9/11 for Dummies?

It's true, anyone can write a scientific paper.
But I applaud all efforts in education about Islam and the dangers we face.

PS. Let's use some Islamic tactics against them.
www.thestar.com...
"And that I refuse as a Muslim to kill another Muslim and also as a Muslim to defend the rights of others."

If muslims are telling each other that it's wrong to kill muslims, (not saying that it's wrong to kill non-muslims) then it's time that we stand up and have zero tolerance for this movement.

[edit on 26-12-2009 by JJay55]

Originally posted by bsbray11

It figures you would deflect from the real question.

there's no deflection at all.

There's some real truth to be learned from my point.

Either you or the guys you want to cite are perfect examples of the DunningKrueger Effect. They know very little, but think they are experts. And you exhibit the same symptoms. There is no rational denial of this fact.

Especially when one combs through some of the comments they've put in their statements about 9/11.

Just from memory, here's a couple of real doozies:

Your prime example of a fine engineer - Charles Pegelow - believes that pineapple nukes were used.

Another says that the towers collapsed from the bottom.

And IIRC, several say that 1 and 2 fell at free fall speed.

In case you don't realize it, that's not a very good analysis of what happened.

AE is nothing but a shallow appeal to authority, with ZERO papers written that have any effect on any REAL engineers. Only the uneducated would be swayed by their statements.

Tony Szamboti and Grodon Ross are the only ones to actually write anything at all that I'm aware of, and the only attention they've recieved is from engineers debunking, mocking, and ridiculing their efforts.

This is getting pretty confusing for me folks, thats why I havent been responding. This thread is forcing me to go out and do some research - something I had hoped I could avoid

Meanwhile, is there anyone around who is expert in both sides of the argument?

Originally posted by Skyfloating
This is getting pretty confusing for me folks, thats why I havent been responding. This thread is forcing me to go out and do some research - something I had hoped I could avoid

Meanwhile, is there anyone around who is expert in both sides of the argument?

Skyfloating, what would it take to prove to you someone was an expert of both sides of the argument?

I see both sides of the conflict, Government control verses population discontent, both sides of 9/11 Truth, and how the system uses our own fear against us as a society.

What would it take to show you that someone knew that?

Originally posted by impressme

*Fact*, FBI hid over five hundred eyewitness account, of being in the explosions, seeing, and hearing explosions at the WTC.

Whats this all about? Do you have more on this?

reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas


I would consider YOU somewhat knowledgable of both sides. As I understand it, your own theory is also some sort of middle-line between the OS and the CT.

Any person who is able to argue both sides, might be more unbiased in his reports.



[edit on 26-12-2009 by Skyfloating]

Originally posted by Joey Canoli
And that's where opinions of 9/11 will diverge.

REAL experts poo-poo EVERY CT theory, claim, etc ever made.

IF one chooses to take the conspiracy angle on it, then you will say that they are lying, or could be wrong, or something similar.

Unfortunately the investigooglers (9/11 truthers) believe themselves to be the intellectual equal of all these demonstrated experts. Or, they believe some folks with dubious experience at best that something is wrong about the "os".

In my OP I asked not to waste time wronging the other side.

Instead of doing so, let me ask you what you think about some of the claims made by CTers here, such as the Demolition of WTC7?

Originally posted by ImAPepper
Opinions mean nothing when it comes to science.

Agreed, and we already know you don't have any proof of your beliefs.

You counted the names of the authors.

Yeah, and they didn't add up to more than the people who put their names with these organizations calling for further investigation.

How many engineers did it take to peer review these papers ?

Most of the papers you listed had nothing to do with the collapse mechanisms of the towers anyway. I also enjoyed the link Intrepid provided regarding peer review. You don't even have to agree with the conclusions of a paper to accept it during the review process, it simply has to have no blatant errors in its methodology. Things are constantly accepted that are later refuted. Even amongst peer reviewed papers regarding the towers, there are many contradictions between them.

How many people attended these conferences?

Now you are really grasping at straws. You just cannot learn what a fallacy is, can you?

You seem to have a thing for Griff and his opinion. IIFC, Griff wanted to take his name off A&E for Gage being deceptive. I also recall Griff stating that the NIST report on 1 & 2 was possible to have happened the way explained in their report.

