Where's Roark

Where's Roark to comment on this? Slacking off? How about Tom Murphy? You don't suppose that it is too tough even for their nimble minds, do yah?

 

This may be the best single piece on the molten steel that I have yet encountered. 

 

 

by Michael Zimmer (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 20 comments) on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 6:16:50 PM
 

Where's the beef?

"To finish, none of these stories prove there was molten (as in liquid) steel at the WTC. There's no evidence temperatures were hot enough to produce that (whatever the energy source), and some of the stories claiming "molten steel" have built-in implausibilities. There was certainly glowing metal, but this only indicates temperatures within the range of a fire."

by Alan Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 433 comments) on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 1:22:10 AM
 

Controlled Demolition, Bombs, Thermite, Molten metal.

  Many people interpreted the loud sounds and debris being projected out sideways during the Tower collapses as an indication that explosives were used to demolish the buildings. Most of these 'explosive' sounds, heard during the collapses were heard after the collapses began. The exterior walls can be seen bending and buckling inward in the videos of both Towers long before any sounds or ground vibrations occurred. In Tower 2, the exterior columns in the east wall were photographed bowing inward up to 10 inches, 18 minutes after the plane's impact. That's 38 minutes before the global collapse began. To be technical, you could say that Tower 2's collapse began slowly, with possibly some noise or impact sounds from falling floors, about 38 minutes earlier than the official collapse time. The explosive sounds and expanding dust clouds occurred just after the east wall buckled inward and started the collapse, and not before the buckling, as would have happened with controlled demolition. When the south wall of Tower 1 was photographed it was bowing inward up to 55 inches on floors 95 to 101, about six minutes before these columns were seen buckling inward.  In the North Tower "thunder" sounds were heard when floors collapsed on the south side 12 to 14 seconds before the top of the building was seen to tilt southward and begin falling as a unit starting the global collapse. Since each section of floor on the long-span side weighed about 500 tons, I would explore these 'explosive' sounds in Tower 1 as evidence of a floor or floors detaching and impacting the floors below on the south side which most probably accelerated south wall failure.  I believe all the supposed 'explosive' sounds can be explained by the impacts made by the collapsing buildings after the columns were pulled in and buckled by the bowing and sagging floors and when the floors themselves began impacting the floors below. The boom, boom, boom, boom, boom repetitive 'explosive' sounds reported by firefighters running as Tower 2 was coming down were most likely caused by the sequential collision of impacting floors (pan caking). The great quantity of air on each floor being compressed in a fraction of a second by great weight and momentum would propel air, smoke, and any concrete dust and debris outward at great velocity. It is clear from the computer studies that the heat from the fires caused differential expansion of the steel parts in the long span, floor trusses with the resulting thermal bowing in some floors directly exerting pull-in forces on the exterior columns or this thermal bowing could have detached a floor which would have impacted the floor below destroying composite action by separating the concrete slab from the trusses and inducing strong tensile (suspension) forces in the double weighted floor. In other floors thermal expansion of the floor against the columns compressed the trusses which along with shear forces within the trusses buckled the diagonal struts collapsing the trusses which went into suspension (catenary action) and helped pull-in and eventually buckle the exterior column walls. All these adverse floor truss effects were caused by steel expansion which begins immediately as the steel is heated. Bowing and buckling can happen at low temperatures (400 C to 600 C) even before the steel would have weakened excessively from higher temperatures. Once the exterior column buckling spread,- possibly assisted by the spandrels,- along an entire wall on one face the towers began to tilt and the buckling spread around the towers exterior and into the core and with all the columns buckled the leaning top sections of the tower began to fall straight down. Although the North tower antenna appeared from some northern angles to have fallen straight down it actually tilted to the south because the south wall buckled first and the cantilevered top building section pulled the core over to the south.  