Dr. Judy Wood ~ Evidence of Breakthrough Energy on 9/11

[TheBitPriest]

I thought blurred time and confusion were side-effects of the death ray. . .

[monkey424]

Please make an effort to look at the information I direct you to (or source the information independently) before adding to the discussion. If you are wondering where Dr Judy Wood's calculations are, then why not check her website:

http://www.drjudywood.com/

Don't be lazy. Do some research!

I will not aim to insult anyone here and I'd appreciate that attitude to be reciprocated. I appreciate good humour but not cutting sarcasm.

Some people are making an effort which I will acknowledge.

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Crimson Wizard

My mistake. I wasn't sure that you'd read the right part of the dialog. I see your point now.

I accept what you're saying, i.e. Michael Ober not remembering the sound of the building hitting the ground due to being in a state of shock / confusion. It is not a particularly strong argument on its own, but in the context of more concrete evidence (e.g. seismic data) this little piece of information plays more of a supporting roll.

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RickJ

It's great you're making the effort to provide some calculations. I encourage more of this.

My argument is not so much about the difference in strength between steel and aluminium but rather that that the analysis should also apply to the plane, i.e. an equal and opposite force will apply, so we should expect some damage to the plane the moment it comes in contact with the building (which we don't see). I'm not arguing that a plane can't penetrate a building; it probably can if going fast enough, but it would need to go much faster than what it did. From what I understand, it would need to travel at a speed comparable to the speed of sound through the material being penetrated. There's a YouTube video that shows a ping pong ball penetrating a paddle, leaving a round hole, and a user posts a comment explaining how this works. It's to do with the speed of sound. It's a great explanation so I've extracted the information here:

Spoiler

Supersonic Ping Pong Ball Going Through Paddle

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc-zmb3jAgo

Here's a video of a ping pong paddle being hit by a ball, flying at supersonic speeds, filmed at 30,000fps. You can watch the ball punch a hole through it, Wile E. Coyote style - which might surprise you if you think about it, since if you throw a rock at a window, the window shatters, it doesn't punch a hole. What's the difference?

The magic is in the speed of sound.

The question that first inspired me to look at this was one which Bob Laughlin (a mad scientist whom I used to TA for, and who later won the Nobel Prize) once set as an exam question: to design our new strategic missile defense system, Brilliant Pot Roast. It worked by putting lumps of pot roast with rocket engines in orbit, and firing them at ICBM's; students had to calculate pretty much everything required for this, including answering the key physical question of what happens when a pot roast strikes a nuclear missile.

It turns out that the most important factor in this is actually not about the structural integrity of the materials, since at high enough impact speed nearly anything will break. The most important factor turns out to be the speed of sound in the objects which are colliding, and how this compares to the speed of impact.

To see why this is, imagine throwing a baseball at a sheet of metal. When the baseball hits the metal, it will start to transfer its energy into the metal, and this energy might cause the metal to shake, bend, tear, or shatter, depending on just how much energy the ball had.

Now, let's consider how the energy gets from the ball into the metal. Start by thinking about ordinary baseball speeds. When the ball first touches the metal, it's going to literally push the metal some. The metal will then try to bounce back (because metal has a tensile strength and tries to keep its shape; which is to say, metal is a solid, and not a liquid or a gas) and you'll see a wave of motion go out from the impact point.

This makes sense: energy from the ball's impact will be radiated out through the metal in the form of a big vibration of the metal, which travels out in a wave, just like it would if you dropped a rock into a pond. (There, the restoration force comes from gravity rather than the tensile strength of water) But there's a name for a vibration wave travelling through a material: sound. Waves flowing through the material will therefore (by definition) travel at the speed of sound in that material, which can be computed from the physical properties of that material or simply looked up. (If you're interested, the formula for a solid is v = √K/ρ, where K is the bulk modulus of the material -- a measure of its stiffness -- and ρ is its density) Some typical values are:

The speed of sound in dry air at sea level: 330 meters per second.
The speed of sound in Uranium: 3,100 meters per second. (Very dense)
The speed of sound in ice: 3,100 meters per second. (Less dense than Uranium, but low strength)
The speed of sound in glass: 3,960 meters per second.
The speed of sound in steel: 6,100 meters per second. (Much higher tensile strength than glass)
The speed of sound in aluminum: 6,420 meters per second. (About the same tensile strength as steel, but less dense)

So if we imagine our baseball striking the metal, the ball will transfer its energy to the "primary impact area" -- that is, the area under the ball -- by directly pushing on the metal, and then that energy will flow out to the rest of the metal. Since the ball is travelling much slower than sound, what's really going to happen is that the ball starts to touch the metal, and sound waves start to travel out instantly; by the time all of the ball's energy has been transferred to the metal sheet, the energy will already have been carried far and wide by the sound waves. This means that the ball's energy will be spread widely across the whole metal sheet.

The exact consequences will then depend on things like the tensile strength of the metal, how brittle it is, and so on. For example, if the metal is brittle for some reason (perhaps it was improperly forged), or if it was a sheet of glass instead of metal, then cracks will start to appear in it. These cracks will spread out at the speed of sound, and by the time the ball has finished striking the glass, all of the glass will be cracked. The window will shatter into many pieces. If, on the other hand, the material is sturdy enough to withstand the impact, say a sheet of decent aluminum, then the vibration will go through all of the metal (making a loud "thump"), and if there's bending of the metal, it will bend the metal all over the place, into a big dome.

(And what happens to the baseball? The exact reverse! The baseball hits the metal, but the metal hits the baseball, too, so vibrations travel through it at the speed of sound in baseballs)

Now let's imagine what happens if it's a supersonic impact -- that is, if the impact speed is higher than the speed of sound in the target material. This time, the baseball will start to transfer its energy into the primary impact area, and it will keep doing so faster than energy can escape from there. This doesn't just mean that all the energy will be deposited into a small area: this also means that, if the material is going to be able to stop the baseball, it has to do so using only the strength of the material under the baseball, since the rest of the material "hasn't yet gotten the news" that the baseball has hit it; it's still at rest.

