It can and it does. Learn something about structures instead of just repeating your "disappearing" mantra, which has no relation to the real world.

There is a difference between expressing an opinion and writing a technical paper. Peer-review certainly gives the latter an edge in the plausibility department.

If you could follow the structural technicalities, you would find that NIST does actually have a theory, which your expert Quintiere largely accepts. He is only questioning the state of the fireproofing, which is irrelevant to your point.

This would be a new theory of yours involving the wall columns being non load-bearing?

OK, if you think that makes a significant difference, let's see your calculations for a situation you consider realistic.

So you think a hole in one edge of the core is going to produce more unequal load redistribution than a hole in a corner?

The impact damage to the north side was obviously not enough to cause immediate collapse. The fires were worse on the south side, which also had the available floor trusses to produce side loads on the south face causing bowing. Despite your "no loads in wall columns" theory, the south wall would have been carrying a load, and when the bowing got too large it would no longer have been able to support that load. The wall columns start to fully buckle, causing a tilt to the south. As I've said before, buildings are not designed to support the sort of static and dynamic side loads generated by a tilt about a hinge, so even if the core still had enough columns left (25% gone, according to the Purdue simulation) to support the static vertical load plus the normal wall vertical load, there is still this extra side load on it, plus dynamic vertical load redistribution also caused by the tilt. I cannot see this as being within the design load case for the core columns.
For WTC2, the load redistribution was very different because of the off-centre impact, with the east wall taking up a lot of extra load. The main fires were on the east side. This is why the east wall failed first - it needed much less applied bowing load from the remaining floor trusses that the south wall of WTC1 did.
See, easy, if you'd understood load redistribution, you could have worked that out for yourself.

Try and learn what the NIST theory actually is, as you obviously have no idea at present. It is L&S who are arguing for fire weakening columns as the prime cause of collapse, not NIST.

No, that is just correcting your argument that the lower part is thicker.

You are quibbling again. If I qualify my statement to say that all debris falling inside the building from top and bottom blocks falls on the bottom block, not the top one, my point still stands. It's which block it hits that is the important point, not whether it's all the debris or not.

Your link actually claimed that NIST had underestimated the corner damage considerably. As NIST have a good eyewitness for their estimate and you haven't, you can stand on your head for all I care. You've quibbled for pages about this and have ended up arguing with yourself.

Typical conspiracists comparison, CD building not nearly as high, remove the penthouse sequence from WTC7 video. How about a comparison with soundtrack - compare the noise of real CD charges going off with their absence at WTC7?

I have listened to you endorsing peer-review at every opportunity, inferring it is the be-all and and end-all; the definitive source of scientific study. Now looking into the details, I have a few questions: -

• Is the peer-review process open to failure?
• Is it possible the peer-review process could suffer abuse?
• Is there a chance that certain authors could be treated preferably by editors or reviewers?
• Could a paper containing apparently reasonable assumptions pass peer-review?
• Could a technically sound paper be rejected purely on the basis of a conclusion bringing the journal into disrepute?
• Can it be ‘career suicide’ for an author to write, or indeed a reviewer to endorse, a controversial or accusing paper?
• Can a peer-reviewed paper be wrong?

For how many of those do you answer “Yes”?

It would seem nigh on impossible at this stage for a paper contesting the official story of 9/11 to be published somewhere such as the Journal of Engineering Mechanics - look at what happened to Steven Jones for his work on 9/11. Therefore, what you are asking for, I am sure you understand, is unreasonable. This is the reason the Journal for 9/11 Studies was created – a place for papers to be published and peer-reviewed without the stigma attached of opposing the official line.

One more question – has the NIST investigation and its findings been peer-reviewed?



You live on planet Earth, right? In my experience the accuracy of the weather forecast varies widely; being wrong as often as it is right. Although I think the temperature is relatively mild for this time of year, apparently, according to the Met Office, I was under 10cm of snow in minus 17^oC temperatures last week.

“It can”… … “and it does.” Is that the level of reasoning you have come down to? The fact is, B&Z’s paper does treat hundreds of columns like they suddenly “disappear”. Fact is, there are a growing number of many intelligent scientists and engineers who dispute the collapse times and whether the supposed official dynamic loads involved were achievable.