I was using Griff as an example of what a fallacy it is to include whole organizations. Because, again, Griff was a member of the ASCE. And Griff was not in the least satisfied with the NIST reports. That's why he was always arguing with people like you. Go re-read his posts if you need a refresher. It's easy to lie about him when he's not here to defend himself, but I actually talked to him on and off the forums and knew him better than probably anyone else that posts here. Valhall is another professional engineer that posts here that is completely dissatisfied with the NIST report.

[edit on 26-12-2009 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by Joey Canoli

Originally posted by bsbray11
It figures you would deflect from the real question.

there's no deflection at all.

Considering you didn't even answer the question I asked, I'm now led to believe you don't even understand what the word "deflection" means.

There's some real truth to be learned from my point.

Either you or the guys you want to cite are perfect examples of the DunningKrueger Effect. They know very little, but think they are experts. And you exhibit the same symptoms. There is no rational denial of this fact.

I could say the exact same thing to you and it would be perfectly true. What's your major and working experience with any of the science or math involved here again? That's what I thought. No rational denial of your "fact" my ass.

Especially when one combs through some of the comments they've put in their statements about 9/11.

Just from memory, here's a couple of real doozies:

Your prime example of a fine engineer - Charles Pegelow - believes that pineapple nukes were used.

Another says that the towers collapsed from the bottom.

And IIRC, several say that 1 and 2 fell at free fall speed.

And NIST tested their "all the fireproofing was knocked off by the impacts" hypothesis by shooting at fireproofing on a truss with a shot gun.

And NIST completely neglects a simple conservation of energy study for WTC7's kinetic energy as it is "collapsing," probably because they KNOW what its free-fall implies in that regard and don't even want to go near it with a 20 foot pole.

And your own Frank Greening that you referenced thought that a thermite reaction spontaneously occurred in the towers from molten aluminum on rust to cause it to collapse, which was asinine has since been refuted.

Bazant totally ignores the amount of debris left in the footprints in his energy models just to force them to work the way he wants them, ie with most mass falling straight down the entire time when it clearly did not.

If want to knit-pick every little detail, the list of fallacies on both sides would be too many to list in a single post. But the bottom line is you are still outnumbered when it comes to expert opinions and if you want to keep referencing the experts as if they're all on your side, you are lying. And the fact that so many professionals ARE outspoken against the official story should tell you SOMETHING, besides that you are a genius and more educated than all of these people, because you are not. Steven Jones alone has credentials that put any of your experts to shame.

Originally posted by Skyfloating
Meanwhile, is there anyone around who is expert in both sides of the argument?

Everyone posting here has probably seen mostly the exact same information. The issue is what starts rolling around in these heads when the information is revealed, because as you see different people categorize all of the different information entirely differently.

As I understand it, your own theory is also some sort of middle-line between the OS and the CT.

Depending on how deeply technical you want to go, you will find there are many different "official stories" and many different "conspiracy theories," really there is a lot of contradictory and false information to go around for everyone on all "sides."


Here is a sampling of all of the different theories regarding the collapses of the Twin Towers alone that I have seen in so many years:

Planes and fires alone:

1) The steel columns melted from the fire. (Several structural engineers were proponents of this in the days after 9/11.)

2) The floors came loose and pancaked down one on top of another, like a domino effect, ie "pancake collapse theory." (Since refuted by the NIST report, also most debris was actually ejected outwards during the destruction.)

3) The floor trusses expanded or contracted enough from heat and deflected enough perimeter columns to cause global instability. (FEMA's report couldn't decide between expansion or contraction and seemed to support pancake theory; NIST said only contraction and denied pancake theory, also said that one form of spray-on fireproofing on the columns may have been dislodged by the impacts.)

4) A thermite reaction formed between molten aluminum and rust on the columns, forming an incendiary that melted columns and led to a chain reaction failure. (Frank Greening espoused this theory when molten steel was first noticed flowing out of the corner of WTC2 shortly before it collapsed, and I think it has since been abandoned by Greening himself.)

