The notion that the WTC towers collapsed because fire weakened the steel is laughable.
The fact that other steel-framed, steel-cored buildings have suffered much longer burning, much larger in extent and, demonstrably, hotter fires, and yet never collapsed, shows how difficult it is in practice to bring down one of these buildings from fire.
Apparently, these buildings are robust structures, highly over-built to handle heavy wind loads; and it seems you would need to heat a large volume of steel, uniformly, over a wide cross-sectional area of the structure, to even have a chance of making one collapse in the neat, symmetrical manner witnessed (to the extent it is even, theoretically, possible to do this without resorting to explosives in the first place).
The easiest way to see that these buildings were rigged for demolition is to start by considering the fact that, between the time Flt. 175 hit WTC2 and the time the building collapsed, only 56 minutes had elapsed. And 56 minutes, simply, isn't enough time to develop a fire hot enough, nor large enough in extent, to even have a remote chance of getting enough steel hot enough to be a factor.
The best way to see the absurdity of the fire-mediated collapse theory is to make some simplifying assumptions...and apply some simple math and physics to the problem.
Say, for the sake of argument, that you’re concerned with one floor of the building. Assuming that you have an unlimited supply of readily combustible fuel available (which is, obviously, not true, but let's be generous), and there is no heat loss by convection, conduction or radiation (another ridiculous assumption, but let's give the shills every advantage).
Now, the rate at which the temperature rises on that floor will be determined by the composite thermal mass of the building materials associated with that floor, and the rate at which you can bring in oxygen to burn the fuel. Assuming, say, about 5E5 kg of steel, and about 1.4E6 kg of concrete, per floor (taking internet based numbers at face value), with specific heats of about 450 and 3300 J/kg*C, respectively, simple algebra shows that you would have to release about 3.27E12 Joules of energy to uniformly bring the temperature from ambient up to, say, 700 degrees C (starting to get into the interesting range, but probably still not high enough to cause a collapse).
The problem is that for WTC2, you have to release this huge amount of energy in only 56 minutes. That means you would have to burn somewhere on the order of 30,000 gallons of jet fuel in 56 minutes. That means you would have to supply air to the fire inside the building at a rate somewhere in the neighborhood of 6E5 cubic feet per minute.
That's right, in order to bring the temperature of one floor of a WTC tower from 25 to 700 degrees centigrade, uniformly, in a short 56-minute time frame, you would have to supply about 600,000 cubic feet of air per minute...for each of those 56 minutes. And that’s a ridiculously high number. And even if you did find a way to create such blast furnace like conditions, the fact of the matter is that you would convect a significant portion of the heat away, just like what happens in a fireplace; in order to let fresh air in, you have to let the heated, oxygen-depleted air escape.
If you were lucky, and the process was, say, 50% efficient (meaning the airflow only carried away half your heat), you would need to double everything, which would mean burning 60,000 gallons of jet fuel in 56 minutes, while feeding the fire with over one million cubic feet of air per minute.
By way of the above numbers, the absurdity of the "official" version of events is laid bare for all to see.
While the official government account of the events of 9/11, continues to bamboozle millions, the utter absurdity, and impossibility of this tale, continues to be overlooked! This is the crux of the 9/11 case. The nation has apparently been rendered too dumb, to figure out the simple fact, that the official story is worthless, as an actual explanation for the events of 9/11. Any way 9/11 is sliced, and diced, there is no getting around this, except of course, by superhuman feats of denial!
by
Rasoul Acheh (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 122 comments)
on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 11:02:45 AM
I meant to add, so adjust your quantity of available fuel to burn downward to about 10,000 gallons or so. Plus an assorted number of magazines, computers, and corkbord.......
Also, no hydrocarbon-based fire can account for the pools of molten iron and steel found under each of the three WTC towers that were demolished that day.
by
richard (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 650 comments)
on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 11:59:56 AM
The amount of fuel present would not have made a difference.
