""yes, if you pour fuel down a shaft it'll flow down. if you explode a tank of fuel next to a shaft, the fuel will burn up. that makes perfect sense. in your universe, combustible fuel can withstand explosions.""

Ummm, dude...

I offered up a simple test you could perform to demonstrate that fuel only burns when atomized (in fact I offered up two. I first learned this in the fifth grade, when firemen came to our school and taught this fact to us.

The physical world does not operate on what you believe, it operates on its own set of rules, and in the physical world, fuel does not burn or "explode" unless atomized.

If you've ever watched a puddle of fuel burning, you will notice that the puddle doesn't go "poof" and disappear in a flash, the surface burns and it takes some time for the fuel to burn off. That is because the fire is consuming the fuel that has turned to vapor at a rate that the fuel is turning to vapor. The fuel in the puddle remains unburned and will flow the way any liquid will flow.

Imagine fuel falling down elevator shafts and then collecting in elevators themselves, and then a bit of something on fire falling onto this... kaboom! You have internal explosions...

You have provided a very good overview of what I think would/should be the position of every "truther" AND freedom lover--an open-minded attitude willing to accept evidence wherever it may lead, tempered by the realization that we all will never be "on the same page" at the same time. And even though the order of importance of our priorities will differ, we still share the same basic ideas of what is important, what needs to be done as far as the "freedom movement/agenda" is concerned.

The Paper

Update:

Structure Magazine, a well respected magazine for structural engineers, has come out with a probable collapse hypothesis. "Single Point of Failure: How the Loss of One Column May Have Led to the Collapse of WTC 7" points out that the failure of column 79 in the lower levels will create the very effect we see in videos.

http://www.structuremag.org/Archives/2007-11/SF-WTC7-Gilsanz-Nov07.pdf

Yet another peer reviewed paper from a respected Journal finds the towers were doomed to collapse.

9/11 demolition theory challenged

An analysis of the World Trade Center collapse has challenged a conspiracy theory surrounding the 9/11 attacks.
The study by a Cambridge University, UK, engineer demonstrates that once the collapse of the twin towers began, it was destined to be rapid and total.

One of many conspiracy theories proposes that the buildings came down in a manner consistent with a "controlled demolition".

The new data shows this is not needed to explain the way the towers fell.

Resistance to collapse

Dr Keith Seffen set out to test mathematically whether this chain reaction really could explain what happened in Lower Manhattan six years ago. The findings are published in the Journal of Engineering Mechanics.

Previous studies have tended to focus on the initial stages of collapse, showing that there was an initial, localized failure around the aircraft impact zones, and that this probably led to the progressive collapse of both structures.

In other words, the damaged parts of the tower were bound to fall down, but it was not clear why the undamaged building should have offered little resistance to these falling parts.

"The initiation part has been quantified by many people; but no one had put numbers on the progressive collapse," Dr Seffen told the BBC News website.

Dr Seffen was able to calculate the "residual capacity" of the undamaged building: that is, simply speaking, the ability of the undamaged structure to resist or comply with collapse.

His calculations suggest the residual capacity of the north and south towers was limited, and that once the collapse was set in motion, it would take only nine seconds for the building to go down.

This is just a little longer than a free-falling coin, dropped from the top of either tower, would take to reach the ground.

He added that his calculations showed this was a "very ordinary thing to happen" and that no other intervention, such as explosive charges laid inside the building, was needed to explain the behavior of the buildings.

The controlled detonation idea, espoused on several internet websites, asserts that the manner of collapse is consistent with synchronized rows of explosives going off inside the World Trade Center.

This would have generated a demolition wave that explained the speed, uniformity and similarity between the collapses of both towers.

Conspiracy theorists assert that these explosive "squibs" can actually be seen going off in photos and video footage of the collapse. These appear as ejections of gas and debris from the sides of the building, well below the descending rubble.

Other observers say this could be explained by debris falling down lift shafts and impacting on lower floors during the collapse.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6987965.stm

Dr. Keith A. Seffen

http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/~kas14/

Below is the list of people who have staked their reputations on the only paper which passed the scrutiny of peer review regarding the WTC tragedy...

