The official 9/11 conspiracy theory claims that 19 Islamic terrorists armed only with boxcutters and basing their operations from caves conspired to ram airplanes into buildings by bypassing the world’s most advanced military defense system. Unfortunately perhaps the biggest problem with this theory is that it violates the laws of physics.

As an important aside, it should be noted that while those that merely question the official 9/11 theory are often called “conspiracy theorists” the official story itself is a conspiracy theory. A conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to do something wrong. A theory is a proposed explanation as to why something happened. A conspiracy theory then is a proposed explanation that two or more people conspired together to do something wrong. The official theory of 9/11 that 19 Islamic terrorists armed only with boxcutters and basing their operations from caves conspired to ram airplanes into buildings by bypassing the worlds most advanced military defense system then is clearly a conspiracy theory. This utilization of two contradictory terms in juxtaposition is called doublespeak.[1] Doublespeak is used to illicit extreme confusion in the listener in order to produce inaction and apathy. So a theory where politicians and business leaders working together to do evil is a crazy outlandish “conspiracy theory”. But a theory of “terrorists” working together to do evil is not a conspiracy theory.

The Achilles’ heel of the official 9/11 story is WTC 7. Many people still do not know that a third building WTC 7 fell on 9/11. WTC 7 was a 47 story building about the width and length of a football field.[2] WTC 7 was not hit by a plane and yet fell down at near free fall. In fact high school physics teacher David Chandler forced NIST The National Institute of Standards and Technology to admit that for a period of at least 2.25 seconds WTC 7 was in free fall.[3] It’s worth mentioning that NIST was tasked with officially explaining how WTC 7 fell.[4] Free fall of 2.25 seconds translates to about 100 feet or 8 stories.[5] Free fall is the acceleration due to gravity alone and can only be attained if there is nothing consequential in the way to offer resistance to the falling mass. How can that be though? WTC 7 had 58 perimeter columns and 25 massive core columns that held the building up for many many years.[6] If you watch video of its fall you see it falls straight down symmetrically just like a typical controlled demolition. Such a collapse requires simultaneous removal or cutting of all vertical support structures. Yet the official story maintains that WTC 7 came down solely due to fire damage.[7] How can normal office fires cause eight stories of structure including the 58 perimeter columns and 25 massive core columns to be effectively removed simultaneously floor by floor so that the building could free fall for at least 2.25 seconds? Fire damage causes gradual weakening of steel not explosive simultaneous removal.

It gets even worse. Observing the video of WTC 7’s fall a “crimp” or kink is seen near the middle of the building as it started to fall. In controlled demolitions such a crimp is caused by blowing the middle columns first and then proceeding to the sides so that the building falls in on itself and therefore minimizes damage to other buildings.[8] WTC 7 also intricately rolled to the south at the end of the collapse. In controlled demolitions, such rolls are performed in order to minimize damage to one side. Note that ground zero was to the south of WTC 7 and valuable real estate was to the north. How can fire be so considerate?

Now here is where physics come into play. As WTC 7 was built gravitational potential energy was stored in the building. When something falls and there is nothing in its way all the available gravitational potential energy will be converted to kinetic energy and the object will attain free fall acceleration. The problem is that with WTC 7 there should have been a massive amount of structure in the way to slow the fall. When the falling mass hit this structure most of the momentum and kinetic energy should have been used up in breaking up or deforming the structure. But for eight stories of fall this didn’t happen. It was like that massive interconnected structure just wasn’t there. The official story requires more energy and momentum to have been present in this system than could have been there. But energy and momentum can’t be magically created out of nowhere in a closed system. They must balance. According to the conservation law of energy energy cannot be created or destroyed in a closed system only converted to other forms. So the official 9/11 story requires an massive extra amount of energy that would be required to remove the eight stories of structure in the way. The laws of physics (conservation of energy and momentum) were violated if the official story is true.

The amount of missing energy is massive. Think about the amount of energy required to cut a massive core column with explosive shaped charges. Multiply that by 25. Add the energy required to cut the smaller perimeter columns multiplied by 58. Total both and multiply that amount by 8. Since the official story does not account for this massive extra amount of energy the official story violates the conservation law of energy and is therefore false. A similar case can be made for the law of conservation of momentum.

Consider a simple analogy. Suppose a car is suspended by one end 10 feet above another car standing on end on the ground. The first car is dropped. In NIST’s alternate universe the first car will free fall right through the other car without slowing down. In the real world the first car would slow down as soon as it hit the second. Both cars would be crumpled and if they did not fall over would be standing one on top the other. To make the first car completely crush the other as well as itself while maintaining free fall acceleration would require a massive amount of extra energy in the form of say a jet engine. To refuse to acknowledge the extra energy source would be to violate the laws of physics.

Now it could be argued that the eight stories of structure in the way was removed before the free fall period occurred. Physicist Dave Thomas supports this scenario[9] but to date has never provided an explanation as to how this could have occurred. In an extreme stretch of the imagination the remaining columns could have buckled over eight entire stories simultaneously, simultaneously severed all floor connections and snapped simultaneously. If this happened the free fall period of WTC 7 could be explained. This explanation is equally problematic though. NIST does indeed show a 1.75 second period before the free fall period in which the building is accelerating significantly less that free fall.[10] However to get their measurements they are observing the middle of the roofline which bows significantly before the four corners begin to move downwards. This bowing inflates the period before free fall.

Physicist David Chandler on the other hand has done extensive and more accurate analysis of the WTC 7 collapse by measuring the descent of a corner of the building.[11] His work shows that before the free fall period there was only a 0.6 second period of near-zero acceleration. But in that 0.6 seconds the building had fallen only two feet. An eight story section of steel bent down two feet would be barely noticeable to the naked eye. If it were possible for an eight story section of WTC 7 steel column to snap after being bent down only two feet NIST would have performed an experiment to show that this could happen instead of producing a computer model that doesn’t even show free fall. Again, having all remaining columns buckle and snap simultaneously and to have all floor connections snap simultaneously all while the building has fallen only two feet requires a massive extra amount of energy that could not have been converted from the available gravitational and thermal energy. This explanation also violates the laws of physics.

The mainstream media generally maintains that the official story of 9/11 is the correct one and that anyone that dares even question it is mentally unsound in some way. However believing in theories that violate the laws of physics is a telltale sign of a severely unhinged mind. Even stranger is the fact that believing in things without question simply because an authority figure told you it is true is not only a sign of extreme gullibility but actually shows a serious disconnect from reality. As the Milgram experiments show[12] such flagrant obsequiousness could be used to manipulate people into doing horrendous things. Further believing in one thing because accepting the alternative is too terrifying is the neurotic condition of denial. Sound skepticism on the other hand is a sign of strong critical reasoning abilities and therefore higher intelligence.

Logically there is nothing wrong with entertaining a conspiracy theory provided it best explains the available facts. However when a conspiracy theory violates the laws of physics it enters the realm of the unhinged crackpot. 9/11 was not only a massive human tragedy. It was a massive attack on science as well. It is time for all scientists and scientifically orientated individuals to stand up and take back science from the conscience-lacking few in power that have egregiously sullied it.

References

3 nist admits freefall of wtc 7 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii49BaRDp_A

4 NIST NCSTAR 1A http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201A.pdf

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 How Building Implosions Work http://science.howstuffworks.com/building-implosion.htm

10 NIST NCSTAR 1A http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201A.pdf

11 Chandler David. “Freefall and Building 7 on 9/11” http://911speakout.org/Freefall.pdf

12 Milgram Stanley (1963). “Behavioral Study of Obedience”. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67: 371–378.