NIST Releases Report On WTC 7 Collapse 1331
photonic writes "After three years of study, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finally released its report on the collapse of World Trade Center building 7. The main conclusion is that the building came down due to fire, not due to debris damage or some conspiracy demolition team. The fire started pretty small after the collapse of WTC 1, but was left to burn several floors out completely. The important finding is that the collapse was triggered by thermal expansion of beams, which could detach asymmetrically loaded girders from the main columns. Some limited pancaking of floors then caused a lack of lateral support and buckling of a single column. This triggered the failure of the entire core of the building, which finally fell down as a single piece. Crackpot theories can be discussed elsewhere; please limit the discussion to the science here. All documents can be found at NIST's WTC page, which read like a porn magazine for finite element junkies. Simulation movies are also available. And yes, they used Beowulf clusters to do the simulations, some of which lasted for several months."
nooo (Score:4, Funny)
And yes, they used Beowulf clusters to do the simulations, some of which lasted for several months."
No! You stole my +5 funny!!
Re:nooo (Score:4, Funny)
you stole my first post!
You've GOT to be kidding! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You've GOT to be kidding! (Score:5, Funny)
I think he meant to say
Why is the crackpot theory not debunked yet? (Score:5, Funny)
If someone left a crackpot burning, couldn't that have started the fire in the first place?
Ipso diabolico facto nonsensicalico.
These guys have resources. It could be quite damaging to be caught with a smoldering crackpot.
Ergo, they crash a plane into the building to cover it all up.
Sheeple, the answers are RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU, just light them up and breathe deeply.
Re:You've GOT to be kidding! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You've GOT to be kidding! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You've GOT to be kidding! (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the wonderful world of self-confirming delusions, wherein you need never admit you're wrong.
And now for something completely different (Score:5, Funny)
Knock-knock
Who's there?
Nine-eleven.
Nine-eleven who?
YOU SAID YOU WOULD NEVER FORGET!
Re:You've GOT to be kidding! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You've GOT to be kidding! (Score:5, Insightful)
Simulations are not as effective: given three years and a beowulf cluster one can model improbable events, and an improbable event verified three out of three times in the case of the WTC buildings won't satisfy conspiracy theorists.
Nothing satisfies conspiracy theorists...
Re:You've GOT to be kidding! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it isn't that it's a conspiracy theory that's the problem.
In fact, that al-Qaida, an international network of terrorists that want to launch jihad against the western world, is responsible for the 9-11 attacks is a conspiracy theory.
The difference is that with the above they don't have to accuse people of being brainwashed in order to get people to accept the theory.
Re:You've GOT to be kidding! (Score:4, Funny)
I have a simple, intuitive explanation for 9/11 that should satisfy everyone: some shit got fucked up.
Umm, no. The RIAA, SCO and MS black ops teams found out somebody was downloading Britney Spears MP3s on a linux box and kinda overreacted.
Imposter! (Score:5, Funny)
Crackpot theories can be discussed elsewhere; please limit the discussion to the science here.
What site is this, and what has it done with Slashdot
Re:Imposter! (Score:5, Insightful)
Crackpot theories can be discussed elsewhere; please limit the discussion to the science here.
What site is this, and what has it done with Slashdot
Well, for sure Digg [digg.com] is one of the places where this is happening, some idiots over there get +100 for the most ridiculous comments. What this has done to Slashdot? I hope they drew away some of the trolls from here...
Re:Imposter! (Score:5, Funny)
Optimist... :P
I'd like to introduce you to Tabbed Browsing [firefox.com].
Re:Imposter! (Score:4, Funny)
Crackpot theories can be discussed elsewhere; please limit the discussion to the science here.
What site is this, and what has it done with Slashdot
I think the submitter meant to say:
Please limit the science to the discussion.
Wake up sheeple! (Score:5, Funny)
Zombies obviously did it.
Re:Wake up sheeple! (Score:5, Funny)
Let's leave McCain out of this one.
Erm... (Score:5, Funny)
Crackpot theories can be discussed elsewhere; please limit the discussion to the science here.
You must be new here.
Unpossible! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Unpossible! (Score:5, Informative)
Um, fires can pretty much bring down every building without some sort of suppression.
The sole exception is concrete, which can leave a hollow shell. Of course, no one on earth can build a 47 story concrete building.
Any building with steel as part of the support, on fire long enough, is eventually going to see that steel buckle, which will bring down the building. You can't just let tall buildings burn and then walk in the next day with new paint and furniture.
When they build steel buildings, they spray insulation on the steel to keep it intact during fires. For the WTC7, that was something called 'Monokote', which is rated for three hours for steel columns. (There is an entirely different 'Monokote' which is just a kind of plastic shrink wrap. Don't get confused.)
This would have been more than enough if the fire-suppression systems had been working, but they were not. It is also why the firefighters pulled out when they did...enough of the steel had started to buckle that the building was listing to the side.
You can build it, but it sure ain't cost-effective (Score:5, Interesting)
If a structure doesn't have to be cost-effective or inhabitable, you can build almost anything with concrete. The most prominent example of this phenomenon is the 105-story Ryugyong Hotel [wikimapia.org] in Pyongyang.
Not inhabitable, certainly not cost-effective, but it is over a thousand feet of concrete structure and interesting in a creepy way.
Cue the "In Communist North Korea, concrete builds you!" jokes.
Re:Unpossible! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unpossible! (Score:4, Interesting)
Dark smoke like the towers had is indication of lack of oxygen and therefore poor burning. It wasn't burning that well or as hot as possible and the kind of smoke proves the point.
WTC 7 could have had ideal burning conditions which would have minimized the amount of smoke.
