. The second thing that must be pointed out is that the stills have no time stamp, we don't know how much time passed between them, or if the time spans are at least equal. Because of these observations, analysis will be laden with some error. Keep that in mind, please.
In the first frame, I marked the height of three individual spires with horizontal lines in blue, dark red and yellow. The forth, green, line indicates roughly to what height of the already billowing dust obscures the view of the steel core: Below the line, you can't really discern anything.
I have repeated the green line in frames 2 and 3, guided by where the roof of that water tank begins. You will notice that the green line, along with all other stable objects (the building on the right, for examlple), is about 14 pixels higher in frame 2 than in frame 1. The tallest (blue) spire, in contrast, "moves up" by only 4 pixels, so relative to the fixed objects, it alread fell about 10 pixels between 1 and 2.
The dark red and yellow spires are even lower in frame 2, by 3 pixels, so they already descended 17 pixels relative to the fixed objects. We may concluuse that these fell earlier, or faster, or both, than then blue spire.
Now, between frames 2 and 3, the blue spire has descended by 44 pixels. It is still clearly visible still. It appears a little more fuzzy for two obvious reasons: a) It descended into a thicker cloud of smoke (smoke that no doubt was shaken and blown from the spire itself; it har accumulated on trusses and girders during the previous collapse phase) b) it's moving rapidly by now.
If we assume that the other spires descend at the same rate (44 pixels), they are now, in frame 3, where I drew the dark red and yellow lines. Note: Both these lines are below the green line, in an area where thick cloud obscures everything! We would actually expect them to have descended even lower, as they fell faster.
Relative to the green line (fixed reference), the blue spire fell even by 75 pixels.
On to frame 4: If I assume that the time intervall between 3 and 4 is the same as between 2 and 3, and if I further assume that the blue spire fell at constant speed, it would have fallen another 75 pixels relative to the green line. The thick blue line in frame 4 indicates where it would. Same goes with the dark red spire. The yellow spire would even be below the bottom margin of frame 4.
Of course the fall would have been faster due to acceleration
In summary:
- In frame 2, all the structure is still intact, but has already started to fall
- In frame 3, all of the structure, except for the tallest spire, has fallen so far that it is now totally obstructed by the water tank and thicker dust
- In frame 4, all the strusture has fallen out of view behind fixed structures.
The dust seen in 3 and 4 is way too little and to thin to represent a significant portion of the mass of the spires.
Comnclusion: Spires fell, they were not dutified.
