AT&T Tech Support 360Scientists reconstruct still-horrifying 9-11 images
A computer simulation of the attack on the World Trade Center is now showing at YouTube. While the images are designed to help engineers and scientists study how a large structure behaves when smashed into by an airliner, they are still horrifying.
Flight 11 crashed into the WTC's North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001. A team of researchers from Purdue University used scientific principles, state-of-the-art simulation code and animation computer system to recreate the three-quarters of a second following impact.
Over and over again, wreckage from the Boeing 767 careens towards the viewer. Sometimes the simulation includes only the body of the aircraft. Other times, the plane is removed from the image so fuel or debris can be tracked.
At one point, the crash is played back and the focus is exclusively on the damage done to the tower's core beams, which are left sliced and twisted in the plane's wake.
The recreation culminates when all the elements: fire, fuel, debris and plane metal are added and the tragedy is depicted with bloodcurdling accuracy.
The simulation is no doubt a scientific marvel. But can anyone watch the scenes without their imaginations adding people to the pictures?
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg.
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I know, it's actually quite hard to see the good in the situation.
fail to see why this was posted online. The computer
programmers probably had plenty of fun doing this, but they
should have anticipated that the images would be viewed as
"horrifying".
Personally, I just cannot see what is so "horrifying". I certainly
didn't start imagining people in the simulation.
The press has such a bizarre take on things...
-Axemaster
How about that glowing picture of red hot steel 3 weeks later? nothing stays red hot that long unless thermate was being used.
I know what happened could be the most logical thing a plane would do, but we need to know why other things DIDN'T happen. Why didn't the plane stop mid-way through the building like a car does or a bullet through that gelitin stuff they use on "Mythbusters?" Why wouldn't the towers fall over instead of colapsing down on itself? Obviously, on side of the towers was weaker than the other, a whole plane went through one side while only some parts came out another.
What caused the fuel to ignite? I'm almost certain I know the answer to that one, but I'm want to make sure my reason is the most logical. Why would several people need to take box cutters on a plane? I'm sure before this happened, virtually no one tried bringing box cutters on a plane, so why wouldn't a person see this a something strange and ask a person what its doing with box cutters?
These are real questions I DO have, why shouldn't I or anyone else ask them? If we ever want to know what happened they will have to be answered. Before you start calling me insensitive, science is trying to destroy people's live every day by trying to prove: this is how Moses parted the Red Sea, these are the remains of Jesus, or "that" won't cure "this", but if we extract a perticular part of "that," we CAN cure "this." And we do need to answer everyone's questions so this doesn't become another: there had to be a second person on the grassy knoll, O.J. had to have done it, or Elvis isn't dead. (Ok the last one is a bad example but it's something people don't seem to have gotten closure for.)
Oh, and by the way, police still "haven't" found who killed Nicole or Ron.