Reply #90: Heavy thoughts, massive coverup

[dlaliberte]

You are trying to make it sound like I don't understand the concept of "path of least resistance", but earlier you were trying to say it only applied to electronics. Now you are suggesting I don't understand the local vs global constraints on finding the path of least resistance, as if I am imaging the mass would somehow jump itself away from the building to find some better path. More strawman arguments. In fact, the "path of least resistance" always *does* apply locally even when the material is trapped, because staying in the trapped space *is* then the path of least resistance. Are we in agreement now? Can we stop going down this path of least reasonable arguments?

I am giving you much more benefit of the doubt than you probably deserve. Don't squander it.

Now you (and Bazant and Greening) *claim* that most (90%?) of the material is trapped in the collapse, but (1) there is no justification for it, (2) that's not what we see, and (3) even *if* it were true, the resulting tangled mess of broken material, although more massive than if it were ejected, would absorb more of the energy in inelastic collisions. To defend a gravity-driven near-free-fall collapse, you *need* at least 80-90% of the material to be trapped, but you need much more than that.

Yes, moving sideways would require lateral forces, and *if* the only forces were due to deflections and rebounds in the downward collision process (which would be true in a gravity-driven collapse), then, indeed, it would not be enough force to explain what we see.

So let's focus on whether we can agree on what we see. I am not saying (right now) that we should look at the clouds and ejection during the 'collapse'. Let's just look at what we see on the ground afterwards. This task is made more difficult because of the rapid destruction of evidence after the fact (and the steel didn't just jump into the blast furnaces).

Greening says in http://911myths.com/WTCONC1.pdf, paraphrasing(?) the estimate by Risk Management Solutions:
"Massive debris-related damage was caused by falling debris generated as the towers collapsed.
This debris includes the bulk of building mass that disintegrated over a footprint 2 to 3 times the
radius of each building’s base, as well as large steel and concrete beams that, during the
implosion of the towers, were ejected well beyond this footprint area. This is likely to be the
principal agent of damage for most buildings near the WTC complex."

This talks about the range, but it doesn't say what the distribution of the mass was - how much was within the perimeter and how much was at various distances out in which directions. If you have some information you trust about how the mass was distributed, please let me know.

Here is a rough estimate based on discussions about whether there might be some missing debris, due to nukes or whatever. (Don't get confused by the nukes - it doesn't relate to the estimate. I won't make a link to this since I can't tell whether the moderator thinks there is some objectionable material elsewhere on the site.) covertoperations.blogspot.com/2007/06/significant-amounts-of-wtc1-and-wtc2.html

Supposing the compacted volume is 11.5% of the uncollapsed buildings, as it was (apparently) for WTC7:

"11.5% of 1365 feet equals 157 feet. This means if WTC1 and WTC2 had collapsed straight down and all debris went in the footprint, there would be a 157 foot high pile of debris. This is clearly what was not seen, as the central debris pile was only about 25 feet for each tower."

80% of 157 ft is about 120 ft. Still way off compared to what we see, for the assumption that 80% of the material fell straight down. This 11.5% estimate supposedly already accounts for the basement levels, but it doesn't account for likely increased compaction of the debris from WTC1 and WTC2. Still, a 25 ft pile within the footprint doesn't sound like it will hold more than say 50% of the building material. Does that sound right to you?

Looking at photos on http://www.studyof911.com/articles/BsB092306/ I would say the amount of building mass within the footprint is a lot less than 50%, and closer to 10-20%.

In this photo, WTC2's footprint is in the foreground with some remaining perimeter columns still standing.



This cross-section view of WTC1 debris distribution looks about right to me:



It is also interesting that there is much greater distribution of debris (more mass, farther away) in the directions perpendicular to the faces, and very little is diagonally outside of the corners. This is consistent with what we saw in the 'collapse' itself in which material was flying out perpendicular to the faces, rather than randomly falling in every direction, as I would expect for a gravity-driven collapse.


I'll have to leave the other issues (pulverization and rotation) for later.