A growing number of scientists are opposing reports by NIST and Fema regarding the 911 World Trade Center collapse.

I personally will not take it upon myself to say how these buildings collapsed. I find it strange that somebody that calls themselves a scientist would agree with NIST findings just because of NIST reputation, and not because of the content of their findings. I find these reports of the National Institute of Science and Technology unsound. They are just very flawed.

Towers 1 and 2 were structurally sound. The findings basically point to deteriorating structure, impact of large airplanes dislodging fire proofing, and jet fuel heat, and a pancake effect.

Does anybody not find this absolutely absurd?


Seven hours after Tower 1 and Tower 2 fell, the 47-story WTC Tower 7 collapsed. Supposedly, fire and debri caused Tower 7 to fall in the form of a highly professional demolition. Anybody who knows anything about demolition knows a collapse of a building that perfect (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj487RNAi14) is like saying the artwork on Mount Rushmore occured by natural erosion.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Mountrushmore.jpg

Oh, no!!! Not THIS old stuff again!!!!!

What conspiracy theory do you prefer, then?

One alternative is that the buildings are actually designed in such a way that all three of them can fall into their own footprints if they are struck hard enough from a random direction and set on fire.

Calling it "this old stuff" doesn't cut it.

One alternative is that the buildings are actually designed in such a way that all three of them can fall into their own footprints if they are struck hard enough from a random direction and set on fire.

Calling it "this old stuff" doesn't cut it.

My point in calling it "old stuff" is that we've been over and over this a hundred times or more. Neither side is EVER able to convince the other of anything! It's all a wasted effort.

All any of us can do is just repeat the same arguments as before - what's the point of that? It's not going to go anywhere this time around either. :shrug:

I wonder in all of those prior discussions how many people actually thoroughly went over the data, and have the necessary expertise in those areas. I assume that would be necessary, so I have stayed away from these discussions.

I personally will not take it upon myself to say how these buildings collapsed.

okay, i will then.
they collapsed from the impact site and proceded to crumple into dust until hardly anything was left.
they fell in a manner totally inconsistent with a controlled demolition.

Remember that NYC outlawed asbestos insulation when the towers were already half complete. As Leo says, the videos all show the collapse beginning at the impact site. It's a different location on each building which the pilots could not have hit with such precision, and both of them have subsequently been calculated by engineers to be within the optimal range of floors to cause complete collapse.

Have the NIST and FEMA reports not been peer-reviewed? That's how science works. There are always a few dissenters and if you're truly concerned the first place to start is by checking their credentials, since there are a lot of mediocre scientists in America as well as quite a few truly bad ones; just look at the so-called "creation science" movement. Furthermore, science is on the wane in a post-Religious-Redneck-Retard-Revival America and many science graduates trade their scruples for jobs in the corporate sector. You say a "growing number" of scientists dispute their conclusions. If this issue is so important to them, why are they just now getting around to examining it?

It sounds more like electioneering politics to me. Look at the outrageous innuendoes about Obama's religion.

You must also peer review the competing theories. If the Bush administration was behind this and wanted to foment hatred among Americans, then why did they implicate their petro-buddies the Saudis in it? They could just as easily have arranged for the majority of the hijackers to be Afghanis, Iraqis, Libyans, Iranians, and people from other Muslim countries they wanted an excuse to attack. Instead, the burning question in America now that we've caught our breath is, "Why did we bomb Kabul and Baghdad instead of Riyadh?" A much easier way to accomplish their apparent goal of pissing off the entire Muslim world, while still punishing the "purported" architects of 9/11, would have been to bomb Mecca, which is on Saudi soil.

The real 9/11 conspiracy was to make the Saudis look blameless. It was considerably less expertly performed than the Watergate conspiracy, yet gullible Americans believed it. Even in current polls, an alarming number of Americans still believe that Saddam--leader of the only large secular, pro-Western Muslim country in the Middle East--was implicated in 9/11.

I don't see anything about the tower's collapse that could be called perfect. I do think NIST has reliable scientists. They are career scientists, not politically appointed.

So it's nuts to think that the Bush administration had prior knowledge, but it is sane to believe that the Saudis did it and the Bush administration helped cover that up.

Not all that much difference between those two theories, really. Either way Bush got his Reichstag fire.

. You say a "growing number" of scientists dispute their conclusions. If this issue is so important to them, why are they just now getting around to examining it?