I don't care if the whole building was filled up with jet fuel. The important point is to realize that it is simply impossible to raise the temperature of almost 2 million kg of construction materials from ambient temperature to 700 degrees C (let alone 1000 degrees C) in the short time frame of only 56 minutes, in anything other than some kind of a specially designed high-tech monster furnace.
In order to release the huge amount of energy required to do this, you would literally need a dozen blowers the size of jet engines pumping air into the building...and when you factor in the heat you will also lose from all this convective flow, it gets even more ridiculous...we're talking about literally moving 20,000 cubic feet of air through the building, every second, for 56 minutes.
And this is completely physically unrealizeable nonsense.
by
jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 287 comments)
on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 5:16:42 PM
the temperatures of hydrocarbon-based fires. I was in a hurry (between patients ) and failed to include that. The fires didn't 'melt' anything. The fires were not sufficiently hot to even seriously weaken the steel.... according to NIST's own research. The towers were demolished. On Purpose. By folks Other Than the 19 (+ or - ) Muslims......
by
richard (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 650 comments)
on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 7:28:01 PM
The official version of most things the government is involved in generally turns out to be a lie in some way or another. Only just last week I read that the metalurgy tests for the bullets in President Kennedy's murder were a flawed process and there were likely at least 3 bullets, which makes it impossible that one person did all the shooting. At least 3 CIA operatives were photographed in the room of Robert Kennedy's murder, a simple fact that has never been addresses or explained. Nor has the look on President Shit-for-Brains face while he was reading the story of My Pet Goat. Personally...I think he had just figured out who the goat was.
by
Roger (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 287 comments)
on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 1:20:10 PM
It's a mistake opednews published this article, because it spreads more smoke over the real issues.
"Joseph Smith" and co. continue to peddle the wrong conspiracy theory, filling their arguments with so much junk. Smith admits his calculations are pretty well made up, and then draws conclusions!
The towers were mortally wounded by the impacts, and the fires didnt "melt" the steel, but weaken the floor trusses which pulled away from the outer walls. You can see this in a great pbs documentary a couple years old... the heartbroken architect of the towers knows how his design failed, and the cameras catch it in slow motion. To save money during construction, they failed to put in solid bolts linking trusses to the outer frame. It's like pulling ribs out of your side... your body will double over.
The towers didnt collapse neatly, you see them shearing apart as the kinetic force of the upper floors smashed each level. You can see part of the core standing separately quite high a moment after the outer parts had fully collapsed. The stongest bulding stands by it's weakest link, and the jet impact followed by truss-weakening fire, destroyed the integrity of the architecture.
It's not about melting steel, it's about disrupting the integrity at the weakest link, which is what happened. Who knows if there was pools of molten steel after, that is not explained by Smith's argument.
These stupid armchair conspiracy theories obscure the deeper issues, mainly how did the the very real 9/11 killers get through, and how was that event misused (like a date-rape drug) afterward.
I hope oped news stops publishing rubbish like this, because it is a discrediting diservice to the tackling of real problems.
~Ann Jones.
by
Ann Jones (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 9 comments)
on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 2:29:33 PM
How about another helping of inconvenient physics?
The wind-load design goal of the towers was somewhere around 90 or 100 mph winds. IIRC, NIST determined that the towers significantly exceeded their design goal, and could handle something like 150 mph winds.
Now a 150 mph wind will exert a pressure of about 95 lbs/ft^2 on a flat surface. Being that the towers were 1368 ft high by 208 ft wide, a 150 mph wind would exert a lateral force of about 2.75E7 lbs.
Now what kind of impulse force can you get from a plane striking the bldg.? A 250,000 lb projectile travelling at 500 mph would carry a momentum of about 5.7E6 slug-ft/sec. If all the mass were brought to rest in a few tenths of a second after striking the building, the forces generated would be about the same order of magnitude as the max as-built wind load forces.
So it's unlikely that the building suffered any severe global structral damage from the impact...and this would comport with the designers statements that the building could withstand an impact from an airplane.
I hope that clears things up for you.
by
jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 287 comments)
on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 4:59:26 PM
It's a mistake opednews published this article, because it spreads more smoke over the real issues.
