I, together with two other individuals (a Doctor of Political Sciences and a Senior Engineer), yesterday submitted the following to a number of NIST personnel, including lead investigator S. Shyam Shunder, who in 2006 said to New York Magazine "But truthfully, I don't really know. We've had trouble getting a handle on Building No. 7". The contact information used can be found at the end.

The idea was mainly to remind them that there are people who will be looking at their report (if they come up with a report one day) with a critical eye.

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Dear NIST investigators,

we undersigned wish to pose a few questions and comments to NIST regarding the still ongoing WTC 7 investigation.

NIST has stated that "no steel was recovered from WTC 7". This is clearly not accurate. FEMA has noted, e.g., that a steel sample from WTC 7 had undergone thinning due to "high temperature corrosion due to a combination of oxidation and sulfidation". FEMA continues: "Evidence of … oxidation and sulfidation with subsequent intergranular melting, was readily visible in the near-surface microstructure." Please see

http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_apc.pdf

The temperatures capable of creating such phenomena are above the maximum temperature of hydrocarbon fires. We expect NIST to continue FEMA's work in finding the cause of these highly unusual phenomena.

We also expect NIST to account for the powerful explosion from WTC 7 that can be heard in the following excerpt from the recent documentary by Italian TV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58h0LjdMry0

Finally, we expect NIST to explain how random fires and asymmetric damage could have caused all ~80 of WTC 7's steel supports to give in simultaneously, resulting in a sudden, near-vertical collapse. A recent experiment conducted at Northeastern University using a mock building showed that removing one "key column" does not cause a building collapse; the weight just shifts to the remaining columns, and the building holds. See

http://tinyurl.com/2jfbv7

After WTC 7's collapse began, the building's roofline fell down at an approximate speed of 7 floors per second. This leaves on average 0.14 seconds for the dropping *and* complete destruction of each floor and its support columns. This seems to violate the law of the conservation of momentum if the only force at work is gravity.

http://11syyskuu.blogspot.com/2006/02/destruction-of-wtc-7.html

The question of how 80 support pillars can provide no more resistance to collapse than air is extremely important and needs to be fully and transparently addressed. We and many others expect NIST to analyze all the evidence with scientific rigor -- and without political considerations.

Yours sincerely,
[...]

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NIST WTC contacts:

wtc@nist.gov
sivaraj.shyam-sunder@nist.gov
michael.newman@nist.gov
NCSTAC@nist.gov