Why is anybody just getting around to it now? I have no idea. Same with the non-scientists. I wonder how come there was seemingly very little interest around the time of 9/11?



The real 9/11 conspiracy was to make the Saudis look blameless. It was considerably less expertly performed than the Watergate conspiracy, yet gullible Americans believed it. Even in current polls, an alarming number of Americans still believe that Saddam--leader of the only large secular, pro-Western Muslim country in the Middle East--was implicated in 9/11.

I don't get it. They were Saudi hijackers, but, correct me if I'm wrong, they were part of a group that was primarily located in Afghanistan. I'm not aware of any evidence besides hijacker nationality that indicates Saudi Arabian involvement, nor do I see why Saudi Arabia would have an interest in doing this. If they had, they would of potentially opened themselves up for what happened to Afghanistan and Iraq, which I imagine would have looked like a golden opportunity to the likes of the Bush administration.

Honestly I don't understand these people.

First, they call Bush a dumbass.

Then they procede to show how his government masterminded a vast 9-11 conspiracy that has most of the people in America convinced that a group of Islamofascist dumbasses from Saudi Arabia pulled it off.

How in the hell do you think he could do this within his first ten months in office, and not manage to ``find'' weapons of mass distruction in Iraq to vindicate his war to the world?

God you people are stupid.

Ben, you are employing the "rational man" fallacy. Also, I don't think that anyone believes that Bush was the actual mastermind or has the capacity.

Bush did have prior knowledge of a terrorist attack, the National Security Briefing delivered by Condi. All he had to do was nothing, let it happen, and not allow a complete investigation afterwards.

A growing number of scientists are opposing reports by NIST and Fema regarding the 911 World Trade Center collapse.

I personally will not take it upon myself to say how these buildings collapsed. I find it strange that somebody that calls themselves a scientist would agree with NIST findings just because of NIST reputation, and not because of the content of their findings. I find these reports of the National Institute of Science and Technology unsound. They are just very flawed.

Towers 1 and 2 were structurally sound. The findings basically point to deteriorating structure, impact of large airplanes dislodging fire proofing, and jet fuel heat, and a pancake effect.

Does anybody not find this absolutely absurd?


Seven hours after Tower 1 and Tower 2 fell, the 47-story WTC Tower 7 collapsed. Supposedly, fire and debri caused Tower 7 to fall in the form of a highly professional demolition. Anybody who knows anything about demolition knows a collapse of a building that perfect (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj487RNAi14) is like saying the artwork on Mount Rushmore occured by natural erosion.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Mountrushmore.jpgBuildings that large can't tilt too much. If it breaks unevenly it doesn't matter as it will be compensated by all the weight being on the rest of the body (crushing the rest of the body so that it eventually will be evenly after all).

Bush did have prior knowledge of a terrorist attack, the National Security Briefing delivered by Condi. All he had to do was nothing, let it happen, and not allow a complete investigation afterwards.

Sure, this isn't what is being debated. I was saying that the people who think that the government had some hand in masterminding 9-11 are complete idiots---this government has never been particularly good at masterminding anything.


Ben, you are employing the "rational man" fallacy. Also, I don't think that anyone believes that Bush was the actual mastermind or has the capacity.

Ummm perhaps. I guess this is a logic term for appealing to ration in a flawed manner? I would call it common sense. In order to explain this conspiracy, you need a whole edifice of other conspiracy theories that hold it up, such that there are no major leaks which some intelligent young reporter from the New York Times might stumble upon.

Give me a break here---do you really believe that a government that couldn't even pull off an invasion of Iraq could possibly pull of a a conspiracy on such a massive scale?

the most telling evidence is the videos of the collapse.
the only real questions surround building 7, and those can be answered by studying where building 7 was constructed.

the most telling evidence is the videos of the collapse.
the only real questions surround building 7, and those can be answered by studying where building 7 was constructed.

This whole business will continue forever, just like the "Roswell Crash Site."

The idiots of the world along with the bored, gullible, crackpots, etc. have to have SOME fantasy to hang onto. And this one will do until something else comes along for them to latch onto. :shrug:

The idiots of the world along with the bored, gullible, crackpots, etc. have to have SOME fantasy to hang onto.

See this web page (http://forum.physorg.com/).

But...you've been warned.

This whole business will continue forever, just like the "Roswell Crash Site."

