Watts Up With That?

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The Chico News and Review has gotten quite a number of letters on their 911 Truth article which gave a platform to the people whom prefer to believe that a gigantic government conspiracy was the reason behind the 911 WTC collapse, and that the towers were brought down with explosives, rather than by fire.

I wrote a short blog essay on the subject, and a letter to the editor, pointing out that the recent collapse of the I580-880 freeway interchange had a lot of similarities, illustrating that fire can indeed take town steel and concrete structures.

Predictably, the 911Truthers lobbed a couple of ticked off letters back at me, even going so far as to say I’m “spreading distortions”.

While I don’t intend to argue their points, since you can’t usually come out winning when you argue with people whom believe conspiracy theories, I will present another view.

For those of you that prefer rational science and engineering, I present this item, a paper published in 2003 by The Journal of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, presents a balanced view that shows that the collapse didn’t need steel melting temperatures to occur. It was written by Thomas W. Eagar, the Thomas Lord Professor of Materials Engineering and Engineering Systems, and Christopher Musso, graduate research student, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

You can read the report in its entirety here: http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html

Or just skip to this conclusion:
While it was impossible for the fuel-rich, diffuse-flame fire to burn at a temperature high enough to melt the steel, its quick ignition and intense heat caused the steel to lose at least half its strength and to deform, causing buckling or crippling. This weakening and deformation caused a few floors to fall, while the weight of the stories above them crushed the floors below, initiating a domino collapse.

There’s a maxim called Occam’s Razor; “All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one.” In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and hypothetical entities tends to be correct. Conspiracy theories require many more assumptions, some unprovable, than a fire and materials failure does.

NOTE: Comments have been closed to prevent overrunn by 911 Truthers, whom seem as irrational as ever and intent on proving their twisted logic.