In its Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers, the National Institute of Standards and Technology summarizes its three-year study and outlines its explanation of the total collapse of WTC 1 and WTC 2.
Readers of the report will find that the roughly $20 million expended on this effort have resulted in an explanation of the total collapse of these buildings that is so vague it barely qualifies as a hypothesis. But it does have one crucial feature of a hypothesis: it is, in principle, falsifiable. In fact, it is easy to demonstrate that it is false.
In this paper we will, concentrating on the North Tower, offer a refutation that is:
- easy to understand but reasonably precise
- capable of being stated briefly
- verifiable by any reader with average computer skills and a grasp of simple mathematics.
