Steven Jones, Robert Korol, Anthony Szamboti, Ted Walter (variously scientists and engineer) on science-based assessment of 9-11 (2016): “On September 11, 2001, the world witnessed the total collapse of three large steel-framed high-rises. Since then, scientists and engineers have been working to understand why and how these unprecedented structural failures occurred… On August 2002, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched what would become a six-year investigation of the three building failures that occurred on September 11, 2001 (9/11): the well-known collapses of the World Trade Center (WTC) Twin Towers that morning and the lesser-known collapse late that afternoon of the 47-story World Trade Center Building 7, which was not struck by an airplane. NIST conducted its investigation based on the stated premise that the “WTC Towers and WTC 7 [were] the only known cases of total structural collapse in high-rise buildings where fires played a significant role.” Indeed, neither before nor since 9/11 have fires caused the total collapse of a steel-framed high-rise—nor has any other natural event, with the exception of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, which toppled a 21-story office building. Otherwise, the only phenomenon capable of collapsing such buildings completely has been by way of a procedure known as controlled demolition, where-by explosives or other devices are used to bring down a structure intentionally… The total collapse of WTC 7 at 5:20 PM on 9/11, shown in Fig. 2, is remarkable because it exemplified all the signature features of an implosion: The building dropped in absolute free fall for the first 2.25 seconds of its de-scent over a distance of 32 meters or eight stories [3]. Its transition from stasis to free fall was sudden, occurring in approximately one-half second. It fell symmetrically straight down. Its steel frame was almost entirely dis-membered and deposited mostly inside the building’s footprint, while most of its concrete was pulverized into tiny particles. Finally, the collapse was rapid, occurring in less than seven seconds. Given the nature of the collapse, any investigation adhering to the scientific method should have seriously considered the controlled demolition hypothesis, if not started with it. Instead, NIST (as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which conducted a preliminary study prior to the NIST investigation) began with the predetermined conclusion that the collapse was caused by fires. Trying to prove this predetermined conclusion was apparently difficult” (Steven Jones, “15 years later: on the physics of high rise building collapses”, Europhysics News, 2016:
https://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles/epn/pdf/2016/04/epn2016474p21.pdf .)