This might rattle some cages...

[bigw00dy]

Whats PLan B????

The National Institute for Standards and Technology has been forced to admit that the total free-fall collapse of the twin towers cannot be explained after an exhaustive scientific study, implicitly acknowledging that controlled demolition is the only means by which the buildings could have come down.

In addition, NIST’s own studies confirmed that virtually none of the steel in either tower reached temperatures hotter than 500 degrees. The point at which steel weakens is 1000 degrees and melting point is reached at 1,500 degrees, according to NIST itself.

Now I wonder why this isn't front page news anywhere?

[Sundae]

I would suggest that it isn't front page news because it's conspiracy theory spin . I'm not interested enough to go through the report and work out where that website got its "facts", but I do not believe for one second that any other than a dirty great big aeroplane hitting the side caused the towers to fall.

Bearing in mind the same site has trotted out the old chestnut that the BBC was in on the conspiracy (a left-wing biased foreign broadcasting agency that challenges even its own Govt? Really?) I do not trust it as a source.

Not refuting but just for the record, from the Guardian last month:

A Cambridge University academic has shattered conspiracy theories surrounding the September 11 terrorist attacks that took place in New York six years ago today with a new mathematical analysis of the collapse of the World Trade Centre.

Keith Seffen, a senior lecturer in Cambridge's engineering department, used established engineering models to demonstrate that once the collapse of the twin towers began it was destined to be rapid and total.

While the causes that initiated the collapse of the towers are now well understood, engineers continue to speculate about the speed and totality with which the buildings were demolished during the fateful attacks.

Conspiracy theorists claim US government involvement in the catastrophic events that followed two planes being flown into the buildings. They suggest "controlled demolition" was the reason behind the speed, uniformity and similarity between the collapse of both towers.

But according to Dr Seffen's analysis of engineering principles, the way the towers collapsed was "quite ordinary and natural".

"The World Trade Centre towers were designed to absorb an aircraft impact but an accidental one with much less fuel and speed," he said.

"It is widely acknowledged that the impacts on September 11th were extraordinary, which led to consequences well in excess of the design capacity for the buildings. The original design of both towers must be praised for standing as long as they did, saving more lives than might have been expected."

Dr Seffen's research showed many studies focused on the phase just before collapse begins.

"They rightly show that the combination of fire and impact damage severely impaired those parts of the building close to where the aircraft hit to hold the weight of the building above. The top parts were bound to fall down but it was not clear why the undamaged building should have offered little resistance to these falling parts," he said.

His new analysis, which will be published in the American Society of Civil Engineers' Journal of Engineering Mechanics, calculates the average strength of a given storey of the building away from the impact area as it was being squashed flat.

This allowed him to define the "residual capacity" of the building, which he then used to develop a dynamic model of the collapse sequence, simulating the successive squashing of individual storeys based on the residual capacity already identified.

From this, Dr Seffen predicted that the residual capacity of both buildings was limited and once collapse had started it would take only 10 seconds for the building to go down.

This shows that the speed of the collapse as actually occurred was consistent with a "pancaking" effect caused by the dual impacts of the planes. As such, the mechanics of this pancaking process were exactly the same as a controlled demolition, but starting from the top and moving downwards, he said.

[bigw00dy]

Originally Posted by Sundae Girl

than a dirty great big aeroplane hitting the side caused the towers to fall.

Then on a side note.....What caused WTC 7 to fall in the same manner as WTC 1 & 2?

[Sundae]

Dirty great big towers next to it falling?

I trawled through the conspiracy and refutation of conspiracy sites a year or so ago when I realised my otherwise sensible friend genuinely believed that the American government could pull off such a complicated event, get it right and not only keep it secret, but also get the press on-side in order to keep it secret.

From Popular Mechanics for example:

FACT: Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA's preliminary report, which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. "The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's Sunder tells PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom — approximately 10 stories — about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest corner.

NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the exact proportion requires more research. But NIST's analysis suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of "progressive collapse," a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or "kinks," in the building's facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.

According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building's failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of floor area for each floor. "What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors," Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down."

There are two other possible contributing factors still under investigation: First, trusses on the fifth and seventh floors were designed to transfer loads from one set of columns to another. With columns on the south face apparently damaged, high stresses would likely have been communicated to columns on the building's other faces, thereby exceeding their load-bearing capacities.

Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. "There was no firefighting in WTC 7," Sunder says. Investigators believe the fire was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run emergency generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly small, but a generator on the fifth floor was connected to a large tank in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: "Our current working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time."

WTC 7 might have withstood the physical damage it received, or the fire that burned for hours, but those combined factors — along with the building's unusual construction — were enough to set off the chain-reaction collapse.

There's loads more on that site if you're interested.

[bigw00dy]

So 7 fell but others closer to 7 still stand today?

I do try to think level-headed and I am really trying NOT to become one of those 'Conspiracy' promoters. But quite a few questions are still left unanswered.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by bigw00dy

Then on a side note.....What caused WTC 7 to fall in the same manner as WTC 1 & 2?

Flint did it.

[Razzmatazz13]

Damn that flint...always pissing in everyone's cheerios...

[Undertoad]

http://xkcd.com/258/

A magazine, I think it was Popular Mechanics though I could be wrong, did an exhaustive study of all the conspiracy theories and later published a book showing all that they found.
It was very specific, complete, neutral and detailed... all of them shown to be VERY wrong.
Many of the ones I had in question were laid to rest quite cleanly. It was well done.

Edit:
Found it: http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech...w/1227842.html
Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report
Popular Mechanics examines the evidence and consults the experts to refute the most persistent conspiracy theories of September 11.

I wonder if the book has not come out yet... I know they made a book from it.

Then again... there is this, LOL.

[monster]

Say it was all a conspiracy. Say you could produce proof beyond doubt. What would it change?

[bigw00dy]

Originally Posted by monster

Say it was all a conspiracy. Say you could produce proof beyond doubt. What would it change?

This sentiment is kinda where I stand. I am by now way "searching" for the 'truth', but more like stuck in the middle. I find conspiracy's interesting but tend to take them no further than ground level. Im lazy + a habitual procrastinator.

So to answer your question Monster, probably nothing worth more than its 15 minutes of fame.

I also did find the Popular Mechanics write-up interesting.

So what I guess that im saying is that I would make a damn fine politician.
Maybe I just like to see how other people feel about the subject.

[piercehawkeye45]

There has only been one scholarly peer-reviewed source about the 9/11 conspiracy and that was showing that bombs would not be needed to make the WTCs fall.

What makes the 9/11 conspiracy so strong is that Bush, Cheney, etc, needed 9/11 to accomplish what they have in the past 6 years. That, and because some people are just crazy, is why the conspiracy will never go away, no matter how much evidence is presented.

[glatt]

The same administration that brought you "you're doing a heck of a job, Brownie," is sophisticated enough to bring down two skyscrapers with controlled explosives while the entire nation is watching?

I don't buy it.

[lookout123]

*dingdingding* and glatt brings us the winner.

[ZenGum]

I spent a moment browsing that site.
My reaction?
Especially to http://rinf.com/alt-news/911-truth/w...n-damage/1479/
Apparently there were secret nuclear reactors built 80 meters below ground level beneath each of the towers!!!