5) Shoddy construction was to blame, columns not actually being welded together as they should have been, only bolted, and galvanic corrosion causing bolts on the exterior to weaken and come apart easily. The steel that was purchased for the towers was acquired for an extremely low price mostly from Japan. (Greening and many others consider this a major factor; NIST asserts the building was up to all proper codes and standards.)

And there are other variations, that mostly play along the lines of combinations of the above.


Theories involving further foul play:

1) The buildings were rigged with conventional explosives. (Not likely considering the sheer amount it would take, not to mention how old this technology is and better options that would be available.)

2) The buildings had incendiaries like thermite placed on the bolts and columns that melted through or severely weakened them in key places. (Physicist Steven Jones supports this theory and has written papers with other scientists documenting explosive "paint chips" found in the dust at GZ. There is also documentation of unexplained severely corroded samples of steel in the FEMA and NIST reports.)

3) Large bombs (of who knows what type -- many theories as to that, including modern pure fusion weapons that theoretically can create a blast as small as the designer desires) were placed in the core structure on the mechanical floors (the gray bands on the towers) and destroyed the core structure at those points and also in the basements, leading to global instability and collapse, usually in tandem with other explosives or incendiaries weakening other parts of the structure.

4) Judy Wood has proposed a theory that an advanced energy beam weapon directed from space vaporized much of the towers. I don't personally buy this and most people here don't (I'm not sure of anyone who does), however there is no disputing that steel was rendered to microscopic particles never seen in such quantities before, as it was measured by some environmental group and was suspected to be a major cause of so many people coughing up blood at GZ, along with the asbestos.


There are so many theories, really the best thing you CAN do is collect as much raw data and undisputed facts as possible, and also as many witness testimonies as you can (firefighters, police, medics, civilians, etc.), and then draw your own conclusions...

Any person who is able to argue both sides, might be more unbiased in his reports.

Talk to Valhall. She is a professional engineer and seems objective enough. She was always here arguing with we who are not satisfied with the government report (NIST), and then she read it herself and found all kinds of issues with it, to the extent that she even fired a NIST employee from one of her engineering teams because she said she had lost all faith in their competence. But she still believes it was an act of terrorism by Islamic extremists. She will also tell you about a Muslim who is known to have been messing around in the basements of the WTC Towers days before 9/11 with a fake security pass. Or you could do a Google search of your own I suppose.



PS I apologize for all the back-and-forth, but a lot of what people are posting here just really irks me. 9/11 was a tragedy and it really gets on my nerves to see essentially trash-talk aimed at anyone who even wants so much as further investigation into the events.

[edit on 26-12-2009 by bsbray11]

reply to post by Skyfloating

*Fact*, FBI hid over five hundred eyewitness account, of being in the explosions, seeing, and hearing explosions at the WTC.


Whats this all about? Do you have more on this?

I hope this will help. The NY Times won a lawsuit under the FOIA and the NY Times released all the eyewitness statements that went on record. The FBI had hid these testimonies from public view. When one is reading these eyewitness accounts one realizes why the FBI hid these reports it is because, they do not support the OS.

Eyewitness Accounts
Eyewitnesses Recalled Explosions, No Alarms or Sprinklers
The collapses of the Twin Towers were witnessed firsthand by scores of people, most of them emergency responders. The majority of those accounts have been suppressed by the state for years. In August of 2005, the New York Times published the single largest and most authoritative body of eyewitness evidence yet assembled, as a result of winning a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. 1 Another body of evidence, which we have yet to examine, is a set of recordings of calls processed by the 911 system on the day of 9/11/01 and released in 2006. 2

911research.wtc7.net...

Originally posted by Skyfloating

Originally posted by Joey Canoli
And that's where opinions of 9/11 will diverge.

REAL experts poo-poo EVERY CT theory, claim, etc ever made.

IF one chooses to take the conspiracy angle on it, then you will say that they are lying, or could be wrong, or something similar.

Unfortunately the investigooglers (9/11 truthers) believe themselves to be the intellectual equal of all these demonstrated experts. Or, they believe some folks with dubious experience at best that something is wrong about the "os".

In my OP I asked not to waste time wronging the other side.

Instead of doing so, let me ask you what you think about some of the claims made by CTers here, such as the Demolition of WTC7?

I personally think they're without merit.

Real experts - those that actually design buildings and have demonstrated their professionalism by *doing* that thing - say the same thing.