I am well aware NIST has a theory up to the point of collapse initiation and it does, as I said, involve near instantaneous buckling/failure of every column across the whole structure – due largely to limited damage and heating of some steelwork where the fireproofing was ‘knocked off’ causing the core columns to fail.



Are you trying to attribute nonsense to me to level the field after the things you have come out with? What I said was the perimeter columns would not bow in the first place without a failure of the core columns. Therefore, it is the core that is vastly more important to examining the collapse than the perimeter.



Well supposedly you and Pericynthion are the experts in modelling structures and when I made suggestions for a more realistic situation you bemoaned it was too difficult. Why are you asking me to produce something, as relevant to one side as the other, that you cannot calculate yourself? Do you really believe cross-bracing, adjacent columns and trusses in a larger structure would not make the slightest difference to the basic examples?



No, you are leading my argument away from its intention. Do you think unequal load redistribution, rather than quantity or severity of damage, is what leads to sudden, virtually symmetrical and near freefall ‘global collapse’ of structures?



So what you are saying is that the collapse initiation process for each Tower was largely different and further, from what you have said previously, that the collapse process was different again for WTC7. Well I never, global collapse of this type of structure never before happens in history except in controlled demolition… and then it suddenly occurs ‘naturally’ in three different ways all in one day! You think it reasonable for people of this day and age to believe in near miracles?



I understand the theory NIST promote – I, as with hundreds of engineers and scientists, do not agree it is realistic. And did you just say NIST are not “arguing for fire weakening columns as the prime cause of collapse”? Quick, hit the Twilight Zone button again.



The lower columns were thicker. When discussing the complete collapses, from impact level to the floor, it may be an idea to consider the whole structure rather than just that at the initiation point.



So because the upper block is breaking up and ejecting large amounts of debris outside of the building, that is your ‘good structural reason’ for the lower block to erode faster? Due to debris being forced outside of the building, the mass available above the intact structure at any given level was being reduced.



Again, you point out only two realistic, though explainable, ways in which the examples differ – timing and type of charges used. The similarities in physical characteristics, ie sudden onset, virtually symmetrical, near freefall, explosive squibs, pyroclastic flow, outnumber those differences in indicating a controlled demolition.

Oh course the peer-review process isn't perfect, nothing is perfect. However, if you think your paper is being rejected for political rather than technical reasons you are at liberty to try it with another journal. Why wouldn't the Iranians, for example, publish Jones if it was only politics preventing him getting a US publication?
The NIST report is obviously not published in a journal, so not subject to journal peer-review. Accident reports are normally published on the authority of the head of the investigating agency. The NIST investigation certainly has a large number of outside specialists contributing to it. If you think NIST is part of the cover-up, your conspiracy just got a lot bigger.

You have proof of that? Comparison of forecast and actual weather?

But curiously, none of them seem able to publish a coherent technical explanation for their views.
Incidentally, I see a lot of claims that among the general public, the believers in the conspiracy theory are now in the majority. Isn't therefore rather strange that among people who might be expected to have some expertise in the matter of building collapses, the conspiracy believers appear to number well under a tenth of a percent?
You still don't get it, do you? If structural elements have to "disappear" before a collapse, then how does any collapse happen? Even a CD charge only removes a thin section of a column, not the whole thing.

You still don't understand the NIST theory, do you?

Ah, we're back to the completely stiff structures again. Remember "Real structures aren't rigid". With the large spacing between the core and the wall, it is perfectly possible for one to fail and start moving before the other.

Why should I go to the effort of doing something which you would instantly dismiss? This is your assertion, you should do the work. If you can't, go ask a structural engineer.

Damage leads to unequal loads, unequal loads and fire spread damage, spread damage far enough and you get a collapse.
We have already seen that "sudden" is wrong - the bowing was visible long before the collapse.
"Virtually symmetric" is also wrong - it now seems that we can add a slight tilt for the north tower to the large tilt of the south one.
"Near freefall" is to be expected - I'm still waiting for any conspiracist to produce any reason other that gut feeling why the fall should have been any slower.

No, the two tower sequences are broadly similar, the differences are the natural result of the different impact angles. No-one has ever claimed WTC7 was similar to the towers - different structure, different damage, different fire duration, different collapse.
This "never happened before" argument is really stupid - how many previous occasions have large aircraft flown at cruise speed into such tall buildings? Of course the results were unprecedented, so was the cause.