The South Tower's top tilted to the east because its east wall buckled first. Once the core columns got out of plumb, there would have been little resistance to their buckling at the weak splices. With the incredible weight of the top of the buildings gaining momentum, like a heavy wedge or sledge all it had to do was break the welded, and single bolt connections holding the floors to the columns. This coupled with the fact that the falling top sections momentum increases as the square of the number of floors impacted as the floors were detached and added to the weight of the descending top. There would have been little resistance to slow the top section's acceleration to the ground. Because this acceleration due to gravity increased the speed and momentum of the collapsing floors and building top, the impacts would have been increasingly violent as shown on the seismic graphs increasing amplitude until maximum when the mass of accumulated floors hit bedrock seven stories into the cellar. In order for a column to support the loads they have to be plumb and in line with the columns above and below. If they get out of plumb by 10 to 20 degrees they buckle and can no longer support the weight. The buildings collapsed because the floors first buckled from restrained thermal expansion and thermal bowing affecting floor truss stability. The sagging floor trusses pulled in the 59 columns in one exterior wall and they eventually buckled. Once the buildings started to tip over from loss of column support on one side the tremendous excess eccentric weight began buckling all the columns across the building. Once the tilted building's tops began descending they hit the floors or columns at eccentric angles which easily detached the floors and buckled the columns. In order for the lower building section to offer any meaningful resistance to the falling building top the columns would have to hit each other exactly in line and in plumb and this was impossible with the top leaning causing eccentric angles of impact. The fact is that columns have to be axially (in line and centered) aligned to support the weight of the building above. Once the top building section began tilting the columns on the side that originally buckled did not line up at all. These columns would have been hitting the floors and would have easily detached or buckled them. After the south wall  buckled in Tower 2 the adjacent perimeter wall columns buckled from overloads and the columns on the opposite west side of the building, which acted as a hinge would still be bearing on each other but at an eccentric angle which means they also would have also eventually buckled as the top tilted. These columns along with some of the core columns as they buckled are probably what kicked the bottom of the top building section to the west as reported by NIST. With all the columns across the building buckled the top section began descending at an angle to the building section below. None of the columns would have been axially lined up. As the columns collided they would have hit each other at eccentric angles and easily dislodged, disconnected or buckled each other. Adding the accumulating collapsing floors and you have a release of incredible potential energy changing to kinetic energy and building momentum as the accumulating chaotic mass of debris accelerated to bedrock 7 stories into the cellars.  There have been some engineering analyses about the impacting floors slowing down the collapse so that the time to collapse should have been longer than 'free fall' times of an object dropped from the towers tops. Since the Tower's outer wall columns, especially in Tower 1, pealed out like a banana, they may have been able to break the connections to the floors ahead of the floors being impacted? In other words, with the weight of the wall columns pealing outward from the vertical along with the added horizontal forces of impacting floors projecting debris outwards onto these columns; these columns, while leaning out, might have been able to break the wall-to-floor connections ahead of the level of impacting floors? If this is possible than I believe that the connection failures could could have traveled down the sides of the buildings at a speed faster than free fall times. This might explain the rapid collapses especially in Tower 1. The wall-to-floor connection failures could have traveled down the building sides faster than 'free fall' times and in effect started the floors falling before they were impacted by the accumulating mass of impacted floors above. The heavy exterior wall columns in the 1500 foot high builddings while pealing off could project the column sections outwards a great distance. This distance (500 feet) was proposed as only being made possible by explosive forces. I disagree. If a wall is strong enough it can fall out flat to a distance equal to its height.Much has been made of the fact that NIST only analyzed the events up to the point where the Towers were poised to collapse before runaway collapse began and failed to pursue the remaining collapse. This was largely because after collapse began the chaotic impacts of the floors, walls and columns colliding could not possibly be analyzed accurately with even the strongest computers. It was a strain on computer capabilities to analyze the mechanism of collapse past the point of runaway disintegration.   The compression of air in the elevator and air-conditioning shafts by the collapsing upper building section and floors, would project air, smoke, and dust down these shafts and out of the air intake or discharge openings on the lower mechanical equipment floors in the exterior walls. This accounts for the plumes of smoke seen projecting outwards from the buildings well below the collapsing floors. There were quite extensive vertical HVAC shafts built into the building. These shafts are connected to air conditioning exhaust and intake ducts open to the exterior on the mechanical floors. Collapse of these shafts would force the dust and smoke out these HVAC exhaust and intake openings in the side of the building.  