Posted on 11/18/2005 11:40:33 AM PST by Iconoclast2
The physics of 9/11 — including how fast and symmetrically one of the World Trade Center buildings fell — prove that official explanations of the collapses are wrong, says a Brigham Young University physics professor.
In fact, it's likely that there were "pre-positioned explosives" in all three buildings at ground zero, says Steven E. Jones.
In a paper posted online Tuesday and accepted for peer-reviewed publication next year, Jones adds his voice to those of previous skeptics, including the authors of the Web site www.wtc7.net, whose research Jones quotes. Jones' article can be found at www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html.
Jones, who conducts research in fusion and solar energy at BYU, is calling for an independent, international scientific investigation "guided not by politicized notions and constraints but rather by observations and calculations.
"It is quite plausible that explosives were pre-planted in all three buildings and set off after the two plane crashes — which were actually a diversion tactic," he writes. "Muslims are (probably) not to blame for bringing down the WTC buildings after all," Jones writes.
As for speculation about who might have planted the explosives, Jones said, "I don't usually go there. There's no point in doing that until we do the scientific investigation."
Previous investigations, including those of FEMA, the 9/11 Commission and NIST (the National Institutes of Standards and Technology), ignore the physics and chemistry of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, to the Twin Towers and the 47-story building known as WTC 7, he says. The official explanation — that fires caused structural damage that caused the buildings to collapse — can't be backed up by either testing or history, he says.
Jones acknowledges that there have been "junk science" conspiracy theories about what happened on 9/11, but "the explosive demolition hypothesis better satisfies tests of repeatability and parsimony and therefore is not 'junk science.' "
In a 9,000-word article that Jones says will be published in the book "The Hidden History of 9/11," by Elsevier, Jones offers these arguments:
• The three buildings collapsed nearly symmetrically, falling down into their footprints, a phenomenon associated with "controlled demolition" — and even then it's very difficult, he says. "Why would terrorists undertake straight-down collapses of WTC-7 and the Towers when 'toppling over' falls would require much less work and would do much more damage in downtown Manhattan?" Jones asks. "And where would they obtain the necessary skills and access to the buildings for a symmetrical implosion anyway? The 'symmetry data' emphasized here, along with other data, provide strong evidence for an 'inside' job."
• No steel-frame building, before or after the WTC buildings, has ever collapsed due to fire. But explosives can effectively sever steel columns, he says.
• WTC 7, which was not hit by hijacked planes, collapsed in 6.6 seconds, just .6 of a second longer than it would take an object dropped from the roof to hit the ground. "Where is the delay that must be expected due to conservation of momentum, one of the foundational laws of physics?" he asks. "That is, as upper-falling floors strike lower floors — and intact steel support columns — the fall must be significantly impeded by the impacted mass. . . . How do the upper floors fall so quickly, then, and still conserve momentum in the collapsing buildings?" The paradox, he says, "is easily resolved by the explosive demolition hypothesis, whereby explosives quickly removed lower-floor material, including steel support columns, and allow near free-fall-speed collapses." These observations were not analyzed by FEMA, NIST nor the 9/11 Commission, he says.
• With non-explosive-caused collapse there would typically be a piling up of shattering concrete. But most of the material in the towers was converted to flour-like powder while the buildings were falling, he says. "How can we understand this strange behavior, without explosives? Remarkable, amazing — and demanding scrutiny since the U.S. government-funded reports failed to analyze this phenomenon."
• Horizontal puffs of smoke, known as squibs, were observed proceeding up the side the building, a phenomenon common when pre-positioned explosives are used to demolish buildings, he says.
• Steel supports were "partly evaporated," but it would require temperatures near 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit to evaporate steel — and neither office materials nor diesel fuel can generate temperatures that hot. Fires caused by jet fuel from the hijacked planes lasted at most a few minutes, and office material fires would burn out within about 20 minutes in any given location, he says.