You've just proved again that you don't understand the NIST theory.

As B&Z did? You were the one who started this argument about what happens at the impact point.

You are still quibbling. Anything that falls outside the building erodes neither block, so is irrelevant to the argument about which block erodes faster. Anything that falls inside the building falls on the lower block, not on the upper one, so erodes the lower block preferentially.
Although not relevant to the original argument, the mass above the intact structure may reduce by the amount that is ejected, but it increases as the impact zone moves down the building because the amount of intact structure becomes a smaller proportion of the building.

See above for "sudden onset, virtually symmetrical, near freefall".
The "explosive squibs" are unlike any CD, and easily explained by air pressure breaking windows.
Do you know what pyroclastic flow actually is?

At the risk of becoming just a minor punctuation mark in the ongoing Flying Swan / Q24 debate, I thought you might both be interested to see this article, as it appears to contain a viable explanation for the molten Aluminium flow.

Thanks for that link, I agree his theory seems very plausible, more so than NIST's aircraft aluminium theory.

It would seem almost lucky for the impact and damage in a ‘battery room’ to cause a short circuit rather than to destroy altogether its contents. If a short circuit is created, the article goes on to say this could cause “unimaginable thermal effects” – is an electrical fault in a battery super-heating metal reasonable?

Even then, molten lead as with molten aluminium is a silver grey colour at melting point… can molten lead even actually glow the bright orange colour observed in the flow from WTC2? I can’t find any examples.

It looks like a lot of research went into the article but what exactly is the final explanation? A molten lead/aluminium with debris combination? This contains all the problems I have previously stated: -

1. No thick/dark smoke expected from debris
2. No flame expected from debris
3. No silver colour at all to indicate aluminium or lead
4. No dark/light patches/spots indicative of a mixture
5. Experiments to replicate molten metal/debris mix have proven unsuccessful

The following observations still leave thermite as the leading contender: -

1. Light white smoke as in thermite reactions
2. No flame as in thermite reactions
3. Glowing orange/red as in thermite reactions
4. Completeness of substance colouration and consistency throughout
5. Timing of substance flow immediately prior to collapse

9/11: WTC2 molten metal

Can you clarify that please? I cannot make sense of it.



No, you don’t get it that steel framed high-rise buildings don’t suffer sudden, near freefall, global collapse. These types of structures in all of history have only ever suffered a tilt or partial collapse. Where a tilt occurs, the initial movement is slower before gathering pace, ie the elements give resistance. Where a partial collapse occurs there is a great deal of slow movement in warping of the frame prior to collapse (see Madrid building below), ie again the elements give resistance. The only time structural elements do have to ‘disappear’ is to achieve the beginning of a collapse as seen in the WTC buildings. That is ‘disappear’, or be cut as in a controlled demolition.



This is how a steel framed high-rise should react to fire before partially collapsing.



Yes and the part that failed initially, to cause the additional loads on the South exterior and for the floor trusses to pull that face inwards, had to be the core columns! We can look at the collapses anyway we want but it always starts and ends with the core.



If you believe this…



… to be the equivalent of, for instance, this…



… just say so.



So laws of physics, in particular conservation of momentum, are just ‘gut feeling’ now are they? Here is a paper confirming the collapses should not have begun: -

9/11 and the Twin Towers: Sudden Collapse Initiation was Impossible

Here is a paper confirming even if the collapses began, they should not have continued: -

Momentum Transfer Analysis of the Collapse of the Upper Storeys of WTC 1

Here is a paper refuting B&Z: -

NIST And Dr. Bazant - A Simultaneous Failure

No, you describe a completely different collapse initiating process to explain why WTC2 tilts toward the impact damage and WTC1 tilts away from the impact damage. The initial tilt for WTC2 would seem reasonable according to the official story but the Southward tilt of WTC1 is not. For this to occur it means the fire caused greater damage to the opposite side from all the columns severed and damaged in the impacts. If your progressive fire weakening theory is correct, the damage must move to those columns adjacent the impact zone, thus more weakening on that side and a tilt toward the North. The tilt we see in WTC1 does not fit with that expected of a ‘natural’ collapse.



Considering you don’t believe fire weakening columns to be the prime cause of NIST’s collapse theory and you don’t even know according to NIST, WTC1 tilted as much as WTC2, I am going to take the above as a joke.



