New: theory of conspiracy theories:

Originally posted by joe shmo
It has been considered and there is documented evidence in the NIST report of NanoThermite ( A Military grade Incendiary). Also, FEMA and the Structural Engineer of the WTC himself cited Rivers of Molten Iron flowing from the tower. FEMA aslo documents partially evaporated Steel beams, requiring temperatures in excess of 4000F to achieve with hot sulfur c ...[text shortened]... in the field who have done significant research.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zbv2SvBEec

I am watching the video on your latest post, the weird thing is the building coming straight down but if it was controlled, it would seem there wouldn't be a conspiracy involving Americans if true, more likely buddies of the people flying the planes. But how could anyone, terrorist or US agents, do all that work without being noticed? A thousand people paid off? The work of this OP is that kind of thing would never remain secret.

Here is another report of the thermite hypothesis:

http://www.911myths.com/html/traces_of_thermate_at_the_wtc.html

Your video seems to be bringing in the idea the attack on the Pentagon being part of the same conspiracy. How can they say that? Americans would somehow want to attack the main military center of the US?

Here are some nutter sites, this guy says there was no plane hitting the towers, but instead, a hologram used to distract the thermite dudes inside.

YouTube

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
I think the key reason behind the existence of WTC7 conspiracy theories is that if we accept that there was no conspiracy behind WTC7, then perhaps there is no conspiracy behind the two main towers either. Perhaps, just perhaps, terrorists did in fact fly some planes into those buildings causing them to collapse, and just maybe the US government intelli ...[text shortened]... me than the possibility of a secret society controlling the entire world through sinister plots.

There quite clearly was a conspiracy to destroy the World Trade Centre. The real question is whether there was a conspiracy piggybacked onto the terrorist one, to ensure the terrorists succeeded. Since anyone minded to do that just had to let the attacks go ahead I don't think that a conspiracy to add explosives to ensure the buildings collapsed is viable. At most there would be a conspiracy of silence, or mild obstruction, to ensure that the attacks went ahead. Even then it's far more likely that, in Rumsfeld's words, they had some "unknown knowns". In other words they had all the information they needed, but couldn't put it together to work out there would be an attack - which isn't that surprising as the US seems to have several dozen competing Intelligence agencies some of which are huge and "some people are learning to fly planes" hardly rates along side things like "they're buying the ingredients for ANFO".

Conspiracy theories don't need a reason to exist, they seem to arise anyway. Possibly the WTC theories are propaganda started on Putin's orders [1], although even if he thought that it was in his interests I doubt that he needs to - people think these things up for fun. I think the driver for WTC 7 theories is that the Twin Towers conspiracies have been debunked so WTC 7 keeps them alive.

My joke is that all conspiracy theories are put about by the government to stop people finding out what's really going on.

[1] A conspiracy theory about how conspiracy theories start.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Ohh, a "generalized solution to the 1D mechanics of progressive collapse." You got me now, no way I can debunk fancy mathematics.

Nothing in your copy and paste implies that the damage from the collapsing buildings and the subsequent fire could not have conceivably caused WTC7 to collapse. It remains the most likely explanation and you have not provi ...[text shortened]... ourous peer review; for instance the reviewers might have been PhD students or junior post-docs.

There is one point in this. Why was there such an intense fire? Skyscrapers are made mostly of metal and glass. There shouldn't be much accelerant around in WTC 7. Even in the absence of a conspiracy theory buildings shouldn't collapse or be destabilized to the point of collapse just because there's a fire - this is worth looking at from a general safety point of view.

Originally posted by DeepThought
There is one point in this. Why was there such an intense fire? Skyscrapers are made mostly of metal and glass. There shouldn't be much accelerant around in WTC 7. Even in the absence of a conspiracy theory buildings shouldn't collapse or be destabilized to the point of collapse just because there's a fire - this is worth looking at from a general safety point of view.

Is it really though? This collapse is the only documented case of a skyscraper being brought down by normal office fires.

Originally posted by joe shmo
Is it really though? This collapse is the only documented case of a skyscraper being brought down by normal office fires.

There is only one documented case of a woman being the Prime Minister of the UK. Do you think Thatcher rose to power due to a conspiracy?

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Ohh, a "generalized solution to the 1D mechanics of progressive collapse." You got me now, no way I can debunk fancy mathematics.

Nothing in your copy and paste implies that the damage from the collapsing buildings and the subsequent fire could not have conceivably caused WTC7 to collapse. It remains the most likely explanation and you have not provi ...[text shortened]... ourous peer review; for instance the reviewers might have been PhD students or junior post-docs.

"Ohh, a "generalized solution to the 1D mechanics of progressive collapse." You got me now, no way I can debunk fancy mathematics."