So, like I said, if you recognize that you do not have the experience to have a valid judgement on the 2 sides, only your own logic will tell you who to believe.

Truthers believe the non-experts.

Take your pick.....

Originally posted by bsbray11

I could say the exact same thing to you and it would be perfectly true.

How so? I'm no expert. I rely on the opinion of real experts that have demnstrated their expertise to any rational person.

Truthers rely on non-experts. Or believe that their investigoogling has made them an expert. Dunning-Kruger Effect.

But the bottom line is you are still outnumbered

There's no list of experts that say that the moon landings were true. Or the earth is round. Or there is no Bigfoot.

The implications of that will escape you, of course.....

when it comes to expert opinions and if you want to keep referencing the experts as if they're all on your side, you are lying.

What experts in AE are you talking about? Please provide their c.v. Please cite their papers. They don't even need to be published in a respectable journal.

And the fact that so many professionals ARE outspoken against the official story should tell you SOMETHING

Yes, they are victims of their own arrogance, and suffer from the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

SO do truthers who think that they have the knowledge to determine whether or not that what they say is true......

Originally posted by Skyfloating
reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas

 

I would consider YOU somewhat knowledgable of both sides. As I understand it, your own theory is also some sort of middle-line between the OS and the CT.

Any person who is able to argue both sides, might be more unbiased in his reports.



[edit on 26-12-2009 by Skyfloating]

Thank you, Skyfloating, it's how I see it.

I see both sides being played against the middle.

The people who follow the politcial party line who call people who are uncovering the conspiracy "Truthers", are just as blind as the ones uncovering the facts they see as culpable and who are calling the other side "De-Bunkers".

You need a fair and balanced view in order to see what's going on.

[color=#FFFF00]Original Quote by SKL :

With being who I am, I have the unique ability to see all angles, the unique ability to see into the heart of a conflict, and see exactly where the truth lies.

Usually, in any conflict, truth is the first casualty, the first to die, the last to be salvaged from the rubble of the conflict, and never to be buried because it is dragged about like a crude and barbaric trophy like the head of a dead king carried on a pike for all to see.

Truth : The First Victim, The Last to Be Un-Buried, Never to Rest...

When seeing a conflict one must see both sides, not picking sides, and bring the conflict to a resolution, otherwise the division stays, and everyone's being played by their own sides for an agenda towards their side, left-wing or right-wing, no one can fly by flapping one wing, it takes a concerted effort of both wings to gracefully fly like an eagle.

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

That word in there, "indivisible" means not letting people divide you.

Here is the trick of the shade though, the agenda of those in power, on both sides, is to cause the ceaseless debate, the in-fighting, and the constant bickering.

[edit on 26-12-2009 by SpartanKingLeonidas]

Originally posted by bsbray11

Depending on how deeply technical you want to go, you will find there are many different "official stories"

False. There were some different thoughts on what may have happened by people 'out of the loop'. There's virtually zero disagreement now. Those that do focus on extremely minor points.

Don't let truthers pollute your mind skyfloating.

and many different "conspiracy theories

And it continues to this day to get even worse. Different factions are now calling each other disinfo, shills for the guv, etc. LMAO.

reply to post by Skyfloating


Tad off topic maybe Sky or not

The Poster above Joey, while "being your friend" also gives

you a Classic example of what and how a Denier works.

Look at his sig, its Debunking 101

1 Stereotype ALL opinions of truthers as 1 shared opinion

2. Attack the validity of ALL truthers : non educated , non experienced ,
I mean ROFL at his level of thinking

3 qualifications under attack, again ROFL .. what is the number at now
1100 AE now , Scholars for truth , over 700 members

So with that said , Research all information, Think for yourself, You will

reach a conclusion yhat you will be comfortable with.

Mod edit: Removed insult

[edit on 12/26/2009 by junglejake]

Originally posted by Joey Canoli
Real experts - those that actually design buildings and have demonstrated their professionalism by *doing* that thing - say the same thing.

