Physics Prof Says Bombs not Planes brought down wtc

Originally posted by LeftBehind


Remember the Madrid fire reached temperatures of 1800 degrees F. The fires burning underground at ground zero could easily have reached such temperatures.

Hmm...and yet...the madrid STEEL did not buckle, yield or melt in any way and the structure still stood? I guess physics in Madrid is alltogether wrong from the physics of NYC? All I have to say is WHAT THE Heck?And you still see the 'official theory" as correct? Do tell.

Mod Edit: Profanity/Circumvention Of Censors – Please Review This Link.

[edit on 4/12/2005 by Mirthful Me]

Great way to change the subject Macmerdin.

Do you still believe that there was molten steel laying about?


In Madrid the steel parts of the building did fail, so I'm not really sure what your post has to do with anything. Only the reinforced concrete core survived in the upper stories.

Do you have anything to add on the subject of thermite or molten steel?

LeftBehind, all you have done with the molten steel issue is express your doubt that the witnesses testifying to its existence were being honest.

I don't think there's any real reason or need for someone in NYC on 9/11 to claim they saw molten steel at the base of a tower, or at the end of a beam, if they didn't actually see it.

And many of the reported instances are very possible, like one end of a beam being melted while the other end is not, despite what you may or may not like to believe. One end may have been deep into the pile while the other was sticking up in the air. Is that so hard to imagine? Again, I don't see any reason for these people to make the stuff up. They aren't even suggesting a conspiracy. Just reporting what they experience.

So I have something to say in regards to the molten steel: I still think it was there. Like I said, all you did was express your personal doubt that those witnesses saw what they said they saw. Why should I believe likewise? You've presented nothing objective.

We've presented much harder evidence, as in physics problems, that you've just brushed off with irrelevant quotations (I'm referencing angular momentum here, and Mr. Eager or whoever else it was that was subsequently quoted irrelevantly). A bit hypocritical to expect us to accept your opinion as fact.

On the contrary Bsbray I think the Thermal images are very objective. These quotes that you believe with no evidence are subjective. That is why they don't prove the existence of molten steel unless your mind is already made up.

You said it yourself you don't need evidence, just beliefs.

The objective data says that there were no pools of molten steel on the surface. The temperatures recorded were no where near hot enough to show molten steel on the surface.

The subjective evidence contradicts this. I'm sure there was molten aluminum in those hotspots. That it was confused for steel does not prove that it was.

Good attempt at changing the subject though.

Originally posted by LeftBehind
On the contrary Bsbray I think the Thermal images are very objective.

But how exactly do they prove that there was no molten steel? Do you have some thermal scans from right after any of the collapses sensitive to pools of such-and-such a size, or what?

There is neither objective evidence for the existence of molten steel or against the existance of molten steel.

There are, however, witness testimonies. You threw these out because, among other scenarios, you can't imagine how a steel column can be hot on one end and cool on the other. I don't see why these people would make this stuff up. We're at odds here, but it's just a matter of opinion.


As far as changing subjects, as if talking about molten steel is changing the subject from talking about molten steel, you can go ahead and get back on the subject of "Physics Prof Says Bombs not Planes brought down wtc" if you're so dead-set against topic changes. Threads shift from here to there as they go along. You know this. You may think you had something there, but so do we all from time to time, and yet those posts always become just as buried as all others.

Edit:

I'd like to know when I said this:

You said it yourself you don't need evidence, just beliefs.

[edit on 3-12-2005 by bsbray11]

Did you ever watch how a blacksmith heats and melts iron, steel, or copper?
He makes a fire from cokes or coal bricks, blows in air or sometimes pure oxigen, until the coals are glowing red hot, and then sticks f.ex. a 1 meter steel rebar in the centre of the fire. After 20 minutes he takes the rebar, its end now glowing red to white hot, and deforming - which is the first stage of melting - , out of the coals, and starts hammering the hot end to form it into the shape he needs.

Guess what, he holds the other end with his bare hand, or sometimes with leather gloves on his hands.
Leather is basicly animal skin. Thus, same SKIN as on his hands, only a titbit thicker!
Do not think he would do that if the rebar end he holds in his (gloved) hand would be f.ex. 300° C. Let ever, have the same temperature as the other end.

It seems you didn't pay attention to your physics teacher, or never had physics teached to you, very basic physics by the way.
Please look up iron or copper or aluminum " heat conductivity , expansion coefficient ", and a lot more what is to learn about metals, heat and temperature.
I advise WikiPedia to you, that's simple enough and will give you the full picture how metals conduct heat.

