9/11 - Physics and Findings:Challenging the NIST Report

Post March 2008Sydney Conference

Frank LeggeB.Sc. (Hons), Ph.D.

 Information sources

Most of this material can be found through these links:

Journal of 9/11 Studieshttp://journalof911studies.com

Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justicehttp://www.stj911.org

Timelinehttp://www.911timeline.net/

9-11 Research by Jim Hoffmanhttp://911research.wtc7.net/

Locating videos

To keep this PowerPoint presentation to a size small enough to email, the videos are not included. To find the files, run the slide show and click this link, or, in edit mode, right click here and select “open hyperlink”:http://9-11.meetup.com/332/files/The name of each file is on the slide in brackets. They may of course be viewed directly.

If downloaded into the same folder (directory) as the PowerPoint file they should run when the slide show image is clicked.

If this does not work the relevant slides will have to be reconstructed using Powerpoint, not Powerpoint Viewer.

My position: Skepticism is essential for a healthy democracy and personal well being.

Are any of these widely held beliefs false?

• A low fat diet reduces heart disease• Vegetable oil is healthier than animal fat• High Cholesterol reduces life expectancy • Prozac is better than placebo for depression• Statin drugs do not cause memory loss and muscle damage• Global warming is largely man-made• Fluoride is good for teeth and harmless to bones• War against Afghanistan and Iraq will reduce terrorism• Killing terrorists reduces their number

Do a Google search and check recent scientific papers. Weigh up the arguments.

Skepticism of official positions may improve the world and your quality of life.

The events of 9/11

• What we saw

• The physics

• The findings

First the obvious - then the science,

but first a question:

• Until 9/11 none had collapsed due to fire.

• Until 9/11 every building which had collapsed had been demolished with explosives.

Given the above, why did the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) make no effort to look into the use of explosives?

Is it likely that this longstanding rule could be broken three times in one day?

The purpose of this talk is to attempt to answer this fundamental question. First we will look for clues in visual anomalies.

A critical question: do steel-framed high-rise buildings collapse due to fire?

South Tower, WTC 2, as it started to collapse

The south tower burned for 56 minutes, then totally collapsed.

The initial rate of collapse would have brought the roof to the ground in under 11 seconds.

Note the colour of the smoke.

Obvious anomaly #1 – smoke colour

• Black smoke, little flame.

This indicates lack of oxygen andshows there was little updraft.

The floors were made of steel and concrete. They could not be quickly destroyed by burning office materials and kerosene so development of updraft could not occur.

The flame temperature would therefore have to be at the low end of the possible range for the burning of these materials.

So collapse would appear to be impossible. Does a wood fired stove collapse?

When floors fail updrafts occur and fire can become intense

The Windsor, Madrid.

Here the fires on about 8 or 9 floors appear to be vertically connected, which would produce an updraft.

This building burned 13 hours yet the core remained standing.

The Windsor, Madrid.

Next day the building core was still standing despite the intensity of the fire and its long duration.

Meridian Plaza, Philadelphia, steel frame. Eight storeys involved. Burned all night. Allowed to burn out. Looked similar next day except that the fire was out. 23 Feb 91.

The truth deniers use this as an example of a fire collapse. Note: intense fire, little smoke. And it didn’t suddenly and completely collapse!It sagged and it did not sag symmetrically!It strengthens our case, not theirs.

WTC 7 - Does this building collapse symmetrically? Is it too fast?

(WTC_high_res)

Obvious anomaly #2 – symmetry

Vertical collapse requires structural symmetry –opposite sides must be exactly equal in strength.

We see little fire on the north side and also see that the fire was declining, running out of fuel.

The supporters of the official story say there was much fire on the south side and also some damage there from debris falling from the North tower, WTC 1. The south side should therefore have given way first, causing the building to topple over. This did not occur, as the videos show.

What can make the cool North wall and the hot South wall equally weak, and do it at the same moment?

Obvious anomaly #3 – speed of collapse

• All three buildings came down at near free-fall speed. • This means that the steel supports provided virtually no

resistance. • Calculations show that even if the steel columns of the

towers are assumed to have no strength the rate of collapse will still be slower than observed, simply due to conservation of momentum. (Ken Kuttler)

• An additional source of energy was required to destroy the supports, pulverize the concrete and expand the dust cloud in seconds against atmospheric pressure.

