Controlled Demolition most Likely brought down the WTC

[laurentius]

Originally posted by Gangerolf
the heat made the metal melt

As far as I know it takes about 5000 degrees of heat to achieve that. A little more than burning office chairs and even diesel have to be burning to reach such levels.

[JohnT]

"As far as I know" isn't the most definitive cite in the world.

[laurentius]

Originally posted by JohnT

I read the part you cut 'n pasted. Why bother myself with more idiocy?

Ah, so thats the key to get you reading. I guess its too much to ask to clik a link..

Heres why I wont cut'n paste the whole article here: Its quite long.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by laurentius

A little more than burning office chairs and even diesel have to be burning to reach such levels.

You mean like an exploding jet plane laden with fuel?

[Gangerolf]

well that's what they said on this documentary IIRC. it became soft and collapsed

[laurentius]

Originally posted by JohnT
"As far as I know" isn't the most definitive cite in the world.

well, heres something for that. Quoting Jones Article here. The references are at the bottom of the page.

http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html

Experts said no building like it [WTC7], a modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire. (Glanz, 2001; emphasis added.)

That’s correct – no such steel-beam building had ever before (or since) completely collapsed due to fires! However, such complete, symmetrical collapses have indeed occurred many times before -- all of them due to pre-positioned explosives in a procedure called “implosion” or controlled demolition. What a surprise, then, for such an occurrence in downtown Manhattan— three skyscrapers completely collapsed on the same day, September 11, 2001.

Engineers have been trying to figure out exactly what happened and whether they should be worried about other buildings like it around the country… Most of the other buildings in the [area] stood despite suffering damage of all kinds, including fire... ‘Fire and the structural damage …would not explain steel members in the debris pile that appear to have been partly evaporated’, Dr. [Jonathan] Barnett said. (Glanz, 2001; emphasis added.)

The observed “partly evaporated” steel members is particularly upsetting to the official theory, since fires involving paper, office materials, even diesel fuel, cannot generate temperatures anywhere near the 5,000+ oF needed to “evaporate” steel. However, thermite, RDX and other commonly-used explosives can readily slice through steel (thus cutting the support columns simultaneously in an explosive demolition) and reach the required temperatures. (It is possible that some other chemical reactions were involved which might proceed at lesser temperatures.) This mystery needs to be explored – but is not mentioned in the “official” 9-11 Commission or NIST reports.

Seems I mixed celcius with Fahrenheit...my bad.

They do NOT explain how steel-column temperatures above 800oC were achieved near-simultaneously due to burning office materials. NIST notes that office materials in an area burn for about 15-20 minutes, then are consumed away (NIST, 2005, pp. 117, 179). This is evidently not long enough to raise steel column temperatures above 800oC as required in the Bazant & Zhou model, given the enormous heat sinks of the structures. And to have three buildings completely collapse due to this unlikely mechanism on the same day strains credulity. Moreover, the Final NIST report on the Towers admits:

Of the more than 170 areas examined on 16 perimeter column panels, only three columns had evidence that the steel reached temperatures above 250ºC… Only two core column specimens had sufficient paint remaining to make such an analysis, and their temperatures did not reach 250 ºC. ... Using metallographic analysis, NIST determined that there was no evidence that any of the samples had reached temperatures above 600 ºC. (NIST, 2005, pp. 176-177; emphasis added.)

At any given location, the duration of [air, not steel] temperatures near 1,000oC was about 15 min to 20 min. The rest of the time, the calculated temperatures were near 500oC or below.” (NIST, 2005, p. 127, emphasis added.)

[Arrian]

Yes. It was concluded that the heat from the JET FUEL FIRE was enough to melt the heavy steel support structure.

The result was a structural collapse that caused the part of the building *above* the plane impact point to "pancake" down onto the part of the building *below* the impact point. This built a whole lot of momentum and it became unstoppable, so that the entire building then "pancaked" all the way down to the ground.

As for #7, I'm not sure, but maybe it had something to do with the impact of the two WTC towers - maybe it shook #7 enough that it destabilized it.

-Arrian

[laurentius]

Originally posted by Dauphin


You mean like an exploding jet plane laden with fuel?

I'm not saying so, the experst are. Read the article?

[Fake Boris]

His paper will soon be published in an academic paper. Let's wait and see what other experts say about it.

This obviously smells like BS, but who knows?

[loinburger]

Well, this certainly convinces me to add reinforcement to my tinfoil hat.

[laurentius]

Originally posted by Gangerolf
well that's what they said on this documentary IIRC. it became soft and collapsed

I saw that too but I'm not entirely convinced anymore.

[Arrian]

Further, consider the possibility that the impact of a large commercial jet liner may have damaged the steel support beams enough that a fire that otherwise may not have been able to melt them could complete the job.

Dude, did you SEE the video of the impacts? I was honestly rather shocked that the towers took the initial hit!

-Arrian

[laurentius]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
His paper will soon be published in an academic paper. Let's wait and see what other experts will say about it.

This obviously smells like BS, but who knows?

