9-11 Evidence Unanswered

OkhamsRazor · #11 (**permalink**) 06-12-2006, 11:30 AM

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The time it took the towers to fall may be one of the most important pieces of evidence in determining their mode of destruction.

It is widely accepted that both towers completely fell (nearly everything but the dust reached the ground) in around ten seconds. This estimate appears to be based mainly on seismic data. However, video evidence of the North Tower collapse suggests that it took close to 15 seconds for the destruction to reach the ground. Establishing a precise time of duration for each fall may not be possible, but there are measurements that can be made. Video records show that each tower's top began its fall precipitously, and show the falling tops for a few seconds before they disappeared into the exploding dust clouds. It is also possible to track other features of the waves of destruction that traveled down each tower. In both collapses dust clouds, exhibiting the behavior of pyroclastic flows associated with volcanoes, rapidly grew as they fell. 1 Each cloud consumed its tower's top in a few seconds, then continued to descend, remaining centered around the tower's axis. Each cloud had a fairly well-defined top and bottom, whose descent can be timed using video records.

Unfortunately, detailed studies of collapse times based on the compositing of photographic, video and seismic evidence are lacking. Instead, seismic signal durations have been treated as synonymous with collapse times by many, and the statements that the towers fell in eight and ten seconds have been repeated by both proponents and detractors from the official explanation.

Meaning of the Seismic Records
Seismic records of the Twin Tower collapses show a large signal for each collapse lasting just under 10 seconds. The durations of the large signals are widely equated with the durations of the collapses themselves. However, the signals may correspond to only parts of the collapse events, such as the rubble reaching the ground.

Consider the seismic records of the closest seismic recording station, at Palisades, N.Y. (PAL). They show a very similar pattern for the leveling of WTC 1 and 2. In both cases there is about five seconds of high-amplitude movement, followed by about three seconds of movement at less than half that amplitude, and then by about 15 seconds of much weaker movement. In addition there is some still weaker movement starting about 12 seconds before the onsets of the high-amplitude movement. The main difference is that for WTC 1 the initial high-amplitude phase builds in intensity to a much higher spike than any seen for WTC 2.
The fact that the largest movement is followed by smaller movement has been cited as evidence that bombs, detonated at the starts of the collapses, generated the large movement, and that the debris impacting the ground contributed to the smaller subsequent movement. However, bombs, if detonated underground, would have generated strong P waves in addition to S waves. The fact that only strong S waves were reported is consistent with the theory that the largest movement was caused by building remains hitting the ground.

Tracking the Tops
The time of onset of collapse is clear in the North Tower, which initiates its telescoping collapse in an instant. The case of the South Tower is complicated by the fact that the top leans for a few seconds before beginning its vertical descent. Although determining the onset of vertical collapse in the South Tower is more difficult, its top is visible for longer and offers a longer span through which to time the rate of fall.

The South Tower
The following analysis is based on the NBC video taken from the east of the towers.

For the South Tower we define onset of collapse as the moment downward movement of the highest point of the roof starts. Unfortunately this time is difficult to determine since the roofline is obscured by smoke when the fall begins. The fall is preceded by a leaning movement that begins around the time the movie begins and accelerates for about three seconds. At somewhere between two and three seconds the top starts to fall. Once the top starts to lean, the highest point of the roof is the northwest edge. 2.5 seconds may be a good estimate for the time that starts to fall. A good marker for this is a small white squib that emerges from the level of the impact zone about three-quarters of the way back on the right face. That immediately precedes the first large ejections from the southeast face.

Using that marker it is possible to time the fall of the South Tower's top up to the moment it gets swallowed up by the dust cloud. At that point the dust cloud rises only slightly above the level of the 78th-floor sky lobby visible as a two-story band on the adjacent North Tower. A small extrapolation gives a good estimate of the time of fall of the South Tower's roof to the level of the 78th floor of five seconds. That distance is about 384 feet (12 feet per story times 32 stories).

The North Tower
The top of the North Tower began to suddenly telescope about a fourth of a second after the radio tower started to fall. In views from the north the top is swallowed up in about two seconds. The CNN live video clip shows the mushrooming dust cloud reaching the ground at about 13 seconds. As the descending pyroclastic dust cloud drops below Building 7, the rising smoke plume shifts to the east revealing the empty space except for the short-lived spire. The first glimpse of empty space where the building stood is at about 13 seconds.

