The east penthouse collapsed 6 seconds earlier. So what? The relevant question is how much time did the entire building take to collapse, the time the roofline took to hit the floor? The only way it could be so fast is if all the supporting columns were destroyed. I don’t see how the collapse of the penthouse is relevant to that. It would only be relevant if said collapse would destroy the supporting columns but then we would have seen that effect much earlier. What we see is the penthouse collapsing but the building still standing still.
Moreover, claims of collapse at free fall speeds for both the WTC7 and the main towers are both false. In the case of the WTC7, the east penthouse started collapsing a full 6 seconds before the rest of the building.
Roland:
There are plenty of videos of the collapse, so I’ll let you watch and decide for yourself:
Do you not see why the fact that your video doesn’t contain the penthouse collapse because of angle or timing problematic in this context? Putting aside the fast rate of collapse once the rest of the building is going down the fact that there is visible evidence of the structural integrity of the building failing before the whole thing comes down is very strong evidence against a controlled demolition.
visible evidence of the structural integrity of the building failing before the whole thing comes down is very strong evidence against a controlled demolition.
Even in a controlled demolition explosive charges go off before the building comes down and already start doing structural damage, if you watched some videos(there are plenty on youtube) you will see for yourself.
Yes, there was some damage done to the building by falling debris and fire which of course was before the collapse and no one is denying this. But the key is: what kind of structural damage would be necessary for the whole building to collapse at approximately free-fall speed(counting from the moment the rooftop starts moving down)? For that to happen all supporting columns underneath would have to be destroyed. For this to happen in a random fashion through fires or whatever is highly unlikely. Btw, if you watch the NIST videos again you will see that their model is not convincing exactly because not all supporting columns are destroyed and you see the building folding instead of coming down vertically and yes, this is the case in both models of NIST.
So the natural conclusion from 3. is that at least the hypothesis of explosives being planted in the building should have been examined by NIST, why wasn’t it done?
Just to reiterate my point which I suspect was long lost in the discussion: I think the controlled demolition hypothesis is the most likely given the facts(regardless if there was a government conspiracy or not). Is it the only possible explanation? No. But I didn’t see any explanation that is consistent with the evidence and at the same time the use of explosives was never falsified, on the contrary NIST simply refused to even examine the rubble/dust for evidence thereof.
I think the model that includes the fire damage basically matches what I see in the video. It might not be perfect, but it is good enough for government work. As discussed before, I think the priors for controlled demolition are insanely low and that the the video evidence is consistent with NIST’s explanation. If some other commenter wants to arbitrate, that’d be fine (though please look at past exchanges on this topic, not just this thread), but otherwise I’m done. I think my position is clear and convincing to anyone reading this exchange (if such people disagree they’re welcome to ask me anything) and so much so that I’m comfortable leaving roland the last word…
You are right that that sort of collapse would require all the supporting columns to fail simultaneously, but that is not a surprising event. Large building collapses are not intuitive. Once a building starts to collapse, it introduces major vibrations and other forces that could, under the right circumstances, destroy all the supporting columns simultaneously, especially if they’d already been weakened by high temperatures.
Phlogiston made specific testable predictions about mass and combustion. Phlogiston theory was thrown out not because it was useless but because it was wrong. In this respect, phlogiston was good science.
(The fact that what you said isn’t a substantive reply to jimrandomh’s remark is a separate issue)
There are plenty of videos of the collapse, so I’ll let you watch and decide for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv7BImVvEyk
Your video is missing the 6 seconds in question. Oranges?
More in this comment:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/218/what_is_missing_from_rationality/1y36
I think I missed your point before.
The east penthouse collapsed 6 seconds earlier. So what? The relevant question is how much time did the entire building take to collapse, the time the roofline took to hit the floor? The only way it could be so fast is if all the supporting columns were destroyed. I don’t see how the collapse of the penthouse is relevant to that. It would only be relevant if said collapse would destroy the supporting columns but then we would have seen that effect much earlier. What we see is the penthouse collapsing but the building still standing still.
Uhh.
JoshuaZ:
Roland:
Do you not see why the fact that your video doesn’t contain the penthouse collapse because of angle or timing problematic in this context? Putting aside the fast rate of collapse once the rest of the building is going down the fact that there is visible evidence of the structural integrity of the building failing before the whole thing comes down is very strong evidence against a controlled demolition.
Even in a controlled demolition explosive charges go off before the building comes down and already start doing structural damage, if you watched some videos(there are plenty on youtube) you will see for yourself.
Yes, there was some damage done to the building by falling debris and fire which of course was before the collapse and no one is denying this. But the key is: what kind of structural damage would be necessary for the whole building to collapse at approximately free-fall speed(counting from the moment the rooftop starts moving down)? For that to happen all supporting columns underneath would have to be destroyed. For this to happen in a random fashion through fires or whatever is highly unlikely. Btw, if you watch the NIST videos again you will see that their model is not convincing exactly because not all supporting columns are destroyed and you see the building folding instead of coming down vertically and yes, this is the case in both models of NIST.
The following video has both models: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuyZJl9YleY
So the natural conclusion from 3. is that at least the hypothesis of explosives being planted in the building should have been examined by NIST, why wasn’t it done?
Just to reiterate my point which I suspect was long lost in the discussion: I think the controlled demolition hypothesis is the most likely given the facts(regardless if there was a government conspiracy or not). Is it the only possible explanation? No. But I didn’t see any explanation that is consistent with the evidence and at the same time the use of explosives was never falsified, on the contrary NIST simply refused to even examine the rubble/dust for evidence thereof.
I think the model that includes the fire damage basically matches what I see in the video. It might not be perfect, but it is good enough for government work. As discussed before, I think the priors for controlled demolition are insanely low and that the the video evidence is consistent with NIST’s explanation. If some other commenter wants to arbitrate, that’d be fine (though please look at past exchanges on this topic, not just this thread), but otherwise I’m done. I think my position is clear and convincing to anyone reading this exchange (if such people disagree they’re welcome to ask me anything) and so much so that I’m comfortable leaving roland the last word…
You are right that that sort of collapse would require all the supporting columns to fail simultaneously, but that is not a surprising event. Large building collapses are not intuitive. Once a building starts to collapse, it introduces major vibrations and other forces that could, under the right circumstances, destroy all the supporting columns simultaneously, especially if they’d already been weakened by high temperatures.
Is this the Phlogiston theory of building collapse?
Sigh. I’m not going to bother reposting the entire thing so I’ll just link:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/is/fake_causality/1vy8
Phlogiston made specific testable predictions about mass and combustion. Phlogiston theory was thrown out not because it was useless but because it was wrong. In this respect, phlogiston was good science.
(The fact that what you said isn’t a substantive reply to jimrandomh’s remark is a separate issue)
1:09 in: ”...but by 5:20 p.m. most of the fires had been extinguished.”
Citation needed.