Debunked: WTC: Multi-ton steel sections ejected laterally.

Blasts of dust filled air from each floor? As the collapse progressed down the higher floor blast would occur first and extend further than the one below and so on. The collapse of an "intact" floor had to force the air below it and the floor below out of the way.... and with it the contents on the floor below. The only place for that air to escape was to blast through the windows... which were weaker than the spandrel steel. And of course we see the panel assembles intact on the debris pile and the glass was easily broken into shards and even seen reflecting light as it fell in some cases.
 
I am pleased that it at least occurred to you as a possibility.


  • Do you agree that in my looping gif the red "things" rotate as one rigid object? (Angles and parallel lines between parts are maintained as the system rotates and moves.)
Yes, nice gifs, showing most likely the tops of large sheets of connected wall panels - we see the top-most, staggered row of panels. I also agree with the general gist of you "simple visualization of my gash maker hypothesis" - except that these particular "red things" are, IMO, not the "gash makers". They seem to fall too far to the east.

The "bumps" that qed inquired about are also likely the staggered tops of a wall section - they are too stable and move too much in unison away from WTC1 to be the puffs of dust from compressing floors, as Jeffrey suggests.
 
@Zett eL If I have understood you correctly, in the following image, you see the magenta/purple shape as one object, a core column, and the red shape as a façade columns (correct me if I have misunderstood you). Let us call this hypothesis A. Two independent objects.

I have an alternative hypothesis B. I feel that there is only one object, looking something like the red in the following diagram. This object is a huge connected piece of the façade.


  1. Have I described your view correctly?
  2. Do you think my hypothesis B is possibly true?

The red lines drawn in which are supposed to represent the orientation core column remind me of a comment I just made on a Sandy Hook Hoax video where I said it looks like someone watching a film with no sound and describing the actions of those on screen to suit what they want to see. Frankly, you can draw the lines in whatever way you want there behind the dust cloud. You could draw in Godzilla behind the dust cloud. Yes, I know that is ridiculous but my point is whatever you imagine to have back there can be there.
 
Let´s forget the facade section for a second.
Let´s even forget my gash maker for a second.
I don´t know if you paid any attention to the following gif yet - please do:



So again: I splitted the screen into three areas.
The left area would be the place to look for our facade section and for my gash maker - but forget about that area for now.
Please focus on the center area and the area on the right.
Do you see what I would call "bundles of core columns" there?
Do you see what I mean when I say "there are longish objects that look much more like core columns than wall sections"?
Maybe start with the area on the right, I think they´re the most obvious ones.
I can't really say anything about the left or middle, I do think the left is a large piece of façade but I could only really tell what you guys were talking about when it was clearly pointed out :)

The one on the right you're talking about though, if I've got the right "object", I'm pretty sure that can't be from the centre of the building. Using the full frame of the video with the corner as a point of reference, when the top of the object becomes visible it looks to be far too close to the edge (the first is ~0:14 in the video, I did a crap job of cropping it).

WTC1-1.jpg

It's even more apparent when it starts to topple, the point it pivots from (roughly in the red circle).WTC1-2.jpg

Ray Von
 
The red lines drawn in which are supposed to represent the orientation core column
Not core, façade.
The red lines drawn in which are supposed to represent the orientation core column remind me of a comment I just made on a Sandy Hook Hoax video where I said it looks like someone watching a film with no sound and describing the actions of those on screen to suit what they want to see. Frankly, you can draw the lines in whatever way you want there behind the dust cloud. You could draw in Godzilla behind the dust cloud. Yes, I know that is ridiculous but my point is whatever you imagine to have back there can be there.
I was merely identifying a second hypothesis based on the rotational integrity of the object in the looping gif. Once you see how big it is and that it is rigid, there a pretty few options for what is could be.

[... Part of the object is clearly identified as a piece of the façade. Rigidity suggests one object. Therefore all consists of façade. ...]
 
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What are these bumps in relation to the above picture?


frame-144.gif

The top "bump" is the flying object I pointed out several times. I don´t know what it is, but it´s neither part of a core column nor part of a wall section. It´s not connected to the other bumps.

The second "bump" is the top of my gash making core column.

I don´t know what the third one is. Maybe something like a part of a floor still attached to the core column, maybe something that´s pushed by the core column, maybe something just flying in front of it. I don´t think that this is part of the wall section we identified.

The bottom bump could be part of our wall section.