A Timeline for the North Tower
It would be useful if collapse events evident in videos could be associated with seismic signal features. Since some news broadcasts have real-time clocks on their banners, it may be possible to match visual events with features of the seismic signals.

Consider the North Tower, whose entire collapse was recorded by the above-mentioned CNN live feed, which has a clock on its banner. That clock does not have a second counter, but its minute counter flips to 10:29 37 seconds after collapse starts, which places the collapse start, according to the CNN clock, at 10:28:23.

Various pages on columbia.edu put the origin time of the signal at the source at 10:28:31, plus or minus one second. This is based on an estimate of 2 km/s travel speed for the S waves, which, given the PAL station's distance of 34 KM from the WTC, gives a travel time of 17 seconds.

The CNN video suggests that it takes about ten seconds for the bottom of the mushrooming dust cloud to reach the ground, and another seven or so for the top to reach the ground. The following composite timeline combines timing estimates of collapse events from the CNN video and the PAL seismic record. It assumes rubble hitting the ground caused the large ground movement, and thus that the crumbling of the tower prior to that caused only minor ground movement. Given that, the times from these pieces of evidence match up remarkably well.

10:28:23 North Tower starts to crumble
10:28:31 Rubble starts to hit the ground (start of big signal)
10:28:36 The heaviest rubble hits the ground (peak of big signal)
10:28:39 Most heavy rubble has reached the ground (end of big signal)

Here are numerous video clips (most are raw footage) of all three buildings collapsing. WTC 7 is the most interesting however, IMHO. If getting a 47 story rectangle to fall symetrically into it's own basement could be achieved by simply exploding deisel fuel in the basement... why do we need folks like Controlled Demolition Inc to charge millions to bring down the buildings that they do? Every single aspect of it's collapse is consistent with a contrlled demolition, from the sagging at the center just prior to collapse, to the symetrical fall, to the shock wave observed by numerous eye wtinesses traveling through the building seconds before collapse, to the numerous squibs seen popping as the building fell.

The owner of the buildings (who btw, took out terrorist insurance for the first time mere weeks before the attacks) explained that he had told the authorities to "pull the buildings" and minutes later (coincidence?) the tower collapsed. Years later his spokesteam attempted to clarify that he meant pull the responders out of the building. Problem is, no responder had been near the building since before noon.

In addition to all of this, 30-60 ton girders from the core are seen traveling slightly upwards then out away from the collapse to a maximum distance of 100 yards. How does this happen without explosive force many times that of anything caused by the collapse? Violating every principle of gravity that we know (remember the only thing supposedly working on the collapse is gravity) there is much solid debris seen ARCING upwards and out.

As with the previous "Eyewitness" video this one also goes into much more detail than this short clip presents. This is just a primer...
Physics demonstration of the WTC 2 Collapse. Again, this is just a small portion of the analysis.

In fact I would suggest skipping the primer and watch the more in depth ananysis. "Eyestiness" "Detailed Analysis" Approx 33 minutes And yes... I know... the end is very, very cheesy... not my fault LOL.

OkhamsRazor · #12 (**permalink**) 06-12-2006, 11:33 AM

Here is an excellent article covering much of the same material.

Dave Heller is a physicist as well as a practicing architect.

In this excellent article, Dave brings lucidity and clarity to some fundamental physical laws as they apply to the “miraculous” freefall collapses of the Twin Towers and WTC 7... “Judge for yourself. Watch WTC7 go down. It takes 6.5 seconds. Take out your stopwatch”...

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Hard Science and the Collapse of the World Trade Center
by Dave Heller

While it may be difficult to awaken everyone from their state-induced fog of fear, we are at a critical point in history which requires us to try. We truly must take an objective look at the facts and evidence surrounding 9-11.

While none of the many 9-11 researchers knows exactly what happened on that fateful day in September 2001, any sensible person can easily spot dozens of inconsistencies in the official story that is being forced upon us.

And these inconsistencies are huge. They range from the apparent stand-down of our immense military arsenal (for over an hour and a half) to the small hole and lack of debris at the Pentagon. There was Bush's bizarre, uninterrupted photo op in a Florida elementary school, and then there is the matter of the remains of Flight 93 being scattered over eight miles of Pennsylvania farmland, a fact which suggests the plane may have been shot down. The official story seems wrong on all of these points.