Charles Pegelow designs buildings and has done it for decades (so do many, many others in these organizations I have listed), but you were just trash-talking him earlier because he entertains the idea that advanced fusion weapons were used. So what? He is still a licensed professional SE and does exactly what you claim "truthers" don't do. You are wrong, and cherry-picking who is an expert and who is not. Richard Gage is an architect and also designs building professionally, but oops, you don't count him either, simply because he doesn't share your opinion on 9/11. Instead you attempt character assassination every single chance you get. Griff is also a structural engineer and doesn't share your opinion, so he's automatically not an expert either. See how it works? If he doesn't agree with you, he's an idiot. That is exactly your line of thinking. That is arrogant.

Truthers believe the non-experts.

What is an expert? Someone with a degree? Someone with a degree who practices their profession? You have plenty of people that fit both of those qualifications as members of the three organizations I listed earlier.

When I point that out, you just move the goal post to people who have published papers. That means nothing. Publishing a crap paper that proves nothing does not make anyone more qualified. Being peer-reviewed in general is not what determines whether or not something is correct, that is NOT what the peer-review process is about and you have been told this numerous times by multiple people. Pick what you think is the best example of a peer-reviewed paper proving anything about the collapses of the Twin Towers and let's see if we can't find anything wrong or incomplete about it.

There's no list of experts that say that the moon landings were true. Or the earth is round. Or there is no Bigfoot.

Nor are there multiple organizations of hundreds of professionals contradicting those things.

Yet there are at least 3 entire organizations with long lists of professional members who are calling for re-investigation of 9/11. The general scholars group, the architects and engineers group, and the pilots group. Again, all 3 have real professionals, with real degrees, and you are just showing your bias and how you cherry-pick when you claim these people don't exist.

What experts in AE are you talking about? Please provide their c.v. Please cite their papers. They don't even need to be published in a respectable journal.

They don't need to write papers AT ALL to have a degree and practice their profession in the field, or to exercise their opinion that 9/11 needs re-investigating because we still do not know the full story of what happened.

Richard Gage is the leader of the organization. Therefore he is basically a martyr considering that makes him a prime target for character assassination from laymen such as yourself.

Richard Gage, AIA, is a San Francisco Bay Area architect and a member of the American Institute of Architects. He is the founding member of AE911Truth. He has been a practicing architect for over 20 years and has worked on most types of building construction, including numerous fire-proofed steel-framed buildings. Most recently he worked on the construction documents for a $400M mixed-use urban project with 1.2 million square feet of retail, parking structure, and 320,000 square feet of mid-rise office space—altogether about with 1,200 tons of steel framing.

www.ae911truth.org...

I would consider someone who has just worked as an architect on a 400 million dollar project, and has his education, license, and 20 years experience, an "expert." You don't -- because you are extremely biased. The ONLY reason you don't consider him an expert is because he disagrees with you -- again, a layman -- about what happened on 9/11. That is bias. A textbook example of it. This man is a PROFESSIONAL and an expert in his field.

Here is a list of technical articles AE911 provides, written by other professional scientists and engineers (meaning they practice their profession for a LIVING): www.ae911truth.org...

• Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe
Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, and others

• Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials
By Kevin R. Ryan, James R. Gourley, & Steven E. Jones

• Mysteries of the Twin Towers
R. Herbst

• The Missing Jolt: A Simple Refutation of the NIST-Bazant Collapse Hypothesis
By Prof. Graeme MacQueen and Tony Szamboti

• Scientists, Scholars, Architects & Engineers respond to NIST
By 16 scientists, scholars, architects, and engineers

• Public comments on the NIST WTC 7 draft report. Submitted to NIST 09/11/08.
Jonathan Cole P.E.

• WTC 7: A Short Computation
Prof. Kenneth L. Kuttler

• Journal of Engineering Mechanics:
Discussion of "Progressive Collapse of the World Trade Center: A Simple Analysis" by K.A. Seffen
Dr. Crockett Grabbe

• Momentum Transfer Analysis of the Collapse of the Upper Stories of WTC 1
Gordon Ross Journal of 9/11 Studies

• Direct Evidence for Explosions: Flying Projectiles and Widespread Impact Damage
Dr. Crockett Grabbe

• Lies about the WTC by NIST and Underwriters Laboratories
Kevin Ryan - U.L. whistleblower - former Site Manager

