Professor thinks bombs, not planes, toppled WTC

[Wildcard Ky]

I don't know if this theory holds any water, but it's definitely an interesting read.

Desert News article

 

[china-doll]

I don't know if this theory holds any water, but it's definitely an interesting read.

Desert News article

It's nonsence and anyone that knows anything about structural engineering and buliding construction will tell you the same.

Structural steel in modern buildings is covered with fireproofing material to lengthen the time it can stand up to the heat of a fire. This fireproofing will typically allow the steel stand up to a fire for somewhere between one and two hours. After that it start to fail.

The fires that burned thru the trade center towers were a fire aided by hydrocarbons (jet fuel). The fire was probablly somewhwere in the neighborhood of 2000 degrees F. The north tower stood for 102 minutes before collapsing. THe south for 57 minutes. Both exactly as would be expected.

What most likely happend is that unter the heat, the floor trusses started to fail sag and fail firls. Eventually one collapsed onto the floor below it. If that lower floor had beed undamaged it quite likely would have withstood the evtra weight. But it too was stressed by the heat and it collapsed also. Now two floors worth of weight landed onto the next floor down. Once the chain reaction started there was no stopping it, the interior floors went down and down, leaving the structural columns. THses columns, damaged by the heat and now no longer having any floors to brace them laterally and also possible being damaged by the collapsing floors buckled under the weight of the floors still above. And down they went.

The bomb theory is nonscence. THe floors that were hit by the planes were a holocoust of burning debris. How would you protect these bombs so they didn't go off prematurly? And if you're going to blow the buildings with bombs why go thru all the trouble of hijacking planes.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Agreed. The business about no previous building failing that way is especially silly. No previous building was deliberately struck by a jet plane carrying maximum fuel load either. I note that the author has no research experience or credentials in any related areas: architecture, structural engineering, fire mechanics, specialized metallurgy, etc. His argument essentially boils down to, "I can't see how the planes alone could have made this happen." That's hardly surprising when nothing in his background suggests that he has any depth of knowledge in the issues involved. That he is not able to understand how the planes might have caused this to happen tells us only that he can't figure it out, not that it couldn't have happened. I can't understand how my television signal gets to my television set, but for the moment the general grasp of it I've got seems more reasonable than assuming that it's all a ploy to disguise the mind-control rays it's shooting into my home.

Shanglan

 

[mack_the_knife]

I dunno, 200,000 lbs plane with a few thousand gallons of fuel, moving at 400+mph...sounds like a bomb to me.

 

[LadyJeanne]

I dunno, 200,000 lbs plane with a few thousand gallons of fuel, moving at 400+mph...sounds like a bomb to me.

Yeah, I'm with you on this.

The simplest explanation is usually right on.

 

[yui]

Yeah, I'm with you on this.

The simplest explanation is usually right on.

Occam's Razor. *nods*

And with that, I'm going back to bed. Night, peeps!

 

[shereads]

The towers were undermined by voles.

 

[cloudy]

I hate to say this, really, but my sister and her many offspring are Morman, and a lot of Mormans are VERY fond of strange conspiracy theories. You wouldn't believe some of the shit I've heard my otherwise-intelligent sister say.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

What puts the argument in rarieifed air for stupidity, is that this is what the buildings were designed to do. Skyscrapers are designed to fall down in their place. It sounds strange, perhaps a litle macabre, but when they come down, this is how they are designed to come down. What they are not made to do is fall laterally. the reason is self evident. If you are going to loose one, it's awful and tragic, but far less tragic than big building dominos.

There simply isn't enough space in a big city to create a lateral fall zone around each building. If you had that kind of room, there would be little need to keep going up. Engineers know, bad things happen. And in the case of these giant projects, catastrophic failure is posible. Fewer lives are lost and the damage is localized when a building falls down upon itself rather than falling over.

In engineering terms, the twin towers did exactly what they were designed to do in the case of catastrophic failure.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Colly, that's fascinating - and, of course, quite logical. It hadn't occurred to me consciously that they must have been designed to do that, but it makes perfect sense. Cheers for the information -

Shanglan

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Colly, that's fascinating - and, of course, quite logical. It hadn't occurred to me consciously that they must have been designed to do that, but it makes perfect sense. Cheers for the information -

Shanglan

Structural enginering is a little bit like warfare. You train and build and hope for the best, but only a fool dosen't make preparations for the worst case scenario. In structural design failuer within a skyscrapper, you simply have to accept people are going to die. You have to make every reasonable attempt to minimize that loss of life and a lot of times that means sacrificing those in the building to keep the failure localized.