That would be assuming the broken up and pulverised sections of the lower block contributed a great deal to the continuation of the collapses. The upper and lower sections must still be coming together throughout the collapse duration. Either way, with the upper block being broken up and dispersed, this should slow the collapses.



The onsets of the main collapses were all sudden, ie it was not apparent the structures were about to crush themselves or implode. After the initial tilts for some reason did not continue, the collapses were virtually symmetrical. If you had bothered to watch the video I linked, you would have seen the explosive squibs of WTC7 were very similar to that of controlled demolition in the comparison. The pyroclastic flow seen after the Towers and WTC7’s demolition is exactly like that seen in other controlled demolition examples.

That peer-review isn’t perfect as you mildly put it and is also open to political sway is very important when judging all papers in regard to 9/11. I’m sure you can understand how papers supporting/opposing the official story may be treated quite differently regardless of their technical merit. I would still like to know how many of my questions you answered 'Yes' to?

I cannot find an Iranian journal making reference to the WTC buildings either way – perhaps they are not interested. If an engineer or scientist published a paper in an Iranian journal, it clearly would not carry any authority in the US anyway.



So when you decry papers needing peer-review to your liking, that is only when the findings disagree with the official story. The NIST investigation has not been peer-reviewed, yet that is quite alright as it supports the official story.



Here is an interesting little study on the BBC weather forecast in 2003. The forecast for one day ahead was found to be accurate only just over half of the time, ie close your eyes and guess!

Which obviously now need to be repeated with the proposed mix from a battery room.

In other words, even the Iranian peer-review process has not accepted a paper backing your claims.

Peer-review is the process for academic journals, one-off technical publications have a different process involving people other than the author having to endorse the contents. The NIST report appears to have this sort of endorsement.

Read that link a little more closely: he assumes that the forecast for today is correct, then compares it with yesteday's forecast, which is right half the time. He is not actually comparing any real weather with the forecast. He is also taking a very narrow definition of accuracy, no mention of wind speed and direction or temperature, just whether he thinks the sunmmary icon is equivalent.

So you just made up that little story about snow forecast when you had mild weather?

Just a comment that the "we have so many architects and engineers on our side" argument looks a bit slim when compared with the same calculation for the general public.

The initial movement is slower, it takes a long time for the bowing of the walls to develop to the point when they give way, but once they do the collapse accelerates because the load-carrying ability of the walls reduces, and that is what is seen as "sudden".

Do try and get the NIST theory right, you still have no idea.

Very funny, what other delaying tactics do you have before you admit that you can't follow up on this one?

I've given my analyses of the shortcomings of first and third of these before. The second is actually the best of them, but he has to scurry around for extra energy absorbing mechanisms before he gets the answer he wants. This is the big weakness in his paper - he takes a rather rough global estimate of the energy absorbed by pulverising the concrete and applies it pro-rata to one floor. Personally, I see the concrete damage being a lot less at the first impact and coming mostly at the end of the collapse when the whole lot hits the ground at high speed. Without this factor, his analysis gives the same conclusion as B&Z.

In both cases the collapse starts from a different wall from the one the aircraft entered. In both cases it is the wall nearest the fiercest fire. In both cases you still do not understand the collapse mechanism proposed by NIST.

Perhaps I should stop taunting you about your misunderstanding of the NIST theory and actually tell you what it is? The prime cause in both cases is the sagging of floor trusses in the fires, which pulls the walls inwards, reducing their load carrying capability.

Does that mean that you are giving up on this one?

I could just repeat my last post here, since that is all that you are doing. "Is sudden", "No, isn't sudden" is not a productive type of discussion.
You obviously don't know what a pyroclastic flow is. I shall point you to this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroclastic_flow
This is not the same as dust-laden air billowing out of a collapsing building, which is a feature of the collapse, whatever the cause of the collapse, and thus no proof of CD.

Absolutely, though everyone already knows NIST should have done more. If a competent investigation had been carried out instead of the narrow-minded sham we have been presented, we would not be questioning these things over 6 years later.

I will go on record as saying the ‘battery room’ theory is just as farfetched as NIST’s aluminium theory and that both trail far behind the very reasonable, apparent and supported explanation that we are witnessing a thermite reaction. One day, when a scientist proves the lead/debris mix to be unrealistic, remember you heard it here first.

