Bloggasm

The always-excellent Clive Thompson points to a new experiment where a team of scientists make a highly-detailed simulation of the 9/11 attacks.:

Researchers at Purdue University have created a simulation that uses scientific principles to study in detail what likely happened when a commercial airliner crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001.

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.

The simulation is so detailed that after 80 hours of work, they’ve produced only a half-second of simulation, but already in that half-second they’ve learned a lot. This kicker for 9/11 conspiracy theorists is here:

“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.”

Of course, the experiment wasn’t done to disprove 9/11 conspiracy theories, that’s just a byproduct of it. And a detailed simulation is a hell of a lot better than grainy footage produced in Loose Change.