Loose Change - Part IV

[Woody-]

ok, fair enough, but yourself or Gravy or Brainster could break it down piece by piece and then put it together as your own paper...A big challenge I know, but if noone does it, than his argument stands...

Just ask him if it wasn't a 757 then what was it?

Let him try and explain how a cruise missile or a global hawk could account for all the evidence at the pentagon. ie light poles, plane parts, dead bodies, eyewitnesses, etc etc.

 

[T.A.M.]

Oh, I am sure he cannot prove either of those, but, if noone can refute his claims, then what.

I say if not, then the "most likely" scenario is the correct one, which probably means that we still go with a 757, but to them it is a victory.

 

[Ramooone]

Now THIS is interesting.

A small site of a pentagon eye witness, with his own eyes and photos he took. His AIM contact is on the site.

http://criticalthrash.com/terror/crashthumbnails.html

i sent him an e-mail about it a while back and he said that he saw with his own eyes an american airlines jet hit the pentagon.

 

[Brainster]

...but I'm going to have to say something nice about Dylan Avery here.

I'll give him credit for not biting on that Sam Danner story even though it confirmed his biases. He says (and I believe him on this one) that Danner seemed like he was making stuff up on the fly.

 

[T.A.M.]

Riskus story

 

[Belz...]

One thing I have observed...

Another excellent post.

Boy, you just keep doing that, don't you ?

 

[Belz...]

*Raises an eyebrow*
Well, I doubt that the dermatological challenged "Some People" you are talking about are still living in their mothers basement. Or is there a catch 22 thing in this entire "Lord of Darkness" gig I haven't heard about?

<<< TELEPORTS >>>

 

[Belz...]

Well, no. My question is: they address it - they say that they have found no evidence for it - so where can I read about how exactly they did exclude the CD hypothesis? Given that they did address it with a conclusion - where is their reasoning justifying that conclusion?

Gumboot was very clear: there was NO evidence of CD, therefore it wasn't even considered. You won't read about anywhere, because only loonies or people with no knowledge of physics, engineering or building fires come up with this CD crap.

 

[Belz...]

I must have missed it. Could you give me a precise reference?

I couldn't help noticing you didn't answer my question: did you read it ?

And this is the crux of the problem for you - there is no CD hypothesis in the scientific sense. Before you have a hypothesis, you must have evidence leading to that hypothesis. And the evidence for CD is what, exactly?

Evidence ? Hypothesis ? No, no, WildCat. You START with a conclusion, then retrofit everything accordingly. Why the hell would you bother with all that "thinking" nonsense ?

 

[brumsen]

I couldn't help noticing you didn't answer my question: did you read it ?

I cannot have missed it without reading it, can I? That's conversational implication. So could you now give me the reference to where my question is answered according to you?

Evidence ? Hypothesis ? No, no, WildCat. You START with a conclusion, then retrofit everything accordingly. Why the hell would you bother with all that "thinking" nonsense ?

That is patronizing bull* and I don't need it.

 

[R.Mackey]

Again, it need not be a simulation. And if you want to know why the collapse occurred, you also need to know why it did not stop. Limited money: sure, but of course I'd be arguing that more resources should have been made free for this study.

No. You do not need to know why it did not stop.

This is elementary. Any structural engineer, even any basic carpenter, can tell you that a static load is easier to control than a dynamic load. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, would expect the WTC towers to only partially collapse once it was underway. If it couldn't support itself statically, it wouldn't have a chance once momentum and secondary impact damage was added to the equation, even if it failed in a completely symmetric manner.

I'm curious about how you would approach this problem if not through simulation? The mathematics involved are too complex to solve directly, even if you simplify the dynamics tremendously (and beyond the point of accuracy).

Interestingly your answer seems to conflict with that given to me by JayUtah over on BAUT. Basically, if I remember well, he said that one starts with a hypothesis which then must be checked for its validity, and that one cannot check several hypotheses at the same time.

Rubbish. Investigation reveals a number of facts. Facts are not biased towards any theory, and are not used up. You can compare a set of facts to any number of theories. Again, this is fundamental scientific thought.

My problem here is that if one truncates the timeline as NIST did, it may be that your evidence is compatible with more than one hypothesis. Or in other words, that the alternative hypothesis has not been excluded by the evidence considered.

I suppose this is possible, but asserting that it "may be" incompatible is not enough. You need to show that it is incompatible before it makes any difference.

If you can show that some facts (e.g. evidence) doesn't agree with the official theory, facts from the "truncated" timeline or outside it, any facts at all, then we have something interesting to talk about. But unfortunately you're speculating about facts that you don't have, and until shown otherwise we may correctly assume they don't exist. This speculation isn't enough to invalidate the official theory.

 

[brumsen]

Gumboot was very clear: there was NO evidence of CD, therefore it wasn't even considered. You won't read about anywhere, because only loonies or people with no knowledge of physics, engineering or building fires come up with this CD crap.