For those who may think that no one has written a peer reviewed paper on the collapse of the towers here it is...

"Walter P. Murphy Professor of

Civil Engineering and Materials Science

Northwestern University

The towers of the World Trade Center were designed to withstand as a whole the horizontal impact of a large commercial aircraft. So why did a total collapse occur? The reason is the dynamic consequence of the prolonged heating of the steel columns to very high temperature. The heating caused creep buckling of the columns of the framed tube along the perimeter of the structure, which transmits the vertical load to the ground. The likely scenario of failure may be explained as follows...

http://www-math.mit.edu/~bazant/WTC/WTC-asce.pdf

The version linked above, to appear in the Journal of Engineering Mechanics (ASCE), was revised and extended (with Yong Zhou on September 22 and additional appendices on September 28) since the original text of September 13, which was immediately posted at various civil engineering web sites, e.g. University of Illinios. It also has been or soon will be published in a number of other journals, including Archives of Applied Mechanics, Studi i Ricerche, and SIAM News:

Z. P. Bazant and Y. Zhou, "Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse?", Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics News, vol. 34, No. 8 (October, 2001).

That means it's not just a document, book, web site or calculation on a forum. It's had to pass critical review by other engineering Professors.

I know there are CT sites which attack this paper but not one person has yet to disprove its hypothesis professionally. There are still people attacking the theory of evolution. Anyone can attack, not many can produce a paper to back it up. Just as there is no "theory of intelligent design" except on Christian web sites, there are no alternatives to this paper other than in CT sites and books."

http://www-math.mit.edu/~bazant/WTC/

The paper... http://www-math.mit.edu/~bazant/WTC/WTC-asce.pdf

http://www.pubs.asce.org/journals/edem.html

FACT: Following up on a May 2002 preliminary report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a major study will be released in spring 2005 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST shared its initial findings with PM and made its lead researcher available to our team of reporters.

The NIST investigation revealed that plane debris sliced through the utility shafts at the North Tower's core, creating a conduit for burning jet fuel — and fiery destruction throughout the building. "It's very hard to document where the fuel went," says Forman Williams, a NIST adviser and a combustion expert, "but if it's atomized and combustible and gets to an ignition source, it'll go off."

Burning fuel traveling down the elevator shafts would have disrupted the elevator systems and caused extensive damage to the lobbies. NIST heard first-person testimony that "some elevators slammed right down" to the ground floor. "The doors cracked open on the lobby floor and flames came out and people died," says James Quintiere, an engineering professor at the University of Maryland and a NIST adviser. A similar observation was made in the French documentary "9/11," by Jules and Gedeon Naudet. As Jules Naudet entered the North Tower lobby, minutes after the first aircraft struck, he saw victims on fire, a scene he found too horrific to film.

first off you pulled this unburnt fuel down the elevator shaft idea of out you know where, then you've decided to proclaim that that is what is most likely to have happened. i will never buy this theory as saw the explosion on video. i cannot believe that anything there was not on fire instantly. furthermore, i saw clips of several people (including firefighters) describing hearing bombs go off at different floors and at different times. as i've said before, i like evidence because it points to truth and i really like truth. so, no sale on the unburnt fuel in the elevator shaft.

Actually, that's the official explanation for people hearing "explosions" down below the crash floors.

The fuel theory was tested and explained by some "fuel theory testing people"... so there ya go.

The way the building was designed, internal "explosions" wouldn't have brought the structure down, so internal explosions don't even help the truther theory at all. A building dripping fuel down service shafts does make perfect sense, though.

The engineering on that treehouse was pretty unique. It eventually supported itself on three spikes driven into the trees. The engineer we built it for had to shore up his beams, as they were over-spanned and were ripe for snapping under any dynamic load...

ADMIN NOTE: This comment has been removed after discovering this new "user" is one of several fake accounts created by the same person.

http://www.maniacworld.com/9-11-conspiracy-theories-debunked.html

This video is very clear and concise as to what initiated the collapse of both buildings...