This means that if the energy transferred by the baseball is greater than the structural strength of the metal directly under it, the metal won't be able to stop it, and the baseball will keep going, and in fact the baseball will be gone before the message reaches beyond the primary impact area. That means that the baseball will basically leave a baseball-shaped hole in the metal, with only some minor tearing and unevenness around the edges. (That small area which did get the message from the very last bits of the baseball, just as it passed)

At this point, it turns out that the faster the ball went, the cleaner the hole will be. If it's fast enough, it will simply punch out the hole and disconnect it before almost any of the sound waves from the impact can get beyond the hole; that means that very little energy will reach the rest of the metal at all. On the other hand, if it isn't that much faster than sound, then the energy from the outer bits of the baseball might have gotten past the rim of the hole before the hole got fully punched, and that energy will escape into the rest of the metal and damage it.

So now, let's test the hypothesis: in the experiment below, a ping-pong ball is fired supersonically at a paddle. We would therefore predict a few things.

(1) The ball will punch a ball-shaped hole in the paddle.

(2) Because the ball isn't going that much faster than sound, some energy will escape, and push the paddle in the direction that the ball was moving. If the paddle is trying to be anchored in place by its handle, then that handle is going to be having a bad day.

(3) We can also look at the reverse problem: what happens to the ping-pong ball? Energy is transferred into it from the paddle, which should cause vibrations, and ping-pong balls, not being very robust, are likely to break. (In particular, if you imagine a giant wave flowing over the surface of the ball, the surface will tear) However, by the time the vibrations hit the ball, it will already have punched a hole through the paddle. So we expect the ball to be ripped to shreds, but this ripping will happen after the hole is punched.

I leave the video as an illustration that the laws of physics do, indeed, work.

(Oh, and what about Brilliant Pot Roast? Well, it depends on what the pot roast hits. A pot roast in space is basically ice, so its speed of sound is roughly 3,100m/s. If it hits the aluminum of the missile, that has a speed of sound of 6,100m/s; if it hits the actual core, that has a much lower speed of sound, 3,100m/s. The impact velocities could range widely, but they'll be on the scale of orbital velocities around the Earth. Apogee for a Minuteman III ICBM is 1,600km, travelling at roughly 6,600m/s. Orbital speed for a pot roast orbiting at that altitude is about 16,000m/s, which means that even if the pot roast hits the missile at a maximally unfortunate angle -- coming up on it from behind -- the relative speed at impact will be over 9,000m/s, well over the speed of sound in all of the materials concerned. This means that the pot roast will punch a fairly clean hole through the missile. At its minimum impact speed, that hole may be less clean, whereas at maximum speed (26,600m/s) it's going to be quite clean indeed. This may cause problems for the missile as it reenters the atmosphere, since it has an unexpected pot roast-sized hole in it, but it won't destroy the missile outright. The pot roast will therefore need to decelerate prior to impact, or alternately carry explosives with it.)

[close]

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DEBUNK THIS, BITCH!

(No offence intended. Just impersonating Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad).

Here are my three main points again.

1. The buildings fell too quickly
2. A larger debris pile should have resulted (not predominantly dust size)
3. A larger seismic signal should have been recorded

I'm trying to direct people to those points because they are the more robust pieces of evidence. You can of course talk about anything you like, but these are the tough ones.

Dr Judy Wood's website contains all the information and workings you need to know to support these three points. I will summarise the info here.

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1. The buildings fell too quickly

The 9/11 Commission Report says the buildings fell in about 10 seconds.

NIST estimated about 10 seconds for the first exterior panels to hit the ground (perhaps implying the collapse extended beyond this time) and seismic data indicates the duration of stuff hitting the ground to be about 10 seconds for each tower. Say for argument sake that the collapse time was 10 + 10 = 20 seconds.

WTC1 was about 417 m tall. The time for an object in free fall to hit the ground from this height (ignoring air resistance) is about 10 seconds.

Assuming a floor by floor progressive collapse, for 110 floors, and taking Newton's Third Law into account (i.e. structural resistance at each floor halting the progression), the collapse would take about 100 seconds.

See this webpage for detailed calculations.

http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/BBE/BilliardBalls.html

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2. A larger debris pile should have resulted (not predominantly dust size)

Consider these two photographs, likely taken on 9/11/01.





The photographs show an ambulance parked near the towers (about 10 m from WTC1) and the 'sphere' sculpture. The pictures show much of the ground is stable with debris that didn't penetrate the ground into the lower levels. We can see the building cladding and the tall arch design at their base that did not disappear below ground. Neither did stairwell B in WTC1 disappear below ground where 16 people survived.

The pictures also show, intuitively I believe, a lack of debris. But what should the debris pile have looked like? We can approach this problem mathematically.

Our friend Dr Greg Jenkins estimated the radius of the debris field to be about 2.5 times that of the building footprint based on aerial photographs. The radius of the debris field is therefore about 80 m.

Details for one of the WTC buildings Height: 417 m Footprint: 63 m x 63 m Concrete: 212,500 cubic yards = 162,468 cubic meters Steel: 100,000 Ton / (8 Ton per cubic m) = 12,500 cubic meters Total volume of building: 1,655,073 cubic meters Total volume of concrete and steel: 174,968 cubic meters Approx. volume of disturbed material in a pile: 262,452 cubic meters * * Bulking factor of 1.5 used to incorporate voids.

Using a basic cone shape to model the debris pile, we can calculate its height using Jenkin's radius and the calculated volume. I've superimposed this onto the building at its base.



This simple model should give us a fair idea of what the debris pile should have looked like.



Although there are indications that the sub levels below the towers did not collapse (e.g. arch cladding standing; stairwell B survived) we could nevertheless incorporate the basement volume into the model. Taking into account this additional accommodating volume (63 m x 63 m x 15 m) just above the subway tunnels that didn't suffer any damage, the new height is calculated to be 30 m.



This does not reconcile with what we see in the photographs.

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3. A larger seismic signal should have been recorded

Dr Wood compares the WTC seismic data to that of the Kingdome Stadium in Seattle.

Kingdome details

Founded on: soil
Mass of structure: 130,000 tons
Seismic Richter value: 2.3

WTC2 details

Founded on: bedrock
Mass of building: 500,000 tons
Seismic Richter value: 2.1

A hard rigid substance like rock is a better conductor of ground vibrations as opposed to soil. If the Kingdome was founded on rock, you'd expect a greater Richter value since there would be less of a dampening effect.