But the focus of this article is on just one point: the odd collapse of the three buildings in the World Trade Center complex.

How I First Began to Question: WTC7

The World Trade Center (WTC) contained seven buildings. The Twin Towers were called buildings One (WTC1) and Two (WTC2). They collapsed in truly astounding fashion, but the event that caused me first to question the official story about the events of 9-11 was viewing videos of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC7).

If you've forgotten, WTC7 was a 47-story building that was not hit by an airplane or by any significant debris from either WTC1 or WTC2. Buildings 3, 4, 5, and 6 were struck by massive amounts of debris from the collapsing Twin Towers, yet none collapsed, despite their thin-gauge steel supports.

Viewing the Collapse of WTC7
The 9-11 commemorative videos produced by PBS and CNN are best. Both clearly show WTC7's implosion. (Lower resolution Internet movies are also available.)

WTC7, which was situated on the next block over, was the farthest of the buildings from WTC1 and WTC2. WTC7 happened to contain the New York City Office of Emergency Management (OEM), a facility that was, according to testimony to the 9-11 Commission, one of the most sophisticated Emergency Command Centers on the planet. But shortly after 5:20 pm on Sept. 11, as the horrific day was coming to a close, WTC7 mysteriously imploded and fell to the ground in an astounding 6.5 seconds.

6.5 seconds. This is a mere 0.5 seconds more than freefall in a vacuum. To restate this, a rock dropped from the 47th floor would have taken at least 6 seconds to hit the ground. WTC7, in its entirety, fell to the earth in 6.5 seconds. Now, recall, we're supposed to believe that each floor of the building "pancaked" on the one below. Each of the 47 floors supposedly pancaked and collapsed, individually. Yet WTC7 reached the ground in 0.5 seconds longer than freefall. Is this really possible?

Judge for yourself. Watch WTC7 go down. It takes 6.5 seconds. Take out your stopwatch.

What About Towers One and Two?

The odd, swift collapse of WTC7 made me reconsider the Twin Towers and how they fell. As I had with WTC7, I first studied video footage available on the web. Then I acquired and watched a DVD of the collapses, frame by frame.

What struck me first was the way the second plane hit WTC2, the South Tower. I noticed that this plane, United Airlines Flight 175, which weighed over 160,000 pounds and was traveling at 350 mph, did not even visibly move the building when it slammed into it. How, I wondered, could a building that did not visibly move from a heavy high speed projectile collapse at near freefall speed less than an hour later?

Next, I turned my attention to steel beams that fell in freefall next to the building as it collapsed. The beams were falling at the same rate that the towers themselves were descending. To anyone familiar with elementary physics and the principles of conservation of energy and momentum, this seems quite impossible if the towers were indeed "pancaking," which is the official theory.

The height of the South Tower is 1362 feet. I calculated that from that height, freefall in a vacuum (read, absolutely no resistance on earth) is 9.2 seconds. According to testimony provided to the 9-11 Commission, the tower fell in about 10 seconds. Other data shows it took closer to 14 seconds. So the towers fell within 0.8-4.8 seconds of freefall in a vacuum. Just like WTC7, this speed seemed impossible if each of the 110 floors had to fail individually.

As I was considering this, another problem arose. There is a principle in physics called the Law of Conservation of Energy . There is also the Law of Conservation of Momentum . I'll briefly explain how these principles work. Let's assume there are two identical Honda Civics on the freeway. One is sitting in neutral at a standstill (0 mph). The other is coasting at 60 mph. The second Honda slams into the back of the first one. The first Honda will then instantaneously be going much faster than it was, and the second will instantaneously be going much slower than it was.

This is how the principle works in the horizontal direction, and it works the same in the vertical direction, with the added constant force of gravity added to it. Jim Hoffman, a professional scientist published in several peer-reviewed scientific journals, took a long look at all of this. He calculated that even if the structure itself offered no resistance, that is to say, even if the 110 floors of each tower were hovering in mid-air, the "pancake" theory would still have taken a minimum of 15.5 seconds to reach the ground. So, even if the building essentially didn't exist, if it provided no resistance at all to the collapse, just the floors hitting each other and causing each other to decelerate would've taken 15.5 seconds to reach the ground.

