Ann Althouse has the scoop about the University of Wisconsin – Madison teaching 9/11 denial as an Introduction to Islam class.
Here are some comments about the class from Kevin Barrett, founder of the Muslim Jewish Christian Alliance for 9/11 truth, who will be teaching it:
“The physics of those collapses clearly could not have resulted from plane crashes and jet fuel fires with office materials.” Barrett says jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel, and says recent tests on melted steel from the building prove his theory that it was wired to collapse, by the Government.
Barrett says the Bush Administration is fooling the American public with the Adolf Hitler ‘Big Lie Technique’… ”Tell them a little lie and they’ll wonder about it – weapons of mass destruction in iraq was a relatively little lie – and people are getting called on it.” Barrett says. ”Tell em a big lie like 9/11 and they have a huge resistance to questioning it.”
Ann links to Jessica McBride’s blog (the radio show host who, I think, broke the story) with all the detail including the class syllabus.
There are a lot of 9/11 conspiracy theorists on the left, but to give their nutty views legitimacy by allowing Barrett to espouse them in a universtiy classroom setting beyond disgusting. The university is providing Barrett cover by claiming he has academic freedom, which is another sham since, as Ann points out, the university gave him that freedom by making him an academic in the first place.
(Jay Tea adds: the persistent commenter known as “.” has repeatedly posted copyrighted materials in their entirety in the comments, despite a warning not to do so. For that reason, I have taken the extremely rare (for me) step of deleting the offending comments and banning his IP from posting any further. Disagreeing with us is not only allowed, but welcomed; opening us up for legal liability on copyright-infringement matters will not be tolerated.
In other words: BLOOD FOR ODIN!)
Lee,
Why are you so hateful towards Kathy? Simply because you are caught red-handed again? So you love the terrorists and try to propagandize for them. Why are you denying the 9/11 attack? Why are lying on behalf of such scums as the 9/11 terrorists?
It is physically impossible for 110 floors of steel and concrete to collapse straight down in 10 seconds. Impossible.
And what measure of physics are you going to use to disprove the “impossible” that actually happened?
Try to remember that they didn’t fall straight down; there were many building damaged or collapsed next to and around the WTC.
In general, I wonder how these conspiracy theorists would like to address a 9/11 family member or two to see what they think of their little theories.
Wrong, Sean.
Gee Kathy, that was very insightful. Thank you for convincing me that I am wrong.
Maybe I should just stick my tongue out too. Nah nah nuh-nah nah!!! Is that how it’s done, Kath?
*sigh*
Sad.
don’t use the physics that apply to the planet earth.
just remember, there is no such thing as gravity, the earth just sucks.
i hate the earth. gotta go cruise around in my hummer for a little bit.
i also hate all the animals. glad i’m not an animal.
Sean,
Just show us the experiment to demonstrate the impossibility of your conjecture or theory.
So bozo,
you love the terrorists and don’t believe that they will be willing to cut off your head?
Lee – I didn’t lie – repeating that lie won’t make your point. As Jim said little engineering was required. They weren’t building a bridge there buddy, they were flying a plane into buildings. I had the physics to do that calculation in high school. BTW – I finished my chemistry degree in three years, and only required another semester for a BS in math.
There is no lie except the original one – what Love America Immigrant calls ‘your lie for the terrorists’. The ‘steel won’t melt’ lie.
It is your supposition Sean, that mass is the only factor?
Remember momentum? Mass x Velocity.
It’s not all about MASS. The speed of the building collapse from the top ACCELERATED.
9.8feet/sec/SEC
That’s why you are wrong.
Peter F,
And what measure of physics are you going to use to disprove the “impossible” that actually happened?
Of course the towers actually fell at freefall speed, but only due to controlled demolition explosives. I don’t claim to be a physicist, but BYU Professor Stephen Jones is, and he has stated that it is not possible for 110 stories to “pancake” in 10 or 11 seconds.
Try to remember that they didn’t fall straight down; there were many building damaged or collapsed next to and around the WTC.
Sure, there was collateral damage, but the buildings did collapse straight down. They did not tip over.
In general, I wonder how these conspiracy theorists would like to address a 9/11 family member or two to see what they think of their little theories.
I’d be happy to talk to any of them. They should be outraged even more than I am, and I would be happy to share with them the wealth of knowledge and research that has been done to show that the Official Conspiracy Theory doesn’t hold water.