Given WTC2 is about 4 times more massive with 30 times more potential energy and with foundations anchored in rock, you would definitely expect the seismic recording to be higher.

See this webpage for more information.

http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/DEW/StarWarsBeam2.html

[Radiant]

LOL.

Again, Monkey, you don't get to demand that people address your specific points when you've been systematically ignoring their points.

[Mandle]

Assuming a floor by floor progressive collapse, for 110 floors, and taking Newton's Third Law into account (i.e. structural resistance at each floor halting the progression), the collapse would take about 100 seconds.

So wait what?

You actually expected to see the catastrophic collapse of a building that had the massive weight of the top portion of it driving it downwards take 100 seconds to elapse???

What would that actually look like in real life?

The massive top portion that fell on the lower levels would just fall and sit for the exact ammount of time required for it to break that next particular structural integrity and then proceed down to the next level and then sit there for the amount of time needed by the stress calculations until it fell to the next level down?

So it would descend through a series of stops and starts?

Unfortunately mate, in the real world, catastrophic events involving a lot of tonnage and a lot of gravity force acceleration do not work level by level in ways that our calculations can even begin to remotely predict...

Even the best science can still only make ball-park predictions on these kind of massive real-world simulations, and even that is based mostly on the very few real world test runs they have been able to study...And don't say that controlled demolitions of buildings even apply here because those guys go in and cut part-way through load-supporting girders and beams to aid in the demolition and make it as "soft" as possible so all of that data it just out the window in real world cases...

You have not even attempted to answer the question of the debris pushed outwards during the collapse falling much faster than the actual collapse of the central structure...In fact, the fact that debris was even pushed outwards implies that normal floor-by-floor physics was involved in the collapse in that each floor could not fully absorb the impact of the fall and applied Newton's Third Law to the falling debris and had to push the debris sideways instead of instantly downwards as in the case of "dustification"...

So how did all that lateral debris fall much faster than the actual building that was collapsing floor by floor?

Did Galileo not take into account the impact of an airplane into the Leaning Tower Of Pisa?

EDIT: I can even explain Dr. Woods' "dustification": Couldn't it be possible that a lot of concrete structures being driven at massive velocity into each other during the collapse could result in them impacting on each other and this causing a massive "snowball" effect in which the powderised/pulverized concrete exploded outwards in its "dustified" state? This would also account for the lack of concrete material that one would expect to see piled up around the site at Ground Zero. It would also account for the "snowball" picture. It would also explain the amount of "dust" that floated around Manhatten that day or was pulled up into the atmosphere via the impact of the collapse...

In fact: Doesn't the whole concept that concrete impacting down upon concrete and crushing itself into the lightweight powder of "dustification" during the collapse kind of destroy the need for any kind of "power beam" weapon completely?

Then all you are left with it the relatively slim steel structure of the building to account for the debris at Ground Zero...

[Snarky]

1. The buildings fell too quickly

The 9/11 Commission Report says the buildings fell in about 10 seconds.

NIST estimated about 10 seconds for the first exterior panels to hit the ground (perhaps implying the collapse extended beyond this time) and seismic data indicates the duration of stuff hitting the ground to be about 10 seconds for each tower. Say for argument sake that the collapse time was 10 + 10 = 20 seconds.

WTC1 was about 417 m tall. The time for an object in free fall to hit the ground from this height (ignoring air resistance) is about 10 seconds.

Assuming a floor by floor progressive collapse, for 110 floors, and taking Newton's Third Law into account (i.e. structural resistance at each floor halting the progression), the collapse would take about 100 seconds.

See this webpage for detailed calculations.

http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/BBE/BilliardBalls.html

This one at least is easy to refute. Her billiard ball model is fundamentally flawed, as can be seen at a glance by the fact that it is linear (or approaches it): it predicts that time of collapse will increase linearly with height of the building. Since the resistance of each floor is presumably roughly constant* while the momentum of the crashing floors from above is growing all the time (increasing mass, and â€" as it turns out, speed), the collapse will necessarily have been accelerating, giving a parabolic curve. In terms of her model, the mistake is to assume that each billiard ball is just "dropped" from its height when passed by that above, when in fact it is knocked downwards with force. (Actually, there are a number of other things wrong with it as well.) Her response in the appendix is nonsense: she says she's assuming elastic collisions, but then says "If all of the momentum is transferred from Block-A to Block-B, the next floor, Block-A will stop moving momentarily, even if there is no resistance for the next block to start moving." That's the complete opposite of an elastic collision! I mean, you're the one who keeps talking about Newton's third law, but here we have Dr. Wood fail to properly deal with momentum.

She's also assuming that the collapse started from the top floor, which is not what happened, and transparently absurd. (Yes, of course the whole building couldn't have been brought down just from the top floor falling down! It's the fact that each building failed much further down that led to the catastrophic collapse of the entire structure.)

Without necessarily endorsing every detail of the model (or its results), this at least shows a reasonable collapse profile: http://www.debunking911.com/freefall.htm
The time it would actually have taken depends mainly on the resistance of the floors (and how much energy would be dissipated in other ways). You can see here that a slightly more reasonable model (by a Woods sympathizer) gives e.g. 30 seconds for the collapse, while a more realistic one (post 12, by AlienSpaceBat) gives between 15-21 seconds depending on assumptions. (Sorry for the quality of these pages, but apparently no respectable scientists have taken Wood seriously enough to bother to debunk.)

It would take a more detailed model to really predict the collapse time properly (and we'd no doubt be left with uncertainty, as Mandle says), but back-of-the-envelope calculations such as these show that observed time is within the ball park of what perfectly normal physics suggest.

* In fact, lower floors may have been somewhat sturdier because they had to carry the weight of the whole building, but this is a minor detail.

[Darth Mandarb]

3. A larger seismic signal should have been recorded

Dr Wood compares the WTC seismic data to that of the Kingdome Stadium in Seattle.