I know experts in relevant fields too afraid to go on record with any commentary; the event had unique conditions never seen before and legitimately raises a great deal of questions and problems on that grounds alone-- but the political atmosphere IS limiting open critical analysis by experts (in addition to government not releasing useful information. This report isn't that useful if you are able to do the work yourself; especially if you don't want to get involved in the mess that even a picky correction would bring you.)
Crackpot theories can be discussed elsewhere (Score:5, Funny)
First read as ... (Score:4, Funny)
First read as "NIST Releases Report On Windows 7 Collapse."
Wait a damn minute, here! (Score:5, Funny)
Asking Slashdot readers to stick to science, refrain from discussing conspiracies, AND taking the fun out of a beowulf cluster reference?
This submitter is a black belt troll and you all know it!
This is not supposed to be a restricted forum. (Score:4, Insightful)
History was not written only once, it was written and rewritten countless times over long periods of time and came to exist as we know it because discussions continue over time and corrections and rewrites and new information that was ignored or suppressed comes out.
But this only happens because people don't just stand there and accept blindly what is told to them especially when it goes against commen sense.
I hope the person who wrote this has the curtosy to remove the comment or correct it.
Re:This is not supposed to be a restricted forum. (Score:5, Informative)
How can anyone on this web site stand there and demand to limit to science as if the fact that the only steel buildings in existence to ever fall from fire all did so on 9/11 (which includes WTC Building 7).
This is absolutely false. There are many examples of other steel buildings that collapsed due to fire before 9/11. One example off the top of my head would be the Sight and Sound Theater fire of 1997. http://www.firefightersonline.com/opsandtactics/tr-097/ [firefightersonline.com] Just google around for a few minutes if you want many more examples.
The way 9/11 conspiracy theorists mindlessly repeat these lies (like the lie that no other steel buildings have collapsed due to fire) without bothering to spend even five minutes googling around with terms like "steel building fire collapse" is a testimony to their extreme gullibility and intellectual laziness. It's not different than the oft-repeated claim that the fire wasn't hot enough to melt steel, which ignores the fact that steel loses much of its strength well before it actually melts.
As to crackpot theories... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As to crackpot theories... (Score:4, Insightful)
You are making a mistake by conflating a lot of people, with lots of different opinions, into a single entity. They are not. And the issue of what physical forces caused the buildings to fall as they did is orthogonal to the question of who caused it to happen that way.
You go on to say
"the (current) Bush Administration doesn't have people smart enough to pull a stunt like that"
I don't know about that. They Bush administration got exactly what they wanted in Afghanistan and Iraq, they got exactly what they wanted with the Patriot Act, the FISA bill, wiretapping, no-fly lists, they got exactly what they wanted on things like the bankruptcy bill, now they even got Poland and the Czech Republic to agree to the missile shield, even though it doesn't even work and in both countries the majority of the population are opposed to the project. In fact, Bush and his people have been getting pretty much what they wanted throughout the term, often with a little help from the Democrats (including the confirmation of all the far right nominations to the Supreme Court and elsewhere).
If you consistently get what you want for 7 years, that's not exactly incompetence.
truthers == IDers (Score:4, Interesting)
Arguing with truthers is like arguing with creationists. They've already decided, it's a matter of faith. The weird thing is having looked at the structural collapse of the towers, if the official version was controlled demolition and the conspiracy theory was burning jet fuel, from a straight scientific standpoint I'd be inclined to believe the conspiracy. Physically, building catches fire, steel expands, breaks seals makes a lot more sense then Rutger Hauer and why not Whoopy spend a few days planting charges. However, like IDers, truthers decided they can make up various physical laws and ignore others as they go along all the while shouting "science!" (cue: T Dolby). And they get continuously pumped up by right wing trolls who figure quite accurately that they make the left look like a bunch of hairy clowns shouting 'JET FUEL BURNS AT 800 DEGREES MAN' at a fireman's funeral.
The real cover up is that the buildings weren't code to begin with, or rather David Rockefeller etc bent building codes to get them built. And Rudy had all the fuel stored in 7 against the advice of all the professionals. And that the Saucer People, in league with the Bush Administration, used a gravity ray to make the buildings fall faster then gravity and straight down.
Actually if you work some UFOs in I'll sign up. How cool would that be?
Re:truthers == IDers (Score:5, Interesting)
The real cover up is that the buildings weren't code to begin with, or rather David Rockefeller etc bent building codes to get them built.
Indeed. The person involved in 9/11 that I'd prefer most to see behind bars is the one who approved the choice of plaster for walls of the staircases. Whoever he is, he has at least hundreds of lives on his conscience.
Some People Need Conspiracy Theories (Score:4, Interesting)
Insecure people need conspiracy theories, they need to make what happened more complicated and devious that it really was. Because if what happened really was this easy;
Prior to 9/11 several people from a third world countries entered the US legally and took flight lessons and then booked flights. Then on 9/11 they legally boarded the aircraft and once the aircraft were airborne took over aircraft, that basically fly themselves, and then pointed them at buildings.
They could never sleep at night and it would make people from the third world smarter that they are.
Several things strange here (Score:5, Insightful)
First, I need to say a few things to inoculate myself from being labeled one way or the other:
1. The concept of a "conspiracy theory" is flawed, and is simply a cop out. There is no such thing as a conspiracy theory. There are just good and bad theories. Labeling an idea a "conspiracy theory" is just a form of jingoism and does nothing to increase the flow of ideas. Labeling something a conspiracy theory is a brilliant tactic to bury an idea as it takes advantage of herd mentality. Judge an idea by its merit and not by its label. Here on Slashdot extremely brilliant and extremely stupid ideas are posited all the time, so why now are we disallowed to discus a certain set of ideas? I thought there was a strong freedom/libertarian mindset here...