Could you please draw in roughly the size and shape of your estimated wall section:

 
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I can't really say anything about the left or middle, I do think the left is a large piece of façade but I could only really tell what you guys were talking about when it was clearly pointed out :)

The one on the right you're talking about though, if I've got the right "object", I'm pretty sure that can't be from the centre of the building. Using the full frame of the video with the corner as a point of reference, when the top of the object becomes visible it looks to be far too close to the edge (the first is ~0:14 in the video, I did a crap job of cropping it).

WTC1-1.jpg

It's even more apparent when it starts to topple, the point it pivots from (roughly in the red circle).WTC1-2.jpg

Ray Von

Oh come on...
You mistake the moment the object first appears for the moment the toppling began and you mistake the lowest visible point of the object for the pivot. Weak basis to rule out my core columns...
 
Oh come on...
You mistake the moment the object first appears for the moment the toppling began
No, I didn't. As I clearly said, the object becoming visible and the object starting to topple are separate points in time, separated by several frames in the video.

and you mistake the lowest visible point of the object for the pivot.
Again, no I didn't. Why would you need to see the pivot point to get a rough idea of where it was? We see the object toppling as it leans "right" in the video, so all we need to gauge the pivot point is to visualise a line running down the centre of the object. Where the imaginary lines of the object before it topples and as it topples intersect would be the pivot point - the point where it either became detached from whatever it was attached to below, or whatever it was still attached to below went "left". This assumes of course it didn't bend, but we can make a pretty good guess that it didn't and also that it became detached, because it looks like we can see the bottom of it as it falls (smoke, debris, relatively poor video quality, lack of stabilisation etc taken into account).

Weak basis to rule out my core columns...
There's no need to be so defensive, I'm quite ready to be proved wrong, but the point I notice you didn't address was the main one - whether the initial position of the object when the corner of the building is available as a point of reference means (as it appears) that it's close to the extremities of the building, or whether it's position fits with it actually being further back where the core columns would be and it just looks to be near the edge because everything else (floors, façade etc) has already collapsed away from it.

Ray Von
 
Whether it is a core column or a façade, does it matter? It is clearly not being "ejected" laterally, which is how this thread started. You could argue that it is a core column, because it "looks" like the base of whatever is toppling over has the pivot point inside the building perimeter. However, it could be a large façade piece that fell vertically, landed on a fixed point and then toppled from a pivot. There is too much dust and smoke. I would imagine that either would be substantial enough to do serious damage to whatever it hits; such as WTC 7. Neither scenario looks to me like it is being "exploded" outward, which is what the original post in this thread was addressing. If you stack up blocks into a tower and they collapse downward, they go all over the place as they come in contact and collide with each other. A wide spread of debris seems like a logical result of this type of progressive collapse, and would not need any sort of explosives to make it happen.
 
No, I didn't. As I clearly said, the object becoming visible and the object starting to topple are separate points in time, separated by several frames in the video.

Oh, now I´ve got you... You even claim the toppling began several frames after the object emerges from the dust! I totally disagree.


Why would you need to see the pivot point to get a rough idea of where it was?

You ask me?!?
Look at your "pivot point" again in the video. It´s moving away from the center of the building and it´s descending. Because the actual pivot would be much deeper in the dust cloud.
 
Whether it is a core column or a façade, does it matter? It is clearly not being "ejected" laterally, which is how this thread started. You could argue that it is a core column, because it "looks" like the base of whatever is toppling over has the pivot point inside the building perimeter. However, it could be a large façade piece that fell vertically, landed on a fixed point and then toppled from a pivot. There is too much dust and smoke. I would imagine that either would be substantial enough to do serious damage to whatever it hits; such as WTC 7. Neither scenario looks to me like it is being "exploded" outward, which is what the original post in this thread was addressing. If you stack up blocks into a tower and they collapse downward, they go all over the place as they come in contact and collide with each other. A wide spread of debris seems like a logical result of this type of progressive collapse, and would not need any sort of explosives to make it happen.

In my opinion, a detailed collapse analysis is long overdue. Nobody did it. No FEMA, no NIST, no AEtruth.
 
In my opinion, a detailed collapse analysis is long overdue. Nobody did it. No FEMA, no NIST, no AEtruth.
It is on video, and what would be the purpose? The goal? Why? The structure of the WTC towers is known, the strength of each part known. What would a study of a collapse be good for?

There is more than enough energy in the WTC tower as it collapses to eject what is seen; the energy released due to failure, and collapse is equal to more than 100 2000 pound bombs, or more than 50 of McVeigh's bombs. This E=mgh releases is enough to eject all the material seen.