"Joseph Smith" and co. continue to peddle the wrong conspiracy theory, filling their arguments with so much junk. Smith admits his calculations are pretty well made up, and then draws conclusions!
The towers were mortally wounded by the impacts, and the fires didnt "melt" the steel, but weaken the floor trusses which pulled away from the outer walls. You can see this in a great pbs documentary a couple years old... the heartbroken architect of the towers knows how his design failed, and the cameras catch it in slow motion. To save money during construction, they failed to put in solid bolts linking trusses to the outer frame. It's like pulling ribs out of your side... your body will double over.
The towers didnt collapse neatly, you see them shearing apart as the kinetic force of the upper floors smashed each level. You can see part of the core standing separately quite high a moment after the outer parts had fully collapsed. The stongest bulding stands by it's weakest link, and the jet impact followed by truss-weakening fire, destroyed the integrity of the architecture.
It's not about melting steel, it's about disrupting the integrity at the weakest link, which is what happened. Who knows if there was pools of molten steel after, that is not explained by Smith's argument.
These stupid armchair conspiracy theories obscure the deeper issues, mainly how did the the very real 9/11 killers get through, and how was that event misused (like a date-rape drug) afterward.
I hope oped news stops publishing rubbish like this, because it is a discrediting diservice to the tackling of real problems.
~Anna Jones.
by
Ann Jones (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 9 comments)
on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 2:30:18 PM
"The towers were mortally wounded by the impacts, and the fires didnt "melt" the steel, but weaken the floor trusses which pulled away from the outer walls. You can see this in a great pbs documentary a couple years old... the heartbroken architect of the towers knows how his design failed, and the cameras catch it in slow motion. To save money during construction, they failed to put in solid bolts linking trusses to the outer frame. It's like pulling ribs out of your side... your body will double over."
But the above is an obvious lie. For example, from Hoffman to an obviously false Wikipedia entry:
The following debunking of the above 'design criticisms' was added to the Wikipedia article on 10/22/05, and and has since been deleted and restored a number of times.
The first criticism omits and the second criticism minimizes the massive core structures of the towers, which contained 47 steel box columns arranged in a footprint measuring 87 by 133 feet. Many of the box colums had outside dimensions of 54 by 22 inches. The denial of the existence of these massive structures is helpful in imagining the pancake-collapse of the floors. Perhaps it is for this reason that the 9/11 Commission Report stated "The interior core of the buildings was a hollow steel shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped."
The second criticism asks us to imagine that the towers employed an unusual design, atypical of skyscrapers. In fact, most modern skyscrapers employ this design, which groups load-bearing columns in the core and around the periphery in order to create unobstructed office space.
The fourth criticism is contradicted by NIST's report, which states that the web trusses were both bolted and welded to the external columns, and that the truss-to-column connections probably did not fail. The failure of these connections would invalidate NIST's theory, which depends on the floor trusses pulling in the external columns. It is interesting that the fourth design criticism (that only single bolts connected trusses to columns) was endorsed by a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then blatantly contradicted by FEMA's Report. 1 FEMA's Report showed that each truss was attached to the perimeter wall with it top chord connected with two 5/8" diameter bolts and a welded 3/8" gusset plate, and the bottom chord connected with two 1" diameter bolts. (See Figure 2-6 in the left margin.)
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The BushBots like Anna/Marky expect you to simply believe their falsehoods because you won't check them out.
Anna/Marky write only lies.... That is all they have. That is all the Bushiebot apologist/shills have
by
richard (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 650 comments)
on Thursday, May 24, 2007 at 6:54:54 AM
Bro, I am not a lying shill, and this isnt about spreading Bushiebot propaganda (which I detest, by the way). I am merely telling you that the Towers' architect himself helped explain how his own design failed and helped kill many hundreds of people. The video, in slow motion, shows anyone with open eyes how the trusses pulled away from the exterior columns at the moment of collapse, exactly at the level of plane impact. The building's individual floors were not designed to resist vertical kinetic impacts from collapse, hence the "progressive collapse" phenomena captured for all to see (over and over!) on video. Rather than trying to protect a kneejerk belief system and labeling stangers like me as demons against your chosen belief (who is this Marky character?), why not be a real skeptic --starting with being skeptical of your own assumptions? We all know there is alot of b.s. around 9/11 and the endless warz that have followed, but let's not lose the forest for the trees : the Towers design failed because of physics, not from a hidden explosives conspiracy,... and the architect of the Towers knows this (and the slow-mo video shows this). Good luck to you.
