Don > I were to hang my hat on a single piece of evidence that is easy to demonstrate, I'd probably pick debris being ejected far below the progression of the collapses as being the most bullet proof. And of course, WTC 7 is so obviously an implosion, with the penthouse falling into the center of the building first, I doubt any other explanation could be treated seriously.
I agree. But what I can't understand is that you accept the debris is evidence of explosives but not the dust, when both arise from the same process?
> Would air trapped between the floors be compressed, and account for the ejection of dust?
The more the air was compressed, the slower would have been the rate of "descent" of the building but, as we know, the building came down (diminished in height) at the natural rate of descent under gravity had the fall been unimpeded. Thus the floors and their contents offered no resistance to the "collapse" of the structure.
> How dense were the debris clouds?
From the photos, the clouds were not only very dense but also hot and traveling along the ground a a rate considerably faster than people could run. Furthermore the dust particles were very small (< 300 microns). It is all these characteristics that give the dust the characteristic of a pyroclastic flow.
> How much of the dust was created by the mechanics of a one billion pound building falling a quarter mile? etc.
The clue is the rate of "descent of the building". Although I say "descent of the building" the building didn't actually descend, it was blown away floor by floor as result of a controlled demolition which was timed to give the impression of a gravitational collapse. Only the remains of the steel structures "descended". This is different from the usual kind of demolition where, once the supports are removed, the building descends as an intact unit and then crumbles to bits on the ground as it falls. Thus, in a standard demolition, the building collapses from the bottom up, and in the WTC Towers, the buildings "collapsed" from the top down.
> From videos of other implosions I've seen, the debris clouds at the WTC weren't anything like what appears to be typical of implosions
I agree.
> I believe some of that may be accounted for by the simple absence of blast blankets used in commercial implosions, but how much is "some"?
That I can't answer.
> Did the dust clouds contain more or less than 20 million pounds of material?
In my opinion, they contained most of the solid material except for the steel.
> At first glance it looks big and wonderful, but when you bite into it, you find very little substance and a lot of hot air.
It is indeed "hot air" that was the cause of the problem! |