After the initial collapse of the upper section, the collapse can't stop when there is more than 12 floors of mass falling. If a building falls, I would try to get 2.5 further away than the building is tall... or study 911 and see how far away things that can kill you can travel in a gravity collapse.

The OP was about ejecting stuff, and the belief there is not enough energy/force to do it just with E=mgh turning to KE. That is not true, and if a study is needed to help someone understand the collapse dynamics, then yes, study the collapse, but the collapse was gravity driven, we have video and photos, and ...

We study for safety car crashes, we use instrumentation to see the force/energy transferred to the occupants, and try to design a car to absorb the crash energy/force. Now cars fall apart and we walk away if the speed is low enough. Would a study of the collapse be to make survivable capsules on floor 110, or floor 55 of 110, so we live?

What is the purpose of studying something already known; what is the question needed to be answered. The chief structural engineer of the WTC towers says they collapsed as he would expect, and he designed the structure, not the looks. Anyway, the energy available during the gravity collapse is more than enough to do all the ejections seen on 911. I guess you could take all the debris and add up the energy for it to land where it did, or make a model. There are differential equations for the "collapse" dynamics in an avalanche, that could be a start for looking at the chaotic gravity collapse of the WTC tower. I found some avalanche stuff with google besides going to a college library.
Would some differential equations be enough of a study for the collapse analysis, or would that be too engineering geeky... would it be like looking at E=mc2​, and not seeing an atomic blast - I guess reading the tech stuff, and seeing how they proved the mass energy stuff would help too. But gravity collapse, we have all experienced gravity, knowingly and not knowingly; drop a bag of parts, and they end up in places so far away, and can we model that, sure, but why. Shoot the garage floor with your 22 and then wonder why you have concrete in your leg when you shot away from yourself... could study that, but why...
Neat stuff to think about, maybe a great academic thing to learn differential equations and then try to do a full up demo, on some small scale.

But a great question; are you satisfied the ejections see on 911 were due to the gravity collapse of the WTC towers?
 
Whether it is a core column or a façade, does it matter? It is clearly not being "ejected" laterally, which is how this thread started. You could argue that it is a core column, ... it could be a large façade piece ... Neither scenario looks to me like it is being "exploded" outward, which is what the original post in this thread was addressing. ... would not need any sort of explosives to make it happen.
Not only would it not need explosives - worse yet, explosives can't do it without totally obvious supersonic shockwaves from very substantial high explosives charges. I am currently writing up a paper that investigates how much explosives it would take to hurl a wall panel at rest from the nearest WTC wall to the adjacent walls of peripheral buildings (130 Liberty St, WTC 7, WFC3) - or 600 ft, as claimed by AE911T. I have developed math formulas to compute (1) the lateral velocity needed to cross a distance d from a height of h, and then (2) the mass ratio steel:explosives needed to attain that velocity, given the Specific energy of the explosive material. The latter is varied through a range from 1.5 MJ/kg (nano-thermite; or conventional explosives with 30-50% efficieny) to 6.0 MJ/kg (the most energetic high explosives at almost 100% efficiency).
The derivation uses the laws of Conversation of Momentum and of Energy.

The result is that you'd need at leat 3 kg of explosives per ton of steel (e.g. for the Bankers Trust building, only 80 m away, requiring a lateral velocity of just 22.5 mph), but easily exceeding 12 kg/ton (600 ft distance from WTC1 fire zone to the ground). This would result in average gas velocities of 1720 to 3000 m/s - many times the speed of sound in air, i.e. shockwaves. For wall panels weighing several tons, we'd soon approach realistic charge sizes of 50 to 100 kg, perhaps more - and they claim such huge blasts occurred multiple times. That's simply unreal.
 
Not only would it not need explosives - worse yet, explosives can't do it without totally obvious supersonic shockwaves from very substantial high explosives charges. I am currently writing up a paper that investigates how much explosives it would take to hurl a wall panel at rest from the nearest WTC wall to the adjacent walls of peripheral buildings (130 Liberty St, WTC 7, WFC3) - or 600 ft, as claimed by AE911T.......

A completely unsubstantiated AE911T claim...

From the aerial photos, zoning maps and so on the furthest from the towers steel found... was something like 441' west of the west facade of 1wtc (the Winter Garden) at 3WFC). 7wtc was about 340 feet from the north face of 1wtc.