On p. xxxviii of NCSTAR1 it is clearly stated that "NIST found no corroborating evidence suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition". This means that it was considered, but no corroborating evidence found. Now where do we found what they have exactly considered as potential evidence?
And again, I don't need the b*t.

 

[brumsen]

You were asked what specific evidence leads you to believe that CD was a possibility. You respond that NIST didn't cover the possiblility to your satisfaction in the reports. Seems like a non-sequitur to me.

No, that was not the question that I was asked, and to which I responded. It was this:

So I'll ask you - what exactly do you think is wrong w/ the official NIST reports?

 

[brumsen]

No. You do not need to know why it did not stop.

This is elementary. Any structural engineer, even any basic carpenter, can tell you that a static load is easier to control than a dynamic load. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, would expect the WTC towers to only partially collapse once it was underway. If it couldn't support itself statically, it wouldn't have a chance once momentum and secondary impact damage was added to the equation, even if it failed in a completely symmetric manner.

I hope to find time to respond more fully to your post, but for now I'll just react to this:
The building could not support itself statically where it was damaged by impact and fires. However, the question about whether it could have supported the dynamic load is a question about the undamaged parts of the building.

 

[brumsen]

The timelines I see in the reports go up until the evidence they have is obscured in the dust. Should they create evidence for what happened after this?

Footnote 2 on p.xxxvii states that “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 includes little analysis of the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached and collapse became inevitable.”

 

[R.Mackey]

The building could not support itself statically where it was damaged by impact and fires. However, the question about whether it could have supported the dynamic load is a question about the undamaged parts of the building.

Here, I'll make this real simple --

Suppose a single floor collapses, symmetrically, with the load of 20-odd floors above it. (The symmetric case is the easiest to deal with and isn't what happened; in the real system the upper floors rotated slightly and it came down on one corner first.) You now have the same static load you had before, with the additional energy of 20 floors falling about three meters.

We know the design strength of the "undamaged" parts of the building, which were built with a safety factor of roughly 2.5, dictated by expected wind loads in case of hurricane conditions.

Can you agree that the additional energy is plausibly enough to overcome the design strength of the building? I know I haven't put up any hard numbers yet, just tell me if you think this is "possible" or "impossible."

Can you also accept that the building, by virtue of being clocked by a jetliner, had some deformation and fracture damage even away from the "single" burning floor? Can you accept that the fire damage was not restricted to a single floor, and caused further deformation and loading a few floors away from our hypothetical collapse? Can you accept that the actual collapse was likely to be concentrated on one corner, and thus the building was further stressed asymmetrically?

I'm really having trouble with this idea, partly because you are the first I've encountered who's suspected a partial collapse was likely.

 

[brumsen]

Here, I'll make this real simple --

I understand your reasoning, and to all your questions my answer is affirmative. But it needs to be checked by means of math and "hard numbers". This is what Gordon Ross attempts to do, and what NIST should have done.
It is altogether intuitively possible that there would be a total collapse, but it's not clear-cut and beyond verification by means of some math.

 

[Blackadder_no]

Is this true. Is this there smoking gun. he states NOONE can debunk his claims. I am far from an expert, and I am still in the early days of my research, but I woul dlove Gravy or Brainster to take a look. I will too, of course.

I can help you with one point already:

Now note the burn/impact mark from the supposed left wing...

IT IS PERFECTLY LEVEL!!! Completely contradicts the tilting of the right wing!

The keyword here, ladies and gentlemen, is "dihedral".

 

[R.Mackey]

I understand your reasoning, and to all your questions my answer is affirmative. But it needs to be checked by means of math and "hard numbers". This is what Gordon Ross attempts to do, and what NIST should have done.
It is altogether intuitively possible that there would be a total collapse, but it's not clear-cut and beyond verification by means of some math.

That's completely fair. I too find it intuitively possible or even likely, but digging deeper into the numbers is good science and encouraged.

For an attempt at hard numbers, I suggest you take a look at Greening's paper (one I quote frequently), especially the work he references on pp. 9-10. If you want to work up your own estimate, these are the numbers to refute.

I've done some back-of-envelope calculations of my own, relying on my training (I am not a structural engineer but have studied solid mechanics), and found these results to be reasonable. I also have not seen any credible challenge to these numbers. But I'm always willing to consider any, should it appear.

 

[T.A.M.]

So on another note, they are once again all over the Albany Museum stuff again over at loose change forum.

They seem all hyped about it again, but I can't seem to fathom why since a poster at the museum says that the "Pcitures" of recorders are infact "pictures of what the 'black boxes' COULD look like if they survived."

Now if a poster in the museum tells you the pictures are used to show you what the recorders "could" look like "if" they survived, I don't see how there can be any more debate. Obviously the pictures are not the those of the actual Flight 11 and 175 recorders.

Anyway, they are going back to ask the curator some questions about it later this week.