More From Steve Jones

HowardRoark: If you wish to dispute the NIST claim, you need to provide something from the east or west vantage points.

No, you only need to look at the link I provided. If you have only a basic grasp of spatiality and geometry, NIST can't fool you on this.

The point is, he asked if there were any examples that could be looked at.

Alright, he did that. Looking at these underground fires the similarity is pretty much nonexistant. Next.

[edit on 9-1-2006 by Lumos]

And when Lumos says the comparison is non-existant, he's not just yanking your chain. Again, what would fuel such intense fires when a plane-full of jet fuel sustains fires for only 10-15 minutes before moving on to office supplies? The remains of the jet fuel, seeped down through the building? For months?

You can even imagine that each car in the parking space below the building sprung a leak in its tank, and still, how intense of fires would that produce, and for what amount of time? Certainly no more than the jet fuel itself, for any longer. At least some of the steel pulled was even molten, weeks after the collapses. Something is wrong here.

Originally posted by Lumos

HowardRoark: If you wish to dispute the NIST claim, you need to provide something from the east or west vantage points.

No, you only need to look at the link I provided. If you have only a basic grasp of spatiality and geometry, NIST can't fool you on this.

Unfortunately, it is you who fails to understand the spatial relationship of what you are looking at.

Your link shows the north face, and the north face only. You can not see either side of the building. Your claim that the antenna is sinking is based on it's movement relative to the north roof line.

At that point, however, the south face had already buckled and was sinking. The collapse started on the opposite side of the building from that video.


The collapse from a different angle

You can clearly see the top of the tower rotate.

It is also apparent from this angle.



The movement of the antenna is not as clear in this video, but the initial rotation as the south wall buckled is clear.

You haven't addressed my question about the hat truss.
I am curious to know how Professor Jones explains or rationalizes the role of the hat truss (which tied the core to the exterior columns as well as supported the antenna) in this theory that the antenna sank into the building first.

This issue is too obvious for you to spin successfully, the perimeter's still entirely rigid when the antenna drops. Rotational foreshortening would have affected both the antenna and the building with equal scale respective to the pivot.

Frame 5:

Frame 7:

Only a subtle difference before the entire cap starts falling in the following frames, but comparing the position of the shinier upper segment of the antenna in both frames with respect to the fixed camera position clearly indicates that the antenna, and with it the core, did in fact drop before the rest of the cap. It's even more obvious when observing the 12 frame sequence "in motion".

Shill.

Originally posted by Lumos
This issue is too obvious for you to spin successfully, the perimeter's still entirely rigid when the antenna drops. Rotational foreshortening would have affected both the antenna and the building with equal scale respective to the pivot.

Not necessarily.

The collapse started with the buckling of the south face, thus the south face dropped first. The antenna was tied to the perimeter columns via the hat truss, thus it tilted after the south face started to drop, and before the north face began to move.

All you can see in that video is the north face. How can you rule out that the south face has not started to move in those two frames, as it is clearly doing in the videos from the other perspectives?

Also, if you rotate through the frames of that link, you can see a very slight movement of the north face from frame 6 on.

Originally posted by Lumos
Shill.

Conspiracy nutter


[edit on 10-1-2006 by HowardRoark]

I would also like to point out some glaring errors on that site that you linked to.

North Tower collapse from the north mpeg
This 10-second video from WTC: The First 24 Hours shows the top of the North Tower from the beginning of the collapse. Still frames of this video clearly show that the radio tower starts to descend about a second before the facade.

The still frames are not of the linked video and in fact, the linked video disputes the claim as I have been stating.

Each of the twelve frames in this sequence is separated by 1/2 second.

911research.wtc7.net...

I've never heard of a video running at 2 frames per second. Are there other frames that are missing? What happened to all of the other frames? How did they decide what frames to keep?

Mock Dr.Jones all you like, Howard. he still presents far more convincing evidence for his theory than you have.

And of course, lets not forget WTC 7, which Dr. Jones believes is the crux, and I have to agree. After watching clip after clip of it collapsing, I dont see how anyone seeing it can say it was NOT demolition destroyed.

Another quote from the above refrenced Jones paper
quote: It would be interesting if underground fires could somehow produce molten steel, for example, but then there should be historical examples of this effect since there have been many large fires in numerous buildings.
Because the fires in the WTC burned for so long, they don’t really compare well to a typical building fire hich is extinguished and cooled relatively quickly.