And the list goes on and on. The information does not have to be published in a journal to be correct or especially to reach anyone who is going to do something about it. We have seen from Dr. Steven Jones' work that when he had his first paper peer-reviewed, you "skeptic" lot not only attempted to assassinate his character, but the character of anyone who reviewed his work. He had it reviewed more than once, to no avail from people such as yourself who will NEVER be satisfied with ANYTHING he does. Nevertheless he had other professionals, and not just David Ray Griffin, but a tenured mathematician (Kenneth Kuttler) and other scientists/engineers he corresponded with review his work. His latest paper on active thermitic material was co-written with several other professionals in their fields. It only takes 2 people to peer-review a paper generally anyway. You know he could have any of these other professionals in these organizations review his work and accept it in a heartbeat. The only reason he doesn't do it is because, again, people such as yourself simply resort to character assassinations and out-of-hand dismissals. You don't even try technical debunking anymore, you just call him names, call him stupid, call him a non-expert, when you are no one to be talking by any means.

Also from their website:

985 architectural and engineering professionals and 5900 other supporters including A&E students have signed the petition demanding of Congress a truly independent investigation.

Yes, they are victims of their own arrogance, and suffer from the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

I honestly have to say you are projecting with this one. You might want to apply your Dunning-Kruger effect to yourself and everyone over at JREF. Then you would find there IS no other real opposition to this work. All you guys resort to fallacies and ad hom tactics anyway, it's like all you know how to do when faced with this enormous body of experts and technical information that contradicts you. You literally just dismiss it out of hand. You don't even look at it or read the work anymore. You are CONVINCED that you already know everything worth knowing about 9/11 and everyone who is trying to learn more is dumber than you are. I really can't think of a more classic case of arrogance than that.

Originally posted by Joey Canoli

Originally posted by bsbray11
Depending on how deeply technical you want to go, you will find there are many different "official stories"

False. There were some different thoughts on what may have happened by people 'out of the loop'. There's virtually zero disagreement now.

Now that is a laugh. Yet here you are arguing about... what is it you're here arguing with us about again?

But we don't count because we're all stupid. Yeah, I get your point. Who is it that's just being arrogant again? Oh yeah, it was me, and all the experts I'm listing, according to you.

arrogant

Someone who is arrogant behaves in a proud, unpleasant way towards other people because they believe that they are more important than others.

www.google.com...

Saying there is no disagreement between people who are informed about 9/11 is massive, massssive denial. If anything, popular dissent against the official account of events has only increased in all these years since 9/11. You didn't have all these organizations 5 or 6 years ago.

I think I've corrected all the typos in this post... If not then oh well.

[edit on 26-12-2009 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by GoodOlDave
I'm not a metallurgist and I wasn't there to see what "melted steel" actually is so I can't say, but if you're asking me to speculate, then I'd say it was due to prolonged exposure to the underground fires that were documented to have been burning for months after the collapse.

I havn't seen anything about underground "fires" but there is video and plenty of witnesses that were part of the clean up that saw liquid metal. I read somewhere that it was steal, tho I can't remember where. someone have more info on that?

but I would think underground fires not being able to happen, since fires need oxygen. I don't think theres alot underground under rubble, but I guess im just speculating. also those fires would have to hit a tempature in the high 2000's to melt steal.

I with alot of the personal attacks I see I would just like to say I could only hope to god that osama did it all and the NWO doesn't exist and blah blah blah. But evidence seems to point in another direction. I can only make opinions based on my own experiences and the evidence put in front of me because I am in fact human. I want to see 9/11 theorys debunked and refuted, but the answers I get never seem to in fact refute it.

I can go into more detail about what FEMA and NIST concluded were the "probable" (NIST's word) collapse initiations in their reports, since these were basically the only supposed investigations into the WTC Tower collapses that had actual access to the buildings' structural documentation (out of public hands) and forensic evidence.

Sorry, this is a long post.. but NIST's report alone is 10,000 pages...

And before anyone reminds me that we have "blueprints" (I use quotes because that term is no longer used professionally), what those actually are, are architectural drawings that were anonymously emailed to Steven Jones, who distributed them to several websites. The original source of those drawings is unknown, they came out several years after the fact, and more to the point, they are architectural and don't have all the structural information that a structural engineer would need to analyze the building. The difference is basically the same difference between an architect and an SE. The structural docs were rumored to have been locked up by Rudy Giuliani's office immediately after 9/11, and were never released by any gov agency for public scrutiny.