Energy cannot be used twice: if it is destroying supports, and doing other things, it is not available to accelerate the building. The collapse must be slowed, but this was not observed.

Implication of the law of conservation of momentum

• The towers came down faster than possible if each floor had been knocking out the floor below.

• This means that each floor started falling before the floor above arrived!

There could have been no high impact collisions at all!

There should have been no dust!

Obvious anomaly #4 - violent projection of dust and steel

Violence of action shown by the fine pulverization of concrete, and its outward projection, together with steel columns and aluminium cladding.

The dust from a distance has the appearance of a fountain, again indicating violent ejection.

• Note how the dust cloud

has already become wide very early in the collapse, while speed of components has not had time to built up.

At this early point, if collisions were occurring, they would be low impact, yet a vast amount of energy has already become evident.

Obvious anomaly #5 - this is no ordinary dust cloud

Within a few seconds of the main collapse of WTC 1 we see that the air is perfectly clear around this piece of the core still standing, known as the “spire”.

The dust is behaving rather like a liquid so must be extremely dense. It does not resemble dust that might have been ejected by air pressure, as in the official story.

Implication of the high density of the dust

• The dust has a high density because it contains most of the concrete. Photographs of the base of the towers show little concrete.

The high density and fineness of the dust both indicate extreme violence, yet we know that the floors were falling before they were hit so any collision would be very gentle.

Obvious anomaly #6 - “spire” starts to drop straight down

Why wouldn’t it remain standing?

Something must have chopped off the steel, at a point well above ground level.

NIST draws attention to a white-hot patch, and says:

“The brightness of the flame, along with the white smoke, suggests that some type of metal is burning”.

But neither steel nor aluminium can be ignited in air!

Some chemical reaction is required. We will shortly identify this reaction.

Obvious anomaly #7 - high temperatures

Obvious anomaly #8- molten metal pours out

Not far from where the white-hot patch was seen, this stream of metal appeared. It was not aluminium. The tower collapsed shortly afterwards.

So far we have seen 8 obvious visible anomalies. If we take measurements we can find more.

• By following the motion of the roof of the buildings we can measure the downward acceleration.

• We can check its magnitude and its uniformity.

• The fall distance is given by at2/2, where a = acceleration, t = time.

WTC 7 COLLAPSE

Assumed constant acceleration: 9.1 m/s2

Assumed start time: 0.3 seconds

0.0

10.0

20.0

30.0

40.0

50.0

60.0

0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 3.50 4.00

Elapsed time (sec)

Drop

dist

ance

(m

)

Measured drop Calculated drop

WTC 1 - Acceleration DownwardsAssumed acceleration: 7 m/s2 Roof starts 0.4 s after antenna

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Elapsed Time (sec)

Drop

Dist

ance

(m)

Antenna measured (m) Antenna calc (m) Roof measured (m) Roof calc (m)

Roof downward acceleration

• Note how well the points measured from the video correspond with the points calculated using a constant acceleration equation, virtually lying one on top of the other for the first 3 or 4 seconds.

• This shows that the downward acceleration of the roof of both WTC 7 and WTC 1 was virtually constant right from the start.

Anomaly #9- uniformity of acceleration at the outset

Steel toughens as it distorts

This means that when the steel starts to sag it will become stronger.

It will therefore require more heat to be added to raise the temperature if sagging is to progress.

Adding more heat takes time.

It is therefore impossible for the initial collapse to be rapid and provide impact. Stage one of the official explanation for the towers is therefore proved false, even if we don’t know the correct temperature of the columns.(see new paper by Legge and Szamboti in the Journal of 9/11 Studies)

If stage 1 did not occur, there was nothing to start stage 2.

Anomaly #10 - uniformity of acceleration

during collapseIf the top of the tower struck the lower portion with enough impact to cause its collapse, as in the official story, we would see a reduction in acceleration about 1 second into the collapse.

This was not observed. The top appears to penetrate the bottom unimpeded.

There was therefore no impact!

