Well, obviously not like a tree chopped at its base. If anything, perhaps like a tree chopped at its canopy. In fact, you can see it start to do just that at the beginning of the collapse, although this tendancy halts instead of accelerating.
Why are you getting so emotional and using such language? Why is what I’m saying “so wrong you don’t know where to start”?
Here is a shot of what I’m talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFz9TZUyIZk&feature=related
The “canopy” of the south tower begins to rotate, then stops instead of accelerating.
Honestly? From the bottom of my heart? Because I believe you’re lying about a national tragedy.
I can’t accept, with all the free information out there that clearly, objectively, and scientifically smashes these childish mock theories to pieces—stuff that’s been posted in this thread, among many, many others-- that you’ve held onto these beliefs with pure intentions for so long. I know I’ve argued this with you months or years ago, and your position hasn’t changed.
On this planet, toward what does gravity always pull?
Hey! They warned us about that in the sticky. Can I get a sanction? Hopefully an economic one. :mad:
What “intentions” could I have?
I’m simply pointing out that the structurally massive core should have provided resistance. This doesn’t mean it would have stopped the collapse or been free from damage, but that it would have deflected an object attempting to move through it. As had started to happen.
Teh gubbermint is teh sux, teh real terrerists are teh bushes, open ur eyez, vote Ron Paul, etc, etc. I’ve seen some pretty outrageous intentions out of truthers but you’re already accusing me of insulting you so I’m not going to get into it any further.
Wait-- are you saying the planes should’ve bounced off?
And the freefall claim? Come on, that’s an example of something you absolutely must know isn’t true at this point. Freefall would’ve been ~9 seconds, which I’m sure you know. There are videos on Youtube of the collapses taking over 20 seconds.
But really, once the action was set in motion, what do you expect but near-freefall? After the initial catalyst (the weakening of the heated steel to the point of failure), there was hundreds of thousands (millions?) of tons of dynamic load accelerating down on a structure that just wasn’t built to take it.
Ever done the trick where you can stand on an aluminum can? When you press the sides in, compromising the integrity of the structure that is holding you up (the aluminum shell of the can), does it slowly collapse?
It is easy to support the freefall claim by observing that debris coming off the towers fell approximately together with the towers themselves. The debris faced no resistance but air, while the towers had to supposedly travel through concrete and steel.
“compromising the integrity of the structure that is holding you up (the aluminum shell of the can)”
Dude… that is the whole point. There was more to the towers than the shell! There was the core, which is too often conveniently ignored. (Such as in the Nova video you linked to, where every shot of the computer reenactment and artist’s rendering conveniently panned away from a shot of the center of the building.) They didn’t build the towers like an aluminum can.
Furthermore, in the point regarding energy, is that it takes very little to deform thin aluminum. Hence, no gravitational potential energy goes into the can’s reshaping to take away from your acceleration. Pulverizing concrete and bending steel is different, and would consume a great deal of energy as well as, as I said, encourage deflection through a path of less resistance.
And what was the point of having a ground to air defense that was somehow inactive for an hour and a half after knowing planes had been hijacked, eh?
This started off as a good thread. What happened?
So it’s a conspiracy again, is it?
Why hasn’t anyone been able to prove it? Is the government that powerful? Let’s assume for the sake of absurdity that they are.
I know they won’t hesitate to murder civilians (3000 in a single day alone!) so obviously they’re silencing all the witnesses out there. Or maybe they’re just bribing people, making them rich enough that they never ask for more. After all, why does someone become a scientist or an engineer? It’s to get rich, right? Well here you go. You know the truth about 9/11? Here’s your riches beyond all dreams of avarice or your painful death and disappearance, your choice.
I feel sorry for you Alex. Because you’re not buying the party line and remaining ignorant about the conspiracy like you’re supposed to… because you’re not buying in like the rest of us who have all been fooled/bribed/intimidated/paid off… the black helicopters will be coming for you. Because you know the truth and clearly that is not allowed. No one is safe because Bush is out of office now.
George Bush is an evil genius. Like the Devil (from whom he clearly takes inspiration) his best trick was convincing the public that his real self the evil genius doesn’t exist. So he carefully crafted his image and then pulled this evil stunt. And since then, he’s used the outrage and anger from 9/11 to make sure that America would hand him the keys to the kingdom. And having accomplished that, he conquered Afghanistan and Iraq, scared the rest of his potential enemies shitless and is now sitting in Houston cackling as he counts the money coming from the oil grab in Iraq and that pipeline in Afghanistan. Hell, he’s probably got a piece of the opium trade too but that’s really secret so don’t go around repeating that since you’re in enough trouble as is.
