Deleted. Essentially posted the following twice, inadvertantly

I didn't specify in which direction you might convince me.

Of course, you will spot this instantly as just another rhetorical device.

I did, and I appreciate the wit.

Not kidding.

"On Sundial's side?" I'm not exactly alone in this.

While I find it utterly incomprehensible that someone would conspire to demolition three buildings in downtown New York City on the same day, I find it much more horrifying that our own Government strove to conceal the truth, and that it leveraged many different agencies in its determined efforts to do so. There was never any form of criminal investigation into this cold-blooded murder of so many people. There was no public research into what best-practices might have detected the perpetrators – who must have spent a very considerable amount of time at work. All of the physical evidence from this crime scene was recycled or dumped into the ocean. "Inexcusable" is not the beginning of my selection of words to describe this.

I am quite sure that the engineers who designed these buildings, and the others who reviewed and approved the plans, and the others who supervised its construction, were not incompetent. They did not design a house of cards that could be brought to the ground with kerosene and waste paper. They did not even fail to anticipate that an aircraft could smash into the structure – after all, the Empire State Building had a bomber sticking out of its side for quite some time. But the "officials," in their zeal to conceal ... "what, exactly?" ... wasted no time blaming them for everything that occurred. And none of them have ever been given opportunity to answer the claims made against them.

Osama bin Laden immediately said that he had nothing to do with it, and I believe him. What I still want to know is, who did? And why did the US Federal Government, instead of leaving no stone unturned in an effort to solve this crime, bury it and strive to remove the traces? There is no statute of limitations on the crime of Murder in the First Degree. Engineers and others still seek answers and justice, even if our Government (at the moment ...) does not.

Elementary demonstrations such as these merely demonstrate what every demolition practitioner already knows: the support for a structure must be removed from the bottom, so that there is nothing to impede anything that is falling from above. Do it right, and you have a tidy pile of debris in less than ten seconds. Do it wrong, and you have a YouTube video.

EDIT: Oh never mind.

Dugan, you don't have to edit-out your comments.

Thousands of New Yorkers, who had absolutely nothing more planned for that fateful day than another day's worth of boring meetings, died on that day in a sequence of events that too-many governments appear much too-quick to bury. They were too-eager to trot out "explanations" that can be too-easily proved to be nonsense, and too-able to give their claptrap too-high levels of endorsement.

Many different groups of people, many of them professional engineers and experts in the law, have presented their evidence to the world's consideration because their adventures through official channels have faced too-quickly slammed-shut doors. (Suspiciously slammed-shut doors.)

Of course it is unpleasant to contemplate just what "world war" might consist of, in our collective future. No one wants to consider any such thing at all. However, if we are to accurately reckon the actual threats that might now be arrayed against us, we must not neglect to make ruthless investigations of these "opening shots."

The way I see it, this was not only a "technical success" but, especially, a successful attack against our own internal politics. Perhaps by playing into the hand of what our Government wanted the public to believe, they apparently got away with mass murder. ("So far ...")

An unspeakable atrocity such as this should never be allowed to be putty in the hands of those who merely wish to determine what the public is to believe ("concerning it" or otherwise).

I am no architect and my engineering education veered off into electronics ( I !HATED! Statics ) so I am far short of expert on specifics in structures. Statics taught me how to calculate the stresses on each and every support beam in a truss bridge but not how to account for the vector analysis of which where the debris might land if the wind was from a particular direction of a given speed average, but I'll have a go at it from a purely theoretical and general forces background.

I don't think it mattered very much whether one side of one floor or even several floors gave in first. It still would have the vast percentage of the building fall within a very short distance of its footprint. The reason for this is any sideways component of force was a miniscule component of the major force at play which was gravity which has no sideways vector. 100% of it is directed in a straight line to the exact center of our Earth.

Now there were some sideways forces that were stupendous compared, say, to the forces required to kill a person or produce large puffs of concrete dust, debris and smoke blown considerable distances away from building center. Remember that scale gets weird through telephoto lenses and the videos we all saw made it difficult to realize that both towers measured almost 3/4 of a football fields length on each side (roughly 210 feet) so a deflection of even 100 feet still appears rather small against a backdrop more than twice that size in width and over 100 times that in height. These are not trivial forces compared to what we commonly witness except possibly in high speed car crashes BUT they are puny when compared to the phenomenal power of Gravity. There were several sections of walls weighing close to a ton that were propelled to distances in excess of 500 feet. They were propelled by the tiniest of fractions of the straight down falling force which gives us another feel for just how massive that force was.