2. If you examine history, conspiracies are actually the norm and not an aberration. Look at Rome, or the times of Shakespeare, or Nazi Germany, or the French revolution, etc etc. Look at the behavior of the current administration of the United States and say there haven't been conspiratory behaviors with a straight face. All a conspiracy means is that more than one person plans together to do something secretly. That happens ALL THE TIME, whether criminally or not.
3. As Slashdot readers many of you consider yourselves to be scientifically minded and aware of logical fallacies. Why does this mindset breakdown when it comes to politically charged events? You are labeling people nut cases and tinfoil hat wearers and conspiracy theorists the same way people were labeled communists during the McCarthy era. The ad hominem attacks are relentless.
4. In light of the awareness that several agencies in the US with billions of dollars in funding and specific programs for controlling the flow of information DO exist, wouldn't you think that Slashdot, a hub of meme flow on the internet, would be a specific target of operations? Opinions are manipulated on the net regularly. You only have to look at China with their "wangyou" (internet friends) that are paid 50 cents chinese for each message they post that supports a certain agenda. The manipulation in the US is much more subtle. Teams of PhDs and psychologists know what buttons to press to get a certain response out of a self-admittedly obsessive compulsive crowd of nerds.
5. Building 7 was never hit by an airplane. The owner of the building admitted to it being demolished, then reneged his statement. There are videos of reporters describing building 7's fall while it is still standing in the background. It took SEVEN years for investigators to come up with a reason for the building to fall the way it did. Is it possible that the SEVEN years were spent honing a story plausible enough to convince even the most skeptical people of it's truth?
6. Unless you've visited the site of the building and done your own scientific measurements, everything you know comes from suspect media sources. This relates to point 3 above. I freely admit I don't know the truth of what happened due to this single fact.
In summary: Don't buy into either side of the story. There are plausible explanations for it being due to fire, but there are equally plausible explanations to it being due to malicious intent. Don't follow the herd - a certain subset of humans are purely pragmatic and will do whatever it takes to gain money or power.
PLEASE PLEASE refer to the last 5000 years of history and don't make the mistake of thinking that somehow right now things are different and innocent.
LS
Re:Several things strange here (Score:4, Insightful)
A conspiracy theory is a theory that relies on the existence of a conspiracy to keep it quiet. Most of these tend to be bad, as most people realize how difficult it is to keep quiet about things on a large scale. Look at your friends. The more people that are in on something, the more likely it is to get out. As for judging an idea by its merit, fair enough. In my opinion, this idea has no merit. And no one's forbidding you from discussing certain ideas, the editor was just asking people not to bring it up. A perfectly reasonable request, seeing as how a lot of the people who come here are interested in science.
Yep. However, most of those conspiracies were found out. It's incredibly hard to keep a conspiracy quiet for any amount of time. These conspiracies usually fall apart as soon as they've enacted their plans. People are incompetent.
Except that we aren't throwing them in jail. Just mocking them.
And not one of these people would gladly go to the press to guarantee their name going down in history as the one who blew the lid off the conspiracy? Or wait, the media is in on it too! See the problem with suggesting conspiracies? Either everyone is in on it, or the people in on it at are the best liars and deceivers known to mankind.
Re:Several things strange here (Score:4, Insightful)
everything you know comes from suspect media sources
And this is the crux of why it's labeled a "conspiracy theory." Because the people who are clinging to it so desperately so frequently dismiss evidence that disagrees by claiming it's part of a cover-up. You can come up with an explanation for just about everything that involves a conspiracy followed by a coverup.
Every single person who has ever been murdered at random (whether by someone mentally ill or as part of a robbery) could really have been murdered as part of a planned conspiracy. That doesn't mean there has never been a conspiracy to murder any particular individual. But without solid and conclusive evidence of the conspiracy itself, it's all mental masturbation. And by solid and conclusive evidence, I don't mean evidence that can be interpreted two ways an only fits if you come to it pre-supposing a conspiracy.
I have proof Jim Henson did it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Insightful)
And your point is? It's a common misconception that random events don't or can't look very neat and tidy. One of the common mistakes people make when faking random data is to make it look too random. Meaning they don't have enough places in the data which appear to be non-random.
The way that a skyscraper is designed and built favors it falling more or less straight down rather to one side or the other. The reason being that if it were to topple, as remote a possibility as that is, the building shouldn't be allowed to hit other buildings. Nobody wants a set of dominoes that large.
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Insightful)
Another big reason large buildings tend to fall straight down is that is the direction gravity is pulling them. Anything much bigger than three or four stories is going to come apart very soon after leaving vertical, and the pieces come straight down.
Yeah, you really have to keep in mind just how big these structures are. With the two main towers, there were dozens of floors above the impact point. It's already a phenomenal engineering feat to hold up that amount of weight. Then consider once the frame becomes weakened. Once any point in the structure starts to give, all those floors above start to move, the weak point is going to buckle. Just think about the amount of kinetic energy all that building gains after accelerating only a few feet. There's no way the structure underneath can survive that even if was completely undamaged. Thus why it seemed as though the towers went into free-fall, the amount of downward force being exerted simply tore through everything like it was cray paper, which then itself fell adding to the mass.
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok so you you got a smaller mass ( the higher collapsing flours) falling over a bigger mass (the lower floors - which were also supported by the ground under them). So now my common sense is suppose to accepts that that smaller mass is able to cause the bigger mass the be pulverized without any resistance?
It didn't pulverize the ENTIRE REMAINING BUILDING simultaneously, genius. The falling, growing, and accelerating mass destroyed the remaining building one floor at a time.