FEMA's report preceded NIST's and was considered a preliminary report. Curiously, it did not try to nail down the exact failure mechanism, but was titled "Building Performance Report" and praised the buildings for standing as long as they did, as if to dispel a rumor that the towers were poorly designed.

Along those lines, a structural engineer that worked with FEMA early in its investigation, Dr. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, later accused the ASCE (whose even earlier study and even engineers went to FEMA to work on its report) of corruption and conflict of interest. Astaneh-Asl said he had been trying to recreate the ASCE's computer models of the WTC collapses for years but was only able to contradict them, and that most NY skyscrapers would have actually been able to withstand 767 impacts and fires according to his own work, including the towers. He implied that he was led to believe that the original ASCE team and all that followed them were covering up design or construction flaws, and noted that a wife of one of the buildings' engineers was on the ASCE panel, etc.

Engineer Society Accused of Cover-Ups
By CAIN BURDEAU
Associated Press Writer

The professional organization for engineers who build the nation's roads, dams and bridges has been accused by fellow engineers of covering up catastrophic design flaws while investigating national disasters.

After the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the levee failures caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the federal government paid the American Society of Civil Engineers to investigate what went wrong.

Critics now accuse the group of covering up engineering mistakes, downplaying the need to alter building standards, and using the investigations to protect engineers and government agencies from lawsuits.

Similar accusations arose after both disasters, but the most recent allegations have pressured the organization to convene an independent panel to investigate.

"They want to make sure that they do things the right way and that they learn lessons from the studies they do," said Sherwood Boelhert, a retired Republican congressman from New York who heads the panel. He led the House Science Committee for six years.

The panel is expected to issue a report by the end of April and may recommend that the society stop taking money from government agencies for disaster investigations.

The engineering group says it takes the allegations seriously, but it has declined to comment until completion of the panel's report and an internal ethics review.

In the World Trade Center case, critics contend the engineering society wrongly concluded skyscrapers cannot withstand getting hit by airplanes. In the hurricane investigation, it was accused of suggesting that the power of the storm was as big a problem as the poorly designed levees.

...

Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, a structural engineer and forensics expert, contends his computer simulations disprove the society's findings that skyscrapers could not be designed to withstand the impact of a jetliner.

Astaneh-Asl, who received money from the National Science Foundation to investigate the collapse, insisted most New York skyscrapers built with traditional designs would survive such an impact and prevent the kind of fires that brought down the twin towers.

He also questioned the makeup of the society's investigation team. On the team were the wife of the trade center's structural engineer and a representative of the buildings' original design team.

"I call this moral corruption," said Astaneh-Asl, who is on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.

seattletimes.nwsource.com...

I also find it interesting that many/most of the news sources that originally carried this AP article can no longer be found online. I also never saw the ASCE's expected response to these accusations. As a matter of fact, I never saw a single follow-up to this article, which made big waves on this forum at least when it first came out (as it should have).


Anyway, here is a diagram of the trusses provided in FEMA's report:




Here is an actual photo from construction, before the concrete slab had been laid:




Here is FEMA's diagram illustrating their two (contradictory) possible mechanisms for initiating collapse:




The first two illustrations show exterior columns pushed outwards by the trusses because they expanded from being heated.

The last illustration shows exterior columns exterior columns pulled inwards because the trusses sagged from being heated.

I have always wondered why the trusses would effectively gain weight (exert more "pulling" force on the exterior columns) simply because they are heated, but I have never gotten an intelligible answer to that question. I'm not saying there isn't one, only that it's beyond me and no one has been able to explain it to me. Anyway...

Though FEMA never reached a preference between the two (which suggests to me there was not a lot of evidence to favor either one over the other), NIST concluded that the most probable sequence was that a large number of exterior columns were pulled inward, not pushed outward, and this deflection is what led to the exterior columns failing first and initiating the global collapses. The global collapse sequences themselves (ie the vast majority of the actual collapses) were never analyzed in detail by NIST and were called "inevitable," their word, after this "probable" initiating event began.