Oh… and it was good to see you wavering from the NIST theory at the first hint of an alternative you liked, flyingswan. Just goes to show how wishy-washy the current 'official' explanation we have really is.

How many of the questions here did you answer “Yes” to? If you don’t want to say, it is apparent you are more interested in avoidance rather than fair and open discussion.



How could they accept something that has not been offered? As I said, I cannot find any Iranian papers regarding the WTC buildings at all. It would not surprise me if they were not interested in the event; simply being accepting of the fact it was a false flag operation.



Who ‘appears’ to have endorsed the findings and conclusion of the NIST investigation then?



My recalling based on experience, was of the minus 17C ‘Siberian blast’, which did not materialise, predicted by some weather forecasters at the start of this month.

Anyhow, you are quibbling - the way the BBC change their future weather forecast from one day to the next is acceptance in itself that the computer weather models originally had it wrong nearly half of the time. It is very nice talking about the weather and all, though we must bear in mind the forecasters are not working to a pre-conceived conclusion as NIST are.

The majority percentages given in public polls seem to be for those people supporting a new and independent investigation, rather than outright calling 9/11 an inside job. No one is claiming the public made aware of the inside job outnumber those still in the dark so… strawman? Also, whereas as a citizen we put our reputation on the line, speaking out as a professional is putting your career on the line – the higher stakes involved would explain the discrepancy you mention if there is one.



A “long time” in your world is 5 minutes? That is how long the bowing supposedly occurred for before WTC1’s collapse. That is a mere 5 minutes between a possible slight displacement to a section of exterior wall and ‘global collapse’ ensuing. When we know the large amount of distortion a steel frame can go through before partial collapse (Madrid Building), it would seem the appearance of bowing followed shortly by sudden complete collapse is indicative of a major damage event quickly weakening the structure… such as explosive charges and/or thermite.

As for WTC2 where the East face was supposedly bowing longer before the collapse – this was the same face that the airliner had moved parallel with and likely dragged its right wing all the way along. Hardly surprising the structure would be weakened there whilst quite conceivably having absolutely nothing to do with the collapse initiation.



I wasn’t being funny and the images (if you can see them – why do posted images appear/disappear so randomly on this site, mods?) are very relevant. You indicated your belief a real structure complete with adjacent columns, cross-bracing, floor trusses, hat truss, etc, would not give a “significant difference” to Pericynthion’s examples. Therefore I am asking the serious question - do you find the two pictures I posted to be structurally equivalent?



Now, despite your personal opinion disagreeing with the paper, do you see how very silly it is to say, as you did, the only reasoning of those questioning the observed near freefall collapse times is “gut feeling”?



In one case the tilt occurs toward the impact damage and in the other case the tilt occurs away from the impact damage - that is a strong indication these were not ‘natural’ collapses, rather initiated by explosives and/or thermite. Also your assertion about the bowing walls being those in line with the fiercest fire is incorrect – according to NIST’s fire simulations, in WTC1 the fire lasts the longest time at its supposed highest temperature along the East and West perimeters.



Ah, so it’s like me saying the Titanic was sunk by an iceberg, you repeatedly state that wasn’t the cause, before ingeniously revealing it wasn’t sunk by the iceberg but rather the rupture the iceberg made. Brilliant.

Rather than nonchalantly skimming through NIST’s theory, flyingswan, perhaps it would benefit to read the complete collapse sequence instead of thinking you know it all. The South perimeter of WTC1 was allegedly carrying the additional load, contributing to the supposed bowing, due to a weakening of the core. The theorised sagging of floor trusses, pulling on the perimeter, was due to the fire. Therefore the prime cause of collapse, according to the faulty NIST investigation, was damage to the core and fire.

I cannot believe I am discussing an exterior wall being the prime cause of collapse. Even FEMA stated of WTC1 in their investigation: -

"Review of videotape recordings of the collapse taken from various angles indicates that the transmission tower on top of the structure began to move downward and laterally slightly before movement was evident at the exterior wall. This suggests that collapse began with one or more failures in the central core area of the building."

There is no doubt the collapses began and ended in the cores, no matter sagging trusses or bowing walls along the way – it was the core after all that supported 60% of the structure’s load. Knowing that limited damage (NIST best estimate: 3 columns severed out of 47) and lesser heating in that area (NIST fire models showing cooler temperatures at the core) could not cause the steel core columns to simultaneously fail, the mystery can only be solved again through the use of explosives and/or thermite.