The lightweight aluminum cladding's breaking free from the buckling columns also would have been propelled outward a great distance by this expanding cloud of air and dust. This would account for huge dust clouds and pieces of aluminum seen projected outwards from the upper sections of the collapsing buildings. The light reflected off these aluminum pieces at the north wall of Tower 2 would be interpreted as flashes from explosive 'squibs'. The flashes below the buckling east wall may have been from the aluminum cladding breaking free from the lower columns as they expanded after being unloaded of axial weight by the buckling of the wall above and their expansion breaking the connections to the cladding. Also explosives leave characteristic tears and fractures in steel, and such indications were not found in the debris pile.  After any fire in which the building collapses, there often remain deep seated, pockets of fire deep within the rubble pile These pockets of fire sometimes cannot be reached by water streams because of their being covered by debris. Air is sometimes drawn up from the bottom of the pile and feeds these inaccessible fires with air. The heat can become intense and can heat any steel in proximity of the fire until the steel is glowing red hot. These pockets of fire are common at burning building collapses and in no way evidence that that explosives or thermite were used to demolish the buildings.  These fires are similar to blacksmith fires where air is blown into the charcoals by a bellows to raise the temperature of the fire to heat a piece of steel or iron. The blacksmith can tell how hot the steel is by its color and can tell when the steel is soft enough to work it with a hammer.   These deep seated fires often have to be dug out by hand tools, back hoes or grapplers in order to expose the burning material for extinguishment. It is common to hold off hitting the fire with water until it is fully exposed in order to prevent the great amount of steam created from obscuring the work area until the fire is fully exposed and can be extinguished. This is what is happening in the picture of a grappler pulling out a piece of glowing hot steel from the debris pile so often described as molten steel. Such fires are incapable of melting steel unless they are supplied with pure oxygen. They can easily melt tin, lead, aluminum etc. Pure oxygen is used in oxyacetylene torches to actually burn and melt the steel when cutting. These torches were used to help clear the debris pile during search and recovery operations. A slag of melted and re-solidified steel and FEO2 is formed on the opposite side of the cut. This slag formation was erroneously reported to be evidence of cutter charges having been used to sever the columns.  Much has been made of the presence of molten metal in the debris pile after the collapse. Presumably this molten metal was somehow connected to explosions or thermite charges, but there were Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) battery rooms on some floors of the Towers and Building 7. These battery rooms supplied continuous battery power to computers if the electricity failed for any reason. These batteries contained tons of lead which melts at low temperatures [327 C (621 F)].  The heat form the fires in the debris pile could easily have melted this lead or the aluminum from the plane, or other metals from the computers. These were probably the metals that were seen flowing through the pile. NIST reported UPS in the 13th floor of Building 7 and the 81st floor of Tower 2. Additionally the EPA reported over 400 different chemicals in the dust and debris. These chemicals could easily be assembled conceptually to propose any type of chemical reaction imaginable including thermite reactions. In addition thermite reactions are rapid and wouldn't last the hours or days at which times the molten metal was observed. About the concrete destruction into dust; F.R. Greening did a paper called Energy Transfer in the WTC Collapse in which he says "the energy required to crush concrete to 100 μm particles is 1.9 × 1011 J, which is well within the crushing capacity of the available energy. Hence it is theoretically possible for the WTC collapse events to have crushed more than 90 % of the floor concrete to particles well within the observed particle size range." http://nistreview.org/WTC-REPORT-GREENING.pdf  I would also investigate the possibility that the concrete was sub par due to freezing during curing or too much air or water having been added during construction. The windows broken out and marble wall panels detached on the interior of the first floor lobby were probably because of torque forces experienced on the lower floor columns from the plane impacts many floors above. The reports of "explosions" in the cellars were also probably from such column displacements or from jet fuel ignitions in the elevator shafts. If you stick a stick into the ground and hit it with another stick most of the deformation will be in the ground around the bottom of the stick. There were reports of split walls and ceiling collapses on many floors after the planes hit.  