The motion of the steel "peeling off" the west face can be traced and I believe it is nothing more than the motion of a tall falling assembly of multiple panels with perhaps a fairly small impulse from over pressure of air at the lower part of the facade panel assembly which was too tall and too unstable to stand with the floor plates to brace it.
 
Yeah, could fit.

Ok, and the highest point of this twisted part of a wall would as least be as broad as one single facade panel that´s aligned like this, right?:



Panels were not like that... they were like this:
 

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What´s the basis for this claim?

...
WTC towers... , showing a concrete building is not the WTC tower.
For the WTC 12 floors weigh more than a lower floor can hold; if the fire causes the upper 12 floors to fall on the lower floors, the first floor hit fails instantly, then the next - this causes the shell to become free to be damaged by the accumulated mass and deprives the core of lateral stability. Concrete and steel building falling over is not a model for the WTC towers, not close, not the same. WTC tower floors hold so much, the floors in the WTC only held up themselves, not other floors; the core and shell held up all the floors. Floors, shell, core formed a system.

I guess after falling 1000 to 1300 feet the top of the WTC towers (okay, some bs) fell apart due to a lot of KE.

Ironically you showed 12 floors standing on the ruble they destroyed below, thus, ,, what was the video for? Gee, I was right even for a concrete building in the case you found on youtube; you cherry picked a case which shows 12 floors crushing the part below; cool. The lower part did not stop the collapse, but did make a nice "soft" ruble pile for the top to stand; must be like a salt shaker standing on salt...
It looks like they failed to calculate how much they had to weaken the top section, or forgot to weaken it, or the small charges failed to go off... have to look up the report, and see who was hired to risk going in the building to finish the job.
 

have to look up the report, and see who was hired to risk going in the building to finish the job.
Content from External Source
That video reminds me of the time my husband decided to take down a separate two car garage on our property single handedly. He took it down to the studs, and cut the studs carefully then took a sledgehammer and knocked out the last one holding it up..... and the whole thing tilted over and ..... stopped cause he'd left a tall ladder standing inside. And the whole structure balanced on the ladder and stood there. All the neighbors watching got a good laugh at theat.
 
A completely unsubstantiated AE911T claim...

From the aerial photos, zoning maps and so on the furthest from the towers steel found... was something like 441' west of the west facade of 1wtc (the Winter Garden) at 3WFC). 7wtc was about 340 feet from the north face of 1wtc.
...
Hehe yes, all true. I haven't made up my mind about how to deal with these exaggerated distances. On one hand, the bolder the claim, the more it fails. Claiming 600 ft instead of a maximum of 441 feet increased the minimum charge size by 36%. On the other hand, the minimum charge size for 441 feet is already ridiculous, and then you get to show that truthers dishonestly exaggerate their claims as an added bonus.

The history of this claim goes back at least to 2004, when Don Paul and Jim Hoffman wrote a book (?) "Waking Up from Our Nightmare: The 9/11/01 Crimes in New York City", from which DR Griffin cited the following in 2005:
[h]eavy pieces of steel were ejected in all directions for distances up to 500 feet, while aluminum cladding was blown up to 700 feet away from the towers
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So that was 500 feet then. Many truthers reference Griffin.
In 2007, AE911Truth's homepage still claimed 500 feet, referencing Jim Hoffman's 911research.wtc7.net:
Lateral ejection of thousands of individual 20 - 50 ton steel beams up to 500 feet
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In August 2008, they had reduced the weight, but kept the distance:
Lateral ejection of thousands of individual 4 - 20 ton steel beams up to 500 feet
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This stayed until Nov 20, 2008, still referencing Hoffman.
On Dec 01, 2008 they had raised to 600 ft (still "4 - 20 ton steel beams"), and that number refered to a graphic by Josef Princiotta:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110422044125/http://www.csi911.info/Exhibit_K.jpg
This graphic claims: "182.8m 600ft to the Winter Gardens Roof Damage".

Princiotta's presentation from way back then is still online: http://www.csi911.info/CSI911.html
Next to Point #6, it has this graphic that makes it clear he is measuring the 600 ft from the North Tower to the Winter Garden:


Source: http://www.csi911.info/exit_speed_54MPH.jpg


You have to love this bold claim:
100 Tons of steel ejected in an instant at speeds near 55 MPH
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By my formula, and assuming a very efficient explosive at 4.5 MJ/kg, to propel 100 tons of steel as a unit to 54 mph would require an absolute minimum of 1775 pounds of high explosives going of at precisely the same moment. And that was supposed to leave most windows at the WFC intact??? :D:D:D

EDITED TO ADD: By the end of December 2008, the claim had evolved to this version:
Multi-ton steel sections ejected laterally 600 ft at 60 mph
Content from External Source
And now AE referenced a David Chandler video that was uploaded already on Dec 26, 2007:

This video tracks some bit of debris from WTC1 going east or north east, and Chandler estimates its velocity at ~70 mph. That video says nothing about distances or weights. Strange then that AE added a velocity of 60 mph.
 