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly - it's the same principle which allows a martial-artist to smash through 10 stacked concrete slabs. If you stacked the slabs directly on top of each other he'd smash his fist into goo before doing any damage to them, but if you leave a gap - even just a quarter of an inch - it creates enough space for the slabs to break individually instead of as a combined mass.
Re:oh ok (Score:4, Interesting)
Quite a few actually, they look like this [youtube.com]
Making a building not fall sideways is a complicated task that requires a lot of training and preparation. The thought that you can get three out of three perfect collapses by splashing them with a bit of aviation fuel must have demolition companies shaking in their boots
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks as though that building fell down because it either became detached from its foundation, or because the foundation wasn't firmly planted in the ground. The above-ground construction of the building doesn't seem to have been the primary cause of the collapse, as the whole thing seemed to remain largely intact before hitting the ground.
I'm not going to say that it's "Apples and Oranges," but that video seems to depict a pretty different scenario.
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Insightful)
Demolition companies are just as concerned with preventing debris from ejecting sideways from the building as it collapses as they are with preventing the building as a whole from falling sideways.
However, to my knowledge, no building as large as the WTC towers have ever been demolished under controlled conditions, and few (if any) buildings with the same internal design (the steel tube core). The steel core of the WTC towers may have very well lent itself to a vertical collapse under any conditions.
Again, not saying anything conclusive, but merely because three buildings happened to fall more or less straight down when they collapsed is no proof that something secret went on. It could also be argued that since WTC 1 and 2 were more or less identical in structure, they should have been expected to collapse the same way given the similar conditions (of being impacted by jet planes), therefore it's only "two" perfect collapses. (Other problem: define "perfect collapse", the WTC 1/2 debris impacted other buildings, that's hardly perfect.)
It could *also* be argued that if you're going to demolish giant skyscrapers and kill thousands of people, you're also not going to care about collateral damage, so why not make them topple sideways so that it looks more accidental? Basically, it's bogus to assume that a straight-down collapse implies shenanigans in the first place.
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Funny)
"Another big reason large buildings tend to fall straight down is that is the direction gravity is pulling them."
Bullshit - Gravity is just a theory, just like Evolution.
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference being that that building was reinforced concrete stack, which is essentially monolithic.
The discussion is about steel skeleton buildings, which have riveted/welded joints that create natural pivots and fulcrums when stresses become off-centered.
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Informative)
"If you say so..."
The building you're showing has about 10 floors. WTC 1 and 2 had 10 times that and weighed exponentially more, in spite of being made with substantially similar materials. What would be strong enough to act as a pivot point for a 10 story building would buckle like a house of cards under a 100 story building, long before leaning over enough to "topple over" properly.
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Insightful)
It needn't be as subtle as seeing patterns where there are none, although we know that happens all the time.
In simple terms, things tend to fall down. Surely, if it were easier to get a building to topple over sideways, a team of terrorists isn't going to go through the trouble of averting what would surely be a larger and more spectacular catastrophe.
People whose experience with construction is limited to building models tend to imagine buildings are much lighter relative to the strength of materials in them then they are.
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Informative)
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Informative)
Presuming, of course, that such efforts existed.
"Uncontrolled" collapses of very large buildings are exceedingly rare events, so nobody would really know a priori how the WTC collapses "ought" to have looked. After the fact, the way the floors pancaked doesn't seem at all improbable. As the force of the collapse propagates downward, it meets elements designed to spread a fraction of a single floor's weight onto vertical supports. Since the force of the collapse would be orders of magnitude greater than what these elements were designed to support, it seems probable that they would impede the progress of the collapse to about the same degree that a cloud of smoke would impede a lazily swung sledgehammer.
Of course, this is just after the fact rationalization, but the engineering analysis confirms it the intuition that no special measures would need to be taken in order for the collapse to proceed in a way that superficially resembles a controlled implosion.
This conspiracy theory has the usual problems of conspiracy theories, such as providing what mystery writers call "motive, means and opportunity". Motive is a particularly vexing issue, given that seven buildings were destroyed past recovery and numerous other ones damaged, it's hard to connect the end result to the purported motive. Another commonsense question would be whether a government that could not keep Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Echelon, or warrantless surveillance under wraps could have engaged in what must have been a substantial engineering effort on three busy Manhattan buildings without anybody noticing.
The real appeal of any conspiracy theory is this:it provides an illusion of control. Limited control, that is certain, but the seat of the pants risk evaluation is actually quite astute: if it were some cabal of government officials, you'd actually be less exposed than if twenty men, each armed with a tool costing $1, could kill nearly three thousand people and bring the country to a virtual standstill for weeks.
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, in the first place your chronology is off. The first Enron trial began in 2004. As of 9/11/2001, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were still in charge, and in fact the first public questioning by analysts of Enron's valuation were only a few months old at that time. The SEC investigation didn't begin until October 2001, so if it all were an attempt to cover up Enron evidence, it would quite literally be prescient.
In any case, there are easier ways to get rid of evidence if you have this kind of power. It is hardly necessary to destroy seven buildings when a fire starting near a single room would do. Even a simple burglary is both easier and more likely to succeed. Add this the fact that the destruction of so many buildings and lives means there would be commission afterwards to investigate. This commission could, of course, be controlled, but if the power to do this certainly it could much more readily have squelched the original investigation.
This kind of "evidence" is typical of conspiracy theories, which have three hallmarks:
(1) Require remarkably smooth coordination between conspirators with no demonstrable ties and considerable reason to distrust each other.
(2) Require the conspirators to choose convoluted, uncertain, and risky means where more direct, more reliable and safer means would presumably be at their disposal.
(3) Concoction and defense of dramatic "facts" that are either can't substantiated or are even (as here) demonstrably impossible.
Now what work, exactly, could be (a) passed of as routine, (b) be so non-invasive that witnesses would fail to recall it later and (c) reliably bring the building down?