But I urge you to just accept that scratchy piece of wool that’s been pulled over all our eyes. Of course it was a massive conspiracy. Of course it was done with well placed explosives that were smuggled in over the course of months. Who would be so foolish as to think burning jet fuel could possibly harm something as durable as steel? Not a chance, it had to be thermite charges. And the Pentagon? Bah! Did you see that impact hole? No outline of the wings! I watched a lot of Bugs Bunny when I was a kid and I know for a fact that when a solid object goes through another solid object it leaves a perfect outline of itself. Since there was just a round hole, it must have been caused by a missile but the government was still willing to murder all the people that were supposed to be on the “plane” to make it look convincing.
This conspiracy shit is deep, man. Tread carefully. You already know what your government is capable of.
See, this is what I’m talking about. You can watch a video clearly showing the buildings falling at more than twice freefall speed, but you want to believe they fell at freefall speed so badly that you’ll choose to buy into some ridiculous Monty Python town-crier logic like this.
Yes yes, PBS, the NIST, all the firemen, and every credible engineer, demolitions expert, and tall buildings specialist in the entire world was in on it. They’re all out to get us, man. We know :rolleyes:.
Again with the fantasy logic. You don’t seem to understand. A physicist or engineer, of which there happen to be some on the board, could explain this better, but to put it in layman’s terms:
When you carry an object up a hill, or up a ladder, or up a skyscraper under construction, you impart potential energy on it by performing the work to transfer it. But here’s the thing, gravity never forgets about that potential energy. As long as the object stays static, and the structure it sits atop is capable of holding it, everything is fine. But as soon as the capability of the structure to support the object falls below the force of that potential energy, gravity comes a’callin’. Think about those cranes and elevators lifting all that mass up into the air during the construction of the WTC towers. That’s a hell of a lot of potential energy, and as soon as the steel columns supporting it were weakened below the necessary levels, the piper had to be paid. The path of least resistence, forgiving of course for the complexity of the structure, was generally straight toward the center of the Earth, just like it would’ve been expected to be. You can balance a potato (static load, like the WTC) on a vertical paper straw, but turn it into a dynamic load (spritz the straw to simulate the weakening steel, thus setting the top in motion) and the structure is not going to tip over; it’s going straight down.
Actually, my understanding is they did. Most of the structural support was found toward the walls, and there were few interior columns.
Actually, gravitational potential energy has difficulty amounting to much. Consider the energy held in a 1kg concrete block carried to the top of WTC. Its energy is 4kJ (1kg x 10m/s^2 x 400m) or 1 watt-hour. A watt-hour is a measly amount of work, equivalent to a microwave running for 3 seconds or the burning of four matches.
If that concrete block faced the same fate as most others composing the WTC, it would have been deformed into fine dust by noon of the 11th. Do you have an idea of how much energy it would take to transform a 1kg block of concrete into dust? Microwaving it for 3 seconds would not be enough.
Although it plays a big role in our lives, gravitational potential energy has a difficult time adding up to much.
Yes, you’re exactly right. Dropping a 1kg concrete block on the WTC would not have destroyed it. Damn, Cheney’s got some splaaaaainin’ to do!
Or to put it another way, we are not talking about dropping a 1 kg concrete block onto the WTC; we are talking about dropping a skyscraper onto it. Namely, its own upper half.
Not only have all these questions been asked and answered here before. Alex_Dubinsky has personally asked these exact same questions, and been answered, here, and I’m sure there are others. He’s just trying to stir shit up.
I can appreciate that some people might be exasperated by this issue by now. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt too. I say that because there seem to be a lot of straw-man arguments against my position showing up. Your approach seems in large measure to be to mock people who disagree with you. Characterizing anything other than a one-sided discussion/decree as ‘yeah but but but’ doesn’t really strike me as the spirit ‘Great Debates’ but… I can believe you’ve been through this before.
I’ll check out your links. The first one uses audio to make the claim that one tower fell in 15 seconds, which isn’t convincing. But there is more material, thanks, I’ll check it out after work. Don’t stress out, I’m really not a nutcase. Honest!
After going through the exact same, already debunked, scientifically incoherent, tin foil hat theories a few dozen times, it’s easy to get jaded. Please don’t take it the wrong way if you happen to be the exception to the pattern, there have been a few rare individuals who seem interested in learning. But you are going to have to accept the fact that unless you present something new and novel, we’ve heard everything you’re going to say and have thoroughly dismissed it as nonsense. This is simply a matter of record; all the commonly espoused conspiracy theories about 9/11 are intellectual, scientific, and social garbage.
Now, Now. this is 2009. We all know that Bush was an ineffectual puppet. Dick Cheney was the evil genius. You substitute his name in to your paragraph and it all makes sense…and you didn’t even see him do it. 
That there used to be a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House supports the assertion that a motivation for the war was Christian crusading? I can see why you were so easily duped into believing in 9-11 conspiracies.