What happened to the WTC complex on September 11th 2001?

I found out something I never knew: I found out that my world was not the real world. Robert F. Kennedy, 1968.

I'll never forget that day. I was at work when it happened. Work for me at the time was caring for a severely disabled adult in his home. Stewart and I were sat in his living room and the TV was on. It didn't take long before the word terrorist was used as I looked upon a smoking building and listened to the reports of a plane impact. At first I assumed it had probably been some sort of accident; and then a plane came into view and smashed into the second of the twin towers and I knew then that this was no accident.

I could hardly believe what I was seeing...but I was seeing it...so I believed it. I continued to watch on and listen to the reports until I saw the roof of the south tower disappear into a dust cloud. My jaw hit the floor and for the first time I began to feel an incredible sense of forboding. I was more shocked that the building had fallen than I was when the second plane crashed. Of course a short while later the same thing happened to the north tower. I had picked up my jaw from the first building collapse when I observed the roof of the north tower also disappear into a cloud of dust. The sense of forboding became something else. Something new and something far worse.

I was overcome with cognitive dissonance. What I saw didn't match what I should have seen. Something was wrong and it was causing me problems I wasn't aware of at the time. I needed to get some fresh air so I took Stewart out for the day. We walked along the road to the train station and as we walked I looked at everyone I passed and wondered if they had seen what I had seen and if they felt like I did. I felt utterly alone in the world for most of that day.

I'd decided to take Stewart on the train to Bolton to see the museum and as we reached the station platform and stopped walking for the first time I turned to the bloke now standing next to me, desperate to speak to someone about it and said to him, 'Have you seen what's happened today?' The bloke turned to me and said, 'Yeah it's horrible isn't it?' I then said in response 'Yeah it's fantastic.' I was in shock, I had no idea why I had said it was fantastic but I felt terrible that I had. The bloke must have thought I was a nutcase.

It turns out, however, that fantasy was indeed on the menu that day in very large portions and this probably explains why the word fantastic unexpectedly fell out of my mouth on that station platform.

World Trade Center building 1 (WTC1) was 1,368 ft tall and WTC2 was 1,362 ft tall. Using the taller WTC1 building the time taken for a solid object such as a billiard ball to fall from the roof to the ground in a vacuum is 9.22 secs (Figure 1). The use of a vacuum negates the small amount of added time for air resistance. The added time for air resistance could indeed be assumed to be small for large sections which have a very low surface area to mass ratio.

Figure 1 (source)

Page 305 of the 9/11 commission report 

At 9:58:59, the South Tower collapsed in ten seconds, .... The building collapsed into itself, causing a ferocious windstorm and creating a massive debris cloud. 

August 2002 Fact sheet (answers to frequently asked questions) by NIST

 NIST estimated the elapsed times for the first exterior panels to strike the ground after the collapse initiated in each of the towers to be approximately 11 seconds for WTC 1 and approximately 9 seconds for WTC 2. (Question #6.) 

At first glance the ten second figure in the commission report and the approximations stated by NIST fit with the finding that the 'collapse' must have taken over 9.22 secs. But there are some other factors to take into account here. Lets take a look at them.

Momentum

As the roof of WTC1 began to fall there was an enormous amount of dust being produced. This dust could be clearly seen spewing from the building. But how was it being produced? If the dust was being produced by each floor being pulverised as it crashed into the next floor below, there would be no accumulation of mass on the following floor to allow momentum to take over as the building came down because as each floor turns to dust the mass is decreased not increased.

Resistance

Also if the dust was produced by each floor being pulverised as it hit the floor below it, each floor below a falling floor must have been solid enough to create the necessary resitance required for this kind of pulverisation to occur. If this was the case the building would have been unable to fall at close to freefall speed as was the case.

Timing

WTC1 stood 110 stories high. That's 110 stories destroyed in close to 10 seconds. Over 10 stories per second. I wonder how high can you count in 10 seconds, try it. It's worth remembering here that each story was over 12 ft apart and each floor also contained lots of material that would also have to be destroyed within this timeframe.

Even if we take the seemingly unfeasible possibility that each floor did indeed pulverise as it hit the next one leaving just enough energy to send the floor below down onto the one below and so on all the way down. Even without accounting for air resistance, this kind of one by one collapse would take well over a minute (figure 2).

Figure 2 (source)

So far I haven't taken into account the fact that the buildings were damaged. So let's do that. Damage to the building would cause resistance to be felt more in some areas than others. So let's be very generous here and say that 9 out of every 10 floors was damaged or even missing leaving only 11 floors to provide resistance. And let's say the energy balance was perfect in order to allow each falling floor to be pulverised and pass on enough energy to the next floor to be dislodged as in the previous example. Again not taking air resistance into account this would take around 30 secs (figure 3)

Figure 3 (source)

So how could it be that the building 'collapsed' in around 10 secs? The only way to get the building on the ground in around 10 secs is by removing the resistance. In other words each falling floor would have to begin to fall before the one above it made contact so as not to slow down the process. See figure 4.

Figure 4 (source)

In the words of Dr Judy Wood

To put it succinctly, something must destroy the building, somehow, ahead of the 'collapse wave.'

It is around here that some readers will begin to drift off into trying to answer the question of HOW this was done. Please, please, please try not to do that. Remember that in order to find out HOW this was done, the question of WHAT happened must be answered. Solving crimes is about WHAT, HOW, WHO, WHY in that order. Going beyond the realm of WHAT happened before the answer has been established with evidence is leaving science behind and entering the realm of theory. Dr Judy Wood's book Where did the towers go? from where all of the material for this series is taken is science NOT theory.

In part 2 we will go deeper into the evidence that answers the question of WHAT happened to the WTC complex on September 11th 2001.

Thank you for reading,

STEEMONKEY🐒

All material for this series is taken from the book Where did the towers go? written by Dr Judy Wood, B.S., M.S., Ph.D.

Any images are used under the 'fair use' doctrine.

Previous episodes

What happened to the WTC complex on September 11, 2001? (An Introduction)