Remember, the whole reason or this theory is that the building could not have imploded without considerable preparation. If a few plastic explosive charges here or there could due the trick, why couldn't extensive structural damage followed by a raging fire?
Armchair it may be, but whereever it proceeds from it is well supported in evidence that conspiracy theories such as this do not explain the facts very well. It follows that since the "explanations" involved are not very convincing in terms of how they reconcile facts, they must be convincing for other reasons. The exact nature of those reasons are, admittedly, a topic of speculation. Who can know for certain? However, I think my explanation is both plausible, and more charitable than the more common assumption that conspiracy theorists are just bat-shit crazy.
Now, I want to go on record that I do think Enron's senior executives were evil, and that I believe the Bush administration is both evil and wildly incompetent at pursuing its nefarious aims. However, I don't think it is within their scope of competence (or incompetence) to execute this putative conspiracy, nor is there any evidence requiring explanations of this sort.
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Funny)
Nobody wants a set of dominoes that large.
Speak for yourself...
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Funny)
Nobody wants a set of dominoes that large.
Wow, you've never met a human male, have you?
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Funny)
The way that a skyscraper is designed and built favors it falling more or less straight down rather to one side or the other. The reason being that if it were to topple, as remote a possibility as that is, the building shouldn't be allowed to hit other buildings. Nobody wants a set of dominoes that large.
I can safely say with 100% assurance that that is absolutely not true. I would kill to see a set of dominoes that size.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So? (Score:5, Funny)
Or why the BBC reported its fall 20 minutes before it actually fell.
Is that seriously the best argument you fuckheads can come up with? That a news organization got a fact wrong? Don't you morons remember "Dewey Defeats Truman"?
Re:oh ok (Score:5, Insightful)
It could also be that anyone who has ever watched a Discovery Channel documentary on professional demolition of large buildings has been led to believe that safely and completely collapsing such a building requires weeks of planning and absolutely precise placement and detonation of lots of explosives.
Or you could just thow some kerosene on it.
I never understood this weak attempt at a sarcastic rebuttal from you "truthers". It's like you just can't wrap your minds around the fact that one of the goals of a controlled demolition is to not cause billions of dollars in damage to surrounding buildings...
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Let's just get this out of the way first. BULLSHIT!
The rest of the world knows something suspicious went on, but America has their head in the sand.
Not long after this shit, there was a building in Europe, where the fire was so intense, it burned everything off. The steel structure was still standing but oxidizing flame was enough to melt or buckle steel in the trade center? The sheer ignorance of the American populace astounds me.
Interesting. Then I am curious as to what temperature would be required to melt and/or buckle the structure of your aluminum foil hat?
Re:Really? (Score:4, Funny)
Interesting. Then I am curious as to what temperature would be required to melt and/or buckle the structure of your aluminum foil hat?
You generally have to wait for the brai... fluids inside to boil off before the aluminum container will melt.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's just get this out of the way first. BULLSHIT!
The rest of the world knows something suspicious went on, but America has their head in the sand. Not long after this shit, there was a building in Europe, where the fire was so intense, it burned everything off. The steel structure was still standing but oxidizing flame was enough to melt or buckle steel in the trade center? The sheer ignorance of the American populace astounds me.
How about if we get this out of the way:
A statement that one building somewhere at sometime didn't collapse under certain conditions is no grounds (in fact it's a logical fallacy) for saying a building couldn't collapse under the same conditions... and worse, it's also no grounds to subsequently stereotype an entire group of people and flame them.
Thank you and have a nice day.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Not long after this shit, there was a building in Europe, where the fire was so intense, it burned everything off. The steel structure was still standing [...]
I'm pretty sure you're talking about the Windsor building in Madrid.
I've got news for you, buddy: It actually works against you.
First, the Windsor building had a concrete core and two concrete technical floors. A very different design from that of the Twin Towers.
Second, the steel portions of the building exposed to the fire did in fact get all melty and collapsey [911myths.com]. The only reason the building is still standing is because of the features I mentioned above.
http://www.911myths.com/html/madrid_windsor_tower.html [911myths.com]
http://www.debunking911.com/madrid.htm [debunking911.com]
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Pancaking, a term which you completely misunderstand, is the event which occurs when you cause the upper floors of a building to collapse suddenly. You question how the fire in the upper floors weakened the lower floors. The answer is that it didn't have to. When the upper floors gave way, they impacted the floors directly beneath them. The kinetic energy that is gained by those floors basically free falling 1 story down is immense, and this cause the floor beneath, also weakened by the fire, to collapse, and so on this process went until it reached low enough that the floor beneath the collapsing floors was undamaged by the impact or fire.
The problem though is two-fold: first of all, those collapsing upper floors sent a huge shockwave of compressing air down the elevator shafts and stairwells, blowing out the windows on the floors below and causing some very minor structural damage. No big deal, but it's what makes people think the lower floors were "blown out". The big thing is that by this point, the upper floors have gained such an incredible amount of momentum from their falling, which is only increasing with their mass, that the lower floors have no hope of "catching" them. I say "catching" because they're not supporting them, they have to stop them from a freefall, and stopping an object in motion, especially an object composed of tons of concrete and steel falling directly downward, requires more structural integrity than any skyscraper has.
This is why the Windsor building is a poor example. This event did not occur. It was the WTC's own height working against it, giving the collapsing segments more and more mass until it was enough energy to break through the structurally sound floors.
People who claim there should have been a core, or or more left of it are people who try to compare this to other events, and often lack an understanding of physics and engineering. ALL of the steel in the WTC towers did not have to melt or be weakened. Only a small portion, in a small area, had to be structurally weakened enough to give way. The rest is simply F=ma
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
The only way any large building can collapse in such a short amount of time, is if it's ENTIRE support structures is instantaneously removed.