Kingdome details

Founded on: soil
Mass of structure: 130,000 tons
Seismic Richter value: 2.3

WTC2 details

Founded on: bedrock
Mass of building: 500,000 tons
Seismic Richter value: 2.1

A hard rigid substance like rock is a better conductor of ground vibrations as opposed to soil. If the Kingdome was founded on rock, you'd expect a greater Richter value since there would be less of a dampening effect.

Given WTC2 is about 4 times more massive with 30 times more potential energy and with foundations anchored in rock, you would definitely expect the seismic recording to be higher.

See this webpage for more information.

http://www.drjudywood.com/articles/DEW/StarWarsBeam2.html

I think this one is easy to dismiss as well. 

Now I am not, admittedly, an expert in such matters but I think this make sense:

The Kingdome was much less massive (in total) but had a much larger footprint than either of the towers.  The Kingdome's footprint (just the building) was roughly 9 acres [ source ] and the footprint of each twin tower was roughly 1 acre (64x64m or ~210') [ source ].  Now, again, I'm not expert but it seems common sense to me that the greater the area impacted the larger the seismic reading would be.  Since the Kingdome's footprint was roughly 9 times the size of each tower's it seems obvious to me it would shake the ground a lot more.

Also; I'm not a geologist by any stretch of the imagination but I believe the seismic readings are based on movement/vibration of the ground (not how loud it is)... it would seem to my uneducated mind that bedrock (under the towers), being far more "stable" than soft ground (under the kingdome) would move less than soft ground and a lower seismic reading would seem accurate to me anyway.  Again, not a geologist so maybe it's possible it's the exact opposite?  Anybody know this?

[Crimson Wizard]

The Kingdome was much less massive (in total) but had a much larger footprint than either of the towers.  The Kingdome's footprint (just the building) was roughly 9 acres [ source ] and the footprint of each twin tower was roughly 1 acre (64x64m or ~210') [ source ].  Now, again, I'm not expert but it seems common sense to me that the greater the area impacted the larger the seismic reading would be.

My remaining memories of physics tell me opposite .
The less is the area, the higher is mass per area value, and the stronger is impact.

I believe the seismic readings are based on movement/vibration of the ground (not how loud it is)... it would seem to my uneducated mind that bedrock (under the towers), being far more "stable" than soft ground (under the kingdome) would move less than soft ground and a lower seismic reading would seem accurate to me anyway.

IIRC the waves are always stronger in hard and dense material, than in soft or sparse material.


What I wonder, though, what was the distance between the crash sites and registereing devices. That would be interesting to compare.
E: OTOH the values they are giving in the article could be not the actual values they registered, but calculated value of epicenter? Actually, I am getting curious on how this is defined, I might look it up later.

EDIT: Also, does the Kingdome seismic data include effect from explosives? The Dr.Wood's text references an article from the "Seattle Times", which sounds like a general newspaper (which is strange on its own BTW, why would a scientist use common media materials for this research?). It does not give such details.


EDIT2:
There is another thought I got after thinking about what Darth said on the building areas.
How correct is Dr.Wood's use of seismic values extrapolation in this case?

Think about this: the Kingdome is a very simple structure, basically one-storeyed building (although large one). When exploded, it should have collapse all at once, and all its mass hit the ground, producing energy for seismic wave almost at the same time.

On contrary, the WWC tower is a tall building that collapsed gradually. May we suggest that its mass was producing energy of seismic waves by "parts"?

These are speculations, because I am at the limits of my knowledge here.

[NickyNyce]

Here's an interesting read. Please take the time to read this monkey. I know that it's not something Dr. Judy Wood wrote, so you'll probably just dismiss it, but for the rest of us, I find it very interesting.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a6384/debunking-911-myths-world-trade-center/

I guess Judy didn't realize that this video would surface. Another picture of hers debunked.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rcdq1gS2RJA

This is a long video, but it tells the tale of the people that were there. It shows video of giant piles of steel and exactly what the after math was like. Not one person mentions energy beams and silly things that Judy mentions. I would much rather believe these guys than the book that Judy is selling. The first half shows the piles and piles of steel that was supposed to be turned to dust.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8POCF37G2hE#

[Radiant]

Here's an interesting read. Please take the time to read this monkey. I know that it's not something Dr. Judy Wood wrote, so you'll probably just dismiss it, but for the rest of us, I find it very interesting.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a6384/debunking-911-myths-world-trade-center/

Indeed. Monkey, please make an effort to look at the information you are directed to, before adding to the discussion. Don't be lazy. Do some research!

[RickJ]

I'm not arguing that a plane can't penetrate a building

Well, until now you have been insiting just that ... that it is physically impossible for a plane to penetrate a building.  As I understand it, this whole energy weapon idea rests upon this assumption.

Also there doesn't appear to be calcyulations of this sort on Judy Wood's site.  Perhaps you could be more specific and direct me to what you ar referring.

[edit]added link physically impossible to post containing this:

...
BitPriest
...
I don't doubt the towers were hit by what appeared to be planes. My argument is that many have missed the subtlety of the impact. When looked at critically one should realise that what we saw was physically impossible. Some people may argue that a bullet can penetrate a given material and therefore a plane can penetrating a building. However bullets are designed to do that - they are designed as a weapon. Passenger airliners are not designed as a weapon. Planes have fragile wings and a tail that you would expect to break on impact. Planes are designed with a much lower factor of safety than buildings, i.e. permanent structures like buildings are effectively over-designed typically by a factor of 3, whereas planes are just designed to stay up in the air with relatively little over-design or extra weight. Aluminium is weaker than steel by a ratio of about 3 to 5. To create a plane shaped hole in the building the plane would need to be travelling much faster at a speed comparable to that of the speed of sound in steel (provided the plane does not tear apart while travelling at such speed).
...

[monkey424]

Radiant

I said you can talk about anything you like, but I'd prefer to focus on these three points for now. I'll also look at what others post and respond like I always try to do. I don't know why you're suggesting I systematically ignore other peoples' posts. Give me a break mate.

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Mandle

The billiard ball example is not meant to predict what would actually happen. Dr Wood says in reality there would not be enough energy to both pulverize material AND initiate the next collapse in sequence. Her example is akin to the Myth Busters forcing something to fail (i.e. blowing it up) when it cannot be done by conventional means. Please read the detail on Wood's website. One diagram shows that in order for the collapse to complete in 10 seconds, floors would need to start moving before the ones above had actually reached them.