The idiots of the world along with the bored, gullible, crackpots, etc. have to have SOME fantasy to hang onto. And this one will do until something else comes along for them to latch onto. :shrug:

What is the crackpot part of this? That members of a government would do the conspiracy, or that the particulars of the conspiracy, like how the buildings fell and whatever other technicalities the conspiracy theorists bring up?

I haven't looked into the technicalities at all, but it seems to be a complicated issue, even for people in relevant fields. I think back in 03 or 04 (I think) when Popular Mechanics wrote their original refutations of conspiracies, dealing with the technicalities, and most of their refutations were so poor that they lost a large chunk of subscribers. Just because of their poor science, nothing to do with believing in conspiracies or not.

The idea that any of those buildings could have fallen fairly neatly into their footprints is a crackpot idea.

The idea that any of those buildings could have fallen fairly neatly into their footprints is a crackpot idea.

Ha! Given the way they were struck and weakened, expecting them to fall ANY other way is what would be crackpot!

Ha! Given the way they were struck and weakened, expecting them to fall ANY other way is what would be crackpot!

You actually think that statement makes sense?

You actually think that statement makes sense?

Certainly - given some basic physics like center of gravity, collapsing floors pancaking onto those below, practically NO sideways thrust involved, etc.

It really WOULD take a crackpot (or someone that doesn't understand basic physical forces) to expect them to just topple over on one side.

I think it takes a crackpot who doesn't understand physics to think that they will fall straight down.

Why don't you guys just model it? :p

Something really simple would be an improvement over this. It can probably be found what the centers of gravity for the towers were, and then see if the maximum estimate of torque from the force of the planes could make.

I find the towers falling sideways hard to imagine. It's a lot easier to imagine the floors falling and taking out the floors beneath than imagining a plane a tiny fraction of the towers mass cause the towers to tip.

Why don't you guys just model it? :p

Something really simple would be an improvement over this. It can probably be found what the centers of gravity for the towers were, and then see if the maximum estimate of torque from the force of the planes could make.

I find the towers falling sideways hard to imagine. It's a lot easier to imagine the floors falling and taking out the floors beneath than imagining a plane a tiny fraction of the towers mass cause the towers to tip.

Exactly! :)

A debunker is someone who does not have to know anything about a subject to "know" that someone else is wrong.

A debunker is someone who does not have to know anything about a subject to "know" that someone else is wrong.

Who are these "debunkers" you're talking about?

I think it takes a crackpot who doesn't understand physics to think that they will fall straight down.
Basic structural dynamics:

1) If the buildings were weakend at or near their base (well below their center of mass) they would have almost certainly "toppled" over since they would immediately have been placed in a dynamically unstable state (try balancing a pencil on your fingertip).

2) The buildings were weakend well above their center of mass, therefore, the portions of the building below the falling mass above remained anchored and stable as the falling (and increasing) mass tended to follow the simplest path - i.e. straight down. (make a "tower" out of cards and start it falling near the top. It collapses in on itself.)

So. I think it takes a crackpot who doesn't understand basic physics to think that they will fall other than essentially straight down.

The idea that any of those buildings could have fallen fairly neatly into their footprints is a crackpot idea.
there are only 2 ways those buildings could have fallen, and in both ways a conspiracy can be seen.
check it out.
scenario 1.
the buildings fell just like they did.
conclusion:
explosives were used for s controlled demolition.

scenario 2.
pieces of the building were explosively ejected out from the flotsam.
the buildings fell "all over the place".
conclusion:
explosives were used to bring the building down.

so you see, it doesn't matter what the true cause was.
explosives were used.
it's a no win situation no matter how the buildings fell.

do yourself a favor metakron.
scare up some videos of controlled demolitions, of all types, and watch them.
dissect them for every last bit of info you can get from them.
after you have watched about 15 or so clips, watch the collapse of WTC 1 and 2.

i challenge you to see a controlled demolition.

there are only 2 ways those buildings could have fallen, and in both ways a conspiracy can be seen.
check it out.
scenario 1.
the buildings fell just like they did.
conclusion:
explosives were used for s controlled demolition.

scenario 2.
pieces of the building were explosively ejected out from the flotsam.
the buildings fell "all over the place".
conclusion:
explosives were used to bring the building down.

so you see, it doesn't matter what the true cause was.
explosives were used.
it's a no win situation no matter how the buildings fell.

do yourself a favor metakron.
scare up some videos of controlled demolitions, of all types, and watch them.
dissect them for every last bit of info you can get from them.
after you have watched about 15 or so clips, watch the collapse of WTC 1 and 2.

i challenge you to see a controlled demolition.