And the only way to have the entire support structure vanish instantaneously is to have hundreds of professionals working on placing explosives along the entire support structure. These explosives are set of using utterly standard wiring, in the case of something as large as the WTC, hundreds of miles worth of wiring. Finally, the explosives would have to be placed with extreme accuracy all around the building by drilling holes in the support infrastructure.
Now, what do you think is more likely, either the government has access to:
or, they have access to the MIB Neuralizer and they have bee able to Neuralize all the witnesses
Here's idea: The premise for you conspiracy theory is incorrect. The building never dropped as if all it's support structure was instantaneously removed.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Come on, now. It was plain to anyone who'd been studying the situation that Al Queda the culprit. It's not like that was their first time at bat. The question is whether or not you think the Saudi family/ies that were allowed to leave the country were actally Al Queda members or not, or had a hand in it. Do you REALLY think that if the government had hired the suicide attackers that... some other rich people from Saudi Arabia would have been somehow important to the plot, but that the people doing the "hiring" wouldn't have thought to maybe get them out of the way in advance? Please.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Informative)
It's in how the government knew exactly who was responsible, the minute it happened, and flew them the hell out of the country. WE KNOW THIS. Why doesn't anyone focus on it??
Total nonsense. The rest of bin Laden family had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks.
Also, the hijackers weren't using assumed names, they appeared on the flight manifests, and they were known. It doesn't take very long to add 2 and 2...
Also, bin Laden's relatives were allowed to leave the country after the national ground stop was lifted and not without being questioned. http://911myths.com/html/family_flights.html [911myths.com]
Re:obligatory comment. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:obligatory comment. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So... Umm... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So... Umm... (Score:5, Informative)
About 23,000 gal. of diesel fuel was stored in the bldg, mainly on the bottom floors but some as high as the 7th. "Several months after the WTC 7 collapse, a contractor recovered" the fuel from the tanks and, "unaccounted fuel totaled... somewhere between 0 and 2,000 gallons..." And "The worst-case scenarios associated with fires being fed by ruptured fuel lines-or from fuel stored in day tanks on the lower floors-could not have been sustained long enough, could not have generated sufficient heat to weaken critical interior columns, and/or would have produced large amounts of visible smoke from the lower floors, which were not observed."
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.html [nist.gov]
Anyway, steel bends in fires, that's why it has to be insulated and why steel bldg's must have sprinkler systems. I doubt the fire dept. was able to respond effectively in time.
Who modded this up? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is WTC 7 that we are talking about, not towers 1 or 2. It wasn't struck by a plane and didn't have hundreds of gallons of aviation fuel in it. As colfer pointed out, it had some diesel fuel tanks in the basement, but these were found to have not contributed largely to the fire (which was on the upper stories).
The conclusion of the board is that a normal building/office fire starting by falling debris from WTC 1 is what brought the building down. If we are going to be building dense cities with skyscrapers then it is important that a normal fire merely gut the building, not compromise it's structural support. The building techniques used in WTC 7 were not sufficient, and shouldn't be used in the future.
Re:So... Umm... (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously you've never done forensics at a fire scene. I have; my father was on the governor's arson squad (State of California Division of Forestry) while I was a teenager, and they used me as a photographer since my grandfather had given me an excellent camera. You would be amazed at what odds and ends survive the most awful fires.
Re:So... Umm... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, we've been so lucky to find Mohammed Atta's passport in pristine condition several blocks from Ground Zero one day after that hell-like firestorm brought down 1.2 million ton of material.
This [eclipsetours.com]... survived this [eb.com]...
Ever hear of jet fuel? (Score:4, Informative)
Let's see...hmm...full tanks of aviation grade fuel.
The 767-200ER, the UA plane which went into one of the towers, has a fuel capacity of 23,980. The flight was a few hundred miles from it origin at Logan International Airport in Boston.
Let's assume that the plan had only 15,000 gallons onboard.
The flash point of jet fuel is 100.4 ÂF (38 ÂC). Many surfaces - including the engines of the plane - would be well above this point.
In addition, there were numerous electrical connections which could have sparked causing the fuel to ignite.
Jet fuel has between 127,000 and 135,000 BTUs per gallon.
Therefore, at the point of impact we had between 1,905,000,000 and 2,025,000,000 BTUs of energy being released in a highly concentrated area (3-5 floors).
Even without the energy generated by the burning of other materials, this is sufficient to inflame the entire area and to cause the required heat damage to the tower.
Jordan
Re:Ever hear of jet fuel? (Score:5, Informative)
You assume wrong if you place any significance on the fuel capacity. Airliners almost never fill the tank up. Instead, they calculate how much fuel is needed based on the weight of the aircraft, then add a safety margin based on the distance to the nearest alternative airport and flying 30 minutes extra, and tank up that much, and not a drop more.
Flying excess fuel around is simply not economical.
In this case, the flight 175 was indeed a 767-200ER. "ER" denotes Extended Range; it's a plane that's capable of flying New York to Tokyo non-stop. Boston to Los Angeles is a far shorter trip, and it wouldn't need full fuel tanks. Especially since it was only about one third loaded. Also, a great part of the fuel had already been used as the plane had finished climbing and had passed New York, New Jersey and into Pennsylvania before it got turned around back to New York. So no, it almost certainly had nowhere near your guesstimated amount of fuel by the time it hit the tower. It likely didn't have that amount of fuel when it took off.
It did, however, have more than enough to cause critical damage, especially since the targeted building hadn't been built on a budget to specs, and not to be as safe as possible. Much could have been done to make the buildings withstand fire better, but then they probably never would have been built, due to costs.