In conclusion I think the reports of controlled demolition can be explained by sounds or sights produced by the plane impacts and jet fuel and air explosions; the sounds of the Towers collapse, - remember most of the people in Tower 1 did not know Tower 2 had collapsed and attributed the sounds of that collapse to be happening in the building they were in. When the interior of building 7 collapsed it would have produced explosive sounds before the exterior walls began collapsing.

Arthur Scheuerman

by Arthur Scheuerman (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 11 comments) on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 12:33:50 PM
 

mental gyrations

Wow, one great big thought experiment, for which you have no empirical evidence.

 

Arthur, you said, “It is clear from the computer studies…” No, it is not clear. Data from controlled burns entered into simulations did not collapse the buildings in the simulations. Unrealistic data needed to be input to get the simulation to collapse. See here. (pdf)

 

“The boom, boom, boom, boom, boom repetitive 'explosive' sounds reported by firefighters running as Tower 2 was coming down were most likely caused by the sequential collision of impacting floors (pan caking).” NIST has disavowed the “pancake theory” in the FAQ’s they released. Your description also ignores the many eyewitness accounts of explosions throughout the buildings that happened well prior to the collapse sequence starting, from below as well as above.

 

“Once the buildings started to tip over from loss of column support on one side the tremendous excess eccentric weight began buckling all the columns across the building. Once the tilted building's tops began descending they hit the floors or columns at eccentric angles which easily detached the floors and buckled the columns. In order for the lower building section to offer any meaningful resistance to the falling building top the columns would have to hit each other exactly in line and in plumb and this was impossible with the top leaning causing eccentric angles of impact.”

 

Except, the tilt and roll of the first, upper mass was halted in mid roll by the building below it falling out from underneath the mass, accompanied by immediate, massive billowing dust clouds, even on the side away from the tilting mass where there would be little or no outward pressure. The billows began immediately upon movement, indicating immediate pulverization of concrete and office materials, decreasing potential energy and mass, expending kinetic energy in the pulverization and lateral and vertical billowing of dust.

 

The observable destruction front, progressing down the faces of the buildings in near straight horizontal patterns, not chaotic or asymmetric, “outran” the collapse of the corner structures. The corners can be easily seen to remain intact, while the even destruction front progressed rapidly down the face. The symmetry of this front does not jive with your imagined “eccentric angles of impact.”

 

My guess is you have visited the young turks at the JREF forum. I have seen similar arguments proposed there. It is all well and good to go through these mental gyrations to try to explain ONE building falling, but then to have to apply the exact same set of suppositions, “possibly’s,” “probably’s,” and “might have’s” to a second building which suffered a very different strike. This strains the probability meter to its max. And then to have a third building fall in an entirely unique manner from the first two, yet exhibit the same molten metal flowing in the basement for the third time in recorded history on the same day, breaks the probability meter altogether. 

by Stephen Demetriou (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 163 comments) on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 1:20:54 PM
 

Economist b.s.

by Kent Welton (49 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 37 comments) on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 1:46:46 PM
 

Pancaking

"NIST has disavowed the "pancake theory" in the FAQ's they released."

They only modified the thinking about the initiation of collapse, based on more and better evidence. There's no argument that after that, there was a pancaking effect, which is what was heard and mistook for explosions by many. The pancaking is clearly evident by the compressed floors found in the aftermath.

So when you say that NIST has disavowed the pancaking theory, that is misleading. They disavowed the pancaking theory of collapse initiation, but not the pancaking collapse proper.

by Alan Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 433 comments) on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 2:20:04 PM
 

That's a huge stretch

"So when you say that NIST has disavowed the pancaking theory, that is misleading. They disavowed the pancaking theory of collapse initiation, but not the pancaking collapse proper."

