I would encourage the authors to submit the paper to as many professional trade journals for publication and further peer review.
The science cannot be "debunked" away in this case as the authors have done an excellent job discussing their means, methods, and conclusions.

Folks, get your Jolt! in a can because its not in WTC 1 and 2!

I'm curious as well to find out why NIST stated it was "too chaotic" to model the global collapse of WTC 1 and 2, but WTC 7 was not chaotic enough to model its global demise?

"I would imagine that if you took the top expert in that type of work and gave him the assignment of bringing these buildings down with explosives, I would bet that he could do it." -1993-John Skilling, Head Structural Engineer WTC Towers

Good work, good analysis. and good info.

It seems that many people in the Truth Community and in the Debunker Community are not even aware of the official explanation for the collapse of the towers. NIST stops at the point of collapse initiation. Their analysis, "does not actually include the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached and collapse became inevitable..." They assume it to be inevitable do to the conclusions reached by Zdenek Bazant. So Bazant's explanation is essentially the "official" explanation after the point of collapse initiation. So how does Bazant explain the collapse of WTC 1 and 2, crush-down, crush up. Bazant et al write, "The gravity-driven progressive collapse of a tower consists of two phases—the crush-down, followed by crush-up..." So the upper block crushes the lower block in a pile-driver like effect. Once it finishes crushing the lower block, the upper block hits the rubble pile and experiences a crush-up. So essentially the upper block remains intact as it destroys the lower 90 some floors of steel and concrete and only self-destructs when it hits the rubble pile. NONSENSE!

Bazant actually states,

"During the crush-down, the falling upper part of tower, having a compacted layer of debris at its bottom, is crushing the lower part with negligible damage to itself. During the crush-up, the moving upper part of tower is being crushed at bottom by the compacted debris resting on the ground."

Bazant assumes that the upper block falls 3.7 meters(one story) at near free-fall onto the lower block. This is what is suppose to supply the necessary energy for the upper block to begin crushing the lower block. Bazant writes, "the upper part may be assumed to move through distance h[3.7 meters] almost in a free fall."

So how does the upper block separate itself from the lower block? Then how does fall 3.7 meters? After the plane impacted the towers the majority of the core and perimeter columns were still intact. These questions have never really be addressed by defenders of the official theory.

Bazant merely made up mathematical assumptions that have no basis in the visual evidence. This paper Szamboti and Macqueen demonstrate that conclusively.

p.s. haverman writes, "If you are willing to accept that the floors fall first, ripping loose from their relatively light connections to the central and outer
columns, everything starts to make sense."

But NIST doesn't accept that the floors fell first either. Their explanation for collapse initiation is the inward bowing of the perimeter columns caused by the catenary action of the sagging floor trusses. If the trusses didn't fail, there is no way the floors could have fallen first.

I posted this on David Chandler's Blog, and no one seemed impressed. I am posting it again because I think it is a useful analogy.

I used one off-color word in the post on David's blog. That was crude. I apologize to David and everyone else. I have changed the offending word to "heck" in this post.

The subject is; "What can and cannot be learned from an 'Initiating event.'"

A boxer lands a punch to his opponent's head. (That is the initiating event). His opponent falls down and lies motionless on the mat. The ref counts to 10, and the fight is over. The medics come out with a stretcher and carry the motionless fighter away.

An explanation that only goes as far as the initiating event tells us that the "winner" landed a punch to the loser's head. Then it just leaves us to conclude that the guy was knocked out.

BUT there are many other possibilities. Only a skillful and honest medical examination can tell us what happened after the punch landed.

After all - boxers are continuously landing punches to one another's heads. Some of these punches seem to have no effect at all and the fighter continues unfazed. Some stagger the opponent momentarily and he quickly recovers. Some stagger him so badly that he remains standing but the ref stops the fight because he is no longer able to defend himself adequately. Some knock him down and he remains conscious but doesn't have the will or co-ordination to get up. Some knock him out cold. Some kill him.

Anyway - we can't "conclude" that he was knocked out, just because his opponent landed a punch to his head and he fell down, remained motionless and was carried off in a stretcher. We need a competent medical examination to establish what actually happened to him.

Possibilities include:

1: He was knocked out cold by the punch.

2: He was not knocked down at all, but chose to fall down (as the punch landed) and stay down for any number of other possible reasons such as:

A: He was bribed

B: He was threatened

C: He was tired of getting punched

D: It occurred to him as he was lying there, that he would much rather be a veterinarian, and if got up he might suffer brain damage as the other guy was beating the heck out of him. He decided to fake total unconsciousness so as not to be labeled a coward.

E: Any number of other possibilities.

A skilled medical team might be able to establish the actual "collapse mechanism." If there were good videos from a number of angles, it might be possible by observing his eyes, his eyelids, his knees, the changes in color of his skin, the speed of his respiration, the relationship in time between the landing of the punch and the responses of his body -- to establish whether he collapsed voluntarily or involuntarily and what the "collapse mechanism" was.

A good video analysis of the punch, might show the velocity of the impact - whether or not the punch was actually pulled by his opponent impacting him with very little force, or whether the punch was accelerating with increasing force etc. etc. The possibilities are endless ---especially as a whole lot of money changed hands as a result of the fight.

Anyway - my point is - that to say "his opponent landed a punch to his head and it therefore follows that this punch knocked him out" is not science - it is rhetoric.

You would cetainly not go to war based on the "conclusion" that he was knocked out by an "initiating even" (the punch) , just because you saw a punch thrown that touched his forehead.

A friend of mine is trying to post to this blog but can't figure out how to register.
Is this blog closed to newcomers?

I certainly understand the need to keep from getting swamped if this forum is limited to current members.

Someone has asked at STJ--

"Can you please provide calculation results in this paper in SI units? or at least give conversion factors for converting results to SI Thanks"