Bottom line: not a miracle at all to pull a one-end molten piece of steel out of a debris pile, even with your bare hands.

But you seem to be blind to the real MIRACLE :
How the hell (pun intended) could that steel bar still be dripping molten steel at one end after days or even weeks?

Since we both agree I hope, that there was no open coal mine under all THREE collapsed towers with pressured-air pipes to feed oxigen to the fires, tell me, with your obvious flawed notion of basic physics laws, what was the SOURCE of that AMOUNT of HEAT, and the maximum temperatures logically existing, to MELT the ends of HIGH TENSILE STEEL beams.

A source which funded HEAT to the bottom of the debris piles, from 11 September untill 19 December 2001..........more than THREE months, FOURTEEN WEEKS !

And DAMNIT, when will you ever accept the logic conclusion, that if you think office furniture and carpets and curtains and desks and cupboards and doors were that source, that you are in serious need of psychlogical councilling?

THOSE THINGS WERE NOT PRESENT IN THE BASEMENTS, and ended up after the collapse, following the same old laws of basic physics, on top of the crushed in first 8 floors above the basements, and the basements floors themselfs.
They did not magically changed placement with those first floors.

And guess what, those first 8 floors consisted of a huge nearly empty entrance hall, the LOBBY, then the Concourse, also nearly empty, and then the 8th and 9th floor was a MECHANICAL EQUIPMENT floor, strongly reinforced with much stronger cross beams and REINFORCED CONCRETE FLOORS.

I know already the next thing you come up with, the famous DIESEL tanks.
Well I have again news for you, the tanks were crushed, and the diesel sipped and spread out within a day into the ground.
And did you see fat black soothed smoke coming from the debris piles?
For 14 WEEKS?
The sign of an oxigen deprived carbon fuel fire?

I DIDN'T, and neither did YOU.

The NYFD pumped over those 14 weeks an amount of water equal to a big LAKE, and STILL THE FIRES KEPT BURNING.

There are only a few physical things which can do that, and one of them is any kind of THERMITE mixture, in abundened AMOUNTS.
And the other ones are pure Sodium or Potassium metals, or, even more chilling to your nerves, running wild, pure NUCLEAR reactions.

If thermite was used, it has been used in a, neglecting public opinion , enormous OVERDOSE.

But I don't believe that.
Thermite was probably used, to melt the basement core collumns, but SOMETHING ELSE was used to PULVERIZE nearly all concrete and other building materials, except steel parts.
And that -something- was the extra source of near ENDLESS HEAT which kept underground fires burning for FOURTEEN WEEKS in 3 former buildings basements!
And then we arrive at only a very few possibilities, and those are all to find within the only other left possibility, the NUCLEAR FACTOR.

Chilling to your bones, ain't it so....

Because you are scared to death, to have to admit somewhere in the near future, that your Administration, or another foreign Administration, or together, planted nuclear devices in those 3 towers.
For the "fun" of playing "cowboys and indians" in far away oil rich countries.
And safeguard the existence of their most important ally, Israel.
Israel, laying on the doorsteps of ALL important oil producing nations in the Middle East.
If it wasn't for the pure strategical position of Israel, it would have NEVER been created in the first place. And it was created with the help of the prime bankers and the oil robber barons, who saw the future implications of such a western nation buffer inside the Middle East.

When will you people stop your IGNORANCE of a huge PILE of PHYSICS-FACTS, and start wondering ?

I still would like too see some real evidence about that molten steel.. pictures or something.

Originally posted by LeftBehind


Long Lance, the short answer? No. A gravity driven collapse model does not require the fires to melt through the beams, it has been posted about numerous times.

Removed inappropriate comment.

collapse alone does NOT genereate the amount of heat seen on the thermal images, lasting for WEEKS, let alone the partially molten steel in the pic you ignore..

Please explain how this:

Is proof of this:

simple, the first is again at room temp, and was only partially molten in the first place, - see that thinned, portion which looks as if it had formed a small puddle once in its history? that was molten, k?

And white smoke?

that's for you

it's proof of sustained heat, for weeks as said a bazillion times already, tell me how a dead fire can keep smoking for weeks unless... see LabTop's post above.



edit: if you wanna doubt everything indicating demolition, start with the pics! i mean just because there's a photo of something doesn't mean it's from the wtc..

[edit on 4-12-2005 by Long Lance]

Mod Edit: Civility.

[edit on 4/12/2005 by Mirthful Me]

Labtop.