"ha! i figure, explosion, jet fuel, bursting tank, fuel is burnt. if it makes you feel better to call that an assumption then so be it. you figure, explosion, jet fuel spills. "

Well, years of starting burn piles with gas taught me a thing or two about its properties...

Plus automotive knowledge (how combustion works in an engine) plus construction knowledge (I like to argue with the engineers and make them earn their dough, the lazy bastards...)

Plus I dug physics when I was a kid...

(Did you finish with lesson one yet?) An object at rest...

"i don't think you repeated it enough times yet for me to accept it as the truth.
how do you know of this sequence of events? where is there a record of these events other than in your imagination?"

What is MORE likely to be true. Some unburnt fuel fell down a shaft and exploded at the bottom, or an incendiary bomb (meaning one that contained lots of fuel and not much force) was placed in the basement of only one of the two towers that collapsed, set to explode at the exact moment that a plane hit the building, in order to weaken the foundation so that the building could break apart from the top down....???

Did you check out our treehouse we built?

"the top clearly tips over and then decides to fall onto the building underneath it. like i said before. no imagination necessary. it's all on video"

The top starts to tip because the mass of the building and its speed were not sufficient to overcome the resistance of the intact building below it. As the speed of the mass increased, you get an exponential increase in the downward force, overcoming the resistance of the building. You also get an increase in the forces of inertia, which are HUGE in the case of something with this much mass.

Also, as the building tips, you can plainly see the structure of the building distorting and coming apart underneath the collapsing part, reducing the resistance of the building to the force of gravity and inertia now multiplying above.

The result is what you see.

A building folowing basic laws of physiccs and behaving exactly as expected.

The explosion you see on that video was indeed from jet fuel, but you make the assumption that ALL of it was atomized and exploded, which was far from likely.

That is why you need to do the experiment I suggested to you.

Mind your eyebrows!

when will you stop with this? we're not talking about a container filled to the brim with fuel and no room for air. we're talking about tanks that exploded. i hope you can admit there is a difference.

Tanks do not explode. Fuel that has atomized inside a tank CAN explode sending the remaining fuel flying outward (depending on the weakest point-- the point of rupture of a tank.)

Some of this fuel will then be atomized and explode in the air, creating a fireball. Some of this fuel will remain a liquid, AND WILL NOT EXPLODE.

It will act just like liquid acts, in this case, following INERTIA (one of Newton's Laws) onward at the speed it ws traveling, until it strikes surfaces that stop it (you can see this occur with a shower massage pointed at a wall).

Then the fluid will collect there unless there is a hole to flow into (a drain in the shower as an example.

If the drain is 80 stories long ( a maintenance shaft), the fuel will flow like liquid does down this shaft until it bottoms out.

Much of the fuel will indeed atomize as it flows downward, mixing with air as it falls...

"then spilt out of the tanks after the explosion,"

I have to marvel at your ignorance.

The fuel that atomized exploded. The fuel that remained liquid and flowed, did not. Once it atomized, it was capable of exploding...

"< so the fuel travelled in the tanks, then spilt out of the tanks after the explosion, then stopped travelling and fell into the elevator shaft, where it remained unburnt, then after it arrived at ground floor, the fumes it created caused an explosion which people mistook for a bomb. got ya. it's so simple."

Yep. And I imagine some debris that was awash in fuel fell too, as little ignitors, causing explosions within the shaft as it fell, possibly igniting what pooled at the bottom of the shaft.

Yep.

You are starting to get it now.

Another way to see this is to fill a glass TO THE BRIM with gasoline.

Leave no room at the surface for the gas to mix with air in the form of a vapor.

Drop a lit cigarette into this gas. It will simply get extinguished. It will not explode.

(Be careful though. Gas vapors will prolly spill over the sides of the glass and lay low on the table or floor where you put the glass. THIS WILL EXPLODE! So you aren't allowed to miss the glass with the lit cigarette.)

http://aeleope.blogspot.com/2006/06/when-is-treehouse-home.html

Check out THIS bit of engineering we did two winters ago...

"< that's the core of the problem, you imagine, i go by what i see.
i see massive explosions on the video footage."