Irrespective of the duration of the fire, steel would not melt..


A better comparison would be to look at the combustion of underground coal fires,
quote: The fire temperature reaches temperatures of 1,700°C deep beneath the ground.source
The fuel mix in the WTC “pile” consisted of unburned jet fuel, leading diesel fuel, automotive gasoline, as well as liquefied plastics from computers, carpeting, cubicles, paper and paper products, and other flammable materials including welding gasses stored in the basements of the building.
Although this is not the same fuel as a coal seam, given a couple of weeks, this mix had ample time to burn, releasing vast amounts of heat that was trapped in the rubble.


And of course a huge amount of inert material, vastly outweighing any possible fuel, crushed and thus able to blanket the fire and surrounding area, at mostly ambient temperature requiring a massive heat injection to bring it to combustion temperature, and randomly mixed with the similarly shredded and distributed fuel. I do not believe that this would compare in any way with a coal seam, nor would a coal seam fire resemble the debris pile fire.



Structure fires that reach post flashover stage can easily reach temps in excess of 1200 C.

This would be relevant if the fires in the WTC or in the debris piles reached flashover stage. What evidence do you have for this?



Another blatent bit of misinformation by Prof. Jones.

quote: The observed “partly evaporated” steel members is particularly upsetting to the official theory, since fires involving paper, office materials, even diesel fuel, cannot generate temperatures anywhere near the 5,000+ oF needed to “evaporate” steel.

According to the metallurgical analysis, the loss the mass of the steel was due to a process commonly known as “hot corrosion.”

This process does NOT need to approach anywhere near 5,000+ F.

quote: The eutectic temperature for this mixture strongly suggests that the temperatures in this region of the steel beam approached 1,000 °C (1,800 °F), which is substantially lower than would be expected for melting this steel. source
A key fact that Jones conveniently ignores is that the corroded steel was pulled out of the WTC 7 rubble after several weeks had elapsed.
As one research presentation asks:
quote: Did the eutectic mixture form before the buildings collapsed or later as the remains smoldered on the ground for months? At this time we don’t know.” source
It is Jones’ responsibility as a scientist to apply the principles of Occam’s razor to his speculations. The fact that he doesn’t even mention alternative explanations indicates that his “paper” is hopelessly biased.


Did the reaction take place under atmospheric conditions in the Tower?
No because the temperature was not high enough and the phenomenon is unknown under atmospheric ambient conditions.
Did the reaction take place under fire conditions in the Tower?
No because the steel temp did not reach 1000 C.
Did the reaction take place in the debris pile?
A gravity collapse would not allow the high temperatures necessary.
So if it took place in the debris pile it proves that the collapse was not gravitational energy alone. How it came about at elevated temperatures is not so much the issue as how the elevated temperature themselves appeared in a collapse powered only by gravitational energy. What are the alternative explanations for these high temperatures? Has Nist, Fema, anyone, supplied any of these alternatives, or is this blatant disinformation?





One other area where Jones’ research is a bit “light.”

He states*:

quote: Yes, we can see for ourselves that the antenna drops first from videos of the North Tower collapse. (See 911research.wtc7.net...; also home.comcast.net...) A NY Times article also notes this behavior:
The building stood for more than an hour and a half. Videos of the north tower's collapse appear to show that its television antenna began to drop a fraction of a second before the rest of the building. The observations suggest that the building's steel core somehow gave way first… (Glanz and Lipton, 2002; emphasis added)

He neglects to mention that When NIST went back and looked at all of the videos and images from this collapse, they found that the appearance of the antenna sinking into the building first was in fact an optical illusion caused by the top of the building rotating away from the camera at that particular vantage point. Other cameras at other vantage points confirm this. Thus the collapse did not occur as he imagines it to be.
Jones could easily confirm or deny this by viewing the videos himself.
I‘ll grant that in order to do this, he would have to get off his ass and actually make an effort to review the NIST data. Since he hasn’t done this, I’ll just assume that he is another internet warrior, flailing away in his self ordained virtual reality.