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WTC towers... , showing a concrete building is not the WTC tower.

Oh, so your 12 floors claim was exclusively for the WTC towers... or steel frame buildings in general?
However, I still don´t see any basis for your claim. Why is it 12 floors, not 10 or 14 for example?

I guess after falling 1000 to 1300 feet the top of the WTC towers (okay, some bs) fell apart due to a lot of KE.

They fell apart way before they travelled such distance.

Ironically you showed 12 floors standing on the ruble they destroyed below, thus, ,, what was the video for? Gee, I was right even for a concrete building in the case you found on youtube; you cherry picked a case which shows 12 floors crushing the part below; cool.

I cherry picked this one because it´s ironically 12 floors that kept standing. Meaning that it was considerable more than the mass of 12 floors that was falling. The collapse still did stop.
And this is not a cherry picked event in general. You can find quite a lot of failed demolitions on youtube just like that one.
 
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Oh, so your 12 floors claim was exclusively for the WTC towers...
However, I still don´t see any basis for your claim. Why is it 12 floors, not 10 or 14 for example?
Beachy probably has #12 in these NIST FAQs in mind:
http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/faqs_wtctowers.cfm
The capacity of the floor seats was estimated to have been approx 12x their actual load (on average) - statically. This would reduce to 6x and less when load is applied dynamically.

This assumes (reasonably, I think) that much of the falling mass would impact floors. When you look at a floor plan, you'll find that only 2% of the area was occupied by columns, so in a purely random avalanche, 98% of the falling mass inside the footprint would hit floors and.

(Of course mass wasn't distributed randomly: Much would be very much concentrated on the lower ends of the columns of the falling top part, and they would not so much load the floor seat than punch and cut through the floor slabs, which gives the floors even less of a chance to survive)

The differences to the demolition failure in the video are probably a relatively larger cross-section of the load-bearing columns or walls, and a higher capacity:load ratio - very tall buildings must be built with more thrift.
 
Oh, now I´ve got you... You even claim the toppling began several frames after the object emerges from the dust! I totally disagree.
topping.jpg

Well, that's what the video seems to show. The top of the object comes into view around 12:00, and (using the building in the foreground as a reference point) just before 15:00 is where we start to see movement, after 15:00 it can definitely be said to be "toppling" right. The camera does zoom out and moves downwards, but there seems to be little horizontal movement to account for the object appearing to stay in the same place for over 2 seconds (video, not real time), and for a lot longer than the several frames I'd guestimated.


You ask me?!?
I asked you because you seemed to think I'd picked the pivot point because I could see it, and I wanted you to be clear that I hadn't.

Look at your "pivot point" again in the video. It´s moving away from the center of the building and it´s descending. Because the actual pivot would be much deeper in the dust cloud.
It's only moving away from the centre once it starts to topple, which hopefully you'll agree the above video shows didn't begin until after the object became visible. The pivot point must be along the imaginary line we can draw through the middle of the object before it moved. Which brings us back to viewing the image with the corner as a reference point.

Ray Von
 
Damn, it´s true, the toppling seems to start only after the whatever is visible for some frames.
To me it almost looks like the object is toppling directly towards the camera first, then slightly changes direction more to the right. Anyways, even if there was toppling movement before that point, the toppling to its... let´s say "final" direction indeed started only after the object appeared - that´s what the video suggests, I agree on that now.

I still disagree about the pivot being anywhere near your red circle...
 
This assumes (reasonably, I think) that much of the falling mass would impact floors. When you look at a floor plan, you'll find that only 2% of the area was occupied by columns, so in a purely random avalanche, 98% of the falling mass inside the footprint would hit floors and.
.
I don't what building and what floor you are calculating the percentage of area of the steel columns compared to the entire foot print.... but for flor 2 where the column size was max... the columns were 0.748% of the foot print. ..les than 1% and higher up it would have been probably about 1/3 of that so it the columns at floor 78 would be about 0.25% of the total footprint. (twin towers)
 
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