(BTW, Kathy, this is how a conversation goes. Instead of sticking your tongue out and telling people they wear tinfoil hats, you have a rational discussion.)
Sean – that ad hominem does not qualify for rational discussion – per your own rules. LOL
That hat must get prickly considering how quickly you loons toss out insults.
And Sean – it’s obvious that you don’t understand physics…
Ever wonder why all physics professors don’t sign on to your theory?
If you think about it really hard, you could come up with a reason.
Here’s a hint: YOUR HYPOTHESIS IS WRONG
Sean,
Kathy gave a pretty good explantion from physics. In the end, we need experiment to demonstrate your conjecture or theory. You have no evidence whatsoever about controlled demolition explosives. We had evidence of planes flying into the building. So it is your responsibility to demonstrate your hypothesis with real experiments.
Here’s Wikipedia on Stephen Jones:
Steven Earl Jones is a professor of physics at Brigham Young University who conducts research in nuclear fusion and solar energy. Although the term cold fusion was coined by Jones in the 1980s, his experimental work was significantly different from the more controversial cold fusion experiments of Pons and Fleischmann.
Currently, Jones is also investigating the hypothesis that the World Trade Center Twin Towers and WTC 7 were brought down by pre-positioned cutter charges.
Jones has also given credit to the Mormon assertion that Jesus Christ spent some time in Latin America while he was alive.
ROTFLMAO
Is anyone here familiar with the Plan for a New American Century (PNAC)?
Is anyone aware that the founding members of this “think tank” included neocons Rummy, Cheney and Wolfowitz, among others?
Are you aware that the project’s deliverable was a document (released September, 2000) titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”. This document talked about a strategy for transformation of the military, the need to engage in multiple simultaneous theater wars in South Eastern Asia and the need to increase military spending substantially to achieve these goals?
Are you aware that the top of page #51 of this document specifically called for a “catalyzing and catastrophic event, like a new Pearl Harbor” in order to make the public and congress accept these new wars and budgets required to fund them?
Is anyone aware that in July of 2001, a certain individual took out a huge insurance policy on the World Trade Center complex specifically covering acts of terrorism?
Did you know that this same leaseholder is on the public record referring to building #7 that “maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it, then they made that decision to pull, and then we watched the building collapse”?
Is anyone aware that on the morning of 9/11 military drills practicing the exact scenarios of the actual events were happening?
Is anyone aware that many of the alleged hijackers are reported to be still alive by the mainstream media?
Or does everyone know that ISI officer who sent the $100,000 to ringleader Atta was meeting with government officials in Washington on the morning of 9/11/01?
You all do know that Osama is an asset of the CIA right? Maybe this explains why any effort was ever made in capturing him and that the program responsible for his capture has just been scrapped.
Are you aware that none of the hijackers names appeared on any of the flight records?
Did you know that the identities of all 19 alleged hijackers were known within hours of the attacks? How is this possible?
Are you aware that the only reason there was any investigation into 9/11 is because family members tirelessly pushed for an investigation? This took about 440 days before the Administration agreed to put together the partisan Keane Commission.
Did you know that hundreds of hours of government whistleblower testimony was conveniently left out of the official report, including over 5 hours of testimony of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmunds?
Are you all aware that the FBI has just recently acknowledged that they “have no hard evidence connecting Osama to 9/11”?
And of course you all must have noticed that just about every piece of significant foreign and domestic policy dictated by the government has used 9/11 for its justification or pretext?
Anyway, I can go on and on and on. There is mountains of information out there that conclusively suggests government complicity. I am 110% convinced that the “official story” is a lie. And believe me I made sure I was 110% convinced before I started shooting my mouth off to family and friends. Do you think anyone can be “nutty” enough to spread a conspiracy of this grand scale if they believed it was just a theory?
Sadly, it is all too obvious that the entire official story is in question. I wish it was true, but unfortunately it isn’t.
I would bet if I asked Jones the tinfoil hat question, he could answer me.
Cold fusion. LOL.
Jesus in South America. LOL
and explosives in the WTC – well that’s a moron trifecta if I’ve ever seen it!
Steve,
It was well known that we had all the intelligence about these hijackers but were prevented from acting because of the Gorellic wall erected by the Clinton administration.