I've seen plenty, and in all the following are true:

1) The prep for a clean controlled demo is immense and highly obvious.

2) Extensive external coordinated explosions are visible in all of them (note that the bursts you see in the WTC footage (water tanks and other pressurized cavities) are neither extensive or coordinated).

3) The presence of explosive chemical residue is everywhere.

May be a real high rise building engineer could tell us what is going On? Anyone in this engineering forum?

May be a real high rise building engineer could tell us what is going On? Anyone in this engineering forum?

*sigh*

Why is anybody just getting around to it now? I have no idea. Same with the non-scientists. I wonder how come there was seemingly very little interest around the time of 9/11?There was quite a bit of discussion in the architectural journals, Baron Max shared some of it with us and highlights were floating around in email spam. Less than a year after 9/11 experts were analyzing the collapse of the building and the details of its construction. They was a lot of debate over whether the city of New York was guilty of criminal stupidity for forcing them to complete the buildings without asbestos. It was suggested that by removing the asbestos they had saved about three people from dying of asbestos poisoning during the lifetime of the building, at the cost of 3,000 lives lost because the building was not fireproofed. This theory was eventually disproved. But there was no one who did not believe that the cause of the collapse was anything other than the impact of the airliners.
I don't get it. They were Saudi hijackers, but, correct me if I'm wrong, they were part of a group that was primarily located in Afghanistan.But its leader is Osama bin Laden, who is a Saudi and a member by marriage of the Saudi royal family. They could hardly operate on Saudi soil, they needed to be someplace where there are hiding places, and especially a country that was not a U.S. ally full of U.S. military bases.
I'm not aware of any evidence besides hijacker nationality that indicates Saudi Arabian involvementSaudis are the major source of financing for all of the anti-Western terrorists. They build and supply all of those terrorist training camps masquerading as schools for poor children throughout the Muslim world from Afghanistan to Indonesia. There is no other Muslim country whose people have as much money as the Saudi people do. Except possibly Iran, and they're doing their part by bankrolling Hezbollah and the Palestinian extremists.
nor do I see why Saudi Arabia would have an interest in doing this.In case you haven't noticed, the Saudi people hate America and routinely refer to us as "the Great Satan." They are outraged that what they perceive as a Christian nation has military bases within driving distance of Mecca, Islam's holiest site. The two princes who run the country and some of the petroleum executives are as transnational as the big shots in any country (including our own). They see the value of ambivalence and tread a fine line of not incurring the wrath of the U.S. But if you go just one level below them, where there are hundreds of billions of dollars available to support worthy causes, you find a fanatical level of hatred for the United States.
If they had, they would of potentially opened themselves up for what happened to Afghanistan and Iraq, which I imagine would have looked like a golden opportunity to the likes of the Bush administration.The Bush administration is just as transnational as the Saudi princes. They're petroleum barons, for the goddess's sake. The Saudi petroleum barons are their buddies. Their not going to attack their own homies. "Oil is thicker than blood." At that level, with these families, there is no sense of national loyalty. The Bushes are the kind of honorless people who give capitalism a bad name. They don't give a flying fig about what happens to this country, as long as they can make money off of it. What the Bush Dynasty did after 9/11 was precisely to DEFLECT the blame away from their pals in Saudi Arabia. They blamed Afghanistan, as if Afghanistan were an actual country that could accomplish something. And they blamed Saddam, because they had it in for Saddam ever since he embarrassed George I in the First Gulf War. 9/11 gave them an excuse to finish some unfinished business; revenge and honor at the cost of American (and Iraqi) lives.
The idea that any of those buildings could have fallen fairly neatly into their footprints is a crackpot idea.Buildings are not like trees. I don't think they have the kind of structural strength that would allow them to crack cleanly in one place, then topple sideways and land full-length and intact on the adjacent city block. Once they get a little bit off of vertical I think they start to crumble.
May be a real high rise building engineer could tell us what is going On? Anyone in this engineering forum?Baron Max knew a lot about this stuff but he was more interested in making himself out to be a loudmouth misanthrope than in contributing his knowledge. I agree that this is difficult to research. This long after the event, you have to be a member of an architects' society or subscribe to one of their journals to see what they were saying about it in immediate aftermath.