by
Ann Jones (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 9 comments)
on Thursday, May 24, 2007 at 10:12:34 AM
Bro, I am not a lying shill, and this isnt about spreading Bushiebot propaganda (which I detest, by the way). I am merely telling you that the Towers' architect himself helped explain how his own design failed and helped kill many hundreds of people. The video, in slow motion, shows anyone with open eyes how the trusses pulled away from the exterior columns at the moment of collapse, exactly at the level of plane impact. The building's individual floors were not designed to resist vertical kinetic impacts from collapse, hence the "progressive collapse" phenomena captured for all to see (over and over!) on video. Rather than trying to protect a kneejerk belief system and labeling stangers like me as demons against your chosen belief (who is this Marky character?), why not be a real skeptic --starting with being skeptical of your own assumptions? We all know there is alot of b.s. around 9/11 and the endless warz that have followed, but let's not lose the forest for the trees : the Towers design failed because of physics, not from a hidden explosives conspiracy,... and the architect of the Towers knows this (and the slow-mo video shows this). Good luck to you.
It's my physics vs your unfounded, wishful thinking.
If you had read my article, the article you were originally supposed to be commenting on, you would see that my whole point is that under the circumstances, it would have been PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for WTC2 to develop temperatures high enough to significantly weaken the steel.
You simply cannot burn enough fuel in 56 minutes to heat the massive amount of building materials present in any given, floor-sized, horizontal slice of the the building, enough to get temperatures up into the range where the various "official" collapse scenarios need them to be.
Do you understand that? That's physics.
So please don't obfuscate with ridiculous strawmen and tell me about "melting" the steel, etc.
And please don't tell me you remember watching some emotional video about the designer confessing to the world that his design was flawed, etc. If you have information that contradicts what I'm saying here, please cite specific refrences in support or provide links to the information. Thanks.
by
jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 287 comments)
on Friday, May 25, 2007 at 6:10:47 AM
Yes, she/he should be specific. The buildings were actually three buildings on top of each other for added strength. Each of those junctures had to be taken down in order to "collapse" the building. Since she/he likes slow motion maybe an examination of the buildings as they actually exploded would be helpful.
WTC7 was classic demolition (implosion). WTC1 and 2 were not classic, they were explosions with material flying out 300 to 500 feet. Where did that force come from. WTC 1 and 2 were very high tech demolition. Steel beams flew as far as a football field and more. Bodies were found on other building roofs. Not an implosion or collapse. This was Explosion.
Had the buildings actually "collapsed" they would have damaged the bathtub and flooded Manhattan. The material from those buildings had to be pulverized and flung (exploded) out. And all this happened in about 10 seconds. The reason we can't get real debate in the media is because they are terrified of the facts. If they thought they were right they would let it be debated in the sunshine and get it over with. Instead they have to scream and run and cover their ears. But we are NOT going away.
The longer they suppress the stronger we will get.
by
BreezyinVA (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 16 comments)
on Friday, May 25, 2007 at 10:07:38 PM
For an impressive list of Military Men, Intelligence Service, and Government Officials
Patriots Question 9/11 (linked below)
http://patriotsquestion911.com/#Davis
A physicist analyzes the collapse of the towers.
Major New Paper Published by Dr. Steven Jones | 911Blogger.com
http://www.911blogger.com/node/8573 If you really want a scientific article about the facts instead of uninformed emotional statements, access the Website above. Not easy reading. Very heavy on use of physics to analyze the situation.
by
Christie (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 141 comments)
on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 4:23:36 PM
Either it's the same "person", or the programming is shallow
It seems I may be one of the first people to point out that the 56 minute impact-to-collapse time-frame for WTC2 poses a serious technical hardship for shills.