I am surprised that anyone who lives in freedom in the US can believe the worst things about their gov. At the same time they resolutely refuse to believe the evil intention and action of the terrorist in front of their own eyes.
Is it because of ideology and a hunger for political power that blined these folks to reality?
“It is physically impossible for 110 floors of steel and concrete to collapse straight down in 10 seconds. Impossible.”
Good grief. Anyone else see what’s so stupid about that statement?
Steve,
You’re first instincts that this is a nutty conspiracy theory were right.
Never change your first answer on a test, it’s very often correct. In this case, you’ve wasted your time.
Really.
Big Mo, please feel free to enlighten us.
I suppose it also doesn’t hurt to mention that a similar “false flag” operation was proposed during the Kennedy era as a pretext for invading Cuba. The program is referred to as Operation Northwoods and its details have recently been declassified.
I’d love to sit here trying to get through to you NeoCons all day, but sadly, it appears to be a waste of time. I tried posting some links to some relevant info, but it got held up for review. Anyhow, good luck to all of you with your beliefs. I respect your right to believe the Official Conspiracy Theory, but I’ll stick with what I believe to be true, thank you.
I’ve been trying to figure it out myself. Looks like Jim, Kathy, and Sean could have an interesting discussion about the collapses.
I don’t understand how the buildings fell. The NIST report gives me a vague sense that the collapse could conceivably have been “initiated” by the fires (given the obvious structural damage).
But even if the top of the building started pressing down on buckled collumns around the 70th and 90th floors … like Sean, I don’t see how the collapse would turn out the way it did. You’ve got a lot of very intact structural steel to break up down there.
Now, the NIST report specifically does not describe what happens in the 10-16 seconds after the collapse begins. It just says the weight coming down is “enormous” … well, the structure was “imposing” until then, I’d say.
If Jim can give rough sense of what happened to the ca. 300 box collumns and all the spandrels and cross girders, and the much more reinforced service floors, etc., in those 16 seconds, that would begin to enlighten me.
I’ve looked at lots of the theorizing and debunking on both sides (including PM and Nova, etc.) It doesn’t settle it for me.
Anyone who thinks that this comment can be used to make a reasonable judgment about its author’s state of mind or intelligence is of course loopy.
Let’s talk about Cold fusion, or Jesus in SA.
I wonder how y’all feel about the Easter Bunny. Do you think the chocolate ones can hop?
Why change the subject Kathy? Run out of lies?
Steve,
You just forgot to mention that the communists were willing to kill hundreds of millions of people and enslaving billions of people just to further the rule of their evil ideology. The communists meant war against America and the free world. They were more bloody than even that fascists. That was a fact. You should be thankful that America was willing to fight against the communists so that you can have the freedom today.
Lee,
Why change the subject, Lee? Run out of lies? We are still waiting for the answer to the question: why are you willing to believe the lie about 9/11 on behalf of the terrorists?
LoveAmerica,
Kind of similar to America’s waged “war on terror” that “will not end in our lifetimes” isn’t it?
Love America Immigrant,
I did try to see if anyone wanted to talk about other conspiracy theories of the esteem Prf. Jones of BYU. Wonder if he thinks Jesus invented Cold Fusion and ran off to South America with the solution?
It’s just impossible not to laugh at them.
I know why Lee and his ilk want so badly to believe that America is evil. They are failures, and must have someone to blame. Individual responsibility is an anathema, much easier to blame Big Brother.
I can hear the black helocopters now….
The sad fact is that conspiracies are easier to believe when you don’t take responsibility for yourself. You don’t have to fix anything if you are helpless.
It’s classic delusional denial.
Sad, and I really shouldn’t poke fun.
Gotta run LAI – don’t be a stranger, stop by HRP and comment, I know my partners would all love to see you. Take care.
Steve,
Don’t understand you point. Communism was a real evil ideology: gulags, famine, genocide, red revolution. Its secular statist creed is the direct opposite of the American creed of inalienable rights given by the creator. Communism meant war against America, the free world, and the poor/oppressed. The jihadist terrorist ideology is a real evil today. It is waging war against America and the West and try to impose their radical Islamic rule on the world. So you don’t believe in the evils of communism and the jihadist terrorists?
Sean:
I’d love to sit here trying to get through to you NeoCons all day, but sadly, it appears to be a waste of time.
