Thursday, April 06, 2006

You Don't Have to be a Scientist To Understand that the Collapse of the Towers was Unusual

You might assume that the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11 because of their design or because the fires were so hot or because of the damage from the hijacked planes. You probably assume that someone who knows alot more than you -- a structural engineer, or a fire expert, or a tall building designer -- has an explanation of why the towers collapsed, and that it all makes perfect sense. At the very least, you assume that you don't have the expertise to even think about why the Twin Towers collapsed, right?

Well, a contradiction in the way the towers collapsed shows that this is not so.

Specifically, there are two possibilities regarding the collapse of Twin Towers on September 11th:

EITHER the towers experienced virtually no resistance from their steel-reinforced concrete floors as they collapsed, in which case, how could the buildings have been pulverized in mid-air into massive dust clouds (see also this photo), and why how could heavy steel beams have shot out sideways up to 500 feet as the buildings collapsed?

OR -- if there was sufficient resistance from the floors of the buildings to have caused the dust clouds and sideways ejection of material -- how could the buildings have collapsed at virtually free-fall speeds?

Did I lose you? Okay, let's back up and start over.

The mid-air pulverization of tons of concrete indicates massive and competing forces -- incredibly violent collisions between objects. Concrete usually cracks when dropped or hit, it is not pulverized. Either the pulverization was caused by some type of explosion, or by the heavy tops of the buildings hitting massive inertial resistance in the form of the lower floors, which were steel-reinforced concrete floors solidly bolted into the steel core.

Likewise, the sideways ejection of heavy steel beams indicates either explosive forces or, at the very least, tremendous resistance by the floors to the downward collapses, thus forcing heavy objects to shoot out sideways.

If the buildings collapsed from any cause other than controlled demolition -- which violently blows out all supports of the buildings being demolished -- then there would have been a crumpling of the buildings. In that case, there might have generated dust clouds near the end of the collapse, but not towards the very beginning. And, clearly, the collapse would not have approached free-fall speeds, since the intact floors would have put up alot of resistance against the momentum of the falling floors.

Bottom line: There could not have been both beginning-of-collapse dust clouds (indicating huge, violently-competing forces) AND collapses at virtually free-fall speeds (indicating only small, minor competition of forces and little resistance).

The towers collapsed as fast as a house of cards, and yet produced enormous dust clouds from early on in the collapses.

The defenders of the official story of 9/11 can't have it both ways.

Instead, the towers had to have been brought down with explosives:

• The near free-fall speed is easily explained by the demolition of the towers' support structures, which took away the resistance which should have slowed the collapse time

And

• The tremendous dust clouds seen early in the collapses can be explained by the massive explosions caused by pre-set demolition charges which pulverized concrete and shot it out of the towers.

See also this article by a PhD chemist on how laypeople can understand that the towers were demolished.

And you can also see what scientists, structural engineers, and other professionals say about the destruction of the World Trade Center.