It may have been even more productive for you to review the raw data rather than rely on NIST. With regard to the second collapse and just to clarify this issue. Check out this segment of video.
www.whatreallyhappened.com...
Note that there is no zoom throughout the relevant sequence so relative movement can be observed.
Put a dark flat object, a piece of card, on the screen at the top right tower corner so that only a tiny piece of dark shows between the card and the white highlight.. Then advance the video frame by frame till this line diminishes or disappears, signifying the beginning of the collapse of the upper section. Click back and forward till you can accurately isolate that point in time.
Now move your card so that it just underlines the line on the antennae. Click back a few frames, a fraction of a second, and observe that the gap between your card and the line on the antennae will grow by a fraction. This shows movement of the core immediately prior to movement of the corner.
Now holding the card in the same place, click right back to the start of the clip. This time the movement is more difficult to discern and this also is confused by an individual assumption of where the immediately-pre-collapse movement begins rather than the gradual movement prior to definite movement.
Measurements at various points in time would show any change in the distance between these two levels, the top of the tower and a point on the antennae. There is a representation of this phenomenon on this site
www.whatreallyhappened.com...
Although the figures given refer to the time frame immediately after initiation, we can draw some very important information from the figures. These show a 10% reduction in the observed height of the measured section of tower. In order for this to be as a result of the antennae falling at an angle, and the shortening being simply a visual, parallax error then the antennae would have to fall through a minimum angle of just under 30 degrees. This is in addition to any angle which may have been exhibited prior to the first measurement being taken, that is prior to collapse initiation.




I am curious to know how Professor Jones explains or rationalizes the role of the hat truss (which tied the core to the exterior columns as well as supported the antenna) in this theory that the antenna sank into the building first.

The movement of the antennae signals a downward movement of the core. That is why it is so important. This was caused by the thermite charge at a low level causing the core to lose load carrying ability, plastically deforming and pulling down on the antennae and also inwards on the walls through the floors. Thus accounting for the evidence of the moving antennae and the inward bowing columns.




There are many by-products from fire such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and sulphur dioxide. Flammable by-products can combine with oxygen and burn, thereby feeding the chemical chain reaction of combustion and contribute to the *chain that expands the fire.*

*The vapours produced in fire can also be combustible and contribute to the fire.*

So, to answer a question posed above, "Can steel burn without oxygen?" Yes it can when conditions are right.
An example of one such condition would be magnesium burning atop steel. A molten mass would be the end result.
*The vapours produced in fire can also be combustible and contribute to the fire.*
The point immediately above also supports the burning of steel without oxygen through a chemical chain reaction.
All the points above are absolute facts. Whether they support or mitigate one side's point of view or the other's will not diminsh the scientific facts.


These are not scientific facts - they are gibberish.
The only reason for carbon monoxide to be present is because of inefficient burning. If it didn’t burn first time round why should it burn second time round. And it is difficult to burn.
Burning is an oxidisation reaction - nothing burns without oxygen.
A lot of molten magnesium could melt a little steel if you really tried, but not burn it.

Gordon.

The collapse started with the buckling of the south face, thus the south face dropped first.

At the point in time when the failed columns develop buckling points, the load required to continue those buckles falls in magnitude. Without immediate removal or large reduction or transfer of that load which has induced failure the buckle will continue to progress.
It is logical that the buckle failures began in the area most affected by aircraft collision and thermal effects. This would produce areas within which the columns are buckling and other areas where they are not.
Howsoever of why and where these failures are grouped the result of these failures is an angular momentum of the top section and this movement will reduce the vertical load on the unbuckled sections while still attempting to load the columns which are beginning to buckle
This uneven resistance to any downward movement of the section above initiation will thus exacerbate the already asymmetric effects. There is no reason to believe that this asymmetry once advanced could correct itself and in the absence of such a correction the result would be an asymmetric collapse.
Continuing the assymetric collapse scenario, as the angular movement meets less and less resistance from the buckling columns, the floor can now be impacted by some of the columns from the upper section. The resistance of the floor should not be downplayed because this is the only resistance that the angular momentum has to overcome. Given that a large proportion of the mass of the upper section would now be acting on a single floor through the fractured or severed or buckled ends of only a few columns then I cannot see them offering great resistance and the column ends would continue to impact subsequent floors. All of this is adding to the angular movement and momentum while reducing the vertical forces on the remaining columns.
The columns which did not suffer from the initial buckling failure would now be carrying less load than they were previously so they would not now suffer from a failure in that mode. They are however subject to growing bending moments and associated shear forces from the resolution of the previously vertical force.
In short, the scenario described with an assymetric initiation would result in an assymetric collapse with the top section tearing itself down the side of the tower in the region of least resistance to the angular momentum.
To achieve a symmetric initiation would not require the removal of all the columns structural ability but it does require that no significant angular momentum is imparted to the upper section.