The load on the ground for each tower as a result of Gravity was 500,000 TONS or One Billion Pounds!! Let that sink in for a moment, one billion pounds... easy to say or write but impossible to really comprehend. It consisted primarily of 100,000 tons of steel and 212,500 cubic yards of concrete per tower. The least amount of initiation force took place in the North Tower as it was hit higher up between the 93rd and 99th floors of the 110 story building, so roughly 9% of the 1 Billion pounds, around 90,000,000 pounds of Tower fell ~9 feet creating a kinetic force equal to that of the entire building, but concentrated in one 90 x 200 x 200 foot block rather than divided over roughly 1000 x 200 x 200 hitting a structure that even if not weakened by nearly an hour of burning jet fuel (some 10,000 gallons of it in each tower) still would have very likely collapsed once the fall began as building design is created around static loads and to resist horizontal stress, not the downward effective force of the entire building.

It isn't difficult to do the Math and what we get is mind numbingly large numbers that have no real meaning to most mortals, myself included. Here's a simpler, smaller, analogous "calculation that we ordinary humans can easier relate to.

Our heads weigh roughly 8% of our total body mass, not unlike the "heads" cut off at the "neck" of the WTC buildings in similar proportion. So if a man weighs in at 160 pounds his head weighs roughly 13 pounds. We can approximate that weight with a half-size cinder block, dimensions 8 x 8 x 8 with the typical air core common to all such style building materials. Not only are our heads reasonably comfortably held up by our necks but a 13 lb cinder block could be placed on our heads and it would be at least an hour before most of us would be fatigued but if it were dropped from 10 feet up as you might imagine the damage would be severe, possibly lethal. Now even though the formula for kinetic energy requires halving the mass (but squaring the speed) the amount of mass is still rather obviously important. Contrary to popular myth, a penny dropped from the Empire State building hitting your head will NOT go through you, but a safe dropped one story will, and I really wouldn't stand in the way of the penny let alone say a 2 pound steel ball from a similar height.

I apologize for rattling on so but if anyone can begin to actually relate to the kind and quantity of forces unleashed that day it really does begin to become clear just how inevitable the straight down collapse was. The problem has been that very few expected that to happen because it was the first of it's kind and knowledge is not the same as wisdom. Most of us need to witness an event to "feel it in our bones". It's generally not quite enough to just know it in our heads. If one doesn't even have the education to even know it in their heads witnessing an event can and very often, almost always, is misinterpreted. It's why we are all fascinated by Magic Tricks and sleight of hand and it is sometimes less satisfying to know how the trick was done. Science very often and to many, takes the Magic out.

/me thinks about it a bit more

/me puts every conspiracy theorist in this thread into ignore list

/me dusts off hands

And if anyone's thinking of yelling at me for this: well, you already know what I'll do in response.

Sounds like your asking for it?

Please explain why you even put your oar in here if you have nothing to say? Trust me I have ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM with anybody disagreeing. In fact I agree with you on the conspiracy theories often =< Junk. Both sides can argue until blue in the face and yet until we see the source code nobody will win or lose.

I have to say even sundialsvcs "opponents" have their own "theory" whether they realize or not....

And what's this? https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...er-4175615189/

A better approach would be to put the whole WWW on "ignore".

I'm not willing to "ignore" a gigantic act of murder in the first degree – along with the other thousands of deaths and long-term health impacts of the pyroclastic flows – nor especially to excuse the inexplicable fact that the US Federal Government(!) worked very tirelessly to prevent criminal investigation into this matter. They shoved several professional engineering and construction companies under-the-bus in their inexplicable zeal to say that two of the tallest buildings in the world ... and then, a third ... could be brought down – into their own footprints, in about six seconds – by kerosene and waste paper, even though streams of red molten metal were streaming out of their sides far below the impact zone.

They put out a preposterous explanation, then quickly branded as "Conspiracy Theorists™" anyone who dared continue to ask questions.