It was Tony Szamboti and Graeme MacQueen who pointed this out. Once pointed out it becomes “obvious” but had previously escaped notice. (Expect their paper shortly.)

We have seen 10 anomalies. Which better fits the observations,

fire or controlled demolition?

First we will have a brief refresher course on controlled demolition.

Note that various effects can be obtained using controlled demolition. It is cheapest to topple a building into a car park if available.

If not, the building must be brought straight down. In the first video the two buildings are tipped slightly toward one another to reduce the risk of damaging nearby buildings.

(Click images to show videos)

Southwark Towers

(southwark_towers(trim))

Beirut Hilton

(beirut_hilton)

(Oslodemo-cut2)

WTC 7 again(wtc7_collapse_its_gone_man)

Note white flash at the top(wtc7-penthouse-kink)

WTC 7 just before collapse. Do you see any broken windows? Hot fires break windows.

Half a second apart, these frames show windows progressively breaking. This proves the previous assumption that there were no hot fires was correct,at least on this side of the building.

We have seen 10 “anomalies”.

Let’s now give them the right title: Evidence of Explosives

1. low temperature of the fire as indicated by black smoke 2. symmetry of collapse of all three buildings 3. near free fall speed of collapse 4. violence of ejections seen early 5. high density and immense quantity of dust 6. vertical collapse of the “spire” 7. temperatures too high for ordinary fires 8. molten metal 9. uniformity of acceleration at “initiation”10. uniformity of acceleration during “impact”

What really happened and how does it compare with the official story?

We will now look at the last four points more closely, first the acceleration data, then the temperature data.

The acceleration graphs show three things:

• The acceleration was obviously close to free fall, impossible given that the bottoms of the towers, undamaged by fire, were in the way.

Remember that energy can only be used once – any energy used to destroy material is not available to cause acceleration.

• The acceleration was constant right from the start, impossible if collapse started with the gradual softening of steel due to heat.

Remember that steel hardens as it distorts and requires the addition of more heat over time for distortion to progress.

• At the moment when the upper portion of WTC 1 should have been impacting the lower portion, the roof continued to move with the same acceleration, impossible if an impact occurred.

Remember that the official story requires the tower top to smash the tower bottom.

NIST versus Sir Isaac Newton

There are only two reasonable explanations for the observations on the previous slide, which listed three impossibilities:

1. Explosives were used to sever the steel supports.

2. The laws regarding motion and gravity have now been proved incorrect.

Sir Isaac Newton developed these laws and they stood the test of time for over three centuries. These laws are the foundation of all modern mechanical sciences and the study of planetary motion.

The notion that NIST has found that these laws can be disregarded is clearly absurd.

The temperature paradox

• On the one hand we find evidence of very high temperatures.

• On the other hand we find the fire could not have been very hot.

Our task is to resolve that paradox.

Evidence of high temperatures

We have already dealt with two:• The “hot spot” on WTC 2.• Molten metal pouring from WTC 2.

Still to come:• Red hot metal from the basements.• Aerial sensing of hot areas in the debris. • Sulphidation and erosion of metal beam.• Small spheres of ferromagnetic material found in the

dust by Professor Steven Jones and others.

        Lead (Pb) Melts 

Faint Red 

Blood Red

WTC Air Temps due to fires (Eagar) 

*Aluminum Melts 

Medium Cherry 

Cherry 

Bright Cherry 

Salmon  

Dark Orange 

Orange 

Lemon 

Light Yellow 

White 

*Structural Steel        Melts 

  *Iron Melts  *Thermite (typical)

°F621 

930 

1075 

1200

1221 

1275 

1375 

1450 

1550 

1630 

1725 

1830 

1975 

2200 

~2750  

2800>4,500 

°C          327

500 

580 

650

660 

690 

745 

790 

845 

890 

940 

1000 

1080 

1205 

~1510  

1538>2500

K601 

770 

855 

923

933 

965 

1020 

1060 

1115 

1160 

1215 

1270 

1355 

1480 

~1783  

1811>2770

Weeks later yellow-hot metal was pulled from the rubble, 1000°C - too hot to be aluminium,

too hot to be from fires.

Hot spots in WTC rubble

• USGS aerial imaging,

16 Sep 01

• Hot Spot Temps ºC A 727, B 557, C 627, D517, E 437, F 427, G 747, H 547.