First of all blacksmithing never fully melts peices of steel as it destroys the grain. The very hottest temperature used is around 2500 degrees.

www.beautifuliron.com...

Second, a forge is a controlled environment in a small space. You would have us believe that, contrary to the thermal images, there were huge hotspots of over 2800 degrees. I don't think you could even walk on top of something like that, let alone pick up a half molten steel bar from it.


Steel can be red at much lower temperature and not be molten. The hot spots that we know existed can account for stories of red steel. At 1300 degrees we can see that steel will glow red, as per the above link.

If you saw a glowing peice of steel, you would probably make the same mistake and assume it was molten. I would as well.


Underground fires are possible and can be fed by gas lines and all the debris. They do not require nukes.

Since you seem so insistent on the nuke theory Labtop perhaps you can present some radiological evidence, as opposed to pure speculation.

I don't see why you think that paper and office furniture cannot burn at high temperatures.

Forest fires can reach temperatures over 1400 degrees on wood alone, no thermite required.

fire.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca...


The NIST fire test on an office cubicle generated over 1600 degrees.

So yes just one floor of such material can easily reach the temperatures recorded by NASA. Let alone a whole building full of such material.

Originally posted by LongLance:collapse alone does NOT genereate the amount of heat seen on the thermal images, lasting for WEEKS, let alone the partially molten steel in the pic you ignore..

Once again please look at the thermal images.

pubs.usgs.gov...



On the 23rd the hotspots are almost completely gone. Two weeks and the heat has decreased considerably. Much different than the weeks of molten steel you would have us believe.

As to your photographic evidence. Steel does not have to be molten to warp like that. Please consult the chart above.

Differences of 300 degrees or more on a peice of steel will cause it to twist.

That thing is not the pools of molten steel. And in fact can be explained with the facts that we have, no thermite or nuke needed.

Originally posted by LeftBehind

In Madrid the steel parts of the building did fail, so I'm not really sure what your post has to do with anything. Only the reinforced concrete core survived in the upper stories.

You're right. I stand corrected. After looking into the incident more, I see that the upper portions of the steel did fail. Although it still stands (no pun intended) that the rest of the lower steel held the upper failing steel. Hmm.....steel that was on fire for hours on end but still had enough strength to resist a global collapse.....I know, you're going to say "but it had a concrete core". Still stands that the Madrid fire was hotter than the WTC fires and yet the lower WTC steel (even though not being heated) didn't have enough resistance to at least slow down the global collapse? I know this topic has been covered in this thread, but wanted to clarify what I was trying to say previously.

Leftbehind...


From.. www.serendipity.li...
Eric Hufschmid, author of a book about the WTC collapse, Time for Painful Questions, told AFP that due to the lack of oxygen, paper and other combustibles packed down at the bottom of elevator shafts would probably be "a smoky smoldering pile."

Experts disagree that jet-fuel or paper could generate such heat. This is impossible, they say, because the maximum temperature that can be reached by hydrocarbons like jet-fuel, burning in air is 1520° F (825° C). Because the WTC fires were fuel rich (as evidenced by the thick black smoke) it is argued that they did not reach this upper limit of 825° C.

The hottest spots at the surface of the rubble, where abundant oxygen was available, were much cooler than the molten steel found in the basements. Five days after the collapse, on September 16, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) used an Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) to locate and measure the site's hot spots. Dozens of hot spots were mapped, the hottest being in the east corner of the South Tower where a temperature of 1377° F (747° C) was recorded. This is, however, less than half as hot at the molten steel in the basement.

The foundations of the twin towers were 70 feet deep. At that level, 47 huge box columns, connected to the bedrock, supported the entire gravity load of the structures. The steel walls of these lower box columns were 4 inches thick.

Originally posted by MacMerdin
You're right. I stand corrected. After looking into the incident more, I see that the upper portions of the steel did fail. Although it still stands (no pun intended) that the rest of the lower steel held the upper failing steel. Hmm.....steel that was on fire for hours on end but still had enough strength to resist a global collapse.....I know, you're going to say "but it had a concrete core".

Actually it the whole building below the 22nd floor was concrete, not just the core.

