open challenge on webcameron by non-believer......

[stav]

this is an open challenge on webcameron, i have spent ages trying to convice him otherwise, does anyone else what a try, here is the challenge.
Prove Me Wrong (9/11 WTC Collapse FAQ)
http://www.webcameron.org.uk/blogs/2364-Prove-Me-Wrong-911-WTC-Collaps e-FAQ

Posted by kozmicstu on Friday, 02 February 2007 16:13:32

I'm posting this here because I'm tired of repeating myself in multiple threads and saying exactly the same thing over and over again. I will attempt to be concise, illustrative and exact in what I say, and put everything into laymans terms for you. As the title suggests, the aim of the thread is for somebody to prove me wrong, if I am. Please, resposes ONLY to the points made in THIS posting - attempts to deviate, change subject or confuse the issues at hand will not be dignified with responses. This thread is about buildings WTC1 and WTC2. WTC7 is entirely different and needs to be tackled seperately. Please do not respond to the thread with questions/info about WTC7, OR the Pentagon attack.

I have, in fact, said this four times now on seperate threads, and nobody seems to grasp what I am saying, so I'm going to put this forward step by step with as little room for confusion as possible. I'd appreciate it if you could do me the honour of genuinely and carefully reading what I say, and then you may commence proving me wrong. I promise you, I come not from a point of ignorance, but from having heard all of the questions and accusations and given them due thought. Please don't just throw insults at me.

How did the Twin Towers fall down in 11 and 9 seconds?!

Several people keep asking exactly the same questions, and I can easily assume they've all at least been told that the fastest you can fall from 417m is 9 seconds, and are amazed because the NIST says that the towers collapsed in apporximately 9 seconds. Considering that there was a large amount of material in the way of their descent, providing resistance, this doesn't seem to make sense.

1. The NIST says that a complete collapse took place in 11 seconds

No, they don't. NIST never said that. Nowehere is it stated that the entire building collapsed in 11 seconds. This point is the one that seems to be catching most people out. The NIST does not say that the buildings collapsed in 11 or 9 seconds. There is no video showing the collapse of the buildings in 11 seconds. There is simply no way to tell how long it took for the top section of the building to reach the ground, nor how long it took for a 'total collapse' to take place. This is because of the amount of smoke and dust obscuring the bottom of the building. When the smoke begins to clear in the videos, you can quite clearly see large sections of building that have not yet collapsed.

2. So where did 11 seconds come from? Are you saying the NIST are wrong?

"NIST estimated the elapsed times for the first exterior panels to strike the ground after the collapse initiated in each of the towers to be approximately 11 seconds for WTC 1 and approximately 9 seconds for WTC 2" Now, read through that sentence again carefully, particularly noting the bit where it says "the elapsed times for the first exterior panels to strike the ground". The exterior panels, as the observant ones may have already noticed, are not part of the central column of the building, and would not necessarily be slowed down by impacts and resistance on the way down. Therefore, you could expect the time it would take for these panels to hit the ground would be quite close to 'free fall' speeds. They were.

3. So how long did the buildings take to completely collapse?

Even NIST do not speculate. I have not heard a single conspiracy theorist speculate. You quite simply cannot tell, because of the smoke. What the NIST do say is that "significant portions of the cores of both buildings (roughly 60 stories of WTC 1 and 40 stories of WTC 2) are known to have stood 15 to 25 seconds after collapse initiation before they, too, began to collapse." This suggests a total collapse time of 25-35 seconds. I have watched the collapse videos, and I definitely can see large portions of building still standing behind the smoke during the collapses.

It is important to remember that no timings can be guaranteed OR accurate, as there is always going to be considerable margin for error amid the calculations. An error of only 1 or 2 seconds can also make a huge difference.

4. But the steel could not have melted at the temperatures inside the towers

No, they could not. Again, nobody ever said they could have, except for those who are creating straw men for the purposes of their arguments (and possibly some people who didn't know any better, but they can be safely ignored). What is entirely plausible is that the steel may have weakened under the increasing temperature. When you consider the pressure that the steel was under, it is plausible that part of the support structure buckled. There is another important and subtle point to be made here, and I'm going to devote the entirety of question 5 to it.