Gordon.

Originally posted by gordonross
The collapse started with the buckling of the south face, thus the south face dropped first.

At the point in time when the failed columns develop buckling points, the load required to continue those buckles falls in magnitude. Without immediate removal or large reduction or transfer of that load which has induced failure the buckle will continue to progress.
It is logical that the buckle failures began in the area most affected by aircraft collision and thermal effects. This would produce areas within which the columns are buckling and other areas where they are not.
Howsoever of why and where these failures are grouped the result of these failures is an angular momentum of the top section and this movement will reduce the vertical load on the unbuckled sections while still attempting to load the columns which are beginning to buckle

Whoa, are you claiming that the vertical load on the unbuckled columns will be reduced as the other columns buckle?

Originally posted by gordonross

To achieve a symmetric initiation would not require the removal of all the columns structural ability but it does require that no significant angular momentum is imparted to the upper section.

Gordon.

Not necessarily.

Remember that all of the columns were tied together by the hat truss at the top of the building. Thus as the load bearing capability of one column failed, the loads would be transferred to other columns.

Eventually, however, those columns will fail too.

It wouldn’t take more than a few degrees of movement off the axis for the remaining columns to fail.

Originally posted by HowardRoark
It wouldn’t take more than a few degrees of movement off the axis for the remaining columns to fail.

This is your opinion.

What is your educational background? What profesional experience do you have in this that qualifies your opinion?

You really should back stuff like this up, old man.

Originally posted by bsbray11

Originally posted by HowardRoark
It wouldn’t take more than a few degrees of movement off the axis for the remaining columns to fail.

This is your opinion.

No, that is the opinion of a couple of (then) graduate students at Northwestern University, one of the top engineering schools in the country.

They published their opinion in the Journal of Engineering Mechanics.

Let’s see Steve Jones do that!

So the steel columns that supported the building just buckled due to the weight of the top few floors? Including the bases of these columns, which had no fire damage whatsoever?

Not only that, but the 9-11 commision denied the existence of these girders all together!! Why would they make such a bold and obviously false statement?

Pg 558 of 9-11 comission official report
The outside of each tower was covered by a frame of 14-inch-wide steel columns; the centers of the steel columns were 40 inches apart. These exterior walls bore most of the weight of the building. The interior core if the building was a hollow steel shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped. Ibid. For stairwells and elevators.

forgive any typos, I had to type from the original source, the .pdf was locked for copying.


[edit on 14-3-2006 by Rasobasi420]

[edit on 14-3-2006 by Rasobasi420]

If Mr Bazant was a student in 2001 how come he was publishing papers in 1999?
What difference do you think there would be in this analysis if you excluded their false assumption that extensive sections of the steel structure reached temperatures of 800 C?

What difference do you think there would be in this analysis if you included a safety factor to take account of the residual strength of the steel rather than assume a safety factor of 1 which assumes that the towers were hovering on the edge of failure and collapse?

In assessing this analysis how did you take account of the loading factors used in light of the fact that the towers were not loaded to their design limit upon collapse?

Gordon.

Originally posted by HowardRoark
No, that is the opinion of a couple of (then) graduate students at Northwestern University, one of the top engineering schools in the country.

Yes, and it was also their opinion that if a...

…majority of columns of a single floor [were] to lose their load carrying capacity, the whole tower [would be] doomed.

And they were wrong, because the towers could withstand more than a 50% column loss on any given floor. And that's a rather important assumption that they made.

The 9/11 Research Site points out some problems, such as the one I've just mentioned:

[The Bazant and Zhou article] implies that the columns were capable of supporting only twice the gravity loads they were bearing above the impact zone. This ignores the fact that the upper floors, lacking standing-room-only crowds, were not carrying their design live loads, and it implies that reserve strength ratios (the extra strength designed into a structure beyond what is required to resist anticipated loads) are two-to-one instead of the five-to-one typical in engineered steel structures.

