On December 8, 2023, civil engineer Jonathan Cole and IC911 Executive Director Ted Walter had a debate about the cause of the Twin Towers’ destruction with Sabin Mathew, host of the YouTube engineering channel Lesics, which has 6.5 million subscribers.
Two months prior to that, Mathew released a video on his channel that superficially advocates his own version of the erroneous progressive collapse theory. In the space of two months it accumulated more than six million views. Realizing the opportunity to educate Mathew and his channel’s subscribers, we approached him about having a discussion, and he graciously accepted.
Although we and many viewers feel that Mathew did not create the conditions for a thoughtful and well-articulated debate, we thank him for being willing to have the discussion.
Ultimately, we were able to provide lots of useful information to viewers. A list of references for the arguments we made is presented below.
Debate Video
Four-Stage, 30-Second Collapse Process
- Discussion of “Spontaneous Collapse Mechanism of World Trade Center Twin Towers and Progressive Collapse in General” by Jia-Liang Le and Zdeněk P. Bažant (Jonathan Cole, 2023)
- High Velocity Bursts of Debris from Point-Like Sources in the WTC Towers (Kevin Ryan, 2007)
Constant Acceleration and Missing Jolt
- The Missing Jolt: A Simple Refutation of the NIST-Bažant Collapse Hypothesis (Szamboti and MacQueen, 2009)
- Destruction of the World Trade Center North Tower and Fundamental Physics (David Chandler, 2010)
- ASCE Journals refuse to correct fraudulent paper they published on WTC collapses (Szamboti and Johns, 2014)
- Some Misunderstandings Related to WTC Collapse Analysis (Szuladzinksi et al, 2013)
Extreme Temperatures and Unreacted Nano-thermitic Material
- Extremely high temperatures during the World Trade Center destruction (Jones et al, 2007)
- Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe (Harrit et al, 2009)
- Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials (Ryan et al, 2008)
- Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse? (Steven Jones, 2006)
Lack of Evidence for Truss Sagging as Cause of Inward Pull on Perimeter Columns
- 25 Areas of Specific Concern in the NIST WTC Reports (Tony Szamboti, 2014)
Related Works by Jonathan Cole and Ted Walter
- ‘PhysicsandReason’ YouTube Channel (Jonathan Cole)
- Beyond Misinformation: What Science Says About the Destruction of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2, and 7 (Ted Walter, 2015)
- 15 years later: on the physics of high-rise building collapses (Jones et al, in Europhysics News, 2016)