5. The steel should not have buckled at the temperatures inside the tower

Now, this all comes down to who you want to believe. Nobody knows for certain what the temperatures WERE inside the tower. Nobody is exactly certain how high a temperature is needed to buckle the steel. Nobody knows how much damage had been done to the steel by the aircraft impact. What can be said is that it is PLAUSIBLE that the impact of the aircraft damaged the fireproofing. With the fireproofing damaged, it is again PLAUSIBLE that the steel could have reached temperatures up to and exceeding 1000C. At those temperatures, the steel would be seriously weakened, and could easily have been weakened enough to cause buckling under the not negligable force of the top section of the building. Notice, the most important thing about this section is that it is emphatically not impossible for this to have happened. Those who claim it is impossible are, simply put, wrong. Note, I am not saying that the steel melted, nor am I saying that there were temperatures high enough to melt the steel. I had an analogy using a spoon and a Zippo lighter. You can weaken a steel spoon to the point where it will bend and eventually snap using just a Zippo lighter, whose flame never reaches the melting point of the steel. You are not melting the steel in the spoon, just as the fires did not melt the steel girders in WTC, but you are significantly weakening it to the point where it becomes strucurally unsound.

6. The top section of the building should have broken off and fallen sideways

It would require some considerable force from the side for this to have happened. The only forces acting on the building were wind and gravity. The top section of the builing had a massive amount of inertia, and so the wind would have little effect, not to mention that it was still connected to the bottom section of the building, keeping it centred. Gravity, on the other hand, would be acting directly downwards on the top section of the building with a huge amount of force, pulling it in a straight trajectory through the rest of the building. The building would collapse roughly onto it's own footprint, with the central column leading the outside by a small distance, due to the fact that the center was the first part to start falling. As it falls, it would gain momentum and velocity, as more weight and more gravitational acceleration take effect. Due to the aforementioned massive (and increasing) inertia, each successive floor would cause less deceleration to the falling section than the one before it. Thus, the falling objects velocity would increase exponentially.

7. But WTC7 fell at free fall speeds!

Yes, yes it did. I know I said I wasn't going to talk about WTC7, but I'll just quickly answer this. I hope sincerely it doesn't distract from the main point of this post. the top floors of WTC7 fell at free fall speed, or near enough. This is because there were no resistive forcs to their motion. If you look at the video, you see that all the floors of WTC7 are falling in parallel. Because of this, no one floor is resisting the downward motion of those above it. This is the exact opposite of how the WTC1&2 buildings collpased: with them, the top part of the building fell and would have hit the bottom part as it came down. This is why it is important to remember that those buildings DID NOT fall at 'free fall' speeds. WTC7, however, started falling from near the bottom. You can clearly see this in the videos. Collapsing from the bottom means that there is no upward forces to resist the downward motion, besides the contact force of the ground. As you can again see quite clearly in the video, the ground is pulverising each floor as they hit it, as you would expect. Since there is little or no time when the building is travelling through air, there is no air resistance. As to why it started collapsing from the bottom, I can't adequetly answer as there is not any information to go on. There was a large fire on floor 5, though. Another thing that is important to note is that the collapse of WTC7 was not unexpected - because of creaking sounds and parts of the wall leaning outwards in a dangerous fashion, the building had been evacuate for fear of a collapse

8. Will this post ever end?

I hope to see people replying sensibly - remember, if you deviate from the topics in this post, be prepared to be ignored. I'd like somebody to tell me exactly why the above is entirely 'impossible' as claimed by many of the theorists. I'm not interested in links to other sites or stories of professors or engineers who believe otherwise, or letters people have sent to important figures. I want you to actually explain, in exact, clear, precise detail, why the above is IMPOSSIBLE. Nothing less will do. When you have ruled out all impossibilities, as Sherlock Holmes said, the possible - however unlikely, is undoubtedly true. If it is not impossible, then it is the explanation that makes the most logical sense.

An open challenge, then. Convince me.

911, collapse FAQ

[spiv]

Hi stav, I'm not going to argue further with the w*nker, he has "debunked last night after actually looking at the 'evidence' for more than five minutes" (his own words) what has beaten many of the physicists around the world who have been trying to find explanations for the free-fall collapses for a couple of years now.

What a plonker he is. And I just don't feel he will ever see reason, no matter what the arguments put to him are. This guy is convinced he has single handedly pulled the carpet out from under all our "truthseekers'" feet by a five minute "looking at the evidence".

Anyway, if you want to persevere, in response to his points 1,2 & 3, collapse times can be obtained from seismometer readings, try:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/LCSN/Eq/20010911_WTC/fact_sheet.htm

or (although I don't agree with everything Judy Wood says these days):
http://janedoe0911.tripod.com/Shake.html

Good luck, but I've grown very weary of this clown.