Note that it would not be necessary for the towers to have a 5:1 strength ratio for the assumption of 2:1 to be wrong. Figures that NIST has released since the publication of this article point to 2:1 being grossly wrong, even in the highest floors of WTC1 (here being closer to 3.3:1 given safety factor ratings), and NIST has also pointed out the obvious in that these top floors were not at full load capacity anyway.

You can find the whole 9/11 Research Site critique here.

[edit on 14-3-2006 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by Rasobasi420
So the steel columns that supported the building just buckled due to the weight of the top few floors?

Yes. The buckling, which is apparent in a number of photographs, started in the impact and fire damage zone. The exterior columns are braced by the floor slabs. When these slabs failed and sagged due to the heat and impact damage, the columns lost much of their ability to resist buckling.

Originally posted by Rasobasi420
Including the bases of these columns, which had no fire damage whatsoever?

I’m not sure what you are saying there. The columns of the lower floors would have buckled and broke at the connections under the forces of the collapse.

Originally posted by Rasobasi420
Not only that, but the 9-11 commision denied the existence of these girders all together!! Why would they make such a bold and obviously false statement?

Pg 558 of 9-11 comission official report
The outside of each tower was covered by a frame of 14-inch-wide steel columns; the centers of the steel columns were 40 inches apart. These exterior walls bore most of the weight of the building. The interior core if the building was a hollow steel shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped. Ibid. For stairwells and elevators.

forgive any typos, I had to type from the original source, the .pdf was locked for copying.

You lost me there. What are you specifically saying is not true?

These exterior walls bore most of the weight of the building

untrue, most of the weight of the building was supported by the 47 steel columns mentioned.

The interior core of the building was a hollow shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped.

As you can see the center was far from a hollow shaft. It is true that stairwells and elevators were in this center mass, but the core was definately not hollow.

I also just noticed that the center had to be the main load bearing structure. If you look you can see the cranes centered around the middle while building the outsides of the building. If the outer walls were load bearing the ranes would be placed along the edge.

Originally posted by Rasobasi420

These exterior walls bore most of the weight of the building

untrue, most of the weight of the building was supported by the 47 steel columns mentioned.

No. The building loads were about evenly distributed between the exterior and the interior columns. This makes perfect logical sense when you think about it. The floor slabs were supported on the inside by the core columns and on the out side by the exterior columns, thus the weight of the floors and the building’s live loads would have been evenly distributed between the two.

In addition, there was a hat truss at the top of the building which transferred the loads from the antennas and the mechanicals rooms at the top pf the building to both the core columns and the exterior columns. This had the added effect of tying these two structural systems together.

Originally posted by Rasobasi420

The interior core of the building was a hollow shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped.

As you can see the center was far from a hollow shaft. It is true that stairwells and elevators were in this center mass, but the core was definately not hollow.

I think you are taking the description “hollow shaft” a little too literally. However, you are correct in one thing; the core consisted of elevator shafts, pipe shafts, air shafts, stairwells, etc. The only floor areas were the toilets and the elevator lobbies.

Originally posted by Rasobasi420
I also just noticed that the center had to be the main load bearing structure. If you look you can see the cranes centered around the middle while building the outsides of the building. If the outer walls were load bearing the ranes would be placed along the edge.

The climbing cranes had their own support columns. These were located in one of the shaft areas of the core. None of the gravity loads on the crane were on the building itself.

When the building was completed, these were disassembled and removed from the top down.

No. The building loads were about evenly distributed between the exterior and the interior columns. This makes perfect logical sense when you think about it. The floor slabs were supported on the inside by the core columns and on the out side by the exterior columns, thus the weight of the floors and the building’s live loads would have been evenly distributed between the two.

Even if that is the case, it's still a far cry from what was in the report. Evenly distributed is one thing because it admits that the center mass held at least half of the weight. Saying Most of the weight was supported by the outer walls, and that the center was hollow is something completely different. Especially since the center was not even close to a hollow shaft, and could not be described that way by any stretch of the imagination.

And if I am taking the term "hollow shaft" too literally (which I don't believe I am) then this report failed to do it's job in describing the structure. Are you saying that the report meant to say "the core consisted of 47 steel girders that bore an equal amout of weight as the outer walls." Becasue that is a very very different statement.