It means I believe the coming together of the upper and lower blocks, if this were ever possible in a ‘natural’ collapse (which it isn’t), would mean the structural integrity of each should deteriorate at approximately the same rate. As this does not occur in the observed collapses, with the upper block remaining intact for a time as it seemingly crushes the lower structure, this indicates that the lower structure was already weakened prior to and during the collapses, possible once more through the use of explosives and/or thermite.



As you say, rather than a simple ‘dust billow’, a pyroclastic flow is a particular fast moving current of hot air, spreading laterally and low to the ground as seen in controlled demolitions and… do you know where else… not counting volcanoes… have a guess… yes, the WTC buildings!

Sign of an open mind - be prepared to change your opinion when faced with new evidence. Why don't you ever change yours? What exactly is "farfetched" about the battery room?

This is another of your problems with understanding the English language. I said nothing is perfect, so that implies yes to all the questions. I could only say no to them in a perfect world.

Jones founds his journal, presumably because he can't get published in the existing ones. If he hasn't offered his papers to every one he could find, then one wonders why not.

All the investigation team leaders have put their names to it, with endorsement by the director of NIST, as customary for such reports, plus two of his political superiors.

Ah, you did make up the snow bit then, and it wasn't a Met Office forecast, just some random outfit offering long-range forecasts.

Agreed, perhaps you should explain this to a few of the other conspiracists posting here.

An engineer is expected to put his career on the line if there is a safety-critical issue - Roger Boisjoly and the Challenger disaster being an excellent example of this. I certainly wouldn't work for a firm that asked me to alter my conclusions to fit some political requirement.

Twenty minutes is more like it, but even five minutes is certainly a long time compared with the duration of the collapse, no way is five minutes "sudden".

To make your point here, you have to produce a configuration you consider realistic and then produce a calculation of the loads. To make my point, I just have to sit back and watch you squirm.

Even after some dubious energy accounting, his basic calculations agree with B&Z, but he has a gut feeling it's CD, so he goes and finds some extra factor, no matter whether it's plausible, to make his case.

In one case the tilt is 90 degrees from the impact face, in the other 180 deg, in no case is it "towards". Depends which floor of WTC1 you look at, but at the one with the most bowing, the 96th, definitely has the fiercest fire on the south side in the minutes leading up to collapse.

We are not arguing about the iceberg, we are in agreement about that. We are arguing about why it sank, given the iceberg damage. I am saying it was a natural result of the damage, you are saying "no, it must have hit a mine as well, everyone knows it was unsinkable".

But not the gradual compressive failure of the core columns as you have been arguing.

What you call the "NIST best estimate" was their estimate before actually doing the fire simulations. The simulations and comparison with photographic evidence of wall bowing gave better agreement with damage intermediate between their initial "best" and "high" estimates, nearer the latter. This is confirmed by the Purdue impact simulation, which also gave more damage that the "best" estimate.
As some aircraft debris went right through the building, the damaged region must also have reached to the south side.
The NIST analysis predicts some distortion of the core structure prior to collapse, this may be associated with the mast movement. However, given the way the lateral motion of the top of the mast would greatly amplify the vertical movement at its foot, "slightly before [wall] movement was evident" isn't exactly a firm indication for which actually moved first.
No matter if the damaged core was still supporting 60% of the load, its collapse could still be triggered by the sudden imposition of an extra load, partially dynamic, from a collapsing wall.

Leaving aside your continuing failure to put together anything beyond a vague hand-waving theory of how thermite would actually do the job...

What you think possible and what an engineer thinks possible are not the same thing. Of course the lower structure could be damaged below the collapse zone - the dynamic loads are much greater than designed for and more or less constant going down the building, while the loads going up through the top half reduce away from the impact zone. I've explained this before, the Chinese simulation gives the same effect, but of course you know better.

You do understand there is a great difference between a gravity driven mixture of hot gas and rock at several hundred degrees moving at over a hundred metres per second, and the WTC cloud a few degrees warmer than ambient and moving horizontally at a few metres per second? One is a pyroclastic flow, the other isn't, whatever the conspiracist websites might like to call it. Its the "looks like means is like" argument again.

