tinwe,
Hey Iavas, how’s the simulation coming? Made any progress on it? I’d love to hear your results.
I had to abandon it for now (with all the job interviews, and now having a job, I don't have the masses of free time that I did a couple of months ago). I think I got to the point where I was trying to make it too complex, and it was getting tough to work it all out in my mind. Basically, I was trying to incorporate simple assumptions about the structural strength, which was tough, but I could have done it until I realised that making the building rigid would change the forces acting on the collapsing part of the building as well as the part still standing, which would mean completely revamping the momentum conservation that I had made the heart of the model. Hope that makes a tiny bit of sense.
Before it got too messy, the collapse times were inconclusive - 12-13s for the south tower and 14-15s for the north tower. It could be a significant difference, or it could be close enough to be consistent - without getting a decent estimate of the structural effects, it's tough to say. The big problem is estimating the level of pulverisation of the concrete - that has the biggest effect on the collapse time. But it's really hard to estimate what fraction of the concrete was pulverised before the collapsing material hit the ground, and how small the pulverised particles would have been.
I'm sorry I didn't have the right poll option for you, it's too late to add it now unfortunately.
Sass, I know all about the standard explanations for the collapses. It is certainly a very easy story for people to believe, and certainly I never questioned it myself when I first heard it. But I've come to realise you can't believe every story the carefully controlled news stations feed you.
It wasn't a "raging inferno", and it was nowhere near hot enough to melt the steel. Look at this picture:
Notice the two people standing looking out of the impact hole. There is a better version of this photo somewhere where you can clearly see that these people have the time to assess their situation, they aren't being forced to jump by 2000F infernos in the building behind them. When firemen reached the scenes of the crashes they found limited fires and fully expected to deal with the blazes quite easily.
Take a look at this photo of the plane impacting the north tower:
How do you explain those puffs at the top of the tower? That could be another reason why noone got onto the roof.
I don't claim to be an expert on helicopters, but I would think they make far more hazardous manouevres during sea rescues in storms etc. For all everyone knew, there were simply fires burning several floors below the rooves. The only danger I can see would be low visibility due to the smoke. In any case, even if helicopters couldn't have landed it doesn't explain why people were jumping to their deaths instead of congregating on the roof. There was always a chance that a rescue could come if they stayed on the roof. I know that if I found I couldn't get down the roof would be the next obvious place to go.
I've read the transcript of the NOVA special and find it simply peddles the official line without addressing any of the physical problems with it. The thing is, any documentary like that will prove what it wants to prove. If you
want to prove that the towers fell by themselves, you can pick and choose the evidence to fit that.
toby,
Well monitored is a far cry from having assets in place to deal with a hijacking. Even the US military doesn't have the capability to maintain a 24 hour Combat air patrol over even a tenth of our airspace for any continuous time period.
But over Washington jets can be scrambled extremely quickly. Are we to assume that about 1 hour after two jets hit the WTC the airforce don't take any action against another jet heading towards the nations capital? You would think the Pentagon would be exceptionally well protected against an attack, especially one with an hours warning.
Why do we need to see it? It couldn't have been caused by anything other than a crashing jetliner. The only other theories that could be suggested are that either a) DoD deliberatly blew up the Pentagon after seeing the planes hit the towers to take advantage of the event. or b) that the entire thing was a massive govt conspiracy from the get go.
Why do we need to see more than one video of the planes hitting the WTC? Why do we want to gain any extra information? If nothing else it's natural human curiousity to want to see one of the most important historical events captured on film. Why did we need to see Kennedy's assassination in graphic detail? If that film exists, and it has nothing to hide, it should be shown to the public. There is absolutely no reason for it not to be unless it shows something the military don't want us to see. Come on, be serious.. important, historical footage is withheld from the world because they "don't need to see it"??? Well, um, I can assure you that MILLIONS would tune in to watch it if it were ever broadcast.
Also, the military could do a lot to quell the conspiracy theories if they just showed the footage and proved the theorists wrong. Sorry, but they are not withholding that video out of respect for what the public needs or doesn't need to see. No way.