You know what the joke about that is?  Their first theory relied on weak bolts and joints, losing their strength, causing the floors to just fall.  Their second, even more unplausible theory, relies on those same weak bolts and joints to now become Hurculean in strength because they "held" so strongly they pulled the exterior columns inward causing the collapse.

Which is it?  The bolts were weak or the bolts were strong?  NIST's report is nothing more than one lie, covering another lie, covering another lie, etc. ad nauseum. 

by Pixie (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 39 comments) on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 6:18:39 PM
 

Very Good. Thanks.

The pancaking impacting floors happened after the collapse started. Did anyone think the 500 ton floors impacting each other as the building top came crashing down would make no sounds?

by Arthur Scheuerman (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 11 comments) on Monday, February 25, 2008 at 1:34:16 PM
 

the Taxonomy of 'Failure' theories

from J. Hoffman's 911 Research.com site

Collapse Theories

Theories Purport to Explain the Unexplainable

All theories to be taken seriously must explain the collapses of the Twin Towers as the result of some chain of events triggered by the jet collisions. To this end a variety of "theories" have been advanced. They range from vague notions of forces too immense to imagine, to partial explanations with huge gaps filled in by hand-waving, but are nevertheless dignified by publication.

• Core meltdown is more a notion than a theory. It is invoked through comparing the heat of the building fires to that of nuclear power plants, and supposes that the fires melted the structural steel. This theory can be used in conjunction with a pancake theory, but usually the idea of core meltdown is so compelling by itself that the pancake scenario isn't required. Since the core meltdown theory isn't endorsed by any official government report, it is frequently used in straw-man attacks against challenges to the official story, as in articles in Scientific American and Popular Mechanics .


• The progressive collapse theory is the root of all the official building collapse theories. The mass of the overhanging part of the building simply crushes the part underneath, accelerating as it falls. The two major variants of the progressive collapse theory are the truss failure theory, endorsed by FEMA, and the column failure theory, endorsed by NIST.
  • The column failure theory holds that the fires weakened the columns on at least one floor sufficiently to cause the columns to buckle, and the upper section of the building to come falling down. To explain how all the columns on one level could suddenly collapse, column failure theories sometimes feature collapse initiation theories.
    • The creep buckling theory explains how the weakening of some columns due to heat could cause them to buckle, starting the spread of a kind of buckle contagion through the remaining columns.
    • The progressing column instability theory is apparently very similar to the creep buckling theory, but allows the columns to spread failure contagion without buckling. This theory is a key ingredient in NIST's Global Analysis .
    Once the columns fail in unison, it is still necessary to crush the rest of the tower from top to bottom.
    • The pile-driver theory supposes that the top of each tower acted like a giant battering ram, crushing the intact portion of the tower from top to bottom.
  • The truss failure theory blames trusses under the floors, which are more easily heated than columns, and/or their connections to the columns. The failure of the floor trusses precipitates a chain reaction of floors falling on one another, which in turn leads to total building collapse. The truss failure theory is better known as the pancake theory. To explain how a whole floor could fall, despite uneven fire stress, requires a truss failure contagion theory.
    • The zipper theory explains how all of the trusses on a floor could fall in rapid succession because of a domino-effect failure of their column connections. The zipper theory is much easier to understand if one erases, as did NOVA , the perpendicular cross-trusses and floor pans, and imagines the floor as a series of parallel trusses resting on weak angle brackets.
    Once the first floor falls on the second, it must somehow exceed the design loads of the one below, which should have been able to easily absorb the impact of the first floor falling about nine feet, especially if it didn't fall all at once. Theories that explain this generally blame some aspect of building design and/or materials.
    • The angle bracket theory helps to explain the cascade of floor collapses below the fire zone by suggesting that engineers forgot to apply standard engineering practices when designing the column connections of the floor trusses. Mis-describing the welded steel shelves that supported the truss ends as angle brackets helps us imagine this.
    Once the floor diaphragms have started to pancake down between the core and outer wall, it is still necessary to dispose of the dense steel grid constituting the outer wall, and the steel lattice of the core structure. This requires some form of sudden column failure theory. Such theories are usually only implied in tellings of the truss failure theory. Sections of the outer wall and core structure are supposed to immediately collapse from lack of lateral support once the floor diaphragms fall away. Since the perimeter wall and core structure were easily self-supporting except possibly in high winds, sudden column failure theories usually take some liberties in describing the architecture of the perimeter wall and core structures.
    • The column splice failure theory has the outer wall breaking up along column splice connections between the three-story-high by three-column-wide prefabricated sections. This theory is easier to accept if one forgets that every set of three column splice connections was surrounded on both sides by six continuous column spans, bound to the spliced columns above and below by horizontal spandrel plates four feet high.
    • The freestanding core column theory has the core columns suddenly buckling catastrophically due to lack of lateral support from the floor diaphragms. This theory depends at least on the core columns being freestanding, as the FEMA Report allows, in contrast toconstruction photos that show them to be cross-braced by horizontal beams and diagonal trussing.