I suspect you must be paralyzed with fear when entering these buildings, since (based on this statement) you obviously believe the mechanics and models used by engineers to push the boundaries of structural physics while simultaneously preserving an extremely large margin of safety for the public to be inferior and sub-par.

Again, from the paper the analysis was not even run by NIST, because of it obvoius validity. See excerpt below:

"In broad terms, this scenario was proposed by Bažant
2001,
and Bažant and Zhou
2002a,b on the basis of simplified analysis
relying solely on energy considerations. Up to the moment of
collapse trigger, the foregoing scenario was identified by meticulous,
exhaustive, and very realistic computer simulations of
unprecedented detail, conducted by S. Shyam Sunder’s team at
NIST. The subsequent progressive collapse was not simulated at
NIST because its inevitability, once triggered by impact after column
buckling, had already been proven by Bažant and Zhou’s

2002a comparison of kinetic energy to energy absorption capability.
T"

I did not write my own Wikipedia article like this guy apparently did (it happens more often than you think) but to be fair he does have a few more citations than I do. I wasn't saying that the article was wrong (I haven't read it in detail), just that you shouldn't attach too much weight to peer review. Peer review just means one or several colleagues browsed through the paper and couldn't find obvious mistakes immediately. Low-ranked journals tend to have less rigourous peer review; for instance the reviewers might have been PhD students or junior post-docs.

Where is your evidence that he wrote his own Wiki Page. It sounds like your a bit of a conspiracy theorist to me...

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
There is only one documented case of a woman being the Prime Minister of the UK. Do you think Thatcher rose to power due to a conspiracy?

Yes.

Originally posted by joe shmo
"Ohh, a "generalized solution to the 1D mechanics of progressive collapse." You got me now, no way I can debunk fancy mathematics."

I suspect you must be paralyzed with fear when entering these buildings, since (based on this statement) you obviously believe the mechanics and models used by engineers to push the boundaries of structural physics while sim ...[text shortened]... nce that he wrote his own Wiki Page. It sounds like your a bit of a conspiracy theorist to me...

Joe, what do you think about the evidence in this video:

YouTube

Originally posted by joe shmo
"Ohh, a "generalized solution to the 1D mechanics of progressive collapse." You got me now, no way I can debunk fancy mathematics."

I suspect you must be paralyzed with fear when entering these buildings, since (based on this statement) you obviously believe the mechanics and models used by engineers to push the boundaries of structural physics while sim ...[text shortened]... nce that he wrote his own Wiki Page. It sounds like your a bit of a conspiracy theorist to me...

I suspect you must be paralyzed with fear when entering these buildings, since (based on this statement) you obviously believe the mechanics and models used by engineers to push the boundaries of structural physics while simultaneously preserving an extremely large margin of safety for the public to be inferior and sub-par.

What?

Again, from the paper the analysis was not even run by NIST, because of it obvoius validity.

Huh?

Where is your evidence that he wrote his own Wiki Page. It sounds like your a bit of a conspiracy theorist to me...

I don't have any hard evidence but I know it to happen regularly. Wikipedia pages about not-so-famous scientists written like they are a c.v. are generally written by the scientists themselves.

Originally posted by joe shmo
Is it really though? This collapse is the only documented case of a skyscraper being brought down by normal office fires.

Does a Youtube video count as 'documentation'?
YouTube

I am sure I could find many more.

Where is your evidence that that was the only documented case?

Originally posted by twhitehead
Does a Youtube video count as 'documentation'?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XMTALBYRNA

I am sure I could find many more.

Where is your evidence that that was the only documented case?

"Does a Youtube video count as 'documentation'?
YouTube"

If you can find an official report from NIST or some other organization of equal position to verify the collapse was due to "normal office fires", then I would say yes. If not, then I must say no.

I've been through this a few times, If you read from early in the thread you can see me reference the following paper several times. Please read:

http://www.civil.northwestern.edu/people/bazant/PDFs/Backup%20of%20Papers/466.pdf

I will note that if it is the case that the claim is supported by NIST ( or another Non-American counterpart), then this video almost perfectly represents the solution proposed by the Author of the paper above.

I would ask you to carefully examine the footage of WTC 7 collapse. It does not fall in that manner. It appears to fall in its entirety at once. Please watch the first few minutes of this interview on C-SPAN.

YouTube

Unless the lower floors of WTC 7 were the ones to collapse ( it addmittedly cant be clearly seen in the video linked if we are looking at the entire building), it doesn't appear to match the Papers Description on The Mechanics of Progressive Collapse, The video you posted, or the fact that the damage to WTC 7 (sited as being caused by debris from the northern twin tower - WTC 1 - collapse) was to the top of the tower.

Originally posted by joe shmo
If you can find an official report from NIST or some other organization of equal position to verify the collapse was due to "normal office fires", then I would say yes. If not, then I must say no.

