Ok, here's the MIT motherlode at this link:

http://web.mit.edu/civenv/wtc/

It provides in-depth reports on all aspects, and offers a compliation of articles published from Sept 2001 thru Feb 2002. It has a great deal of technical information.

Oh I'm sure people here could shoot holes all over MIT's theory:rolleyes: , what to those eggheads know about biodiesel? :confused:

Thanks Kirk. That's a show-stopper for conspiracies. I read the summary and that's good enough for me.

Conspiracy theorists must jump that hurdle before I pay attention to them in the future.

It is possible that these buildings imploded the way they seemed to without engineered assistance. We see documentaries on TV that make it sound like it is an engineering miracle when much smaller buildings are brought down so cleanly. It does give rise to suspicions. It appears that either those demolition companies are a scam or these buildings had help coming down so cleanly or maybe it was a miracle, amen.

People tend to look for complex conspiracy theories in events like this because the simplicity of what really happens seems so impossible to us - in order to do something so cataclysmic - it must have taken more than Tim McVeigh and a Uhaul full of fertilizer and a couple of crackpot friends, or John Wilkes Booth and a couple of crackpot friends, or Lee Harvy Oswald and a 19$ rifle, or 19 sucidal fanatics in an airliner. To quote Bertrand Russell, things are pretty much as they seem to be. A suicide squad flew an airliner into the building. The building was not designed for that particular event. The design shortcomings resulted in the collapse of the building due to a catastrophic fire. End of story.

Personally, I think the idea the WTC could be secretly wired for demolition is preposterous. The risks involved of commiting mass murder for insurance money, the size of the conspiracy required where all who participate must remain quiet, the fact that the building maintenance and security personnel would have to be part of the conspiracy, all make this idea speculative hogwash to me.

Go follow the link that Kirk provided and read the summary. If the summary doesn't convince you, go read the PDF's. When you (or anybody) can refute that stuff, I'll join the conspiracy mongers. Until then, case closed.

I saw an article originating from NOVA that says the combined effects of temperature difference and the points where the floor trusses interface with the side supports are thought to be the lead causes for the structural failure. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/collapse.html

Thinking about Botnst’s comment, and not pretending I can do the math, wouldn’t the earthquake dampening elements of the structure’s foundation stop or greatly dampen any P waves moving through the structure, as they are built to withstand the entire mass of the building plus foreseeable shocks originating from earthquakes.

If you read the MIT studies, they cover the temperature differentials and cite it as a key factor. As I mentioned early, the key event was that some upright member of the core structure merely need to bend a little - melting of the steel was not required - to begin the cataclysmic chain of events. I saw elsewhere on the MIT site that that NOVA program was based on these studies.

I didn't know about the earthquake dampening devices. I assume that they are for dealing with transverse (S) waves or L waves (Rayliegh) not compression waves (P). But I sure as heck don't live in an earthquake area, so I have never looked into earthquake dampening. I'd be real curious to see how somebody would design a massive vertical structure capable of withstanding or dampening thrust from any direction. Got a link?

Hmmm. But thinking about it, I guess that the dampeners would probably be most concerned about lateral thrust, to prevent development of a "Tacoma Narrows Bridge" type harmonic oscillation. I guess you'd have a footing that would allow X or Y movement but no Zed. The building is undoubtedly strongest in the vertical.

In the Northeast, there are no specific requirments for earthquake contingencies other than the "moment welds" - superstrong heliarc welds strategically placed to hold the building together during an earthquake. The guys who make these welds are the highest paid ironworkers. In California, large buildings are built on enormous coil springs and shock absorbers, not much different from that found on '57 Chevy.

I haven't downloaded the MIT PDF's because my home connection is too slow, but I don't see any reference in the summary to Bldg 7. That's the point at which most critics see the crucial questions, even though they don't think there's evidence for enough heat in the towers to cause them to fail. Bldg 7 had no structural damage and no jet fuel, yet a 43 story building is completely destroyed. Unheard of.

Each building weighed an estimated 500,000 tons each, excluding contents. If one was to stick with the most obvious as being the most likely, since the evidence suggests Bldg 7 came down of its own accord, my guess is BLDG 7 sustained initial shock damage to its foundation, and then when the second tower came down, the building collapsed from the second round of shock waves after being weakened by the first. Perhaps I misunderstood Botsnst before, and this was what he was actually saying. I could not see harmonics and shock waves bringing down the WTC from the plane impact, but it certainly makes the most sense in relation to a 43 story building directly adjacent. In fact, if we remove magical theories of demolition bombers and such, it is the only theory that makes any sense.Put a stack of poker chips on a board, drop a rock two feet away on the board - what happens? Restack the chips. Move one foot closer. Do more poker chips fall off the stack? Move one inch to the stack - you get the idea.

On one of the MIT web pages, it mentioned an exhaustive study of the entire event from an engineering perspective available from MIT Press:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2003/wtc.html

I am sure it would cover the adjacent buildings in detail.

Yeah, I'm still wondering about that one, also.

Keep in mind that the energy created by the falling towers is not going to be absorbed by soft earth - it is going to go directly into the same bedrock that the adjacent buildings has it pilings sunk into - 500,000 lbs of mass transferred almost instanteously directly to bedrock- twice - the majority of energy is not going to be transferred over the ground - it is going to shoot up into that building via rock and iron. That building must have hummed like a bass guitar string plucked with a 5 iron. Remember all those pins I mentioned holding together the columns at splice points? They must have snapped like tootpicks from sheer forces as the building moved up and down with the shock waves transmitted thru its pilings.

In addition, one must take into consideration how the pilings connect to the building itself. Long runs of angle iron are driven with a pile driver deep into the rock at the points where the core columns are located. Then a concrete form is built around the protruding angle iron, concrete is poured and enormous anchor bolts are sunk into the wet concrete. The base columns are then bolted to these anchors after the concrete has cured. A few of these sheering off would give you the exact same effect one gets from an implosive dynamite charge - in fact they pack these charges at exactly those points. The most instructive piece of info would be an examination of those column bases and anchor bolts.