Debunked: Steel was hurled hundreds of feet by explosives

[Marc Powell]

Conspiracy theorists claim that massive steel structural elements from the Twin Towers were launched hundreds of feet by explosives. In the 2014 David Hooper film, The Anatomy of a Great Deception (viewable in its entirety on YouTube at youtube.com/watch?v=l0Q5eZhCPuc ), a video clip is presented at the 55:32 mark that shows a section of exterior columns impaled in the side of a building. Here is a frame from that clip.

The narrator (David Hooper, himself) tells the audience:

"In this clip a multi-ton steel box column had so much lateral force that it pierced the building across the street."--"If I can't chuck a shoe more than a hundred and fifty feet from the fiftieth floor of my building, how much force do you need to get a multi-ton steel girder to triple that?"

The video clip Hooper presents does indeed show a massive steel column assembly protruding from the side of a building, and the building was indeed located more than 450 feet from where the North Tower had stood. However, the steel rubble did not end up where it did due to explosive ejection, as Hooper claims. In reality, exterior columns from all four sides of each tower fell at great distances by leaning out and breaking off in great sheets after the floors had fallen. The picture below shows such a sheet of exterior columns from the west side of the North Tower, about 100 feet wide and 50 to 60 stories in length, still mostly bolted together, laid out across West Street and up against the glass dome of the Winter Garden.

From the picture, it should be obvious that, on its way down, the sheet of exterior columns raked against the southeast corner of 3 World Financial Center, leaving a section of steel rubble protruding from its nineteenth floor. That piece of rubble is the "multi-ton steel box column" shown in close-up at the 55:32 mark in Hooper's film. One would think that David Hooper and his Technical Director, Richard Gage, with all their research into the events of 9/11, could have located pictures that answer Hooper's rhetorical question about how rubble from a collapsing high-rise can travel three times farther than he can "chuck a shoe."

Incidentally, the picture showing the sheet of exterior columns can be downloaded at:

https://ia801303.us.archive.org/2/items/NIST_9-11_Release_08/International_Center_for_911_Studies_NIST_FOIA/Release_08/Release 8/42A0007 - 1of3/Police Overheads/166.JPG

 

[Jeffrey Orling]

They are not interested in facts... or engineering. They look for images which appear counter intuitive to people with no engineering or technical background and easily swayed by such things. Even when sensible explanations are available have they have seen them... Gage et al will not recant or back down. All they want to do is plant seeds of doubt.

 

[Oystein]

Nice and crisp, @Marc Powell !
I like that you focus on this one particular piece of wall panel.

Note that there is another thread on page one of this sub-forum list of threads that covers the more generalized topic of "Multi-ton steel sections ejected laterally", which looks at a number of different incidents of "stuff" moving away some distance from the footprints.

In post #446 there, @Christopher 7 challenges the hypothesis that the panel stuck high in the corner of 3 WFC comes from the interconnected sheet of panels on the ground as, so he argues, there is no damage to the building between those panels on the ground and that panel high up. Discussion ensues, where such damage is shown to exist after all, etc.

A few posts down, I link to a paper of my own that presents another reason why "explosives" could not "eject" such multi-ton pieces that far:
https://www.metabunk.org/attachment...steel-sections-from-the-wtc-towers-pdf.35292/

Short version: The principle of Conversation of Momentum demands that the Momentum (mass x velocity) of the projectile (here: several tons times several tens of mph) is equal to, but opposite, the Momentum of the contraption that does the projection (assuming all start at rest. This is why guns experience recoil. In guns, of course, the gun itself is much heavier than the projectile, and thus the projectile ends up being much faster than the gun. Also, the gun is usually fixed to something even heavier, such as the body of its human operator, the ground or a ship in artillery, etc.
Since there is nothing like a "barrel" to lend hypothetical explosives lots of mass to "shoot", the heavy, alleged projectiles at the WTC collapse must get their forward momentum from the equal but opposite backward momentum of the products of the explosive reaction, i.e. the explosive gasses.
Both projectile and gasses now have a kinetic energy (0.5 x mass x velocity squared), and that energy comes solely from the chemical energy of the explosive released by its explosion.
It can be calculated how much (what mass of) explosives are required to propel a projectile of a given mass (say: 1 ton) to a given velocity (say: 60 mph). It turns out that, for the kind of velocities implied in the claims of "lateral ejections", on the order of 10 kg of explosives are required to propel 1000 kg of projectile - assuming there are no significant losses. And that this also would result in hypersonic gas velocities (like 9 times speed of sound in air). For each wall panel, weighing several tons, we are thus speculating about explosive charges on an order of magnitude of 100 kg - hypersonic. This would result in absolutely overwhelming loudness of bangs. Nothing remotely close was recorded or otherwise observed, and so it is impossible that explosives caused wall panels to ballistically fall across to buildings across West, Liberty or Vesey Streets.

 

[Bruce Lansberg]

From the picture, it should be obvious that, on its way down, the sheet of exterior columns raked against the southeast corner of 3 World Financial Center, leaving a section of steel rubble protruding from its nineteenth floor.

I have been theorizing over this before. Now you delivered the evidence. Thank you so much for this picture. Really, really helpful.

 

[Marc Powell]

Short version: The principle of Conversation of Momentum demands that the Momentum (mass x velocity) of the projectile (here: several tons times several tens of mph) is equal to, but opposite, the Momentum of the contraption that does the projection (assuming all start at rest. This is why guns experience recoil. In guns, of course, the gun itself is much heavier than the projectile, and thus the projectile ends up being much faster than the gun. Also, the gun is usually fixed to something even heavier, such as the body of its human operator, the ground or a ship in artillery, etc.
Since there is nothing like a "barrel" to lend hypothetical explosives lots of mass to "shoot", the heavy, alleged projectiles at the WTC collapse must get their forward momentum from the equal but opposite backward momentum of the products of the explosive reaction, i.e. the explosive gasses.
Both projectile and gasses now have a kinetic energy (0.5 x mass x velocity squared), and that energy comes solely from the chemical energy of the explosive released by its explosion.
It can be calculated how much (what mass of) explosives are required to propel a projectile of a given mass (say: 1 ton) to a given velocity (say: 60 mph). It turns out that, for the kind of velocities implied in the claims of "lateral ejections", on the order of 10 kg of explosives are required to propel 1000 kg of projectile - assuming there are no significant losses. And that this also would result in hypersonic gas velocities (like 9 times speed of sound in air). For each wall panel, weighing several tons, we are thus speculating about explosive charges on an order of magnitude of 100 kg - hypersonic. This would result in absolutely overwhelming loudness of bangs. Nothing remotely close was recorded or otherwise observed, and so it is impossible that explosives caused wall panels to ballistically fall across to buildings across West, Liberty or Vesey Streets.

Good scientific analysis of just how preposterous 9/11 truth claims can be.

Sorry if any of the information I present in my posts is a rehash of issues already discussed and put to rest in this forum. I feel insulted by the misrepresentations and insinuations in this particular AE911Truth film and think it necessary to present a comprehensive counterargument. For at least the past two years, David Hooper has been promising to produce a sequel to his 2014 tour de farce. Anything I can do to cast doubt on the credibility of the filmmakers and prevent that from happening is a good thing. Maybe it will even result in the AE911Truth organization finally getting the "independent investigation with full subpoena power" that it has been clamoring for... except, the investigation will be of them.