It might have been nearly seventeen years ago now, but Justice does not forget. Engineers don't forget, either. If the greatest structural failures in the history of engineering really was caused by kerosene and office trash, then we must know why. And if it was caused by what plain observation clearly indicates was the cause, then we must know why, also. It is unacceptable to a great many people to blindly accept a stupendously flawed explanation – even if it is the "official" one – nor to accept that the "official explanation" so quickly proffered could be permitted to stand in the face of such obvious flaws. This criminal investigation should be reopened, and it should now include an investigation into obvious collusion between the perpetrators and the Federal Government in trying very hard to let them get away with it.

You can't wipe this away as "conspiracy theory" because the presence of wide-spread conspiracy, both before and after the fact, is also stupendously obvious. Ad hominem labeling of those who demand to ask questions doesn't work. It is a demand that the truth be known, as well as the reasons for the lies. It is a demand for justice.

Justice does not forget.

Maybe the following can help explain the "molten flows" and towers collapse.

How Aluminum May Have Collapsed the Twin Towers

(The people in that video are NOT government scientists either, AFAIK.)

@sundialsvcs,

If you're not going to even consider what anyone else says and just keep harping the same points over and over again, there's no point in even having a discussion about it. You say things like "Ad hominem labeling of those who demand to ask questions doesn't work." and you don't think that cuts both ways ?? I'm sorry, but it DOES, as you're implying that YOUR version of events MUST be true and whatever anyone else says, must be them trying to stop/cover-up any discussion/investigation. Think about it.

Well, guess what else isn't going to work? You spamming the same points over and over again, expecting people like me to believe what you're saying. Well I'm sorry to say, I'm still not convinced by your argument... you cannot even give ANY clear reason as to why it happen, by whom, etc. You just keep making baseless arguments with no proof. Well, how do you expect people to honestly believe you given that? When you won't even seriously consider other possibilities?

And no, I don't have any intention of making any more reply's to this thread. Why? Because it's not a discussion when you only want to consider YOUR argument. So what's the point? Zero.

If you are to display anything remotely approaching objectivity you really need to research Jet Fuel so you stop referring to it as mere "kerosene". First off most varieties of Jet Fuel are kerosene based, highly refined and with numerous additives combined. You really wouldn't want to put Jet Fuel into your Coleman Lantern. Additionally though paper obviously has considerable potential energy locked up in it, it was hardly the only onsite contributor. Synthetics, most notably plastics, are abundant in modern office buildings and burn at very high temperatures and also drip fire globules that spread flames extremely effectively and burn for a long time.

Perhaps more importantly are you implying that controlled demolition melts metals? The most common form of demolition does not, so I assume you are banking on the Thermite Theory which IS used in some types of demolition and actually can and does produce molten metals.

The evidence supporting Thermite Theory is indeed quite compelling and revolves around a very important and telling phenomenon. It is one of the few areas promoted by so-called "Truthers" which is not dependent on mere speculation, hearsay and distrustful agenda but has actual objective evidence. In all seriousness, sundial, I highly recommend you read the below linked article in full. It is supremely objective and seems entirely free from any government alignment, bias or agenda. It is in a word, Scientific, and exceptionally serious-minded.

Please do check out --- Dig Within, The Question of Thermite --- It isn't even entirely conclusive so you don't have to risk any Sacred Cows. It also fully admits that it appears there is bias in the Official Story, and really why would we not expect that? considering governments believe far more strongly in PR than in Science and almost always require all ducks get in a row, very unscientific and meant to have the appearance of solidarity and convince people instead of getting at the Truth no matter how messy or inconvenient.

It does seem likely that higher temperatures than those created by Jet Fuel alone were in effect at the Twin Towers but Thermite is only one possibility and intent is far from likely, let alone proven. Governments are provably often prone to cover ups, but Businessmen are loathe to risk anything but money and are adept at risk assessment even when money is the only risk.

Wow, you didn't have to go all Pottering on the discussion, however these types of over-reactions is what causes people to be able to pull "fast ones" on the populace...its the old shut up, you don't agree with my viewpoint/beliefs so shut up or go to hell etc... Or, burn all books that disagree with my viewpoint, ban all religions except mine etc...

Often times, you know you are getting closer to the truth the more people try to prevent anyone from looking in that corner or vault/cave/book etc... What are you afraid to find? What are you (generically not just Dugan) afraid that others might find? Did you ever hear keep asking and answering questions, reducing them down until there are no questions left to answer? Tyranny is the opposite of this: don't allow questions, and give people the answers before they start asking, if they ask revert back to rule #1 (don't allow any questions).