Don’t tell me you have an open mind when your belief system is based first and foremost on what authority tells you to accept as true. I am open to a change of mind where hard evidence is presented which impacts on my current thought. As the facts stand, I have every reason to doubt the official version of 9/11 events and equally as much to confirm to me a false flag operation. With what I now know, to accept the official story is to accept a miracle… and I don’t believe in miracles; only evidence, facts and logic.

The ‘battery room’ theory is farfetched in all the same ways as the NIST aluminium theory, though with the added line of an airliner crash by chance causing short-circuits creating so said “unimaginable thermal effects”.

Not a problem understanding English but a desire to have a direct answer to a direct question, rather than an ‘implied’ response. If you are answering “yes” to all the questions, you can well understand how the B&Z paper may have been open to assumptions, perhaps wrong, in its making, ease of passing review as this was the ‘renowned’ Bazant and also political sway, before being quickly pushed through the system.



As discussed, right now any US, Western or other allied country is not the place to have a paper disputing the official story published. I think not even Russian or Chinese journals would wish to cause such a political storm by opposing the official US story at this time. Where does that leave? Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, parts of Africa? Jones and other researchers are very careful not to point fingers in their studies. Therefore, do you really think it sensible of them to align themselves with enemies of the US? No, I completely understand why they create their own journals outside of the political stream, available for researchers to read and come to their own conclusions.



Are you telling me the people and their affiliates who compiled the NIST investigation approved it themselves? After what you have been saying about the Journal of 9/11 Studies, I do hope not.

I will leave that to you. I find it more important to respond to the falsities spread by official conspiracy theorists than misunderstood but harmless claims of those supporting the truth.



There simply is no safety-critical issue in raising the prospect of controlled demolition in the WTC buildings; only a risk to your career from making such an accusation. Unless you are suggesting structures should be made safe against unexpected controlled demolitions, you are not making sense.

If you worked for such a firm, they would not be asking you to change your conclusion, rather giving you narrow line of study with pre-determined conclusion, “find out how these buildings collapsed due to impacts and fire” and as Bush said, “Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories”. See, your hands are tied from the beginning and if you were so inclined to deviate from the task set to you, perhaps reporting it up the chain, you will soon be left in no doubt as to where your career is going.



NCSTAR1-6 pg. 333, “Inward bowing of the South exterior wall was first observed at 10:23 a.m.” that is 5 minutes before the collapse time of 10:28 a.m. That you assume the bowing of one section of wall 5 minutes before the collapse to be the beginning signs of ‘global collapse’ initiation is highly contentious when we consider the extensive and severe warping of the Madrid building over many hours which resulted only in partial collapse.



Are you arrogant enough to believe the ignoring of a direct question that would clear this issue up gives you the right to sit back and be automatically right? To make my point here, at the third time of asking, I need you to clearly state whether you find the pictures I posted to be structurally equivalent. The fact is, you won’t answer because you know the images are not equivalent, which further proves your assertion of Pericynthion’s examples being relevant to the WTC structures as vastly incorrect.

This is another example where, through your bias, you cannot accept my case is clearly proven, resorting to avoidance and rhetoric as a mask to your failings. Why is this necessary if the official story is so clear-cut?



Ross makes numerous assumptions all in favour of a complete collapse before factoring in the pulverization of concrete at the impacted floors, causing an energy deficit to a ‘natural collapse’. Observed visual evidence of concrete pulverization is not a “gut feeling”. Indeed one would find it more realistic to factor in all of the energy required rather than ignoring it as the B&Z paper did. Now I have my own eyes and the calculations of a Mechanical Engineer vs. flyingswan and a politically driven Bazant. Not much choice there.



Knowing the NIST investigation as you are supposed to, I would have thought you were aware they stated, “There was approximately a 3 to 4 degree tilt to the south and a 7 to 8 degree tilt to the east” in WTC2. Therfore, the tilt was largely “towards” the impact area.

In the minutes before collapse, the most severe fires allegedly reached the South perimeter. This does not mean the South perimeter suffered the fiercest fires as you incorrectly stated, as, before that time, the East and West perimeters had suffered more widespread and longer lasting fires. Why no bowing of those facades?



Well you have been incorrect on the prime cause of NIST’s collapse theory and due to NCSTAR 1-6 pg. 299 in the collapse sequences stating, “The shortening of the core columns” I would suggest you are wrong again in the above.



