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December 3, 2007
The Truth Is Out There
Gentle readers, as you probably know, this blog is dedicated to the search for truth, silly web quizzes, and LOLcats, with an occasional foray into the wild world of robots. But primarily, I see this blog as a place to ask questions, to point out potential connections among phenomena most of us consider unrelated. That's how we learn. Asking questions is the beginning of wisdom.
A good friend of ours has been involved with the 9/11 Truth movement for a while now, and has been sending us frequent e-mails with more and more information, argument, polemic, and exhortation.
I've resisted posting about any of this for a long time, because it doesn't have anything to do with digital literacy, web memes, or LOLcats. It does, however, have everything to do with the fearless pursuit of the truth. And for that, I respect these people.
Today, our friend e-mailed his usual suspects with a letter written by Frank Legge (note: the letter is a pdf file). The letter was written to a "Die-Hard Supporter of the Official Explanation," and it very neatly summarizes the problems that I, myself, have when considering the strange case of World Trade Center Building 7, which collapsed at free-fall speed after being damaged not by a jumbo-jet collision, but rather by the debris falling from the Twin Towers.
Here's a lengthy excerpt from Legge's letter:
If you think about the nature of the collapse, supposedly due to fire weakening the steel, you will agree that it would only be necessary to follow the early stages of the collapse to determine its character. If heat is the cause, the steel will weaken gradually and will start to sag in the region where the fire is most intense. At that moment the steel will have almost enough strength to hold up the weight of the building, but not quite. So we have the force of gravity acting downwards, trying to produce an acceleration of 32 feet per second per second, and the force of the hot steel pushing upwards, a force a bit less than that of gravity. Let us say we are looking at it at the moment when the strength has declined to the point where the steel is capable of pushing upwards with 90% of the force required to hold the building up against gravity. There would thus be a net downward force of 10% of gravity. Now acceleration is proportional to force and we have a net force of 10% of gravity so we would see an acceleration downwards of 3.2 feet per second per second.
When you graph the data you find that the fall did not start with a motion which could be ascribed to a small net force of that order. The downward acceleration of the roof was very close to free fall right from the start, 30 feet per second per second, and continued at that rate until out of sight. There is no hint of a slow start. This tells us that the steel supports went from adequate strength to virtually no strength in an instant. For reasons stated above this is absolutely impossible if the loss of strength is due to the application of heat.
The observed acceleration, if maintained, would bring the roof to the ground in 6.2 seconds. A brick dropped from the roof would take 6.0 seconds. These numbers are so close together that only something which destroys the supports in an instant can account for it.
Now, I don't know what happened on 9/11. I was in the Loire River Valley in France at an academic conference at the time, scared out of my mind, and stuck watching French-langauge-only news broadcasts. But when I saw the Twin Towers fall exactly into their own footprints, and then when I saw WTC 7 fall into its own footprint without even the pretense of a "jet fuel" fire to melt its steel supports... I smell a rat. The physics doesn't add up. And physics doesn't play politics. Physics doesn't care who's in the White House, and it doesn't care who you are or who you voted for. It just is.
There's a whole lot of information that has been collected by the 9/11 Truth movement. You can get a crash course here. Some of it seems a little nutty. Really. But the big pieces of the official story just don't add up. And that bothers me. And it should bother everyone. We don't live in an age of miracles anymore. Maggots don't spontaneously generate on meat. And skyscrapers don't spontaneously liquify their steel internal supports instantaneously and uniformly.
There is an explanation. And it doesn't ignore the pesky facts, the way the "official story" does. The truth is out there.
Posted by reparent at December 3, 2007 6:32 PM
Comments
For more information come to historic Faneuil Hall in Boston on December 15, 2007 for Architects, Engineers, & Educators Speak Out, The Destruction of the WTC Towers 1,2, and 7: A Case For Controlled Demolition. This event will be moderated by Ray McGovern, a 27 year CIA Veteran. For more information visit www.boston911truth.org and to register visit http://boston911conference.eventbrite.com/
Posted by: Crystal at December 4, 2007 9:01 AM