But of course the buildings did exist. They had stood for over 30 years. The floors weren't hovering in mid-air. So how did the building provide no resistance?

Yet another observation one makes in watching the collapsing towers is the huge dust clouds and debris, including steel beams, that were thrown hundreds of feet out horizontally from the towers as they fell. If we are to believe the pancake theory, this amount of scattering debris, fine pulverized concrete dust, and sheetrock powder would clearly indicate massive resistance to the vertical collapse. So there is an impossible conflict. You either have a miraculous, historical, instantaneous, catastrophic failure that occurs within a fraction of a second of freefall and that kicks out little dust, or you have a solid, hefty building that remains virtually unaffected after a massive, speeding projectile hits it. You either have a house of cards or a house of bricks. The building either resists its collapse or it doesn't.

And we know the WTC Towers were made of reinforced steel and concrete that would act much more like bricks than cards.

Thus, put simply, the floors could not have been pancaking. The buildings fell too quickly. The floors must all have been falling simultaneously to reach the ground in such a short amount of time. But how?

What About the Fires? (continued...)

OkhamsRazor · #13 (**permalink**) 06-12-2006, 11:35 AM

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The official story maintains that fires weakened the buildings. Jet fuel supposedly burned so hot it began to melt the steel columns supporting the towers. But steel-framed skyscrapers have never collapsed from fire, since they're built from steel that doesn't melt below 2750 degrees Fahrenheit. No fuel, not even jet fuel, which is really just refined kerosene, will burn hotter than 1500 degrees Fahrenheit.

Steel-framed skyscrapers have never collapsed from fire.
It's also odd that WTC7, which wasn't hit by an airplane or by any significant debris, collapsed in strikingly similar fashion to the Twin Towers. There wasn't even any jet fuel or kerosene burning in WTC7.

According to the 9-11 report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), "the specifics of the fires in WTC7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time."

Aside from its startling nonchalance, this statement makes a rather profound assumption. Again, no building prior to 9-11, in the 100-plus year history of steel frame buildings, had ever collapsed from fire.

This fact was known to firemen. Hence their unflinching rush up into the skyscrapers to put out the fire. Partly it was bravery, to be sure, but partly it was concrete knowledge that skyscrapers do not collapse due to fire. Yet after 100 years, three collapsed in one day.

Did the FEMA investigators not think to ask the New York City Fire Department how they thought the fire started, or how the fires could have caused the astounding, historical collapse? This would seem to be an elementary step in any investigation about a fire. Instead, they chose to leave the cause of the collapse "unknown."

Conclusion

So if the science in this article is correct (none of it goes beyond the tenth grade level), then we know that the floors of the three WTC buildings were not pancaking but were falling simultaneously. We also know that fire is an insufficient explanation for the initiation of the collapse of the buildings.

Why, then, did the three WTC buildings fall?

There is a method that has been able to consistently get skyscrapers to fall as fast as the three buildings of the World Trade Center fell on 9-11. In this method, each floor of a building is destroyed at just the moment the floor above is about to strike it. Thus, the floors fall simultaneously, and in virtual freefall. This method, when precisely used, has indeed given near-freefall speed to demolitions of buildings all over the world in the past few decades. This method could have brought down WTC7 in 6.5 seconds. This method is called controlled demolition.

A controlled demolition would have exploded debris horizontally at a rapid rate. A controlled demolition would also explain the fine, pulverized concrete powder, whereas pancaking floors would leave chunks of concrete. Controlled demolition would also explain the seismic evidence recorded nearby of two small earthquakes, each just before one of the Twin Towers collapsed. And finally, controlled demolition would explain why three steel skyscrapers, two of which were struck by planes and one of which wasn't, all collapsed in essentially the same way.

The massive energy required to pulverize concrete into microscopic dust
suggests the use of explosives

Ongoing Questions

But having established that all three WTC towers had to have been assisted in their failures, I asked myself, Who could have planted the explosives to blow up the buildings in a controlled demolition? Could fundamentalist Muslim fanatics have gotten the plans for those buildings, engineered the demolition, and then gotten into them to plant the explosives?