Re:So... Umm... (Score:5, Informative)
The fire in the North Tower was still burning and spreading when the tower collapsed. While it was obscured somewhat by dust and smoke during the fall, flaming debris did spread out over considerable distances, some of it striking WTC7, breaking through the windows and setting aflame material in the lower floors, which spread rapidly as the collapse of the Twin Towers had done considerable damage to the water systems in the area, and water pressure for the firefighting systems was very low.
The immediate evacuation of WTC7 (among others) as soon as the evacuation of the main towers was ordered saved a great many lives.
Re:"Crackpot Theories" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Crackpot Theories" (Score:5, Insightful)
How many skyscrapers have people seen collapse which are NOT controlled demolitions?
In other words, how many data points do you have on "What does a skyscraper collapsing on its own look like"?
In other other words, how do you know that "falling straight down" is an artifact of controlled demolition, and not an artifact of being a skyscraper?
Re:"Crackpot Theories" (Score:5, Insightful)
The claims about it being controlled demolition misses some points that are important. No controlled demolition has ever been done for a building even the size of WTC7, let alone the main towers. The tallest ever was done by CDI in 1998, when the 439-foot-tall JL Hudson Department Store was brought down. The original WTC7 was 610 feet tall, and of course the main towers were more than twice that. Trying to map that out without being fairly obvious would be difficult at best.
It seems to me, in a bit of a thought experiment, that it makes sense that a skyscraper should come straight down, more or less. They are built around structures that are designed to withstand significant loads due to wind, bending slightly but not that much overall. If structural member breaks, even if it breaks outward, there will likely still be some connectivity to the core, preventing it from moving outward. The additional stress added to local joints would cause them to fail, but in a less outward direction, as some of that energy has already been redirected downward. This continues around the building as the collapse continues. Some of the materials in other parts of the building will tend towards their own outward motion, but be pulled back in by the remaining connection to the core, canceling out some of the momentum in the other direction. Ultimately, everything comes straight down.
I think that makes some sense.
Re:"Crackpot Theories" (Score:5, Insightful)
Both are afected by gravity, which exerts a downward force.
Re:"Crackpot Theories" (Score:4, Informative)
The principles of demolitions are pretty similar - you destroy the supports of the building causing it to collapse down on top of itself. The WTC towers suffered a similar failure only the primary cause was a combination of damage, stress and weight of material from above that caused the supports to fail, rather than controlled explosions.
Re:"Crackpot Theories" (Score:4, Informative)
So, the implication is that a big conspiracy set up charges to bring down the towers and that this conspiracy is good enough to never be uncovered, but not good enough to make it look unlike a professional demolition?
Also, I was watching it. The only thing that made it look like a professional demo is that the building fell downward. Professional demos have a bunch of blasts in a visible pattern to take out the major supports; the Twin Towers didn't have any of that, it merely fell in the direction of gravity, which doesn't much surprise me.
Re:"Crackpot Theories" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, you're right, holocaust deniers, intelligent design proponents, and 9/11 conspiracy theorists all feel like they've been denied the right to debate their theories.
The thing is, they're lying to themselves. They have lots of debates. I've heard 9/11 conspiracy theories deconstructed and made out to be bullshit lots and lots of times. Holocaust deniers do have conventions (like the one in Iran last year). Intelligent design, which should be laughed out of any adult conversation, has managed to actually be taught in schools and considered in courts of law. All of these people already get way, way, way, way, way more attention than their theories deserve.
These people say the opposite of the truth, not only when spouting their absurd theories, but when explaining why other people won't listen to them. "Oh, they're just sheep, led astray by a huge conspiracy." No, actually, you're a petty fool with a reality deficit. We don't ignore you because we are dummies, we ignore you because we have better judgment than you do and can see thru what you say.
Re:Controlled Demolition, of course (Score:4, Interesting)
No one ever expected a fire to burn out of control for several hours. There was always an anticipation that fire units would be dispatched and undertake steps to control the fire.
Civilian structures are designed based on the expectation that emergency services will be available. They are not constructed as bunkers, for the most part, as the expenses are simply too high to do that. Nevertheless, NIST made a recommendation to evaluate those buildings that use similar construction methods and suggests several possible cost-effective ways of mitigating the risk of collapse under similar circumstances.
Re:Just plain wrong. (Score:4, Informative)
The only video I see is one where someone repeatedly asserts the 'pulled' means 'demolished'.
There are plenty of manuals on controlled demolitions, and they don't get quoted. You know why? Because they do 'pull' buildings. That means to pull over a building using cables hooked to the supports.
You couldn't do that to WTC 7, and it wouldn't have gone down like.
The fun thing about the 9/11 Truthers is that their conspiracies make no sense. They have holographic missiles flying around, explosives in advance, news media with a scripted story that sometimes jump ahead.
Do you want to know how the US government would have actually done 9/11?
They would have installed non-overriddable autopilots on the airplane, either some sort of sleeping gas, or cellphone/radio jammers to keep the people from contacting anyone.
They would have tapped the phones of some of the passengers booked on United 93, recorded some of their voices, and forged phone calls from them. Hard to do in real time, but they were in a hostage situation on a plane, so if anyone you're talking to asks a question you can't answer, well, the call would get 'dropped' or the hijackers would take the phone away or something.
Then they would have flown the actual airplanes into the actual buildings and let whatever happened.
They would have not contacted any media in advance. They would not have replaced any airplanes. They would not have rigged the twin towers buildings to fall. They would not have used this opportunity to take down an unrelated building. They would not have put the planes they stole back into service under a different number. They would not use actual terrorists who can be found alive later. (They wouldn't have made them all Saudis instead of Iraqis.)
