tanabear
Critical Thinker
This falling mass impacted floor after floor at speeds approaching 90 mph. The pressure of the impacts approached 100,000 psi. Repeated impacts at only 10,000 psi would grind a human body to dust. The air pressure was such that the air being expelled approached a velocity of 200 m/s. I have calculated myself that expulsions from floors in the 50s range could have easily reached the top of the DB building. This is unpublished but reliable as far as I am concerned.
But was this falling mass intact or pulverized? Look at the mass falling outside the perimeter of the tower, if there was another structure directly beneath it, would we expect this structure to be destroyed the same way as WTC1 and 2? And when you say falling mass, point to it in this picture:

There are no examples. Can you provide examples of high rise tube constructions that have been impacted by airplanes and survived? It's not an assumption. A number of unpublished analyses have been done that show fairly convincingly that:
1. If the collapse initiated, that it would continue. See the last paper linked in my previous post.
2. The top would not fall or slide off. (Mackey's paper)
There have been many buildings more severely damaged in times of war and none of them collapsed the way WTC1 and 2 did. The fact that an event is in some ways unique does not imply it is more severe. "The impact did nothing to this building." Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl.
Also, how do you know that collapse would initiate? Bazant and Zhou wrote in the paper, Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse?—Simple Analysis
"The downward displacement from the initial equilibrium position to the point of maximum deflection of the lower part (considered to behave elastically) is h+(P/C) where P=maximum force applied by the upper part on the lower part and h=height of critical floor columns (=height of the initial fall of the upper part) ~=3.7 m....the upper part may be assumed to move through distance h almost in a free fall."
Bazant and Verdure state in their March 2007 paper, Mechanics of Progressive Collapse: Learning from WorldTrade Center and Building Demolitions,
"The subsequent progressive collapse was not simulated at NIST because its inevitability, once triggered by impact after column buckling, had already been proven by Bažant and Zhou’s (2002a) comparison of kinetic energy to energy absorption capability."
So was this 3.7 meter fall of the upper block onto the lower block something that Bazant/Greening/Zhou used in their model because it was actually observed or is it merely a hypothetical assumption they made up? If it was something that was actually observed, show me when it happened.
Also in the documentary, Building on Ground Zero Shyam Sunder states, "Suddenly the columns snapped, and, as a result, the entire top of the building came down, pretty much in freefall, because kinetic energy that was unleashed was just huge." In the documentary they show computer animation of this happening. Why don't they provide video/photographic evidence?
Regarding the statement, "The top would not fall or slide off." I don't see the upper block after a certain number of seconds. Observation takes precedence over words on paper.
It is unnecessary to prove crush-down/crush-up. I'm not saying it is entirely realistic, in fact David Benson, one of the authors of that paper acknowledges that it is not 100% realistic. It's important to remember that momentum transfer, the governing phenomena in the collapse, is not that dependent on whether the falling mass is intact or not.
It is unnecessary to prove the crush-down/crush-up hypothesis?????? When did it no longer become necessary for scientists to prove their theories? Especially when this hypothesis is the basis for the War on Terror, which has led to the death of thousands. Once again, is the falling mass intact or not? Someone might believe it doesn't matter, but I'm asking what actually happened. If physics can't tell us if the upper block would remain intact or not, then it can't tell us much of anything else about the collapse.