"So how did all that lateral debris fall much faster than the actual building that was collapsing floor by floor?"

I'm not really following what you're trying to say here. That 'lateral debris' falls faster because it's in free fall, i.e. no resistance. Are you suggesting this proves the progressive collapse model is valid?

Your suggestion that concrete smashing against concrete would produce vast amounts of dust is incorrect. Look at collapsed buildings after an earthquake to see what a debris pile should look like.

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Snarky

Again, the billiard ball example is not meant to model reality. It is forcing a solution by ignoring the reality that more energy would actually be required to both pulverize material AND initiate the next collapse in sequence.

You've found the momentum info in the appendices. That's good. Dr Wood looks at two cases: inelastic and elastic collisions. The latter is like a tennis ball bouncing off the ground, or two billiard balls colliding. Wood says: "If all of the momentum is transferred from Block-A to Block-B, the next floor, Block-A will stop moving momentarily, even if there is no resistance for the next block to start moving." This describes an elastic collision. To use billiard balls: ball A transfers momentum to ball B, causing ball A to stop moving in that direction.

Mandle had already posted that article that references analysis by Dr Frank Greening. And I have already pointed out, Greening is ignoring Newton's third law (see HERE). So by my definition, he is full of shit.

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NickyNyce

The first link you provided says nothing about Dr Woods work. I'm not sure what the second video is meant to show or prove. And the third video I'll watch a bit later but I dare say it will omit much of the evidence I'm trying to get you guys to focus on.

Btw, you didn't respond to my earlier post. I'm interest to know what you can tell me as a local of NY. What has been happening at the site over the years? I'm interested to know what buildings were completely dismantled and rebuilt, such as Bankers Trust. Why did it need to be dismantled?

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RickJ

I stand corrected. I said WHAT WE SAW was physically impossible, not that a plane can't go through a building. I don't wish to repeat myself so read what I wrote again carefully.

FYI - Judy Wood does not focus on the planes. Others do. All she says about the planes is that real planes couldn't take down the WTC buildings, and neither could fake ones.

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SEISMIC DATA

Darth: Thanks for thinking about the seismic data.

CW: Thanks for correctly explaining the concepts. I hadn't thought about the area (pressure = force / area, so the smaller the area the larger the pressure), although in this case I believe it's the impulse energy from multiple impacts to the ground that's more relevant. The seismic data is interpreted by the guys at the seismic recording stations, and the distance from the event epicentre to the stations is accounted for in the Richter Magnitude calculations.

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AMBULANCE

I understand that the ambulance was about 10 m away from WTC 1 (source) but wasn't totally convinced. So I attempted to find its location based on some features in the photograph. By matching up several reference points, it does indeed look like the ambulance was within about 10 m from WTC 1.

   

   

The other photograph of this scene was extracted from a video to create a panoramic view. The video appears to be looking down on the people and shows part of a building on the right, so I guessed it was taken from the Merrill Lynch Building across West Street. The images show WTC 7 still standing, so the picture was taken on 9/11.

Where is the nominal 15 m tall stack of debris that should be on top of that ambulance?

[Radiant]

I said you can talk about anything you like, but I'd prefer to focus on these three points for now.

Yes, we get that. The point is that you if you purport to be interested in the science behind this, you can't just avoid discussing anything that contradicts your pet theory. Science doesn't work that way.

[Snarky]

Snarky

Again, the billiard ball example is not meant to model reality. It is forcing a solution by ignoring the reality that more energy would actually be required to both pulverize material AND initiate the next collapse in sequence.

But it is meant to represent a hypothetical "ideal" (meaning maximum theoretical speed of collapse) model, yet it is nothing of the sort. If anything, what it represents is a scenario where:

-The top floor falls down on the second-top floor
-The impact is just enough to cause the support of that floor to crumble, causing it to fall from a stand-still, but does not transmit to it any additional downward impulse
-At this point, the top floor has no further interaction with the building: it either disappears (is, perhaps, pulverized?), or if it continues falling (on the graph it appears to do so, unaffected by having hit the floor below) it does so around the rest of the building
-The second-top floor now falls onto the floor below, repeating the process

It is clear that all the assumptions in this model are wrong, and tend to give a slower-than-realistic speed of collapse.

You've found the momentum info in the appendices. That's good. Dr Wood looks at two cases: inelastic and elastic collisions. The latter is like a tennis ball bouncing off the ground, or two billiard balls colliding. Wood says: "If all of the momentum is transferred from Block-A to Block-B, the next floor, Block-A will stop moving momentarily, even if there is no resistance for the next block to start moving." This describes an elastic collision. To use billiard balls: ball A transfers momentum to ball B, causing ball A to stop moving in that direction.

Yes, sorry, I got confused by the inconsistencies and mistakes in her discussion, which made me flip the inelastic/elastic definitions. The problem is that she only discusses an elastic collision model: the first billiard ball model is fundamentally wrong, but if anything it more closely resembles an elastic model. The second is wrong because while it accepts that momentum is transferred from "Block A" to "Block B", it forgets that Block B will then continue to accelerate under gravity before it hits Block C, so momentum is increasing between each impact.

In a correct version of the elastic billiard ball model, all the momentum of the floor from above is transferred to the floor below, so it essentially continues the "free fall" of that floor (since we're assuming no energy is lost in breaking the floors), while the floor above "bounces" (stops momentarily before resuming free fall from a stationary position). The result is something like this:

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/MiyhvHd.png[/imgzoom]

Notice that the big difference from Dr. Wood's (incorrect) model is that the collapse of each floor level below is initiated as soon as the first parabola intersects: this is necessary in an ideal elastic model, since the momentum is simply transferred between equal masses, constantly accelerating under gravity, so the "front" of the collapse follows a free-fall path.

In fact, this is a consequence of Newtons's third law that you are so keen on.

And yes, obviously this is an idealization, with no actual slowdown from the crushing of the building structure, but the result is quite strikingly different from Dr Wood's 100 second estimate, isn't it?

In any case, I think a perfectly inelastic model (as in the second link I posted) is more appropriate in this case.