Thats the attitude I! Let the academics sort it out in their given time. I just wanted to share this with you guys first.

[lord of the mark]

Popular Mechanics:

THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
The collapse of both World Trade Center towers--and the smaller WTC 7 a few hours later--initially surprised even some experts. But subsequent studies have shown that the WTC's structural integrity was destroyed by intense fire as well as the severe damage inflicted by the planes. That explanation hasn't swayed conspiracy theorists, who contend that all three buildings were wired with explosives in advance and razed in a series of controlled demolitions.


Widespread Damage
CLAIM: The first hijacked plane crashed through the 94th to the 98th floors of the World Trade Center's 110-story North Tower; the second jet slammed into the 78th to the 84th floors of the 110-story South Tower. The impact and ensuing fires disrupted elevator service in both buildings. Plus, the lobbies of both buildings were visibly damaged before the towers collapsed. "There is NO WAY the impact of the jet caused such widespread damage 80 stories below," claims a posting on the San Diego Independent Media Center Web site (sandiego.indymedia.org). "It is OBVIOUS and irrefutable that OTHER EXPLOSIVES (... such as concussion bombs) HAD ALREADY BEEN DETONATED in the lower levels of tower one at the same time as the plane crash."

FACT: Following up on a May 2002 preliminary report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a major study will be released in spring 2005 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST shared its initial findings with PM and made its lead researcher available to our team of reporters.

The NIST investigation revealed that plane debris sliced through the utility shafts at the North Tower's core, creating a conduit for burning jet fuel--and fiery destruction throughout the building. "It's very hard to document where the fuel went," says Forman Williams, a NIST adviser and a combustion expert, "but if it's atomized and combustible and gets to an ignition source, it'll go off."

Burning fuel traveling down the elevator shafts would have disrupted the elevator systems and caused extensive damage to the lobbies. NIST heard first-person testimony that "some elevators slammed right down" to the ground floor. "The doors cracked open on the lobby floor and flames came out and people died," says James Quintiere, an engineering professor at the University of Maryland and a NIST adviser. A similar observation was made in the French documentary "9/11," by Jules and Gedeon Naudet. As Jules Naudet entered the North Tower lobby, minutes after the first aircraft struck, he saw victims on fire, a scene he found too horrific to film.

"Melted" Steel
CLAIM: "We have been lied to," announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net. "The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel." The posting is entitled "Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC."

FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks."

"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent." NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.

But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832°F.

"The jet fuel was the ignition source," Williams tells PM. "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."

Puffs Of Dust
CLAIM: As each tower collapsed, clearly visible puffs of dust and debris were ejected from the sides of the buildings. An advertisement in The New York Times for the book Painful Questions: An Analysis Of The September 11th Attack made this claim: "The concrete clouds shooting out of the buildings are not possible from a mere collapse. They do occur from explosions." Numerous conspiracy theorists cite Van Romero, an explosives expert and vice president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, who was quoted on 9/11 by the Albuquerque Journal as saying "there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse." The article continues, "Romero said the collapse of the structures resembled those of controlled implosions used to demolish old structures."

FACT: Once each tower began to collapse, the weight of all the floors above the collapsed zone bore down with pulverizing force on the highest intact floor. Unable to absorb the massive energy, that floor would fail, transmitting the forces to the floor below, allowing the collapse to progress downward through the building in a chain reaction. Engineers call the process "pancaking," and it does not require an explosion to begin, according to David Biggs, a structural engineer at Ryan-Biggs Associates and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) team that worked on the FEMA report.

Like all office buildings, the WTC towers contained a huge volume of air. As they pancaked, all that air--along with the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse--was ejected with enormous energy. "When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it's going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window," NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM. Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition, Sunder adds, "but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception."

Demolition expert Romero regrets that his comments to the Albuquerque Journal became fodder for conspiracy theorists. "I was misquoted in saying that I thought it was explosives that brought down the building," he tells PM. "I only said that that's what it looked like."

Romero, who agrees with the scientific conclusion that fire triggered the collapses, demanded a retraction from the Journal. It was printed Sept. 22, 2001. "I felt like my scientific reputation was on the line." But emperors-clothes.com saw something else: "The paymaster of Romero's research institute is the Pentagon. Directly or indirectly, pressure was brought to bear, forcing Romero to retract his original statement." Romero responds: "Conspiracy theorists came out saying that the government got to me. That is the farthest thing from the truth. This has been an albatross around my neck for three years."

[lord of the mark]

"BYU Professor Has Plenty of Company in the Academic Community, Including 60 Faculty Members from Two Utah Universities who Concur a Controlled Demolition Most Likely Brought Down the WTC and Further Investigation Is Needed"


"After presently scientific arguments in favor of the controlled demolition theory, Jones said everyone in attendance from all backgrounds, conservative and liberal, were in total agreement further investigation was needed."

Interesting how all were in agreement further investigation is needed, morphed into 60 concur that a controlled demolition most likely brought down the WTC.


I presume that we can look forward to the academic response being similarly mischarecterized.