[stav]

this is what kozmicstu on webcameron is going to post next...
Since we're on a break from 9/11 over on WCTO, I'm putting up here what I was going to put up there, sort of as a dry run...



OK, so following on from the last FAQ thread, several questions were raised which need addressing. The thread in question, though, seems to have deteriorated into mud-slinging, name-calling and 'macho posturing'. Considering this, I am going to do my utmost to continue answering the questions that are being raised in a clear and precise manner, but I'm going to abandon that thread and individually answer the points brought up in it over here. This is for two reasons: It gives us a nice fresh start where we can all be civil to each other, and it means I don't have to repeat what I am saying anything like as much.

So, on to the FAQ, Part 2:

1. The Seismometer shows a collapse taking 8 or 10 seconds

If you watch the collapse, you will see that these numbers are self-evidently not indicative of the entire collapse time. The collapse took well over 10 seconds, to me it looks around 18-20 on the majority of the videos I have looked at, but some people disagree with that, and that is fine. Nobody watches the video and thinks it's only 8 seconds, though. The collapse could not have only taken 8 seconds, as the pieces of building would not have time to fall to the ground in that amount of time.

2. How could the seismometer be wrong?

I am afraid I am not a seismologist, and so I can't answer that question. I can suggest that it probably isn't wrong per-say, but what it shows has been misinterpreted, like the NIST collapse times? It doesn't really matter, though. It is obvious that the building did not fall in only 8 seconds. When looking at the collapse video, incidentally, you should note that the free-falling debris falls considerably faster than the collapse of the tower, showing that the tower is not in free-fall. Scrubsupwell has helpfully put this point into an easily understandable picture which I will borrow for this posting. Thankyou, scrubsupwell!


North Tower Collapse Pic

3. Why are you so interested in how fast the towers collapsed, anyway?

I'll admit, this is mostly out of sheer frustration. The so-called free fall speeds with which the towers collapsed has been used so many times by so many people as 'irrefutable evidence' that the towers were not brought down by gravity that when I found out that it is a fallacy I became incensed. The unwillingness of so many people to simply look at the above picture and see that the towers are not in free fall simply astonished me. I may have driven the point home a bit far, but I think it's really important to get out in the open the fact that this accusation - that the towers fell at free fall speeds - is entirely false.

4. Free fall or no free fall, it's too fast for the 'pancake theory'

This is true. I looked up how pancaking buildings collapse and I can categorically say that pancaking would be too slow to explain the speed of the collapse. The towers didn't pancake, though. It's called pancaking because at the end you are left with a series of floors stacked directly on top of each other, like a pile of pancakes in an American breakfast. The World Trade Center debris did not look anything like this, and above this the WTC towers didn't have a series of large strong floors, but a mesh of steel round the outside, a steel core in the centre, and floors that were essentially 'hung' between the two. Pancaking, in other words, could not possibly have happened to the twin towers in any circumstances. The pancake theory was refuted years ago and superceded with the progressive collapse theory. When 9/11 Mysteries disproves the pancake theory, in other words, it is shooting straw men

5. So, what's progressive collapse?

The buildings didn't pancake, but that doesn't rule out a gravitational collapse. Pancaking involves the top floor falling on to the next floor down, which then falls on to the next floor, which then falls onto the next floor and so on. In the WTC, however, it wasn't the top floor which fell, but the top 17 (or 30) floors. The pancake theory doesn't cover this, but the total progressive collapse theory does. According to the progressive collapse theory, all that needs to happen to trigger a total collapse is to have sufficient mass in the collapsing section of the building to overwhelm the supports at the first point of impact. To quote Zdenek P. Bazant, "Regardless of the load capacity of the columns, there is no way to deny the inevitability if progressive collapse driven by gravity alone if this criterion is satifsfied (for the World Trade Center it is satisfied with an order-of-magnitude margin)" (emphasis mine)

6. So what about the molten steel?

I'm not going to use the conspiracy theorist tactic of diverting attention away from areas where I am uncertain. I do not know what melted the steel, and I do not know what it's doing there. I'm not sure why it really matters that much, though. It's certainly not the smoking gun that you seem to think it is. There could be several different possible explanations for it, and since it was found many months later it is not evidence of the condition the steel was in at the time the buildings collapsed. Where is the evidence saying the steel was molten before or during the collapse? More on this later, maybe.