I am sure the building designs have been analyzed and the new building they are going to replace with, will have right type of designs. There is nothing wrong in revisiting the topic as long as we can talk about how to prevent such manmade disasters.

The asbestos issues is an interesting one. In India there are thousands of building with asbestos roofs. Over the years, they get sealed by weather, oil, wax etc and does not cause any human health issues. NYC could have encapsulated the asbestos easily and used it. The problem is no one thought that someone will pour tens of thousands of jet fuel and ignite it. That is a black swan moment.

The only way to build a tower that can withstand such fire is using massive reenforced concrete columns, like the Malaysia Petronas towers. These days we build residential houses with toothpicks and commercials with I-beams that barely covers the code.

Sometimes ago, I saw on TV that an entire subdivision was burnt to the ground in a California forest fire - except one concrete house built by a Taiwanese Architect.

Buildings are not like trees. I don't think they have the kind of structural strength that would allow them to crack cleanly in one place, then topple sideways and land full-length and intact on the adjacent city block. Once they get a little bit off of vertical I think they start to crumble.Baron Max knew a lot about this stuff but he was more interested in making himself out to be a loudmouth misanthrope than in contributing his knowledge. I agree that this is difficult to research. This long after the event, you have to be a member of an architects' society or subscribe to one of their journals to see what they were saying about it in immediate aftermath.
Does any one ever give a fuck about my posts?

Does any one ever give a fuck about my posts?

Yes, actually, I do. I don't see why other seem to have chosen to ignore what youve already said. :shrug:

Sometimes post that are good are not responded to because they said everything well and the only thing left to say is "nice post", which most people don't do that frequently (if I did it for every good post I liked it would probably start to look stupid). Besides, men can't go complimenting each other frequently, you know :p

Anyway, I guess some people did just ignore it, probably posted before reading the whole thread. But you know the solution: squeaky wheels.

Does any one ever give a fuck about my posts?
don't feel too bad, mine get ignored too.
the reason is that if they are ignored the posters can keep on posting, sometimes the same tired rhetoric.

If what your saying is true then why would you say it out loud? If a secret organization had the power to destroy the twin towers and cover it up. I wouldn't want to mess with them.

A debunker is someone who does not have to know anything about a subject to "know" that someone else is wrong.No. To debunk means to make nonsense clear as nonsense and help laymen understand scientific explanations. James Randi is the quintessential debunker. When we were members of CSICOP many years ago he often came to meetings of the L.A. chapter (one of the largest and held at Caltech) and demonstrated how the tricks of faith healers and other charlatans could be easily done using the people skills, technologies and other methods of professional magicians. The negative connotation of "debunker" is an attempt by those who have been debunked to discredit him. He damaged the careers of some very successful charlatans and they used their considerable resources to go after him, at one point suing CSICOP so he had to step down as an officer to avoid bankrupting the organization.

It's a frustrating crusade. One of the high-profile faith healers, Peter Popoff, had his own UHF TV show (in the days before cable) and lost it after he was exposed. His "hearing aid" was a radio receiver and his wife was reading the data on pledge cards to him backstage. The conversations were played by a friendly TV reporter. Nonetheless after lying low for a few years he came back on the air without even changing his name.
Does any one ever give a fuck about my posts?I see you used one of mine as an illustration--which was also ignored. I did not mean to give the impression that I had ignored yours. Sometimes it helps to have the same thing said in different voices. As for your credentials, you need to state them clearly. Most of us on SciForums are not professionals in the subjects we discuss so the members are not in the habit of assuming that, for example, someone who writes authoritatively about architectural engineering is a practicing architectural engineer. Sorry, but that's life on the internet.

Does any one ever give a fuck about my posts?

Aliens?

the governments in-ability or unwillingness to give a decent investigation on the matter is probably the main reason I consider 9-11 conspiracy highly probable.

They could end the whole damned conflict by releasing the various footage of the pentagon attacks. But they dont....they hide it under "classified"

their actions do not support their claims

Read-only, you said it... not AGAIN. I thought this conspiracy theory had been debunked long ago. I see absolutely nothing inconsistent about the NIST findings of how the buildings collapsed. It's completely consistent. I do know quite a bit about the mechanics of materials since I deal with the strength and fatigue of metals every day of my life. So, I have a hard time wasting any energy refuting these silly arguments. Not that I am a Bush apologist in any sense, but these conspiracy theories have no place in any sort of forensic evaluation of the WTC tower failures.