Dr. Pal Chana of the British Cement Association demonstrated the relative likelihood of floor collapse in a steel versus concrete framed building, using the vivid example of the Madrid Windsor Tower fire which raged over 26 hours on 14-15 February 2005. This former landmark office block of 30 storeys featured a concrete core throughout, but with concrete columns up to the 21st floor and steel columns between the 22nd and 30th floors. Remarkably, despite the intensity and duration of the fire, the concrete floors and columns remained intact however, the steel supported floors above the 21st floor collapsed, leaving the concrete core in-situ and exposed.

www.concretefireforum.org.uk...

there was molten steel in the basement. it was reported by multiple witnesses.

there were explosions. they were not only reported by multiple witnesses, but were also reported live and these reports were broadcast in real time.
firemen reported explosions(they should know).
the audio track from the 'new' footage from across the river shows a large spike and rumble, and then SILENCE, and then the spikes of the collapse(complete with explosions).

these attempts to rewrite history, LEFTBEHIND, are PATHETIC.

Billybob ... don't worry abou them ... they are nothing more than treasonous shills who will toe the republican neocon agenda as long as they can.

Kind of sad though with so much overwhelming evidence that implies implosion and all the shills just plug their ears.

The video evidence of the distance video 'shaking' about 10 sec before the tower collapse is quite obvious that thermite charges were most like detonated in the sub 7 storey basement which would literally melt the core structure and produce the near freefall collapse and resulting molten steel as witnessed in the sub levels.

Ignorant shills will most likely rot in hell .........

Wow, this molten metal debate's getting messy and confused.

Does the thermal imaging recorded represent the maximum temperature present in the wreckage?

As already stated, infrared radiation, just like any form of electromagnetic radiation, is absorbed, filtered, or reflected by intervening objects. This is the simple reason why a light will be a lot dimmer of you put a piece of cloth over it, and this is why the AVIRIS spectrometer cannot read thermal impressions from the masses of magma under the Earth's crust. The wreckage, debris, and pulverized concrete in the WTC1 & 2 basements was 70 feet deep. The data was only corrected for atmospheric absorption and scattering. It cannot be and was not corrected for absorption by debris, nor for absorption and scattering effects of smoke and of water vapor being sprayed on and evaporating from the wreckage. The temperatures underneath the wreckage were much higher than those read by the spectrometer at the surface, unless we are to assume that the source of the enormous heat was on the very top of the wreckage, and the wreckage underneath was cool. Official and media reports, and common sense refute this.

The image from September 16th shows temperatures recorded at the surface in excess of 700°C. This means that the temperatures under thousands of tonnes of wreckage could quite easily be double that or more. Easily hot enough to be molten iron or steel.

Doesn't thermite burn at about 2500°C? Wouldn't much higher temperatures have been recorded?

The thermite reaction itself burns at 2500°C, yes, but the byproducts of that reaction - molten iron, aluminum oxide, and anything else melted by contact with them - will begin to cool and will not retain that temperature forever. Since the rate of cooling is proportional to temperature, the byproducts will cool faster earlier on, decreasing in their cooling rate as they decrease in temperature. Cooling rates are dependent on many different factors, such as ambient air temperature, surface area of the material/object exposed to air, conductivity of objects it is in contact with, and many more, but for a simple example something which takes 3 days to cool down by 1250°C may take 15 days to cool the down by another 1250°C. Below is a simplified cooling curve:



The cooling object in this case was at 625°C after 2 days, 1250°C the day before, and a full 2500°C the day before that. The above graph is not meant to be quantitatively representative of the molten metal in the WTC wreckage. It is designed to show how the time-temperature relationship is not linear. For more information regarding cooling and heat transfer, google for "Stefan-Boltzmann law" and go from there.

Does the thermal imaging recorded on September 23 indicate the wreckage was completely cooled?

No. At the areas under WTC 1, 2 & 7, red hotspots are still visible, even at the surface where much less radiation would be recorded. Hotspots can still be seen at the corners of the two WTC tower footprints, and under the East side of WTC7. Remember that the temperature recorded reflects a much higher temperature under the wreckage. Also, the imagery has a spatial resolution (pixel spacing) of approximately 36 sq.ft. Extremely small or deep areas of high temperature will not register.



Could an ordinary fire in the wreckage be hot enough to reach such temperatures as recorded on the 16th? Didn't the Madrid fire burn at temperatures approaching 1000°C?

Yes, the Madrid fire burnt at hellish temperatures. However it also burnt itself out in 16 hours. Fires require two things to burn - combustible matter (fuel), i.e. paper, wood, gasoline, oil, gas, etc, and a combustive agent, i.e. an oxidant, usually the oxygen of the air. Only when these conditions are optimal will a fire reach extremely high temperatures. A fire will "starve" without fuel, and "asphyxiate" without oxygen. The Madrid fire burnt at high temperatures because it had plenty of fuel in the office space, and more importantly plenty of oxygen flowing in through the large, blown-out windows on all its sides way up in the air.