NIST also came out against pancake theory, because pancake theory requires that the truss connections to the exterior columns failed first, thus the trusses would no longer be able to pull the exterior columns inwards. Therefore, since pancake theory contradicted sufficient inward pulling to cause significant deflection, they asserted it was not likely.

Pancake theory was a theory that attempted to explain the entire collapses, not just the initiations, remember. But NIST didn't try to replace it with another theory, because as far as they were concerned, their job was done simply by hypothesizing an initiating event only. After that they were content just to say that the rest of the collapses were too chaotic to analyze, even though they showed patterns of symmetry and order that suggested a definite pattern or mechanism was at work, not just pure chaos.

For example when WTC1 began collapsing in particular, all 4 corners of the building and also the antenna (which was supported independently by the core structure) dropped straight down at once, suggesting that the perimeter columns all the way around the building as well as the internal structure were all compromised within a single instant. NIST's report also declares that this event would be unlikely, despite another engineer named Thomas Eager suggesting a "zipper" theory to explain the apparent simultaneous failure of so many independent trusses/exterior columns.


This is a typical arrangement of the trusses spanning between the inner core columns and the outer exterior columns:



Each truss was independently connected to columns on either side. The only structural feature the trusses shared with each other was the concrete slab that was laid solid over entire floors. You will notice btw that you can hardly find a single piece of concrete anywhere in the debris at Ground Zero larger than a fist, and even pieces of that size are very rare. Most of the concrete seems to have been turned into fine powder/dust, which is one of the reasons pancake theory was so popular originally.


Both the NIST and FEMA reports neglect to say much at all about the core structure's mode of failure once the trusses and perimeter columns theoretically failed.

This is what the core structures of the Twin Towers looked like, without drywall compartmentalizing the halls and elevator shafts that were located there:




This image shows where the core structure fit in with the trusses and exterior columns, with interconnecting beams removed:




Before these reports, it was commonly asserted (for example on many History Channel programs that are STILL aired with this erroneous information) that the buildings were "hollow tube designs" and that the core area only supported elevator shafts. (continued)

[edit on 27-12-2009 by bsbray11]

The core structure itself was the most physically robust part of the structure. I have seen NIST variously generalize the load-bearing ratio between the perimeter columns and core columns as 50/50 and 40/60, respectively.

Because of the core structure's design, it's also not as easy to claim that it pancaked into itself, because it used an actual network of beams between the columns instead of thin trusses spanning otherwise empty space.


A little-known fact, the core structure of both WTC1 and WTC2 stood momentarily after the rest of the building had collapsed around them and were visible and photographed:


WTC1's core structure still standing, aka the "spire":





Note: the above photo does NOT show the core structure "vaporizing," but instead it sank straight down and left behind a cloud of dust resembling the shape that formerly occupied that space. This can be seen in videos, and if you will do a Google search, you can find videos that show this happening very clearly.



Above you can see 4 box columns falling in pairs still braced to one another, leaning over like trees, before the remaining columns sank down into themselves.










An animated gif:





WTC2's core structure still standing, which (along with various pre- and post-9/11 references of the Twin Towers as having a concrete core, including Oxford University, UNC, MSNBC and the BBC ) has led to speculation that the Twin Towers had concrete encasing the core columns instead of drywall alone (and who knows whether or not that is true since the structural docs were apparently always considered sensitive info for these landmarks):









The above analysis by mechanical engineer Gordon Ross shows that the visible portion of WTC2's core here is actually the core structure stripped of its outermost columns, which were connected to the trusses.


The mode of collapse for the core structures in both buildings, again, was not addressed by any investigation. NIST brushed it aside as an inevitable consequence of the perimeter columns failing in a fashion similar to their treatment of the global collapses as a whole.

But both core structures seemed to sink straight down into themselves (aside from a few columns that leaned over from WTC1's core). How exactly that was achieved, again, no one has touched that with so much as a 20-foot pole, though buildings that are conventionally demolished are first destroyed at the base to allow the weight of the mass above to fall straight down unresisted.


I've already gone off on a tangent from the NIST and FEMA reports so I'll stop there, but I figure someone will be seeing this information for the first time and for that it's worth it.