You asked a question, it was answered according to the laws of science, and now you’re having a hard time getting through? Think harder Sean, read those posts again, and entertain for perhaps one moment that it wasn’t all a big conspiracy theory, that a marked minority believe your brand of outlandish events occured. Being the minority here doesn’t mean you’re the only one’s in the know, it means you’re the minority because you’re favoring fantasy over reality.
I can hear the black helocopters now….
Something tells me you hear little voices too.
Sean,
Sure, there was collateral damage, but the buildings did collapse straight down. They did not tip over.
Yes, Sean, they did come straight down, and that may be the only miracle that occured that day. But that doesn’t do squat to support your (cough, cough) professor’s theory. Let’s get into the real details of how braindead your theory is.
First, any controlled or planned explosion of such an immense structure you would have seen the demolition explosions on the lower and middle levels of the towers, and heard a series of detonations just to start to collapsing the buildings. This type of demolition would have required a crew of hundreds of men and women to conduct –who most certaintly would have been noticed moving in and out the buildings drilling hole after hole after hole into the buildings’ structures and beams, ripping apart walls to place explosives and blasting caps, run wire all over the place to outside and secure area where the proverbial button would have been pushed. This is basic demolition practice. And none is said to have occured on orin the weeks before 9/11.
The structural failure (as someone pointed out very early in this thread) was due to the fairlure of the fire retardant on the steel beams which was blown off by the initial impacts of the planes and then exposed to the incredible heat of the jet fuel. With the retardant blown-off and exposed to the intense heat, the steel beams were compromised, buckled and could no longer hold the weight above the crash site. Once those key beams failed, it was all over; yes, the weight came straight down at first, but then the floors and everything else began to peel off when the rest of the structutre could not hold the weight. You can view it here here. And some more wacky professional building engineer expertise here
And yes, it can happen in 10 seconds (actually it was 16 seconds to total collapse).
I’d be happy to talk to any of them. They should be outraged even more than I am, and I would be happy to share with them the wealth of knowledge and research that has been done to show that the Official Conspiracy Theory doesn’t hold water.
You’d better have good health insurance then because you won’t be doing much talking afterward.
By all means, present your theories to the world. You keep making our point–that is, people who are sane–that people like you are to be ignored and pitied.
Something tells me you hear little voices too.
Why change the subject, Lee? Run out of lies? We are still waiting for the answer to the question: why are you willing to believe the lie about 9/11 on behalf of the terrorists?
Peter, Thanks for the research and the links.
In general, I wonder how these conspiracy theorists would like to address a 9/11 family member or two to see what they think of their little theories.
Posted by: Peter F. at July 5, 2006 04:59 PM
heres 1 9/11 family member(more to come):
Donna Marsh O’Connor at the U.N
http://www.911podcasts.com/display.php?cat=7&med=0&ord=Name&strt=0&vid=31&epi=0&typ=0
Sean, sweetcheeks… see this 20 lb bag of sugar?
Please stand here and hold it over your head. Pretty easy, right? Your arms are easily handing a 20 lb load even over your head…
Now, edge just a little closer to the roof line where I’m standing above you… I’m going to drop a 200 lb anvil on top of your 20 lb sugar …
How fast do you hit the ground?
“And yes,” Peter says, “it can happen in 10 seconds (actually it was 16 seconds to total collapse).”
The 9/11 report does say about 10 seconds. I also think 16 seconds is closer. I think 10 seconds is very implausible (for the reasons people have been suggesting.)
I still don’t know what is supposed to have happened in those 16 seconds (note that this can grant the official take on the fire-proofing and the intense heat.)
The top 20 floors come down on the bottom 90. (For surely you don’t mean that the collumns buckled all the way down the side of the buildings.)
Then what happens? The frame shatters like porcelain?
You all got to understand the Lee troll … it is contrarian on purpose, because that is the raison d’etre of its existence. No fact, no argument will make one bit of difference to it.
Just another indecent KossKiddieKultist.
Darleen,
I’m not an expert on this, but it seems to me that the analogy would fit if Sean were holding 100 of those bags one on top of the other (i.e., he was already that strong — carrying 2000 lbs.) and then you dropped that 200 lb. anvil (or a stack of twenty bags) from the height of say 5 bags of sugar onto that tower of bags.
It’s because I imagine it (more) like that that I can’t get the official story to make any sense.