Mandle had already posted that article that references analysis by Dr Frank Greening. And I have already pointed out, Greening is ignoring Newton's third law (see HERE). So by my definition, he is full of shit.

Like I said, I don't endorse the model, since I haven't examined it in detail. But it shows a far more reasonable collapse profile than Dr. Wood's. I also don't feel like going down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out what Dr. Greening meant by his comments (I assume he wasn't trying to say that Newton's third law is somehow suspended in a collapsing building, just that you can't apply it in the way they had).

[NickyNyce]

The first link I provided is not something that Judy wrote, and I see now that if Judy didn't say or write it, you won't take it seriously. Judy is right and the rest of the world is wrong.

The second link shows that Judy is using pictures in her book and trying to make people think that only a death ray could cause the damage. So you should take this into consideration. Its written in her own words. But now the video is out, and Judy should feel very silly that falling debris was the reason why the fire truck looks like that..not a death ray.

I don't live in the city, I live near it and could see the towers from where I live. I have not gone to ground zero so I can't give you any info about those buildings.


Here is some more video. Judy claims that the underground mall and parking garage were unscathed. This is not true.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PCndKGqkqKc

This is what falling pennies did to the surrounding buildings.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SwKx_NtgoIs

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QWEiEB69-E0

How the towers were built in the link below possibly played a big part in how they collapsed. Maybe there was a flaw in the way they were built. I don't know exactly why these towers collapsed as they did, but I just don't see anything that says death ray from what I have seen.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mcaz6N75mjM

[monkey424]

Snarky

Billiard ball example

The billiard ball example is simply using billiard balls as timing devices, each starting at rest and then accelerating at free fall when triggered, like a relay race. Billiard balls are not interacting in this example; they are just timing devices. It is interesting to note that one billiard ball dropped from the top of the building takes about 10 seconds to hit the ground at free fall. Additional billiard balls are introduced to incorporate a resistance or hauling effect in the progression. Different arrangements of billiard balls are used to show different scenarios. The example serves to illustrate that the overall collapse (assuming it is possible) should have taken longer than 10 seconds. The example should not be confused with attempting to calculate an actual collapse time.

Elastic collisions

The graph you have produced illustrates perfect elastic collisions and looks correct to me.

What does Judy Wood say here?

If Block-A stops moving, after triggering the next sequence, the mass of Block-A will not arrive in time to transfer momentum to the next "pancaking" between Block-B and Block-C.  In other words, the momentum will not be increased as the "collapse" progresses.

I can see how Dr Wood's notes are confusing. Some more diagrams would have been helpful! She seems to be contradicting herself here. In the context of elastic collisions, Block-A transfers momentum to Block-B. Isn't this "transfer" synonymous with "triggering the next sequence"? What does she mean Block-A will not arrive in time to transfer momentum - hasn't that already happened? It's not very clear, but I think she means that momentum will not increase in the sense that it won't increase beyond free fall speed. That's the only interpretation I can think of. Your explanation and graph makes more sense to me.

Inelastic collisions

Inelastic collisions are probably a more realistic model. Judy Wood explains this type of collision with the equation demonstrating that when two bodies of equal mass impact and "stick" together they will continue to travel at half their original speed, i.e. conservation of momentum. That link you provided (HERE) includes the correct governing equations to model the collapse, which when plotted look like this.



So using this model of collapse, the overall collapse time should be somewhere between 10 and 100 seconds.

Reality check

Judy Wood does not claim that the collapse should have taken 100 seconds. Rather, she argues that the progressive collapse or "pancake" model is fundamentally wrong.

According to the pancake theory, one floor fails and falls onto the floor below, causing it to fail and fall on the floor below that one, and so forth. The "pancake theory" implies that this continues all the way to the ground floor. In the case of both WTC towers, we didn't see the floors piled up when the event was all over, but rather a pulverization of the floors throughout the event. So, clearly we cannot assume that the floors stacked up like pancakes.  Looking at the data, we take the conservative approach that a falling floor initiates the fall of the one below, while itself becoming pulverized.  In other words, when one floor impacts another, the small amount of kinetic energy from the falling floor is consumed (a) by pulverizing the floor and (b) by breaking free the next floor.  In reality, there isn't enough kinetic energy to do either.*

*

Spoiler

Wood references:

Trumpman
Paper: http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/trumpman/CoreAnalysisFinal.htm

Hoffman
Paper: http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/dustvolume/index.html
YouTube vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKG2nWlQM80

Note: If you don't like Wood's presentation style, you may prefer Hoffman.

[close]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NickyNyce

The first link you posted on 5 June entitled "Debunking the 9/11 Myths" does not have anything to do with Judy Wood's work. I can't see the relevance of this article. I see it as a bunch of claims that are arguably 'easy targets' and attempts to debunk them. It does not attempt to address these points:

1. The buildings fell too quickly
2. A larger debris pile should have resulted (not predominantly dust size)
3. A larger seismic signal should have been recorded

I want to focus on the above three points because:
A) they are relevant to this thread about Judy Wood and what she talks about
B) they are not 'easy targets' to debunk as some would imagine

I have watched your videos and noted the following:

Video 1
9/11: Ground Zero's Responders (2012)
- dust
- paper
- ground rumbling prior to collapse
- building 7 quiet when it came down
- spontaneous fires
- boots 'melting' and "needed replacing every two days"

Video 2
WTC Underground Images @ 100ft
- voids / space below ground big enough for people to enter implies it did not all cave in
- "the deeper they went, the more preserved everything was"
- 100 feet down* the floors were virtually untouched
- a lot of the cars were in pristine condition and were driven out
- remains of many victims not found

* Note the WTC basement extended to bedrock that is 70 feet below ground, not 100 feet..

Debris obviously penetrated in some areas and Judy Wood is not denying this.

These videos paint a clearer picture of what happened at Ground Zero.

9/11 Debris: Investigation of Ground Zero, Pt. 1
9/11 Debris: Investigation of Ground Zero, Pt. 2

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DEBRIS PILE

Can anyone tell me what's wrong with this picture?

[RickJ]

1. The buildings fell too quickly

Inelastic collisions are probably a more realistic model. Judy Wood explains this type of collision with the equation demonstrating that when two bodies of equal mass impact and “stick” together they will continue to travel at half their original speed, i.e. conservation of momentum. That link you provided (HERE) includes the correct governing equations to model the collapse, which when plotted look like this.