One reason collecting and identiying bodies was such a laborious task was because the individual floors were designed to pancake. As they come down, the weight accrues, thus the resistance of each succeeding floor down is lessened as physics of motion and acceleration take over.

The real danger in something like the trade centers, where your failure occurs near the middle, is that the upper floors might fall away en block and crush a buliding nearby. In the case of the trade centers the design worked perfectly, with the weight of the floors above, blowing out the steel structure and coming down vertically.

The sad part is, the design pretty much assures you of dying if you are in the building when it fails. The trade off is, if you are in the building next door, you're very likely to suffer nothing at all.

 

[R. Richard]

OK, if bombs, not planes, brought down the World Trade Center (WTC) towers I have a couple of questions. First, where did the terrorists get the bombs? Mind you, these can't be several ton ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel bombs, they have to be very compact. Second, how did they get such a bomb aboard an aircraft? Even advanced military bombs weigh more than an individual can reasonably carry.

Of course, one of the terrorists may have been able to smuggle a couple of sticks of dynamite on board. First, a couple of sticks of 70% dynamite would not do all thast much damage to the WTC. Second, if one terrorist was caught with one stick of dynamite, the whole operation is game over.

The idea of bombs bringing down the WTC is worthy of review; psychiatric review.

 

[cantdog]

Structural enginering is a little bit like warfare. You train and build and hope for the best, but only a fool dosen't make preparations for the worst case scenario. In structural design failuer within a skyscrapper, you simply have to accept people are going to die. You have to make every reasonable attempt to minimize that loss of life and a lot of times that means sacrificing those in the building to keep the failure localized.

One reason collecting and identiying bodies was such a laborious task was because the individual floors were designed to pancake. As they come down, the weight accrues, thus the resistance of each succeeding floor down is lessened as physics of motion and acceleration take over.

The real danger in something like the trade centers, where your failure occurs near the middle, is that the upper floors might fall away en block and crush a buliding nearby. In the case of the trade centers the design worked perfectly, with the weight of the floors above, blowing out the steel structure and coming down vertically.

The sad part is, the design pretty much assures you of dying if you are in the building when it fails. The trade off is, if you are in the building next door, you're very likely to suffer nothing at all.

As a fireman, I can confirm both China Doll and Colleen. The key is the trusses. Trusses support well under mere load, since they are triangles repeated. Using small members arranged in nets of mutually supporting triangles you can carry a load using a lot less steel for the same strength.

Heat, though, acts to soften steel. The smaller through the piece of steel is, the more quickly it buckles under heat stresses. Trusses fail because each member in them is small-diameter steel. But the columnar supports are thick. So the floors fail, but the columns hold.

The floor-by-floor puffs of 'smoke' this guy observes are evidence of the floor-by-floor failures. The building came stright down, more-or-less, because its collapse was constrained by the columns.

Even buildings of masonry with wooden truss or wooden beam floor supports are designed so that, in a fire, the floors fail and pancake down on each other. That way, the shell remains and may even be re-usable. If the outer walls failed first, the whole structure must be demolished because the masonry would be twisted.

Firemen get to know these things so that we can get out in time not to be trapped in the collapse of the floors. "Pancake" takes on new meaning when you put a few firemen between floors designed to fail.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

As a fireman, I can confirm both China Doll and Colleen. The key is the trusses. Trusses support well under mere load, since they are triangles repeated. Using small members arranged in nets of mutually supporting triangles you can carry a load using a lot less steel for the same strength.

Heat, though, acts to soften steel. The smaller through the piece of steel is, the more quickly it buckles under heat stresses. Trusses fail because each member in them is small-diameter steel. But the columnar supports are thick. So the floors fail, but the columns hold.

The floor-by-floor puffs of 'smoke' this guy observes are evidence of the floor-by-floor failures. The building came stright down, more-or-less, because its collapse was constrained by the columns.

Even buildings of masonry with wooden truss or wooden beam floor supports are designed so that, in a fire, the floors fail and pancake down on each other. That way, the shell remains and may even be re-usable. If the outer walls failed first, the whole structure must be demolished because the masonry would be twisted.

Firemen get to know these things so that we can get out in time not to be trapped in the collapse of the floors. "Pancake" takes on new meaning when you put a few firemen between floors designed to fail.

Cabt, thanks for posting, maybe you know something abou tthis?