Re:Yes, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:yah, right (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ummm yeah right (Score:4, Interesting)
"It looks like they want to wrap-up this investigation and blame [the collapse] on normal office fires," said Gage during counter-conference.
Normal office fires? What the fuck is that guy smoking? This was not "normal office fires"
Oh, I get it, he's got an /agenda/. It's a crackpot agenda though.
Crackpots are the most annoying of all, because not only are they wrong, but their untested gedankenexperiments are so wrong you don't know where to start pointing out the wrongness.
"No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified."
But then this is some reason for Gage to think that the sulfur was part of the mystical "thermite" which contains no sulfur in its composition.
And he calls himself an engineer.
I'll tell ya what the source was. The sulfur was in the steel when it was manufactured. Please go look up AISI steel grades.
http://www.answers.com/topic/aisi-steel-grades [answers.com]
OMG! STEEL HAS SULFUR IN IT! AND PHOSPHOROUS! AND MANGANESE! AND MOLYBDENUM! AND COBALT!
Fucking retards
Making steel is like making brownies. There are recipes for all the grades and they have different elements.
"400 architectural and engineering professionals"
Just because it says PE next to your name it doesn't mean you're smart. It means you passed a test. I know of one engineer that totally bought into the bullshit over on Stormfront.org. Seriously.
Richard Gage is to architects and engineers as Jack Thompson is to attorneys.
Someone should seriously look into taking away his stamp.
--
BMO
Re:Ummm yeah right (Score:5, Informative)
God I get sick of this. Same arguments again and again, 7 years now, 7 years and we are still faced with the same psuedo-scientific babble.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to summarise here. Steel does not need to be 'melted' to be weakened well beyond safety margins, and beyond its required design strength. At moderately high temperatures it is weakened significantly. Go look up a materials handbook or two. The buildings collapsed in an entirely ordinary and predictable manner, they did not 'free fall'. Structures such as that are designed to collapse pancake style, like a concertina, they do not ever topple over. Can you imagine the extreme dangers that a toppling building of say 110 stories would pose to say, half of the surrounding CBD? The bomber in the 40s was not a jumbo jet, not even remotely close, there weren't even planes that big built back then. Neither did the planes that existed in those days have the same high strength materials embedded in them as in this case. I believe the NIST report suggests that elements such as the titanium axles used in the engines caused significant structural damage to the building core in certain places.
You *are* peddling a conspiracy theory. Multiple investigations and simulations have drawn the conclusion that the buildings fell down as a result of the observed evidence: Two fucking giant jumbo jets flew into them. Occams razor my friend. And you are here jabbering on repeating the same debunked theories of a small group of complete crackpots in the face of it.
I have worked in wrecking, do you have a clue? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I have worked in wrecking, do you have a clue? (Score:4, Interesting)
The most difficult issue to deal with is what yourself said. Steel frame skyscrapers are hard to bring down. It is especially difficult to bring them down into their own footprint such that there are no residual steel columns left standing. With due respect to the authors of this official report and their three years of computer simulations, I do not believe for one moment that thermal expansion from the burning of paper, desks and plastic fittings (even over a period of many hours) is sufficient to explain this. I also do not think it can explain molten steel in the wreckage weeks after the event.
It is true that significant preparation for a controlled demolition would have been required. From what I have read, it is not true that tons of TNT would have been required, or that the columns would have needed drilling if thermite charges were used. I am not saying that this is definitely what happened. I am saying it fits the observed collapse and debris better than thermal expansion.
Forgive me if I ignore your strawmen.
Now, please, if you have really read everything available and have a good explanation, please lay it out for us.
Re:No "crackpot theories" here... (Score:5, Informative)
I saw the video link, it might be helpful to you to be accurate and precise with what the owner said when you report. The owner said the firefighters had come to him and said they couldn't sustain the effort needed to control the fire and that they should pull "it". The "it" referred to the effort to control the fire, not pull the building down. The firefighters were admitting what they were doing was ineffective and they couldn't sustain the effort. They concluded there was nothing they could do so they told the owner they'd pull out the effort spent on the building.
The abutment of that clip with the building collapsing is misleading as is the whole clip. It is just someone's effort for 15 minutes of fame and nimrods like you help him...pathetic...
Gerry
Re:Nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
What evidence?
The BBC made a mistake, probably because of the huge amounts of confusion that was abound. As for your other claim about a 'NY radio station', that's not something I've heard before, and your lack of detail leads me to believe that you've just made it up.
Re:The Same Old Wrong Conclusions (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why firefighters had no fear whatsoever of going in there.
Citation needed.
I don't need any research to tell me that if you fly a large passenger airplane into a building then something really bad going to happen to it.
As far as WTC7, I've seen a whole neighborhood burned down in less than an hour because of one house catching on fire, I'm strangely led to believe that something on a much larger scale could have similar effects.
Re:no surprises here (Score:4, Informative)
If the WTC 7 did come down because of a government conspiracy (and I'm not saying that it did or didn't!) then it would stand to reason that a federal agency like NIST would draw a conclusion of structural failure rather than deliberate demolition. No big surprises here.
That's called affirming the consequent [wikipedia.org]. It's not insightful, informative, or valuable in any way; it's a fallacy.
Re:here's some science for you. (Score:5, Insightful)
You may wish to learn a little bit more about gravity here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_gravity [wikipedia.org] .
Re:Mission Accomplished (Score:5, Informative)
Fire doesn't melt steel. If you did metallurgy in college, you would know that above a certain temperature the most stable crystalline structure of steel becomes one which is a lot weaker. If you really care, you can google to find phase diagrams of steel like this one [wikimedia.org] that tell you exactly how steel behaves when you heat it up.
If you didn't do metallurgy in college, then you have no idea what you're talking about.