Fires under the wreckage of the WTC towers and WTC7 would be low in combustible fuel, but most importantly would be severely asphyxiated. The only way for air to get to where the fires were was by being sucked down from above - the sides of the WTC building basements were sheer concrete walls. Fresh air moving down into the wreckage has to battle against a) the upward-moving convection forces of rising heat, b) the obstruction to airflow caused by the debris, c) the "exclusion" of oxygen by heavier, denser gases and smoke in the lower areas, and d) the water being sprayed on the wreckage creating steam and water vapor in the air - hot water vapor tends to carry oxygen away from a fire, and spraying thinly vaporised water into the air around a fire is a trick firefighters use to asphyxiate it.

There is one thing which can assist a fire to survive under inoptimal conditions, and that is if it is generating very extreme temperatures. Under such extreme conditions, materials with low combustibility will burn, melt, or conduct heat to other areas in turn creating more heat and fire, plus gases and smoke created by the fire will ignite in a process called 'flashover'. In an oxygen-starved, fuel-starved environment, a fire cannot reach the temperatures required for flashover. Only if there was something else initially creating extreme heat could this occur in the WTC wreckage, and only then could it burn for 3 whole months.

There is an excellent wiki on firefighting principles here: en.wikipedia.org...

Didn't the witnesses to the molten metal say that they only found molten metal on the surface of the wreckage?

I can't seem to find anything which would indicate this. The witnesses refer to steel flowing in the ruins and under the ruins, not on the ruins. They use terms such as "in some pockets now being uncovered". This plainly implies that the molten metal was under the wreckage and being discovered as the debris was being dug up by excavation machinery. Among the witnesses was Leslie Robertson, the structural engineer responsible for the design of the World Trade Center Towers, a person that would be privy to all the goings on of the clean-up and collapse assessment. The four independent witnesses all reporting on the molten metal being under the wreckage implies that is in fact where it was, and also that the fact was widely known amongst those involved in the clean-up.

Couldn't the molten metal be aluminum?

Yes, it is possible that some of the molten metal was aluminum, however there are a few problems with this assumption.

1. Three of the four witnesses specifically stated the words "molten steel".

2. The aluminum on the WTC towers was all on the outside of the buildings. As the buildings collapsed, the outer walls mushroomed away from the towers, with the aluminum covers being flung away from the building footprints. Both the demolition and pancake theories entail this aspect of the collapses. If the running metal was all aluminum, then the question is, where did it all come from? And how did it get under all that wreckage?




3. The presence of molten steel under WTC1 &2, and also WTC7, was further testified to by Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI).

www.americanfreepress.net
Loizeaux, who cleaned up the bombed Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, arrived at the WTC site two days later and wrote the clean-up plan for the entire operation.

AFP asked Loizeaux about the report of molten steel on the site.

"Yes," he said, "hot spots of molten steel in the basements."

These incredibly hot areas were found "at the bottoms of the elevator shafts of the main towers, down seven [basement] levels," Loizeaux said.

The molten steel was found "three, four, and five weeks later, when the rubble was being removed," Loizeaux said. He said molten steel was also found at 7 WTC, which collapsed mysteriously in the late afternoon.

Mr Loizeaux clearly states that the molten metal was found deep in the basements, not on top of the wreckage, and he further states quite clearly that it was molten steel that was discovered, not molten aluminum. Moreover, he states that molten steel was also found under WTC7. There was no aluminum involved in the construction of WTC7 that I'm aware of. There is no mention of it in any FEMA or NIST reports or anywhere else that I can find. The WTC7 basement would have been even more fuel-starved than the basements of WTC1 & 2, and yet the hottest readings were under the WTC7 wreckage. FEMAs WTC report states that the diesel tanks under WTC7 did not explode or catch fire, rather they were crushed. Even had they caught fire, a diesel fire would be incapable of creating molten steel.

Another witness:

www.americanfreepress.net
Peter Tully, president of Tully Construction of Flushing, N.Y., told AFP that he saw pools of "literally molten steel" at the World Trade Center.

Tully was contracted after the Sept. 11 tragedy to re move the debris from the site.

So, it seems the only argument left against the presence of molten steel is, "The witnesses are embellishing the facts". That's six credible, expert witnesses now all directly involved in the actual clean-up operation who are supposedly just "making it all up".

Leftbehind wrote:
First off, WCIP the burden of proof is on the parties claiming that there was literally molten steel. How exactly do you prove that something was not there? It is up to you to prove something positive.