This seemed improbable. And after learning that WTC7 housed the FBI, CIA, and the OEM, it seemed impossible. Then I thought, Why would terrorists engineer a building to implode? Wouldn't they want to cause even more damage to the surrounding buildings and possibly create more havoc and destruction from debris exploding away from the building? And if they'd planted explosives in the buildings, why would they have bothered hijacking and flying planes into them? Perhaps WTC7 was demolished to destroy evidence that would answer these questions. To this day, I don't know. But this is how I began to question the official story about 9-11.

Recently I learned that President Bush's brother, Marvin Bush, is a part owner of the company that not only provided security for both United and American Airlines and Dulles Airport, but also for the World Trade Center complex itself. I also discovered that Larry Silverstein, who had bought the leasing rights for the WTC complex from the NY/NJ Port Authority in May of 2001 for $200 million, had received a $3.55 billion insurance settlement right after 9-11—yet he was suing for an additional $3.55 billion by claiming the two hits on the towers constituted two separate terrorist attacks! He stood to make $7 billion dollars on a four month investment. Talk about motive.

In conclusion, I'll repeat myself. None of the many 9-11 researchers can definitively say exactly what happened on that fateful day in September, 2001. But any sensible person can easily spot dozens of inconsistencies in the official story that is being forced upon us. And the fact is, most of the available 9-11 evidence points to at least some level of government complicity.

Please, read more for yourself. Don't take my word for it. Most of all, do not buy the double-speak that visible politicians and the media use to discount any question about 9-11. Clearly, there are no "conspiracy theories" surrounding 9-11. The official story itself affirms that there was obviously some kind of conspiracy. The real question is, "Who was involved in the conspiracy?"

This is all pretty basic stuff. Any questions so far? Otherwise I'll move on to the next topic.

rdnor · #14 (**permalink**) 06-12-2006, 03:09 PM

Hey O , I am not feeling too well today , so I will wait to respond to your post . Most likely tomorrow . Cancer treatment sucks , but dying is worse . Thank God I only have two more to go !

OkhamsRazor · #15 (**permalink**) 06-12-2006, 03:12 PM

Only two more... THAT"S EXCELLENT. Yup, chemo sucks bigtime. No hurry... I'll just post more in the meantime... anything you want me to hit topic-wise?

rdnor · #16 (**permalink**) 06-12-2006, 03:25 PM

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Originally Posted by OkhamsRazor

Only two more... THAT"S EXCELLENT. Yup, chemo sucks bigtime. No hurry... I'll just post more in the meantime... anything you want me to hit topic-wise?

Motives . Theories on reasons why . Theories on personell involved . That'll keep ya busy .

OkhamsRazor · #17 (**permalink**) 06-12-2006, 03:32 PM

Hmmm... I'm really more into providing what we already know. For reasons and motives, you would have to ask them... there are plenty of theories out there, but again... I'm not trying to implicate anyone.. yet. I'm simply showing the evidence that has so far been compiled by some very reputable people... and maybe a few not so reputable... but they will not be central to this argument.

Tell ya what.. I will make a few comments on those things after I have gone through the tangible evidence. And I'm quite busy enough, thank you.

rdnor · #18 (**permalink**) 06-12-2006, 03:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OkhamsRazor

Hmmm... I'm really more into providing what we already know. For reasons and motives, you would have to ask them... there are plenty of theories out there, but again... I'm not trying to implicate anyone.. yet. I'm simply showing the evidence that has so far been compiled by some very reputable people... and maybe a few not so reputable... but they will not be central to this argument.

Tell ya what.. I will make a few comments on those things after I have gone through the tangible evidence. And I'm quite busy enough, thank you.

I was just pickin at ya . Actally it's me that is bored silly . Some days reading is difficult Because it is more than a few lines the words run together . This REALLY sucks because I love to read . I have seen every movie blockbuster has so I just sit around and attempt at political commentary .

OkhamsRazor · #19 (**permalink**) 06-12-2006, 04:25 PM

Yeah, I know that bored feeling. Just for grins and such, I find myself at video.google looking for content to watch. I'm a bit of a geek so I tend to watch lectures. There are some great net tv stations. LMAO there's always cspan

OH... There's some pretty sweet software out there that will read text for you off the clipboard. Some actually have pretty decent "human like" voices and phrasing. I use it to listen to pages while I'm typing others.

PhilosopherWarrior · #20 (**permalink**) 06-12-2006, 06:35 PM

rdnor..
Keep toughing it, sir!!
You are surviving and staying awake..
Support and prayers.
MTC