• The shockwave theory postulates some unspecified "shockwave" which travels ahead of the crushing mass, breaking up the building. Shockwave theories tend to be found in amateur attempts at accounting for the building collapses.

by richard (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 650 comments) on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 6:25:48 PM
 

Then of course .......

Then of course there's the take everything out of context creative writing theory, which can explain pretty much anything in any way desired.  Handy indeed.

That's the "truth" movement in a nutshell. 

by Alan Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 433 comments) on Monday, February 25, 2008 at 2:28:42 AM
 

Mischaracterization is counter to "truth"

Besides oversimplification, your main error is treating the FEMA and NIST reports as if they're somehow presenting equal competing theories.  No, the second builds and expands and improves upon the first, with the former no doubt being in complete agreement with the latter.

It's clear from reading the FEMA 403 report that it is strictly a preliminary effort:

2.4 Recommendations

The scope of this study was not intended to include in-depth analysis of many issues that should be explored before final conclusions are reached. Additional studies of the performance of WTC 1 and WTC 2 during the events of September 11, 2001, and of related building performance issues should be conducted. These include the following:

*During the course of this study, it was not possible to determine the condition of the interior structure of the two towers, after aircraft impact and before collapse. Detailed modeling of the aircraft impacts into the buildings should be conducted in order to provide understanding of the probable damage state immediately following the impacts.

*Preliminary studies of the growth and heat flux produced by the fires were conducted. Although these studies provided useful insight into the buildings' behavior, they were not of sufficient detail to permit an understanding of the probable distribution of temperatures in the buildings at various stages of the event and the resulting stress state of the structures as the fires progressed. Detailed modeling of the fires should be conducted and combined with structural modeling to develop specific failure modes likely to have occurred.

*The floor framing system for the two towers was complex and substantially more redundant than typical bar joist floor systems. Detailed modeling of these floor systems and their connections should be conducted to understand the effects of localized overloads and failures to determine ultimate failure modes. Other types of common building framing should also be examined for these effects.

*The fire-performance of steel trusses with spray-applied fire protection, and with end restraint conditions similar to those present in the two towers, is not well understood, but is likely critical to the building collapse. Studies of the fire-performance of this structural system should be conducted.

*Observation of the debris generated by the collapse of the towers and of damaged adjacent structures suggests that spray-applied fireproofing may be vulnerable to mechanical damage from blasts and impacts. This vulnerability is not well understood. Tests of these materials should be conducted to understand how well they withstand such mechanical damage and to determine whether it is appropriate and feasible to improve their resistance to such damage.

by Alan Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 433 comments) on Monday, February 25, 2008 at 2:50:30 AM
 

Finally!

