Postby jwocky » Mon Dec 07, 2015 2:25 pm
I am feeling a headache approach ... again. Because I have had discussions like that too often and a lot of it involves some highly sophisticated math and physics knowledge, then you have the problem with the forged pics, some people patched together to support their conspiracy theories and then, there are some purely invented things involved on that side of the spectrum. And honestly, it is too early for me to go through it point by point, so I give you just a hint ..
You look at the photo what a bird strike can do to a plane and then you look at the WTC images. Now, a bird, lets say 1lb of mass can, if the angle is right, damage the skin of a plane, but in the process, the bird is smashed and then simple thrown to the side because he ends up on the beams carrying this skin and slides away along the rounded shape of the plane. It's a dynamic parallelogram of forces and it involves some nasty integrals to describe it mathematically.
Now, if you look at the WTC, it was slightly heavier than such a bird. And it couldn't move away or slide anywhere because it was a building anchored on the ground. So there was no way, a plane can push it out of the way. So at the moment of impact, you have the situation, that nothing can move out of the other's way. It's not like a bird strike.
The other thing is, the WTC was constructed by rows of T-beams standing upright on the floors along the outer walls. The whole construction was intended to hold force in the vertical direction. The impact was almost horizontally. And since nothing in whole could fly out of the other's way, the parts did. The plane and the building were deformed basically each in the relation of the resistance forces, their internal construction brought up. Now, you see it as ONE building and ONE plane, but what actually hit and was hit were complex constructions of parts of different resistance and ability to deform. For example, the visible outer walls of the WTC weren't even bearing weight, all was sitting on those steel T-beams. The walls themselves were not much resistance and so weren't the aluminium skil stripes of the plane's skill. Which kind of equalizes it. If you could take the force and speed vectors against the resistance vectors, you could simulate the impact in a computer. You are right, the plane disintegrates but it disintegrates INTO the building because it has no other place to go at this point. It knocks some T-beams out, bigger parts, for example the engines hit a split-split-split second before the wings and thus the wing tanks make it surprisingly far in till they get ripped open. And during this whole process they also take parts of the building with them inside, like pieces of wall, T-Beams and a lot of dry-wall from the inner separations. This is a process that virtually uses up energy (energy can't really used up, it is changed into break-ups and deformations, of course) but thus, the speed of every part of this mess is in general decreasing with every micro impact. So, an engine for example going inside the building through a drywall appears as the winner in terms of physics, but actually, the drywall slows the engine still down. Then, there is friction. You wouldn't think, carpet can stop a plane, but enough carpet actually can slow the sliding through the building by little amounts and all those amounts add up. On ther other side of the building, you see the "outbreak" and there is no plane anymore, it's mostly gas, flames (blown forward by the air pressure change created by the impact, parts of drywall, aluminium parts and, that is the give-away, a dark cloud. If you compare the color of the "smoke", you see, you have right after the impact some very dark clouds there, that become lighter for a few minutes after the impact and then darker again. The reason is, there was a lot of dust involved. The dust makes it appear darker, but the dust settles down faster while the lighter colored smoke still prevails. That is, till the ensuing fires spread over plastic materials and the remaining T-beams start to become crumbly under the heat. The begin of this process, when the remaining T-beams start to cave in is also signified by more dust (from the upper floors) and thus, at the moment, the T-beams start to bend before breaking, the "smoke" appears darker again because it's not smoke alone anymore, but also added dust. You may have seen in movies similiar dark explosion clouds, they are made with motor oil and dust. Same effect.
So, bottom line: A plane can bring down a building of that size and weight with that construction. Because of the size and weight of the building and it's construction, it can.
Now, at the moment, I don't feel like dealing with all the rest of this conspiracy theory, maybe I return to it when I had more coffee and my phone calls out of the way. In fact, as any writer, I love good conspiracy theories, and, maybe to your surprise, every mathematician who works with game theory, hidden sets in population dynamics or society math as it is called nowadays, loves a good conspiracy theory even more. But well, that means "good" as in logical, not based on just lack of knowledge and mere paranoia and whateve4r people think they need to hate. A good conspiracy theory has to be at least logical and apply to the basic laws of physics. This one doesn't, but it takes a close look because it hangs a little above the usual physics 101 class in school.
So, at this moment, it is like the famous bridge scene in Titanic.
Ismay: "This ship can't think"
Andrews: "She is built from steel, sir, I assure you, she can and will"
Because Andrews, the engineer, knows a few things about his business, the mere user of technology, Ismay, doesn't. And for Ismay, belief had replaced the need for knowledge but at some point, he treated his belief like knowledge and it caught him cold.
Free speech can never be achieved by dictatorial measures!