• Extremely hot!

Beam thinned to knife edge

Supporters of the official story argue that this could have happened in the debris pile.

Impossible: if hot enough to melt the steel it would have produced a rounded shape.

The sharp edge is proof of a very rapid process, melting and blowing away one side of the plate before the other side can get hot.

Further examples of thinning - eroded steel from WTC 7

FEMA describes sulphidation and oxidation of WTC7 steel beams in Appendix C.(Not discussed in NIST report.)

• “A liquid eutectic mixture containing primarily iron, oxygen, and sulfur formed during this hot corrosion attack on the steel.”

• Prof Steven Jones has found iron with sulphur in solidified metal from the towers and also in small spheres found in the dust. Sulphur is used in thermite to lower the melting point of the metal being cut. It is then called thermate.

Temperature required to melt steel

• Steel normally melts at about 1500o C.

• If sufficient elemental sulphur is present the melting temperature can be lowered to about 1000o C. But how can large amounts of elemental sulphur be present in the steelwork of a building?

Even 1000o C is far too hot to be achieved by heating with normal flames.

But thermite can do it. It produces white-hot molten iron at about 2500o C

Professor Steven Jones was the first established scientist to publish a hypothesis of explosive demolition on 9/11.In his 2005 paper he referred to the following:

• Eye witness reports of molten metal beneath the debris.• Symmetry of collapse.• The high temperature of recovered steel.• The antenna on WTC 1 dropping before the roof.• Eye witness reports of explosions.• The pulverization of concrete and ejection of beams.• The low temperature reported for the steel samples examined by NIST.• The lack of rigour in the NIST simulation.• The near free fall speed violating the law of conservation of momentum.

He criticized NIST for failing to include the collapse in their simulation. (Many people are unaware that their simulation stopped short of the actual collapse.)

He then pointed out that explosives and thermite could account for all observations.

A group submitted a Request for Correction to NIST in June 2007. On 27 Sept 2007 their overdue reply arrived. Their reply included:

"We are unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse". That's exactly the point we have been trying to make! We can help them – we can explain the collapse! We have APPEALED their unsatisfactory response to us. Find it in the Journal.

Professor Jones has placed his career on the line and has continued to work on 9/11. He has now reported the following:

• The discovery of small iron-rich spheres in the WTC dust. Analysis shows they have the fingerprint of the product of the thermate or thermite reaction. (2007)

• The discovery of small red chips in the dust. Analysis shows these are unreacted thermite. (2008)

Examine the following images. They show clear correspondence between known incendiary or explosive materials and the WTC dust. What more evidence could anyone possibly want?

Will the media now expose the fraudulence of the official story?

Iron-rich spheres in WTC Dust.

Aluminium is also present.

(SEM, Jones)

USGS and others report iron-rich spheres in WTC dust, too!

RJ Lee report on WTC dust: Spheres!

Note presence of iron (Fe), aluminium (Al) sulphur (S).Note presence of iron (Fe), aluminium (Al) sulphur (S).Which is WTC dust, which is Thermate?Which is WTC dust, which is Thermate?

X-EDS signaturesX-EDS signatures(Energy dispersive X-ray analysis)(Energy dispersive X-ray analysis)

Many dust samples have now been tested, revealing the following:

• Thermite type containing Si (silicon) is far more common than thermate type, containing S (sulphur). The ratio is about 10 to 1.

• This is found at all four sites.

• It is possible that the Si type is nano-thermite, which would be explosive, rather than incendiary.

Commercial Thermite, sphere.Note iron (Fe), aluminium (Al) silicon (Si).Note iron (Fe), aluminium (Al) silicon (Si).

Commercial thermite product and Liberty apartment dust

Commercial thermite product and sample 4, collected within 20 min.

Top: commercial thermite. Bottom: WTC dust.

-->

--> ? Could we find

unreacted thermite in the WTC dust?

DISCOVERY: Many “red chips” found in WTC dust (all 4 samples, S. E. Jones)

• Tough• Ferromagnetic• Bi-layered• Red one side

FTIR (K. Ryan)• Chemical

signature? • ~thermite!