An admission from Alan that more study is needed, precisely what the truth movement has been saying all along. An honest analysis of the truth movement's position on the collapse of WTC7 will find that our statements almost always include pointing out that FEMA stated unequivocally that the fire hypothesis is very weak, and needs more study. If you wish, Alan, to talk about mischaracterisations, YOU should be careful to be consistent in your statements. As Pixie very simply and eloquently states above, you can't have it both ways.

by Stephen Demetriou (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 163 comments) on Monday, February 25, 2008 at 7:07:16 AM
 

"Truth" movement never satisfied

"An admission from Alan that more study is needed, precisely what the truth movement has been saying all along...."

In no way shape manner or form did I "admit" that "more study is needed".  Even before the first FEMA work was done, we knew that a combination of damage and heat and gravity brought down the towers and WTC7.  Sure, it was nice to get a little more precise insight on the particulars, as was gained by the initial study and to an even greater degree by the second in-depth NIST study.  

And it might even be a nice luxury to fine tune things even more, but to what end?  Is it really prudent to spend more millions on tracking down that final 5 or 10% uncertainty?  Was it 52% fire and 48% damage, or was it 51% fire and 49% damage?  

BTW, they're currently working on what will probably be a very detailed report on WTC7.  Exactly what the "truth" movement is constantly demanding, more study.  But they're never satisfied, because it turns out that the more study is done, the better our understanding of the precise mechanisms involved in the failures.  And those mechanisms just don't ever seem to include bombs, thermite or even termites. 

by Alan Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 433 comments) on Monday, February 25, 2008 at 12:45:34 PM
 

Thanks...

My very sincere and heartfelt thanks to all those, Pixie, Medicis, George Washington, and all the other "truthers" who daily counter the illogic and gainsaying of the government apologists. As more and more evidence comes forward, and the arguments are further refined, the burden of proof rightly falls on those supporting the official misrepresentation of the facts. Thanks for all your efforts.

 

(Now get back to work...)

by Stephen Demetriou (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 163 comments) on Monday, February 25, 2008 at 7:38:34 AM
 

NIST WTC 7 study

is limited to what happened between floors 8 and, I believe, around 41. They are not looking at what happened in the basement, apparently, but the structural damage starting at floor 8. Another narrowly defined "initiation" sequence study that proves nothing, but more importantly, covers a multitude of sins.

by Stephen Demetriou (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 163 comments) on Monday, February 25, 2008 at 12:54:52 PM
 

911Blogger has the following article on high temperatures

A structural engineer who was a member of the team assembled by the American Society of Civil Engineers to investigate the World Trade Center site after 9/11 has described numerous phenomena indicating extremely high temperatures suffered by the WTC structural steel. This appears to be further evidence that high-temperature explosives, such as thermate, were used to bring down the towers.

Dr. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, who specializes in studying structural damage done by earthquakes and terrorist bombings. He flew to New York on September 19, 2001 to conduct a two-week reconnaissance of the collapsed towers, hoping to gain an understanding of how they'd come down. He was able to examine numerous pieces of steel taken from Ground Zero. [1]

He said the towers were exceptionally well designed and built, describing the WTC as "the best-designed building I have ever seen." [2] Yet the structural steel had suffered unusual warping and other major damage:

• Astaneh-Asl said that steel flanges "had been reduced from an inch thick to paper thin." [3]
• At a recycling center in New Jersey, he saw 10-ton steel beams from the towers that "looked like giant sticks of twisted licorice." [4] He showed the San Francisco Chronicle a "banana-shaped, rust-colored piece of steel" that had somehow "twisted like toffee during the terrorist attack." [5]
• He noted the way steel from the WTC had bent at several connection points that had joined the floors to the vertical columns. He described the connections as being smoothly warped, saying, "If you remember the Salvador Dali paintings with the clocks that are kind of melted--it's kind of like that." He added, "That could only happen if you get steel yellow hot or white hot--perhaps around 2,000 degrees." [6]
• In an interview in 2007, Astaneh-Asl recalled, "I saw melting of girders in [the] World Trade Center." [7]
• He found a foot-long twisted shard of steel that was "like a piece of bread, but it was high-strength steel." He commented, "I haven't seen anything like this [before]." [8]
• He came across "severely scorched [steel] members from 40 or so floors below the points of impact [by the planes]." [9]
• The fireproofing that had been used to protect the WTC steel also showed evidence of extreme conditions. In some places it had "melted into a glassy residue." [10]
• Astaneh-Asl saw a charred I-beam from WTC Building 7--a 47-story skyscraper that collapsed late in the afternoon of 9/11, even though no plane hit it. "The beam, so named because its cross-section looks like a capital I, had clearly endured searing temperatures. Parts of the flat top of the I, once five-eighths of an inch thick, had vaporized." [11]