7. What about the NIST steel strength tests?

I went looking for a report on these tests and couldn't find one. I'd like to see one. I keep hearing the results, but not the details. In particular I'd like to know whether the pieces of steel tested were the same length as in the building supports, and whether they were tested for strength vertically, horizontally and diagonally. These are extremely important details which speak directly for the usefulness of the tests and the results. If somebody can point me to this information I'd be grateful, and I'll replace this paragraph with more information if it arrives.

8. The demolition was specifically designed to look like a natural collapse

I'm afraid I see this as the last dying breath of a failing arument. I'm not saying you are necessarily wrong, just that this seems astonishingly desperate

The next few questions deal with responses to my last post that I have heard and taken in and do not require repetition

9. You clearly haven't done any research

In writing these two FAQs, I have drawn upon several sources, including a number of peer-reviewed scientific articles which I got to using my university access. I have listed some of these sources in the last thread if you really need verification. I have also watched Loose Change, and most of 9/11 Mysteries. I have briefly looked at the FAQ which NIST put up, and also a site which attempts to debunk that FAQ. I have been to the Loose Change web site, and also the Screw Loose Change web site. I have been to the 9/11 Mysteries web site, and also Screw 9/11 Mysteries. I promise you, I am reading carefully and trying to look at both sides of the argument. The one thing I have not done is read the official 9/11 Commission Report. This is for two reasons: the first is that I can't be accused of simply defending the official story if I haven't actually read the official story. The second is that the conspiracy theorists claim it was a whitewash and a coverup anyway.

10. How could you have watched 911Mysteries and still not believe it was a controlled demolition?

I noticed many many points during the film where information is distorted, where holes appear in the logic and where huge assumptions are made without basis. I'm not saying the whole thing is entirely wrong, I'm saying it isn't impartial (they sell the DVD for $18 for God's sake!), it IS propaganda, and the things it says must be taken with appropriate skepticism. Just as an example of a logical flaw, towards the start of the film (~10mins) the cores of the WTC towers are described as 'indestructible', and it is asserted that they were 'completely demolished' in the collapse leaving 'no large pieces'. This is used to suggest that the core was systematicallly destroyed from the top down by explosives. Later on, around 25mins, a video is shown, noting specifically the large section (700 feet) of the North Tower's core that survived for many seconds after the collapse had finished. This is used to 'prove' a different point ("what force acts upon the core to make it all of a sudden disappear?" The answer to her question, of course, is gravity). If the core was systematically pulverised with explosives, why did such a large piece survive? The two things are mutually exclusive.

The film makes no sense in several places, raising far more questions than it solves. It makes comparisons to the collapses of other buildings which are not in any way comparable to WTC. I watched it and was unimpressed, as you might be able to tell.

11. You are <insert insult here>

You are probably correct.

12. You probably work for the US Government

I wish - they pay a lot more than a university, after all. Alas, I do not currently work for the US Government, nor am I speaking on their behalf, nor am I a plant or a troll - I am in fact a regular on this site who has finally tired of being told his is ignorant.

13. Why are you spending so much time over this?

Says the conspiracy theorist who has not posted a single message about any other topic.
People in the buildings heard explosions

What would be really surprising is if the buildings were hit by planes and there were no secondary bangs, crashes or explosions. There are numerous things within the buildings which could cause such sounds. Falling objects, elevators coming down their shafts (and hitting the bottom of the shaft), Electrical equipment shorting, air pressures changing within the building because of the fire, and so on and so forth. Can anybody prove unequivocally that this is NOT what the people involved heard?

But Thermite, Thermite!

Have you seen how much Thermite would be needed? You're talking about a ridiculous amount of the stuff! Huge amounts! Loads! To do what you are suggesting with thermite, you would need to place several thermite charges on each level of the building, each charge being several kilos of thermite. You'd also have to time each one perfectly, and know in advance which floor the plane was going to hit. You'd also have to be absolutely certain that neither the plane's impact, nor the fires afterwards, would damage the mechanism. [/b]

[spiv]

Hee heee stav, this guy's still clinging on to his deluded circular arguments. Not even worth arguing with him any more, he'll never see it!!! I love the way he thinks we are all expected to prove him wrong. I really couldn't care less what he thinks!!

[stav]

i agree spiv, its funny reading his logic.
the bump is gonna hurt when he comes back down to ground from where he is.

[spiv]

Yup, he had no idea of any of the questions surrounding the events of 911 a week ago, now he's the Tory party expert!!

I have to say though, that the great thing that is happening is that the full arguments and questions are being mapped out. Anyone else reading it may well start to gain some understanding, and a host of questions themselves, and then doubt and.... well, you know how it is, we've all been there.