This assumes both objects are of equal masses and ignores gravatitional acceleration.  Obviously a progressively increassing number of floors have more mass than an single floor.  So as the collapse proceeds, the falling mass's velocity loss is proportionally smaller and smaller.  The velocity of the upper mass accelerates between floor collisions at 32 ft/s/s.

Judy Wood does not claim that the collapse should have taken 100 seconds. Rather, she argues that the progressive collapse or “pancake” model is fundamentally wrong.

Now I'm confussed because before, in this post you said "SOME of [Judy Wood's] the evidence is: ... 1. The towers fell at free fall speed.".

Here is a demolition expert with first hand knowledge of 911/WTC collapse who disagrees.  He explains the difference between a controlled demolition and the progressive collapse of the towers.  In doing so he clearly points out where and when the failure of the structual elements occur. 
http://www.jod911.com/WTC%20COLLAPSE%20STUDY%20BBlanchard%208-8-06.pdf

2. A larger debris pile should have resulted (not predominantly dust size)
Just from this photo it can be clearly seen that dust and debris are distributed over a much larger area than you are assuming.  Also, the article I linked above explains how the outer structual elements are thrown away from the buildings as they collapsed.


3. A larger seismic signal should have been recorded
Again in the linked article, The author and his colleagues at Protec, an authority on explosive demolition of structures, disagree (see assertion #4). 
They say that the seismic data is consistent with a building collapse and that a stronger signal would have been expected if explosives were used.  The signal was weaker because no explosives were used.

[Crimson Wizard]

Again in the linked article, The author and his colleagues at Protec, an authority on explosive demolition of structures, disagree (see assertion #4). 
They say that the seismic data is consistent with a building collapse and that a stronger signal would have been expected if explosives were used.  The signal was weaker because no explosives were used.

BTW, this is something I tried to point out in the post above: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=51989.msg636514951#msg636514951

[NickyNyce]

You totally dismissed the 2nd video I posted on June 5th. Why?..because it shows that Judy is wrong. She put that picture in her book and said herself...what could make a fire truck wilt like this?...REALITY JUDY, here's the video to prove it! Good job of completely avoiding this.

As for the ambulance. Are you saying that it's impossible that debris didn't hit it?

Your first video that you posted says that the towers were an egg crate construction that is about 95 percent of air, explaining why the rubble after the collapse was only a few stories high. You and Judy can't understand why there was so much dust, but your video mentions that there was 5 million sq ft of gypsum, 6 acres of marble and 425,000 cubic yards of concrete. Why would it be surprising to see dust?

200,000 tons of steel came crashing down, crushing each floor. I'm not surprised that there weren't any computers or copy machines. They were crushed into tiny little pieces, why is that hard to believe?

No building in the world that was built like the trade center towers ever had planes crashed into it and caught fire and collapsed before. There is no comparison to make here, but Judy apparently knows exactly what it should look like, including that people falling from the windows should be praying and holding pictures and giving a piece sign while falling. Some of the things that she has said is so outrageous that you can't help but do the Judy giggle...

Judy is taking advantage of an extraordinary occurrence that is not easily explainable and is making money off of it.

[monkey424]

RickJ

1. The buildings fell too quickly

Obviously a progressively increasing number of floors have more mass than an single floor.  So as the collapse proceeds, the falling mass's velocity loss is proportionally smaller and smaller.

This is incorrect. Conservation of momentum says that as two masses impact and combine (inelastic collision), then the resulting velocity decreases. This means the collapse could not have been faster than free fall speed. My argument is that resistance in the progression (assuming there's enough energy to keep it going) should slow things down and produce an overall collapse time somewhere between 10 and 100 seconds depending on how much energy is lost along the way.



The towers did indeed fall near free fall speed. Does this make sense?

The demolition expert you mention, Brent Blanchard, focusses on the implausibility of a controlled demolition by conventional means (e.g. dynamite). This is fine, but he instead supports the progressive gravity-driven collapse model and does not question the implausibility of this. In reality, under the gravity-driven "pancake" model, there wouldn't be enough energy to pulverise floors and also keep the collapse going. *

*

Spoiler

Wood references:

Trumpman
Paper: http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/trumpman/CoreAnalysisFinal.htm

Hoffman
Paper: http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/dustvolume/index.html
YouTube vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKG2nWlQM80

[close]

---

2. A larger debris pile should have resulted (not predominantly dust size)



This picture shows a lot of dust. If debris is present, it is obscured by dust. Look at images in the aftermath that show conditions unobscured by dust to see what the debris radius is. I just used the debris radius quoted by Greg Jenkins. You can use a larger radius if you like but ultimately I'd still expect to see that ambulance buried by rubble. Why not try doing come calculations? See what you get.

---

3. A larger seismic signal should have been recorded

"[The article says] the seismic data is consistent with a building collapse and that a stronger signal would have been expected if explosives were used.  The signal was weaker because no explosives were used."

I agree explosives weren't used and the seismic data may be consistent with a building collapse, but is it consistent with a 110 story building founded on bedrock?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Crimson Wizard

You made some good points earlier which deserve a response.

"Does the Kingdome seismic data include effect from explosives?"

I don't know. Here is a video showing the demolition of the Seattle Kingdome stadium. I'd imagine the initial explosives stage would be treated separately from the final collapse stage and the calculated Richter value would apply to the latter (although I can still hear explosives while it is collapsing).

Assuming the Seattle Kingdome collapsed "all at once", and the WTC tower collapsed "in parts", shouldn't this be reflected in the seismic signal?

I'd argue this would contradict the official "pancake" theory of collapse. If you accept pancaking of floors, then we should see jack-hammering type impulses all the way down, increasing in magnitude as the mass accumulated, with the biggest "all at once" impulse at the end.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

NickyNyce

Firetruck

Regarding your video.

I'm not convinced this video proves anything. What caused the wilting? Does falling debris cause a truck to wilt? Fire might be a more likely culprit; after all, we've seen evidence of vehicles on fire elsewhere.



Curiously, it seems this same fire truck is now in the 9/11 memorial museum. Can you explain ALL the damage? Fire might explain wilting, but what about the corrosion?