Who knows, maybe Shill-Central will now have to somehow reprogram all their 'bots, to better accomodate this novel argument.
It would have been nice if Rosie or someone could have brought it up for the first time while on the air, during a live confrontation with a shill.
by
jpsmith123 (3 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 287 comments)
on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 9:19:17 PM
Folks, I am not a Bushiebot shill, etc. (actually a pro-impeachment indie progressive, whatever that means), but you conspiracists are barking up the wrong tree, and it embarrasses the real Bush-war critics. OpEd News should know better, and steer clear of these ridiculous arguments.
Smith uses specious calculations, like total heat needed to melt the total mass of steel/concrete within x time-frame, but that isn't what happened. Watch the pbs and other documentaries, where the Towers' architect, heavy with the death of thousands under his designs, joins in explaining how the two towers failed in design. It's not about heating a total buildings' mass in a short period of time with limited fuel-air sources, it's about overstressing the weakest links, which appears to be exactly what happened. You can see the floor trusses pulling out of the exterior columns (puffs of smoke indeed) precisely at the level of impact at the moment of collapse, in slow motion... are you guys blind? Listen to the architect in the pbs doc. You've let your necessary skepticism become a knee-jerk religion., and it harms/distracts from the real issues of the day.
I'll repeat, the conspiracy isnt who "blew up" the Towers, but who allowed or how did the real 9/11 hijacker killers get through, and how was the event used afterwards (like a date-rape drug).
Maybe building 7 was "pulled", i wasnt there who knows (although the thousands of gallons of diesel fuel pumping into that fire sounded reasonable to me), but calculating wind-resistance and total heat needed to melt total mass in the two towers is ridiculous because it ignores the specific architectural wounds/weaknesses, as understood and explained by the heartbroken architect himself. The central columns in one of the towers actually partially stayed erect after the floors had sheared away to the ground, you can see this in the collapse video through the smoke... if you care to. The static energy of the upper floors turned into kinetic vertical energy when the weakest links of the architecture failed (the trusses). The buildings werent designed to resist vertical kinetic energy, and thus the "progressive collapse" (as any child can see) starting precisely at the level of the plane-impact wounds and fire areas, where video and eyewitnesses see the buildings buckle and then progressively collapse. [Were the "explosives" used in Smith's fantasy located exactly at the plane-impact area, and did the "demolition crew" pre-protect the bombs from the fires and wait the hour or two to set them off just so that it all appeared to collapse exactly at the place of impact...?! ...oh please, spare us...] Use your eyes!
The 9/11 truth crowd is unfortuantely a kneejerk religion, not a helpful group in healing/preventing wars, or even in understanding the complexity of our real (as opposed to conspired ) problems. This all really the worst and most embarrassing misuse of critical thinking, y'all may as well become fundamentalist christians for all the childproof architectural and video evidence that could be offered to and refused by your knee-jerk made-up minds. (Notice how I am sudenly labeled a "Bushiebot shill" because my argument steps on the toes of a BELIEF SYSTEM... just like you instantly become a "Sinner going to HELL" when you exist differently from the fundy christian... same psychology)
No offense, Smith and co., but these "the towers were demolished" arguments are disgraceful and distracting from the real issues. Get a job.
by
Ann Jones (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 9 comments)
on Thursday, May 24, 2007 at 9:38:31 AM
Ditz, if it's THAT easy to bring buildings down, why not save the money and fly tanked up jumbos into buildings instead of going through all the trouble of calling demolition teams in ?
Those people cost REAL DOLLARS !
by
Tony Forest (4 articles, 10 quicklinks, 116 diaries, 1007 comments)
on Thursday, May 24, 2007 at 1:51:35 PM
Within the first month after 9/11, I realized there had to be government complicity in letting the hijackers reach the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when the civil air traffic control system can detect immediately when a plane deviates from it flight plan and the protocol calls for civil air traffic control to inform the military within minutes. But then I remembered being
