WTC Challenge, page 9

There's a lot of information in this thread to cover, and this is my first post, so for convenience I'll just post a couple things I found interesting with the collapses, and we'll go from there.

First of all I'd like to ask those who buy the official story how the 'pancake collapse' itself started. The official explanation of the cause of the collapses of WTC 1 and 2 were that fires and knocked-out columns provided such a weakening of support that those floors gave out and the buildings then began falling in on themselves, correct?

My first problem with this is, that I would like to have explained to me, is why the buildings collapsed when they did. It's no secret that jet fuel burns very quickly. I believe it's been estimated that the jet fuel in either building had burned up completely between 10 and 20 minutes or so after each of their impacts. At any rate, the fires lost an immense amount of intensity around those times. Afterwards, the fires went on to feed off of office fires; off of furnishings and flammable parts of the building itself, no longer feeding off the jet fuel. It's also no secret that office furnishings burn more weakly than jet fuel, giving off less heat.

If you watch video coverage, the initial clouds are huge, and gray. The smoke is billowing out. That's because the fires are being fed by jet fuel, and we are told they are burning very intensely, which is evident by the amount of smoke and it's color.

Around the times that the jet fuel burns away, there is less smoke coming from the building, and it's much darker. Again, you can look at video for this if you want proof of it, or photographs. Dark smoke, especially when the volume is also decreasing, is a clear indication of weakening fire. At the point of lessening smoke, and it turning black, the fires are losing much of their intensity and of course burning more cooly. It would not make sense for the fires to be hotter at this time, because, to recap once more, the smoke had turned black (indicating an unhealthy burn), there was less smoke, and the fire's initial fuel source had apparently by this time depleted. No surprise; jet fuel burns very quickly.

Here's a photo of the clouds, billowing gray, and with more smoke than would later be present:

And here's a photo of the clouds as they would later appear: black, smaller, and obviously dying:

So the clouds suggest a weakening, dying fire. So what?

Well, which are hotter: healthier, more intense fires fed by jet fuel and puffing big light clouds, or unhealthy, less intense fires fed by office furnishings that cause only smaller, dark clouds? I think it's obvious that a healthy, better-fed fire, will be hotter. It simply doesn't make sense the other way around.

The conclusion we can come to is that the fires were initially hotter than they would be later. That makes sense, right? Well why didn't the towers then collapse while the fires were hotter, at their peak of temperature? Instead, they fall (rather suspiciously reminiscent of demolition) at a time when the fires were cooling off.

Let me make this a little clearer still. Which will be hotter: steel submitted to hotter fire, or steel submitted to cooler fire? Obviously, the steel submitted to the hotter fire would be hotter. If steel was exposed to a fire that was weakening and cooling off, the steel would similarly cool off. It would not make sense for the fire to cool, but the steel to continue heating. That just utterly defies logic and science. And similarly, cooler steel is stronger than hotter steel. It would not make sense for cooler steel to be able to hold more weight than hotter, more malleable steel.

So, again, why did the buildings collapse while the steel was cooling off and not while it was at its hottest? There was no added weight to further stress the steel beams, so added stress was not the problem. It doesn't make sense for steel to continue heating while the heat source itself weakens, and steel closer to normal temperatures holds more weight. So what then? What events specifically trigged the collapse? I've just shown that it is not logical to assume the steel was at its hottest, weakest state, and neither had any further stress been added since the initial impact of the planes.

So why didn't the buildings collapse when the steel was at its hottest, but rather after it had cooled for some time? It seems to me that the effect of heat on the steel had little if anything at all to due with the collapse, or else the buildings would have fallen when the steel was at its hottest. So that's the first problem I'd like to have explained to me.

The second one is why the building did not fall sideways, like a tree with notches cut into its side. After all, the planes did not go all the way through either building. One plane went through diagonally, and the other simply rammed straight into its building, and there's no evidence it even made it past the core columns. The perimeter columns had been knocked out of particular sides on each building, and yet rather than having either building fall sideways into the lack of resistance to gravity provided by the lack of support columns, both buildings fall straight down as if all perimeter columns were simultaneously knocked out. There was no reason for all columns on the damaged floors to all give out simultaneously, especially taking into account what I've just discussed about the steel not even being sufficiently heated. It cannot be argued that the buildings did fall sideways, because they simply did not. Admittedly, there was slight tilting during the first couple of seconds, but the buildings still fell down and in on themselves, as any video of the collapse or photo of Ground Zero after collapse will show.

There must be some reason for why the building did not fall sideways, and further why the tilting mysteriously stopped after the first few seconds of collapse.

The third problem is the temperatures of the fires. We were told the temperatures were extremely high; enough to sufficiently weaken the steel, enough to cause a collapse. Industrial steel, such as used in skyscrapers, can hold several times it own weight (the exact number of times in the case of the WTC is not available as far as I know, but if it is, feel free to inform me).

No skyscrapers have ever fallen as a result of fires, which I'm sure you've already discussed here. There have been fires that have been testably more intense than those at the WTC, and that have lasted much longer, but did not result in any sort of collapse. Whole floors have been gutted by fires in some cases, and still no collapse. You can find examples of other such skyscraper fires here: 911research.wtc7.net...

When I say other fires have been testably more intense, I mean there have been other skyscraper fires that have had fires that accomplished more because of their greater intensity than the fires at the WTC buildings were able to accomplish. For example, in some of the fires mentioned in the link above, there was extensive window-shattering from the intense heat of the fires around the windows. The fires spread to other floors in some of those examples, as well.

By contrast, at the WTC buildings, there is no video or photographic evidence of any such widespread shattering of glass from heat. There are windows shattered from debris and the initial impacts, etc., but not from heat, or at least not many. This alone sets the fires back to the 600º C or below range, immediately. Beyond 600º C, windows begin shattering extensively from intense heat. Again, we did not see that at the WTC buildings. If the fires were as hot as they were claimed to have been, we would have easily seen the same widespread window shattering such as that in the other skyscraper fire cases.

Also, the fires did not spread beyond the floors that they started on. Fire going down the elevator shaft doesn't count either, I'm afraid, because the other examples of skyscraper fires being referenced did not have their fires spread to other floors by means of the elevator shafts. They were simply much hotter, and spread between floors themselves. And again, those fires didn't cause enough damage to the steel structures to collapse the buildings, so why would weaker fires in the WTC skyscrapers cause them to collapse? Let alone while the fires were dying, and let alone in a fashion that suggests all columns gave way at the same time!

So there are a few things for you guys to explain, those of you who buy the official story. A demolition would be able to explain all of it, obviously, but I suppose that's just a coincidence. So I'll start into this discussion I suppose with those points, if it's alright with you guys. As far as the NIST report, it won't load on my computer for some reason, but seeing as how it's not in its final form yet (as if they'll have some corrections to make or something), and apparently 'open to public comment', I'm skeptical of how concrete their explanations are from the start anyhow.

Thanks.

[edit on 4-7-2005 by bsbray11]

[edit on 4-7-2005 by bsbray11]