Tom,
We may not know exactly about all the details of how the towers collapse. We know that the “controlled demolition explosives” theory has no evidence whatsoever to back it up. This is a kooky conspiracy theory. Yet some people were willing to believe it. At the same time, they would resolutely refuse to believe that Saddam and Alq have any relationship. That is just amazing.
I see there are alot of people,who are quite sure about the official 911 story. People who believe the 911 commission report? or maybe think that people in the massive military/industrial complex/govt just couldnt bring something like 911 to its own country. Even a few so called experts and engineers.
and we are looking for answers
just a few Questions
So.answer us o’scientific ones ones.
how did the towers freefall as fast as gravity?
why was every computer, chair,and telephone along with the concrete floor, “including the carpet on top and the steel pan on the bottom” vaporised! into a pyroclastic dust cloud that covered the whole of lower manhattan in a layer of dust 3 inches thick?
why was there literally tons of molten iron and red hot steel beams in the basements of WTC 1,2,and7?
How come the secret service did not immediately throw a jacket over George Bush”s head and drag his butt away from my pet goat to the limo and drive to where Airforce One was parked,when they found out we were under attack?
yohnzeye,
Kathy and Peter had given you pretty good explanation already (peter even include the links).
At least we can all agree that the “controlled demolition explosives” is a farce that has no evidence to support it. Imagine what we would require to accomplish such a feat. If you can believe in such a fantasy, you shouldn’t have any problem believing that the planes flying into the towers causing them to crash.
LoveAmerica,
Since you say that
“We may not know exactly about ALL the details of how the towers collapse.”
you can’t also say that
“We know that the “controlled demolition explosives” theory has NO evidence whatsoever to back it up.”
There are some details of the WTC collapses that suggest controlled demolition. And there is no evidence to suggest that explosives were not used. (It was removed from the scene.)
(Though there are many sophisticated theories about how impossible it would have been to plant them, etc., etc., and how unlikely it is that Bush – or whoever – would have thought to do so such thing … but they are pitched more or less at the level of pop conspiracy theories. I.e., people just thinking out loud based on a few factoids and their intuition.)
As to the “kooks” … I’m not sure I want to get into that aspect of it.
Best,
T.
Tom
You first have to understand that the WTC was a radically new design to be able to be built that high and be functional. It was designed to withstand a hundred year storm (I remember being on the top floor during a bad winter and feeling the building sway. Didn’t startle me, ’cause I’m a Californian and all our tall buildings are designed to do that to so they don’t fail during earthquakes) and to take a hit from the commercial jet liners of the day.
Understand that the OUTSIDE of the building bore the LOAD. It is/was a brilliant design that went up quickly and worked well. But it was not designed to sustain the extraordinary circumstance of commerical jet liner bigger than the jets that existed at the time of the design, flying at extraordinary speed AND tanks FULL of jet fuel. Once the floor where the impact took place failed, the TOTAL WEIGHT of all the floors crashed down on the next, which was no more prepared to take that load then Sean prepared to received a 200 lb anvil. Remember, these floors were, in essense, free of internal support because the trusses transferred the load to the OUTSIDE walls and those walls had been breached. The above quotes are from here and scroll down to the picture captioned
On 9/10 there hadn’t been a hijacking in the US for over 30 years. We didn’t even lock the cockpits of jets!
That point of logic may have been a bit cryptic. I meant something like you can’t reasonably say, “I haven’t been outside today but I know that there is no evidence to suggest that it rained last night.”
-sigh-
This grew too big for my comments to be even read probably…BUT
I graduated from the California Maritime Academy with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. A required course is called Engineering Ethics, and we had many discussions, often prompted from video shorts from case studies. This happened to be a case study. For the website check out this:
NOVA Online:Why the Towers Fell
why was every computer, chair,and telephone along with the concrete floor, “including the carpet on top and the steel pan on the bottom” vaporised!
Oh GEEZ another Lunar Chiroptera asswipe heard from.
LISTEN you fuckwit, I know people who worked at Ground Zero on the rescue/recovery details. They are going to have nightmares for years … stuff got CHEWED and SHREDDED, as might happen when something so mundane as a desk or HUMAN BODY is ground up between concrete slabs weighing tons…but they weren’t “vaporized”. Telephone here, hand there, desk drawer here, piece of thigh there.