I read somewhere, that new designes in earthuake prone zones had the floors built with a sort of cantalever design. With thick blocks of fairly dense concrete on alternating ends. the idea was this would leave dead space between the floors if they failed. It sounded reasonable, but besie the one article I never saw anything else abou tit.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I'm just impressed that the author of this paper couldn't manage the depth of research possible with a post to pornography bulletin board.

 

[yui]

I'm just impressed that the author of this paper couldn't manage the depth of research possible with a post to pornography bulletin board.

*cough* He could have at least Googled. *cough*

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I hate to say this, really, but my sister and her many offspring are Morman, and a lot of Mormans are VERY fond of strange conspiracy theories. You wouldn't believe some of the shit I've heard my otherwise-intelligent sister say.

Not only that, but this guy's involved in "fusion" research at BYU. Does anyone remember Fleischman and Pons, the two BYU chemists who "discovered" cold fusion back in the late 80's? It was a huge embarrassment for the University and made them a laughing stock. And now this guy's coming out with this stuff?

I was especially intrigued by this statement:

Jones says he became interested in the physics of the WTC collapse after attending a talk last spring given by a woman who had had a near-death experience. The woman mentioned in passing that "if you think the World Trade Center buildings came down just due to fire, you have a lot of surprises ahead of you," Jones remembers, at which point "everyone around me started applauding."

Doesn't do a lot for his credibility.

 

[cantdog]

Cabt, thanks for posting, maybe you know something abou tthis?

I read somewhere, that new designes in earthuake prone zones had the floors built with a sort of cantalever design. With thick blocks of fairly dense concrete on alternating ends. the idea was this would leave dead space between the floors if they failed. It sounded reasonable, but besie the one article I never saw anything else abou tit.

I'm going to google around a bit.

Collapse. You want to be nearer the outer wall, they told us, unless there was something of good columnar strength right near by. The trick was to end up in void spaces, roofed by the floor which collapsed on you, but held up by something. the resulting space would be shaped like a tent, if you can picture it. Your description seems like an attempt to provide void spaces by virtue of the shape of the floors themselves. Sorta pancake avoidance.

I can't say, Colleen. But it's been since 1995 that I've been out of the fireman biz.

 

[cantdog]

Still looking. BUT, I did find a cool thing with cantilevered beams for earthquake-resistance. It's an old technique, I guess.

citation
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y90/sysladobsis/cribbageandcator.jpg

 

[LadyJeanne]

Not only that, but this guy's involved in "fusion" research at BYU. Does anyone remember Fleischman and Pons, the two BYU chemists who "discovered" cold fusion back in the late 80's? It was a huge embarrassment for the University and made them a laughing stock. And now this guy's coming out with this stuff?

I was especially intrigued by this statement:

Jones says he became interested in the physics of the WTC collapse after attending a talk last spring given by a woman who had had a near-death experience. The woman mentioned in passing that "if you think the World Trade Center buildings came down just due to fire, you have a lot of surprises ahead of you," Jones remembers, at which point "everyone around me started applauding."

Doesn't do a lot for his credibility.

As I read through the article, I kept waiting to read that planes didn't actually hit the towers at all; that the planes were a figment of mass hypnosis or something. Like the Holocaust.

 

[zeb1094]

As I read through the article, I kept waiting to read that planes didn't actually hit the towers at all; that the planes were a figment of mass hypnosis or something. Like the Holocaust.

No they hit, I saw them. Let's see, a couple of hundred tons of metal moving at 4 - 5 hundred miles an hour equals a whole lot of kentic energy. Of course that's not his field, he's into fusion and solar energy so the kentic energy of a photon isn't quiet up there with a jetliner.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Let's see. He couldn't get it published and is instead trying to get it in the media by publishing a draft on his website and sending it to the news services and getting interviews.

Psuedoscience alert right there. You almost don't even have to read the article to know the rest of the tale.

 

[Guest]

Let's see. He couldn't get it published and is instead trying to get it in the media by publishing a draft on his website and sending it to the news services and getting interviews.

Psuedoscience alert right there. You almost don't even have to read the article to know the rest of the tale.

Perhaps he should have called the towers down by Intelligent Design.

Someone would have snapped it up immediately.

 

[yui]

Perhaps he should have called the towers down by Intelligent Design.

Someone would have snapped it up immediately.

Doesn't that require intelligence?

Oh!

Wait.

Nevermind. I feel so silly.

 

[Liar]

Perhaps he should have called the towers down by Intelligent Design.

Actually, that was what his non-scientific approach to the subject at hand reminded me of.