These observations indicate that the World Trade Center steel was subjected to very high temperatures. Yet, while postulating that the towers collapsed due to fire (and without the use of explosives), even Thomas Eagar--an engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology--admitted, "The temperature of the fire at the WTC was not unusual, and it was most definitely not capable of melting steel." [12] One must conclude that the phenomena observed by Astaneh-Asl are therefore highly suspicious.

It may well have been because it offered such revealing clues that the remaining structural steel from the World Trade Center was so rapidly destroyed, being shipped abroad as scrap to be melted down and recycled. CBS News described: "The [cleanup] operation--which began days after the collapse, okayed by then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani--goes on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As a result, Astaneh has almost certainly missed seeing crucial pieces before they were cut up and sent overseas." [13] As the New York Times reported, the steel scrap was worth "only a few million dollars, a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars the cleanup" was going to cost. Yet the knowledge that could have been gained from it "could save lives in a future disaster." [14]

NOTES
[1] Kenneth Chang, "Scarred Steel Holds Clues, and Remedies." New York Times, October 2, 2001; Robert Sanders, "Report from Ground Zero." Berkeleyan, October 3, 2001; Jeffrey R. Young, "Scholars Work to Rebuild the World Trade Center Virtually." Chronicle of Higher Education, December 7, 2001.
[2] Keay Davidson, "Berkeley Professor Seeks the Safer Skyscraper." San Francisco Chronicle, October 22, 2001.
[3] Robert Sanders, "Report from Ground Zero."
[4] Jeffrey R. Young, "Scholars Work to Rebuild the World Trade Center Virtually."
[5] Keay Davidson, "Berkeley Professor Seeks the Safer Skyscraper."
[6] Jeffrey R. Young, "Scholars Work to Rebuild the World Trade Center Virtually."
[7] "Collapse of Overpass in California Becomes Lesson in Construction." NewsHour, PBS, May 10, 2007.
[8] Pamitha Reynolds, "Berkeley Prof Analyzes Structural Damage of the WTC." Berkeley Daily Planet, October 20, 2001.
[9] David Kohn, "Culling Through Mangled Steel." CBS News, March 12, 2002.
[10] Kenneth Chang, "Scarred Steel Holds Clues, and Remedies."
[11] Ibid.
[12] Thomas W. Eagar and Christopher Musso, "Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering, and Speculation." Journal of the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society 53 (12) 2001: 8-11.
[13] David Kohn, "Culling Through Mangled Steel."
[14] Kenneth Chang, "Scarred Steel Holds Clues, and Remedies."

 

Big acknowledgment to Shoestring blog. 

by Stephen Demetriou (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 163 comments) on Monday, February 25, 2008 at 3:38:43 PM
 

Tunnel-vision

Looks like most of those seemingly strange occurrences are more characteristic of a chaotic collapse, and the extraordinary amount of kinetic energy released by the initial failure, than they are of "thermate."

People familiar with explosives and their effects on steel, the very same who were intimately involved in the clean-up, have stated categorically that there was no evidence of any kind of thermate or any other explosive being used. 

by Alan Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 433 comments) on Monday, February 25, 2008 at 5:36:18 PM
 

Apparently not a bombeliever

"There are parallels between the failure of the MacArthur Maze ramps and the collapse of the World Trade Center towers," he said. "Both incidents were caused by a massive fire, fed by a large amount of fuel, weakening the steel structure.''

by Alan Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 433 comments) on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 2:37:01 AM