In that case your original claim is worthless. All it really means is that either fires that cause sky scrapers to collapse simply don't get documented, or you can't be bothered to find the documentation. That fires do cause collapse and that such events are common place is not ruled out by your statement nor is your statement strong evidence against it. Your statement mostly only shows that you haven't looked. Its similar to people who claim there is no life in the universe except on earth - based on the fact that they haven't looked anywhere else.

I've been through this a few times, If you read from early in the thread
I have no interest in reading the whole thread

Please read:
http://www.civil.northwestern.edu/people/bazant/PDFs/Backup%20of%20Papers/466.pdf
I see that that article goes a step further and simply blatantly claims:

No experienced structural engineer watching the attack expected the WTC towers to collapse. No skyscraper has ever before collapsed due to fire.

Both statements are obviously unconfirmable with the first being almost certainly false and the second most definitely false.
Do you have anything other than wild unsupported statements? I want to see evidence that someone actually did a survey of sky scrapers and fires and causes of collapse rather than simply making up the claim for effect (as the writers of that article evidently did). I also want to know how 'sky scraper' is defined in the claim as multi story buildings collapsing due to fire is commonplace.

Originally posted by twhitehead
In that case your original claim is worthless. All it really means is that either fires that cause sky scrapers to collapse simply don't get documented, or you can't be bothered to find the documentation. That fires do cause collapse and that such events are common place is not ruled out by your statement nor is your statement strong evidence against it. ...[text shortened]... scraper' is defined in the claim as multi story buildings collapsing due to fire is commonplace.

No, both of your statements are false...Not Mine.

Taken Directly From the NIST Report.

http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/faqs_wtc7.cfm

8. Why did WTC 7 collapse, while no other known building in history has collapsed due to fires alone?
The collapse of WTC 7 is the first known instance of a tall building brought down primarily by uncontrolled fires. The fires in WTC 7 were similar to those that have occurred in several tall buildings where the automatic sprinklers did not function or were not present. These other buildings, including Philadelphia's One Meridian Plaza, a 38-story skyscraper that burned for 18 hours in 1991, did not collapse due to differences in the design of the structural system (see the answer to Question 9).
Factors contributing to WTC 7's collapse included: the thermal expansion of building elements such as floor beams and girders, which occurred at temperatures hundreds of degrees below those typically considered in current practice for fire-resistance ratings; significant magnification of thermal expansion effects due to the long-span floors in the building; connections between structural elements that were designed to resist the vertical forces of gravity, not the thermally induced horizontal or lateral loads; and an overall structural system not designed to prevent fire-induced progressive collapse.

Do a little research first before you start making accusations.

Here is another ( admittedly basic) analysis that I myself just did, that should raise's some question. The plane impacted the northern face of WTC 1, meaning it flew over WTC 7.

Follow the link to the image:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Trade_Center_911_Attacks_Illustration_with_Bird%27s-eye_Impact_Locations.svg

Now conservation of Momentum dictates some of the impact debris should have been blown out laterally to the sides ( East and West) and most to the South, and much less than other directions to the North.

Now see Layout of WTC Complex from the following link.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/WTC_Building_Arrangement_and_Site_Plan.svg

Using simple kinematics and other known geometric parameters ( with one unknown postulated parameter - Namely the height of impact) I come to the following result:

Height of WTC 1 = 1,362 ft = y1
Hieght of WTC 7 = 743 ft = y7
Distance between North face of WT1 and South Face of WTC 7 = 370 ft = d ( See link in previous post above to NIST report for parameters verification)

I'm estimating the plane hit at approx 1000 ft on WTC 1 and using basic kinematics ( neglecting air resistance) The lateral velocity of the ejected material in the Northern direction is can be calculated as follows:

V_North = d*Sqrt( 2*(y1-y7)/g) = 370[ft]*Sqrt(2*(1000 [ft] - 743[ft])/32.2[ft/s²])

V_North = 1500 ft/s (Supersonic Velocity)...I guess Air Resistance should be accounted for, but it would act to retard the impending damage from debris to WTC 7. The question I have is does this make sense? Most of the energy from the hit should have been dissipated in the Southern direction? Its certainly not conclusive, but it seems odd.

Originally posted by joe shmo
The collapse of WTC 7 is the first known instance of a tall building brought down primarily by uncontrolled fires.

That is a blatantly false statement and I really don't care who said it. If you think it is not false then demonstrate that a survey of tall buildings and fires has actually been done. As far as I can tell both the people you have quoted saying it just made it up on the spur of the moment.

Do a little research first before you start making accusations.
I don't need to. It is obvious that the claims are false.

How much would you be willing to bet that I could not find an example of a tall building that collapse due to fire alone? I could get rich here.