Reply #21: Do you really think it should be such a huge question that it....

[mikelewis]

takes hundreds of professionals from many vocations analyzing the fire's impact on the structure? The reason they are devoting so much time and energy to this issue is because they're busy trying to figure out the highly improbable. They have to answer the question of how the building collapsed and they are not allowed to factor in the possibility of explosives.

While anything can be explained if you put enough ink to paper, this should be a simple problem to solve. But it's not a simple problem because for every answer one hundred other questions pop up. These guys have the ability to put this issue to rest with one math problem and they know it. The speed at which the buildings fell will tell you everything you need to know. Each truss, junction and weld has a quantifiable amount of resistance. With thier resources, they could determine that amount of resistance within a reasonable margin of error. If the mass of the building, and they could use the maximum load numbers if they want, if the mass of the building could move through that resistance at that speed, then they're done.

The reason for my disbelief and many others, is the seemingly complete failure of every support structure almost simultaneously. The pancake theory makes no sense, these were not plates welded to a central core, this was an intricate web of support structures designed to keep that building standing under extreme circumstances. That support net comletely gave out and did it at an incredible speed. If the speed of collapse shows that more energy was required to move through that resistance, they have to consider, and so do you, the possibility that there were explosives. This riddle can be solved, definitely not by me but I'm sure this team of hundreds of professionals could make short work of it.