Also, don't forget witness testimony of fire trucks exploding! (Lieutenant Rene Davila, p. 27/28)

---

Lack of debris and dust

The buildings may be 95% air, but the twin towers together comprised about 1 million tonnes of steel and concrete. Here's the data again:

Details for one of the WTC buildings Height: 417 m Footprint: 63 m x 63 m Concrete: 212,500 cubic yards = 162,468 cubic meters Steel: 100,000 Ton / (8 Ton per cubic m) = 12,500 cubic meters Total volume of building: 1,655,073 cubic meters Total volume of concrete and steel: 174,968 cubic meters Approx. volume of disturbed material in a pile: 262,452 cubic meters * * Bulking factor of 1.5 used to incorporate voids.

Why not try doing some calculations? How high should the debris pile be? Given the ambulance was only parked 10 m away from the building, how likely is it that it survived let alone is visible at all?

I accept things can be smashed into pieces. But I'd expect the pieces to range in size: from tiny to medium and large. I'd expect some pieces to be large enough to be recognisable. The witness testimony however indicates an overwhelming lack of recognisable objects.

[Snarky]

Snarky

Billiard ball example

The billiard ball example is simply using billiard balls as timing devices, each starting at rest and then accelerating at free fall when triggered, like a relay race. Billiard balls are not interacting in this example; they are just timing devices. It is interesting to note that one billiard ball dropped from the top of the building takes about 10 seconds to hit the ground at free fall. Additional billiard balls are introduced to incorporate a resistance or hauling effect in the progression. Different arrangements of billiard balls are used to show different scenarios. The example serves to illustrate that the overall collapse (assuming it is possible) should have taken longer than 10 seconds. The example should not be confused with attempting to calculate an actual collapse time.

But if the billiard ball examples are to have any bearing on the argument at all, they must bear some relationship to the models in question. Wood's billiard ball examples don't. The "Case 2" model is said to be a way to estimate how long the collapse would (at least) take in the "pancake model" ("So, even though the mechanism to trigger the "pancaking" of each floor seems to elude us,  let's consider the time we would expect for such a collapse. To illustrate the timing for this domino effect, we will use a sequence of falling billiard balls, where each billiard ball triggers the release of the next billiard ball in the sequence by simply passing it in space.") The key element of the pancake model is that when floors from above crash into the lower ones, they'll push them down (so the lower floors won't just start free-falling from a rest state), but the Case 2 billiard ball simulation doesn't account for this, yet claims that "Thus, if anything, this means the calculated collapse times are more generous to the official story than they need to be."

It's not. It's a bizarre distraction (the model itself makes no sense) that fails to provide any information about the pancake scenario. Claiming that it does by itself demonstrates such incompetence that it's enough to discredit her completely: none of her models or calculations can be taken seriously.

RickJ

1. The buildings fell too quickly

Obviously a progressively increasing number of floors have more mass than an single floor.  So as the collapse proceeds, the falling mass's velocity loss is proportionally smaller and smaller.

This is incorrect. Conservation of momentum says that as two masses impact and combine (inelastic collision), then the resulting velocity decreases. This means the collapse could not have been faster than free fall speed.

Uh, none of that contradicts what CW said. And of course the collapse could not have been faster than free-fall speed. That's why people keep returning to the videos where it's clear that it's not, because the debris is falling much quicker than the collapse.

My argument is that resistance in the progression (assuming there's enough energy to keep it going) should slow things down and produce an overall collapse time somewhere between 10 and 100 seconds depending on how much energy is lost along the way.

Fine. Of course,"between 10 and 100 seconds" is such a broad range as to be nearly meaningless. It clearly covers the actual collapse time of the buildings, in any case.

The towers did indeed fall near free fall speed. Does this make sense?

The best estimates for the time the collapse took seem to be somewhere between 15 and slightly above 20 seconds (it's hard to tell exactly because it was obscured by dust clouds), while free-fall is less than 10 seconds. That strikes me as significantly slower than free-fall speed.

In other words, your claim #1 has not been established.

The demolition expert you mention, Brent Blanchard, focusses on the implausibility of a controlled demolition by conventional means (e.g. dynamite). This is fine, but he instead supports the progressive gravity-driven collapse model and does not question the implausibility of this. In reality, under the gravity-driven "pancake" model, there wouldn't be enough energy to pulverise floors and also keep the collapse going. *

*

Spoiler

Wood references:

Trumpman
Paper: http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/trumpman/CoreAnalysisFinal.htm

Hoffman
Paper: http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/dustvolume/index.html
YouTube vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKG2nWlQM80

[close]

Well, now we're into more of the crux of the matter, but also beyond what simple high school physics can easily answer. Still, I don't know about "pulverize", but it seems highly implausible to me that the force of the top 10-20 floors falling down one floor would not be enough to cause the next floor down (and related building structure) to collapse. By your own numbers, that would be more than 10,000 tons just of steel, falling almost 4 meters. I don't think any building is designed to withstand that. And if it did collapse, then all of that falling another floor down should also cause the next floor to collapse, and so on. (Some of the mass is lost as dust and debris falling off the side, but more is almost certainly picked up from the progressively collapsing floors.)

(Oh, and as for the "pulverizing," keep in mind that the smashing up of the floors did not all happen in one go. For floors below the initial structural failure, you had: 1. being struck by the building from above, leading to collapse; 2. after collapsing, striking the floor(s) below during the rest of the building collapse; 3. striking the ground; 4. being struck again from above by the rest of the building collapsing on top.)

And honestly, that's as far as I'm willing to delve into this rabbit hole. The bits of the argument I've bothered to look into collapse like... a house of cards, let's say, and that gives me no confidence in the other claims.

So quickly about the other points:

1. The amount of debris: Your calculations could be wrong (is 1.5 a reasonable bulking factor? unknown), the photos could be misleading (from certain other angles the pile looks much higher), and/or it may have fallen elsewhere (i.e. more towards the other side of the building).
2. The seismic record: Basically, I think you need to be a trained seismologist with knowledge of the local conditions to properly interpret this data. AFAICT, no person fitting that description has come forward saying there's anything fishy about it.

I'm done.