You all belong in a state facility for the criminally insane. And I’m being nice for saying so, because the alternative is that you all are sane but evil.
Tom:
Go to the sites I linked. And yes, the steel beams would buckle, snap and shatter like procelain due to the immense weight and the internia of mass coming down on top of them.
LAI:
No matter how much we explain how a controlled demolition actually works and the number of people involved to bring down a structure like the WTC, we are more or less wasting our breathe.
yohnzeye:
why was there literally tons of molten iron and red hot steel beams in the basements of WTC 1,2,and7?
1.) The fires from the jet fuel which ignited objects (and people) in the buildings and down the elevator shafts to the floors below. When the structures failed, the fires spread. And…
2.) The collapses themselves crushed automobiles (also filled with fuel) located in the basements of each building, which exploded and started fires that smoldered for months, many feet below the top of the rumble. With little oxygen, they smoldered for months.
3.) People and things (desks, computers, etc.) would have been vaporized due (again) to the sheer force and weight coming down on top of them…
4.) You’ve been given scientific answers for them; you’re just too damn stubborn to accept the truth. That’s the sad part.
Engineers in al-Qaeda?
Hmm, you mean like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed?
What’s that, he never got an engineering degree? Hmm, that’s not what wikipedia, the Washington Post, or the LA Times discovered, when they were doing research on him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Shaikh_Mohammed#Professional_career
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16232-2004Jul26.html
http://www.engology.com/eng5mohammed.htm
And that’s after an exhaustive, two-minute Google search of “Khalid Mohammed engineering.”
Kathy, a minor nit:
Acceleration by Earth’s gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared, not feet.
Though I suspect dealing with these… fervent individuals led to some frustration that led to you missing that. Stay calm, get your facts in order and eviscerate their arguments. It won’t do any good for them, but this isn’t a private conversation.
…wow, this thread made me dig up some basic physics formulae to see if those spewing conspiracy theories had bothered to use any of them. Answer: unlikely.
In general, I wonder how these conspiracy theorists would like to address a 9/11 family member or two to see what they think of their little theories.
Posted by: Peter F. at July 5, 2006 04:59 PM
Lorie van Auken(9/11 widow) said that Richard Clarke “gave top shelf credibility to what many of us in the victims’ rights commmunity had suspected for months – that the Bush administration seemed to allow 9/11 to happen.”
Patty Casazza(9/11 widow) said of the commission, “I was looking for an investigation into September 11, 2001. That is not what we got.” And, later, that “[t]he word ‘cover-up’ doesn’t even seem to do it justice.”
Darleen,
I’m familiar with the information you cite about the WTC design.
The crucial part of your comment, as I see it, is this (which I’ll go through one detail at a time):
“Once the floor where the impact took place failed,”
But the NIST report (the most recent explanation) does not suggest floor failure. It says collumn failure was the problem. The whole top part of the building came down on the whole bottom part in one piece. So, yes, according to the official story
“the TOTAL WEIGHT of all the floors crashed down”
but not
“on the next [floor],”
rather, on the next floor AND the very intact collumns and spandrels there, which brings us back to your analogy:
“which was no more prepared to take that load then Sean prepared to received a 200 lb anvil.”
Or almost you original analogy … because where’s that 20 pound bag of sugar? What role was it playing in your analogy when you first suggested it? Like I say, the WTC below the 90th floor was like Sean already holding a 2000 lb. anvil and you threatening to drop a 200 lb. one on top of it. Sure, he may notice it. But he is a bit more “prepared” than you make out.
Lastly, you say:
“Remember, these floors were, in essense, free of internal support because the trusses transferred the load to the OUTSIDE walls and those walls had been breached.”
Well I don’t know: I think something like 30 of something like 200 collumns were breached in the perimeter. (And you should remember that each collumn was overdesigned for safety.) The trusses were connected to both the core and the perimeter. And, again, most of the structure was not breached.
So it’s still a description of what actually happened (or might have happened) to the steel frame in the 16 seconds that the collapse took that I’m looking for.
That sort of thing can be modelled on a computer (one that is bigger than mine, by people who are smarter than me). It is possible to produce a frame-by-frame simulation of gravity-driven structural failures. That simulation would give me something to work with.
NIST did not provide one: they did not show us what physics and engineering predicts the collapse would look like under the initial conditions they set up.
In short, I’m still wondering.
Best,
T.