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August 25, 2008

9/11 collapse of WTC 7 due to fires

No evidence of planted explosives in World Trade Center building

According to NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), the third and final building collapse in the World Trade Center area of New York City in the late afternoon of September 11, 2001 was due to fire. Read all about it in last week's press release, HERE.

This finding I imagine will ramp up reaction amongst 9/11 conspiracy movement people. They will pull out all sorts of speculation about why this is a put-up job. For a flavor of their brand of "proof", I recommend my post in the old blog about the misuse of physics amongst this conspiracy crowd. See that post HERE. And yes, I've watched the videos with speculative comments by Professor Jones about the "puffs" of smoke & debris, the supposed flows of molten metal, the "sturdy" nature of the materials & structure, and the rate of fall. He's going to have to do a lot better. Being a physicist, he must know dynamic loads are a very different animal than static loads.

Building 7 is the smoking gun for conspiracy proponents. But the findings of the lengthy and careful study by NIST are that, "The fires in WTC 7, which were uncontrolled but otherwise similar to fires experienced in other tall buildings, caused an extraordinary event" leading to the "Heating of floor beams and girders" which "caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down."

In the old blog post, I had a mild go-round with some commenters sympathetic to the conspiracy theories who wrote things like this:
I have not hear[d] a good explanation as to how these collapses could have caused steel and concrete to vaporize and pulverize substantially into micron size particles.
You can read these posts and my responses at the above link.

In that post, I also recommend the fine articles posted at Counterpunch written by retired physicist Manuel Garcia in 2006. These have far more analysis than I was able to offer. Garcia has published a follow-up piece explaining areas where his hypotheses proved incorrect in the light of the NIST findings. His point today is about how science operates. Truth comes not from jumping to singular conclusions about observations taken as anomalies, as the conspiracy theorists do again and again. Rather, the "detail and pace of NIST work" is the key to arriving at a supportable scenario for the "phenomenology of the WTC building fires and collapses."

Finally, I'll note my own follow-up post from April 2007 describing a split between another physicist -- this one, Steven Jones, who I mention above and who is sympathetic to certain conspiracy notions -- and a group with even vaster belief in U.S. government involvement through use of mysterious super-weapons. A fellow who taught university-level philosophy in Minnesota, named James Fetzer, appears to believe that it just might have been energy beams from spaced-based platforms that started the collapse of the WTC buildings. That was too much for Jones, who quickly broke with the "Scholars for Truth" a couple of years ago.

Posted by The Owl at 23:58. Filed under: Mathematics and science

Comments

I cannot believe smart people who say there is nothing to see here. I would believe you more if you said, "I can see how some people would find this odd - and I admit it resembles a regular demolition very much - but actually the science disproves this as even a possibility" But just blowing off half the country with the regular smug status quo is really getting old for me. Not for you or all the many volunteers and mercenaries who make up your army of unbelief. Or should I say, all of you who are so sure that the government would never lie, never lies, or at least isn't lying about this. It's not we who are soft here.

Posted by Ben on August 26, 2008 at 11:59

Okay, I take that point, I can see how it "looks like" there's something to the conspiracy. It's convenient to think that way because of the way the Bush/Cheney Company seized the moment.

There are many sites cataloging the anomalies, for example:
http://www.twf.org/News/Y20...

These are more clear-headed than others.

But if you read my earlier post, you'll see that what I'm waiting for is some REAL evidence. As it stands, the conspiracy theories merely are assertions based on conspiracy-biased interpretations of self-selected observations, generally ignoring the greater sphere of observations that would tend to disprove conspiracy.

Show me a credible insider from the cast of hundreds or thousands that would have been required to pull off the controlled demolition scenario, and then you could serve me some crow with that too.

Posted by The Owl on August 26, 2008 at 13:08

Unfortunately, NIST did not test evidence of controlled demolition of WTC 7, beyond stating that they couldn't find a video with sufficiently loud explosive sounds. Shyam Sunder was quite clear that his team's scope did not include a "criminal investigation," and in any case, he considered controlled demolition to be incredible on its face. Hardly a way to start out an investigation, is it?

As for presentation of REAL evidence, in this case for the engineered destruction of WTC 7, there is plenty. Will you accept it only if it comes from a government mouthpiece?

The Congress has yet to establish and fund an independent investigative body armed with subpoena power to explain what DID happen on 9/11. If you'll recall, the "911 Commission Report" failed to even mention the collapse of WTC 7.

I've long since realized that if we want to know something, we have to go find it for ourselves. What we get fed via media and "officials" of any stripe is never unbiased and frequently, purposely false.

Posted by Ennealogic on August 26, 2008 at 16:48

First let me say thanks to Ben and Ennealogic for posting. I'm glad somebody has come here with substantive comments. It hasn't happened in a while.

Now, as to that substance, I'm afraid Ennealogic and I have a different impression about what constitutes REAL evidence. I say it would be a credible insider, photos/video of the charges themselves, or yes, recorded evidence of sounds of sufficient intensity. You may not like what NIST says because it does not fit in the frame, but what THEY carefully observed IS dispositive.

Furthermore, a building must be prepared for demolition with explosives. This takes a huge effort. Inadequate ad hoc placement would be less likely to bring a building down than fire. So there should be some REAL evidence of this preparation. But there is not, as NIST states:

http://www.nist.gov/public_...
"For the building to have been prepared for intentional demolition, walls and/or column enclosures and fireproofing would have to be removed and replaced without being detected. Preparing a column includes steps such as cutting sections with torches, which produces noxious and odorous fumes. Intentional demolition usually requires applying explosive charges to most, if not all, interior columns, not just one or a limited set of columns in a building."

But you see, we don't discuss that in the conspiracy arena, because it tends to disprove conspiracy.

Fetzer the trained philosopher looked at the evidence arguing for the explosives theory and concluded that it was insufficient. Must've been high energy beams shot from orbit. If you're truly believing conspiracy, you ought to follow Fetzer because his logic in the use of evidence is impeccable.

Finally, no, I'm as skeptical as anyone should be about what the government says. But it's not an either-or proposition. As Garcia writes, NIST's work is careful and methodical. My evaluation at this point is they answered the questions as well as they were able given the available REAL evidence.

Posted by The Owl on August 26, 2008 at 18:37
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