You are like the ID guy that says it appears we were designed, therefore we were.

Gas tanks do not explode. Gas needs to be atomized to explode (flash burn).

When you "flood" a car, it means the gas is in too solid of a state to explode and the car won't run. A carburetor is used to turn the gas into a vapor, which will explode.

If you did my experiment I suggested, your eyes would see this first hand.

""< right. and the structure travelling downwards will be compelled to travel in the path where it encounters the least resistance. the path of least resistance is all around the building, where there is absolutely nothing to stop it from falling. all it has to do is tip and slide just a bit, but it refused to do that for about 100 stories. it decided to defy laws of physics, is what you would have us believe.""

Ummm, dude, I am starting to take up a collection to send you to physics camp. I mean it...

Gravity acts on mass (that be the weight of the building) pulling it to the ceneter of the earth.

Right?

That means straight down. At a rate of 32ftpersecond squared. (That means it accelerates as it falls until it reaches terminal velocity, which is when air resistance equalizes the acceleration.)

So, mass is pulled straight downward. Once it begins to move, it picks up a second force, inertia. That means that the desire for the mass to move straight downward gets an exponential boost by the force of inertia.

Got it so far?

IF these two combined forces is greater than the resistance it encounters from the building, the path of least resistance is straight downward.

This was the case here, as is plainly evident by watching what happened.

"a moving body will take the path of least resistance. always. without exception."

Ummm, awesome, I hate to tell you this, but you are dead wrong here. Think of a car that goes off the freeway and collides into a cement wall. The "least resistance" path would have been, of course, to go around the wall. But the car doesn't find this path, it crashes with a thud. Why?

The reason the car hit the wall and destroyed the car (and maybe the wall) is because of the laws of motion. This is Newtonian physics, something you learn in the eighth grade.

Gravity is the initial cause or force that set the building in motion straight downward. Gravity, PLUS the law of basic inertia compells the structure to travel downward.

http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/Class/newtlaws/u2l1b.html

Appropriate that it is "lesson 1"

You obviously need to go to the beginning...

"why don't demolition experts don't set fire to a building and blow two floors making the top part of the building fall down on the bottom part. thereby collapsing the floors below it, which would accumulate mass and drive the whole building into the ground. surely blowing up two floors of a 20+ floor building and setting fire to it is less labour intensive then blowing up every support column at multiple places. furthermore, this new technique is 100% effective as we've already witnessed."

Ummm, first of all, most building set to be demolished have been emptied of all their contents, leaving very little in the way of combustibles.

Secondly, fire is unpredictable and the smoke is toxic.

Thirdly, The results of burnt objects in a modern building is highly toxic. They are also harder to clean up, as the gooey substances resulting from things like rubber melting sticks everything together in a gooey, icky mess.

Fourthly, strategic drilling into strategic support beams and exploding them is mathematically easier and more predictable than hoping a building falls a certain way.

Fifthly, you would have to predestroy the supports and then go in and set fire to the building-- not a very safe thing to do, even for someone as awesomo as you...

I could keep going, but this should get you started in thinking normal thoughts...

Fourthly,

"you have to realize that you keep suggesting experiments that have nothing to do with what you're trying to prove. an exploding tank of gas will eject its contents into all possible directions which will in turn ignite. a gas tank will not explode and then spill out fuel. you must be kidding me or yourself about this gasoline in the elevator shaft. this is beyond ridiculous."

Again, I am rolling my eyes.

The fuel tanks did not "explode", as in "from a central point outward". Try to use your mind here and imagine what happened, awesomo...

The plane struck the building, ripping the wings backwards. Fuel in the wings, being a liquid, was traveling FORWARD at the rate of speed as the plane.

What physical obstruction do you imagine stopped the liquid from proceeding foward?The walls were destroyed by the nose of the plane which preceded the fuel, making a perfect avenue for the fuel.

This was the "spilling" effect I was trying to show you. The fuel that atomized exploded, and the fuel that did not flowed forward and splashed and careened and fell down service shafts that ran the length of the building.

Now go do the experiment and observe for yourself...