Red Chips are Bi-layered, Red (left)/Grey(right)

Red layer

~40 microns

Grey layer

~25 microns

Could the grey layer be the outer surface of the package and the red layer the active ingredient?

Super-thermite exploding (LLNL report)

A single, minute red chip is heated with a small torch

The operator is wearing magnifying lenses.

Look for the white streak running toward his knuckle as it ignites.

Where does this evidence leave the official theory?

We have seen a lot of evidence for explosives.

With eyes now open to this possibility we will review the main essential components of the official explanation and see how they hold up.

The official explanation for collapse of the towers describes a two stage process:

1. One floor collapsed rapidly due to heat and plane damage.

2. The floors above fell as a block and the impact

caused the next floor below to collapse. The mass of this floor was added to the falling block which again fell, a pile driver action.

This was repeated for all floors and the whole tower was destroyed in 10 to 12 seconds. (See paper by Bazant and Zhou, relied upon in the NIST report.)

The impacts also provided the energy to pulverize and blow away the concrete and fling out much of the steel.

Is that what we saw?

• Was there a sudden collapse of one storey?

• Did the top section move as a block?

Watch the movement of the tower top.

What part collapses initially?

Is this compatible with the official collapse theory?

Check details in the following 8 images.

The north tower, WTC 1. Was it felled by fire?

Note dust puffs below main collapse area. Are these explosives going off prematurely?

(wtc1_jets_distant)

Temperature needed for collapse

• About 700 C.

• What colour would that be?

Cherry red hot.

FEMA questions their own ‘fire-collapse’ theory for WTC 7

• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) report [May 2002] on WTC 7 concluded that fire weakened the structure and caused it to collapse, however hidden in the body of the report is the following:

• “….the best hypothesis [fire caused collapse] has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed to resolve this issue.”

You would expect therefore that NIST would have completed this task. They have not done so. They have let a contract to a private firm to find how fire caused the collapse of WTC 7.

Six years have passed and the explanation has still not arrived. Apparently it is very difficult to explain as a result of fire!

Collapse initiation of WTC 1Is it red hot?

WTC 1 Steel regains strength as it cools.

Note: woman standing in plane impact site. How hot is it now?

What does NIST say about the temperature of the steel?

Core Temperature

NIST simulation data. Graphs are at 15 minute intervals. These show the core area of the towers was cooling at time of collapse. So the columns were either cool or cooling.

If cool they obviously could not collapse.

If cooling they had already survived higher temperatures without collapse so could not now collapse.

Less than 200 deg C - Blue Less than 500 deg C - Green

This data clearly contradicts the conclusion of the NIST report.

Temperature of steel samples

• NIST says they found few samples where the temperature had exceeded 250 C and none which had exceeded 600 C. They took care to collect the samples from the fire-damaged region.

How then could the towers collapse due to heat?

NIST’s own data proves their conclusion to be false.

How have they been able to get away with such astonishingly flagrant deception!?

The science appears conclusive, but perhaps you are nervous about science.

How about applying simple common sense to this problem.

It is not really difficult as the following slide shows.

Collapse time

9.2 seconds for the roof on the right in a vacuum. How long for the roof on the

left?

It started off at a rate which would have got the roof to the ground in 10.9 seconds. The official explanation asks you to believe that the top would only take 1.7 seconds longer to plough through 340 m of cold steel and concrete!

Is that possible? Are they joking? No, they are serious. Deadly serious.

Drawing from Joe Plummer of Stopthelie.com

What didn’t happen

• If one side gives way the C of G moves towards it and the building must topple.

• No “pulverizing” of concrete.

Conclusion• It is inescapable that explosives were used to

bring down all three WTC buildings. An obvious question arises:

• Who placed and detonated the explosives?

• The fact that the authorities went to great lengths to remove, hide, destroy and deny evidence of explosives appears relevant to this question.

Peer reviewed papers supporting all these claims can be found at the Journal of 9/11 Studies.

Stopped here in Sydney. Main scientific case finished. Good place to stop if other speakers will cover the following areas:

• Fallacies in the official theory• Contradictions in the NIST report• Thermite demo• What is PNAC• How deception was created• Consequences