Still, the wall would not be bowing so severely in the first place if additional loads were not imposed on it from the failing core. If the core was not already weakened, the bowing or failure of a wall, does not cause the core to collapse.



The person describing it as a pyroclastic flow is Jim Hoffman, a software engineer working in scientific visualisation. His paper below describes how expansion of the WTC dust cloud resembled a pyroclastic flow and could not have been formed from the gravity driven collapses of the structures: -

Analysis of Energy Requirements for the Expansion of the Dust Cloud Following the Collapse of 1 World Trade Center

I changed my opinion because I saw new evidence.
You will never change your mind because your opinion is not based on evidence. You have set yourself up so no-one can disprove your ideas:
"Looks like a CD? Told you that's what it was.
Doesn't look like a CD? Shows they were trying to disguise it."
An unfalsifyable theory is worthless, but that is all you have.

What exactly are you querying about it? Do you doubt that there was a battery room in that corner? Do you think it unlikely that a place close to the impact would see debris flying about? Do you think that shorting a lot of lead-acid batteries would not be likely to have thermal consequences?
Try dropping a piece of metal across the battery terminals of your car and see what happens.

Well, there is a difference between three people, none of them a structural engineer, reviewing each others papers on structural engineering, which is effectively what Journal of 9/11 Studies is, and a large and well-qualified team, including plenty of people from outside NIST, writing an accident report - not an academic paper like B&Z - and getting it approved in the standard manner for such reports. Such reports are not subject to peer review because, by the time the investigation is complete, there are no independant experts who know more about what happened that the investigation team. You'd need to set up a second investigation to get a qualified second opinion.
You are comparing apples and oranges here.

Whereas if I had made such a "harmless claim", the likes of sunofone would be posting about "the lies of government shils".

No safety-critical issue? The whole point of an accident investigation is to see how to prevent anything similar happening again.
I work as an engineer, I know that however narrow my work topic, I make an effort to see how it fits into the big picture. I have never changed a report for political reasons.

And from the same report, for WTC 2 bowing was first observed at 9:23 and collapse was at 9:59, thats 36 minutes. My "20 minutes" was the average.

Of course the pictures are of different structures. However, Pericynthion's examples were perfectly adequate for demonstrating that your uniform load re-distribution theory was highly misleading. That's all they were aimed at. If you want to know how loads were re-distributed on 9/11, you will have to repeat NIST's calculations. Until you do, I have no need to take anything you say on the subject at all seriously.

See your Hoffman paper for the unreliability of the concrete pulverisation energy claims.
You can of course produce evidence for your claim that Bezant was "politically driven"? How about the Chinese paper?

Since when is "3 to 4" larger than "7 to 8"?

As the south wall fires were fiercest in the final minutes leading up to collapse, I should think it doubtful if other fires were longer lasting, and didn't you just say that the bowing only started five minutes before collapse? Then there's the east and west walls being further from the main impact damage and probably seeing less fireproofing damage as a result, so better able to resist the fires.

I didn't say there was no movement of the core, I said that the wall collapse was the event that triggered the collapse. You have been pushing core compression failure as the sole collapse mechanism.

Of course there was load re-distribution from the core to the walls, first due to the impact damage and then due to the effect of the fires on the core. However, what made the collapse sudden, which was the whole point of this argument, was the wall collapse due to bowing, a much faster process than what was happening in the core. This gave a new load re-distribution which suddenly loaded up the already weakened core, dynamically as well as statically.

Thank you for that link. It's getting the big laughs reading papers like Hoffman's that makes my posting here so rewarding.
He thinks the outward flow of dust and air is a thermal expansion effect, and since there wasn't enough energy in the falling building to heat the air by the amount he claims, there must have been an extra energy input. There is no evidence whatever that the dust cloud reached the temperatures he claims, as plenty of people survived getting caught in the clouds, so no evidence for his big energy numbers.
However, if the outward flow is a mechanical result of the air inside the building being pushed out in the collapse, the kinetic energy requirement is very much lower, so no problem.
I'm afraid this is all too typical of the type of calculation put up by your side.

Back in Roman and Greek courts, whenever they were trying to find out who was lying, they would always ask the question "Who's to gain?" Just let that question sink into your head for a while (if you're capable of holding a thought). Who is to gain in 9/11, what story outweighs the other??? Just think about it. Thousands of dollars to