My Roark-inspired "Prove it" challenge was not asking that you prove the molten metal wasn't there, rather it was in response to your two assertions which were as follows:

1. That the witnesses fabricated or embellished their testimony, and

2. That ordinary fires, particularly in an oxygen-starved, soot-choked environment, are capable of creating the temperatures indicated by the thermal spectroscopy, and furthermore capable of burning for three months despite having thousands and thousands of gallons of water poured on them non-stop for that entire period.

So once again, I request that you provide proof of that which you posit.

LeftBehind wrote:
Using your logic WCIP we should never take anything you post seriously either. By your standards, we should hold your prior posts as proof that you are completely biased and agenda driven, and should ignore anything you say.

I never said that we should ignore what you say. What I meant is that yes, you are biased and agenda-driven, and therefore when a new piece of information comes out, you will automatically look to see if it strengthens your case. If it weakens your case, you will automatically try to debunk it or find alternative explanations. This is a natural process and is the way in which we humans approach logic - we form a hypothesis based on observations, and then we see if further observations support or can be reasonably interpreted to fit our theory...no mystery here.

As for me, yes, I do exactly the same but on the other side of the fence. I already clearly and openly stated that I do have an agenda and what that agenda is, and yes, after having reviewed all of the information available in regards to 9-11, I have formed a general opinion and thus I am biased. It is impossible to not have bias; impossible not to have an opinion - it's simple human nature. But does bias mean that we will be deceptive? No. Does it mean that we will accept everything as fact if it fits our opinion without confirming through research? No. However you were attempting to "sell" your complete and pure objectivity to us, and it just doesn't float. The simple and starkly obvious fact is that you are doing your best to try to debunk the molten steel issue in any way you can, previously stating that it should simply be ignored, because you are staunchly biased against any controlled demolition theory, and the sooner we can be honest with each other, the sooner we can continue to debate free from any illusions of disinterest.


[edit on 2005-12-4 by wecomeinpeace]

for the high standard, above posting, I have voted you WATS for the second time, the first time was last month. I got 2 more left.

Perhaps I get a chance to give one to LeftBehind, if he generously admits this month that he starts doubting the official explanations.
Just doubt. No full turnover, just simple doubt.

Still stands that the Madrid fire was hotter than the WTC fires and yet the lower WTC steel (even though not being heated) didn't have enough resistance to at least slow down the global collapse? I know this topic has been covered in this thread, but wanted to clarify what I was trying to say previously.

WTC had those big floors, so collapsing debris went through the floors. That made outer walls to lose horizontal support, and made them able to buckle. Do you think that WTC tower's core could withstand alone the falling junk?

Originally posted by msdos464
Do you think that WTC tower's core could withstand alone the falling junk?

According to the "pancake" theory...yes. You have to remember that the inner core did have lateral supports in both directions (x axis and z axis). It doesn't matter if the supports where diagonal (truss) or not. I will try to explain. If you have taken physics or engineering...think about vectors. The only thing advantageous about having the supports diagonally is to give it more support vertically. The inner core columns already had enough vertical support, so the designers went with horizontal supports only. Actually, horizontal supports would give more resistance to lateral loading than diagonal supports, because diagonal supports would split the resistance forces up into vertical AND horizontal and not just horizontal with horizontal supports. Making any sense?

You can actually see parts of the core still standing after collapse, MSDOS, in certain videos that've been posted around here. Certain columns stood for a little while after the rest of the building had collapsed, peering through all the smoke and dust, before sinking straight downwards upon themselves.

The core was connected to the perimeter columns through some trusses and smaller columns, and from what I understand wasn't that bound to them, given that the columns could withstand some bolts connected to trusses being sheered here and there, and I would say that they could. The core was set up almost like a little building within the building, and the core columns surrounded the offices, etc. around the middle of the building. The core columns also had a much higher redundancy than the perimeter columns. The core structure should've been able to stand perfectly well on its own if it could withstand horizontal loads, and as MacMerdin's pointed out, the structure must have had that, too. So yeah. It should have stood.

I would like to thank everybody for some incredible facts and analyses.

I don't know if I lean to one side or another, in this debate. But I know this: I witnessed the collapse of the towers myself, and it did look awfully like an explosion. That doesn't mean it was necessarily an explosion, since the energy released by the falling floors in the pancake theory must go somewhere, and it might have gone to all the debris flying out sideways. But I still remember the visual impression, and that was one of an opening flower. And I can't explain the synnetry of the process either.