• Molten metal found in the debris of the World Trade Center may have been the result of a high-temperature reaction of a commonly used explosive such as thermite, he says. Buildings not felled by explosives "have insufficient directed energy to result in melting of large quantities of metal," Jones says.
• Multiple loud explosions in rapid sequence were reported by numerous observers in and near the towers, and these explosions occurred far below the region where the planes struck, he says.
Jones says he became interested in the physics of the WTC collapse after attending a talk last spring given by a woman who had had a near-death experience. The woman mentioned in passing that "if you think the World Trade Center buildings came down just due to fire, you have a lot of surprises ahead of you," Jones remembers, at which point "everyone around me started applauding."
Following several months of study, he presented his findings at a talk at BYU in September.
Jones says he would like the government to release 6,899 photographs and 6,977 segments of video footage for "independent scrutiny." He would also like to analyze a small sample of the molten metal found at Ground Zero.
I agree. The NIST report makes the point that they were 90% empty space, and could easily collapse on themselves. The suspicious points to me include WTC7, the recent purchase by Silverstein, Silverstein's "pull it" remark, molten metal in the bases, and the fact that when they went to remove the gold in the basement, someone had already been there trying to break in!
How could somebody possibly have been digging around in the gold storage area without being noticed?
Ah! Here come the "experts"
The amount of gravitational energy unleashed when the Twin Towers fell was on the order of a small nuke. I forget what power-of-ten joules I calculated, but it was pretty darned huge. All that energy all had to get converted to some other form, and an awful lot of it got turned into heat.
It takes an awful lot of energy to pulverize that much concrete and other materials into a pyroclastic cloud. I doubt much kinetic energy turned into heat.
Where do you think it went?
Pulverizing the concrete into dust. If you compare the wreckage of WTC with other buildings hit by planes, the debris is much, much finer.
I don't think the dust has a higher energy state than the unpulverized concrete. Imparting that mechanical energy may have the effect that the concrete gets pulverized, but I don't think pulverizing in and of itself absorbs energy except insofar as it turns the energy into heat.
The point is that it takes energy to pulverize the concrete. Every joule of kinetic energy that goes into making powder is a joule that cannot be converted into heat.
Does pulverizing concrete result in any chemical or state change for its constituents? I thought it just resulted in physical rearrangement, much like sanding down a block of wood. And sanding, sawing, drilling, etc. all produce lots of heat.
I don't think there's any state change. The change is at the physical level. Physical kinetic energy is absorbed in the process of pulverization. Presumably some heat was produced in the reaction as well. I have not seen any competent calculation that would compare the amount of heat produced to the amount of energy absorbed in pulverization. It is a very interesting question.
In the absense of any chemical or state change, the calculation is very simple: any energy that goes in that does not come out (as sound, vibrations, or whatever) is converted into heat.
If I break a rock with a hammer, the hammer stops, but the rock does not get hot. I don't think all the hammer's energy can be found in the momentum of the resulting pieces.
It takes a lot of mechanical energy to produce a small amount of heat, and vice versa. Dropping a ten-pound hammer three feet would, if all of that energy were converted into heat, represent enough heat to increase the temperature of one gram of water by about 10°C. A quick google search suggests that stone has a thermal mass about a fifth that of water. Distributing 100% of the impact energy through 50 grams of stone (concentrating the energy in about 1/10lb) would heat it by about 1°C. I would hardly expect the stone to "get hot" from one such impact. There's just not enough energy there. By contrast, the collapse of the world trade centers represented a release of energy comparable to a small atomic bomb. Even if only a small portion of the energy got converted to heat within the building materials (a lot would get converted into heat in the ground or in the air) that would still represent a really incredibly huge amount of heat. Depending upon how the energy got concentrated, it should not be surprising if parts of the building would get very hot from mechanically-generated heat alone.
One might expect in the wake of the event that someone might have done a calculation of the amount of heat released, but if so, I have never seen it. I personally doubt that the collapse of a building would release sufficient heat to melt metal, but the WTC collapse is beyond the range of any mechanical energy releases I have had occasion to observe or could confidently opine upon.
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