9/11 simulation

The Hoofnagles gave us an entertaining view of a troofer a few weeks ago. This gentleman tried to simulate the fall of the twin towers on 9/11 using office supplies. It's clearly a mess.

Researchers at Purdue University recently released a slightly higher quality simulation of the crash:

The simulation could be used to better understand which elements in the building's structural core were affected, how they responded to the initial shock of the aircraft collision, and how the tower later collapsed from the ensuing fire fed by an estimated 10,000 gallons of jet fuel, said Mete Sozen, the Kettelhut Distinguished Professor of Structural Engineering in Purdue's School of Civil Engineering.

It took about 80 hours using a high-performance computer containing 16 processors to produce the first simulation, which depicts how the plane tore through several stories of the structure within a half-second, said Christoph M. Hoffmann, a professor of computer science and co-director of the Computing Research Institute at Purdue.

Their findings? The towers lost 25% of their core support beams:

The researchers are analyzing how many columns were destroyed initially in the building's core, a spine of 47 heavy steel I-beams extending through the center of the structure, Sozen said.

"Current findings from the simulation have identified the destruction of 11 columns on the 94th floor, 10 columns on the 95th floor and nine columns on the 96th floor," he said. "This is a major insight. When you lose close to 25 percent of your columns at a given level, the building is significantly weakened and vulnerable to collapse."

It remains to be seen if this has much effect on the troofer movement. (Don't hold your breath).

Apparently the researchers at Purdue are currently working on modeling the fall of the towers:

In the coming months, we will explore how the structure reacted to the extreme heat from the blaze that led to the building's collapse, and we will refine the visual presentations of the simulation.

The video of the simulation is below. It's fascinating to watch, even if it is disturbing.

When you come across a conspiracy theorist in the forest...

One of the reasons I started this blog is that I noticed how common it was for the folks who call themselves "climate skeptics" use many of the same rhetorical techniques as HIV/AIDS skeptics, Intelligent Design advocates, 9-11 conspiracy theorists and holocaust deniers (I read the Intelligence Report - some people gape out their windows at car accidents, I read about hate crimes). It turns out the folks at Denialism.com have noticed the same thing.

I once made the mistake of pointing out to a climate skeptic that for him to believe what he did, he would have to believe that almost every climatologist, and many scientists in other specialties (from biologists to astronomers) were in on an elaborate hoax. When he agreed with that assertion, I pointed out that other folks who believed in such elaborate hoaxes were holocaust deniers. And he invoked Godwin's Law. For anyone who finds themselves in this situation, speaking (or typing) to someone who is positing such extraordinary claims that couldn't possibly true without turning every expert in the world into a lunatic or a fraud, I give you this:

An HIV/AIDS denialist will say denying the link between HIV and AIDS isn't unreasonable, and pointing out that they use the same methods as other denialists, like evolution denialists or holocausts denialists is unfair. They're not like those other dirty denialists, they're just misunderstood.

But they are like those other denialists. That's the whole point that we make here at denialism.com. The methods of all denialists are the same. We're not creating guilt-by-association, we're pointing out that that they're using similar tactics, and that no matter what the denialists deny, they use the same rhetorical tricks to sow confusion and disrupt debate. If they feel guilty that they share space with these other denialists, that's not my problem. They're the ones using denialist tactics to make their point. If they don't want to be called cranks or denialists, I suggest instead of alleging conspiracies and making fallacious arguments, they actually provide data.

From the folks at Denialism.com. Enjoy.