The Myths and the Math Behind the
Rewriting of History
“Mythic imagination is our innate power to see for ourselves how the cosmos works, and how the gods play, but it is not a license to play God.”
(John Lamb Lash, Not in His Image, 309)
In the first of three articles defending the scientific credibility of the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report and the subsequent NIST Report, Manuel Garcia, Ph.D., a Physicist and Mechanical Engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, begins his series by identifying the detractors, those who disagree with the “official word” (Garcia 2), as suffering from “mass psychosis,” “psychological infection,” or better yet, a societal “psychological epidemic.” These terms he attributes to the work of C.G. Jung in his 1958 book Flying Saucers, a much expanded version of a 1954 essay, and one of the final writings undertaken by Jung before his death in 1961. The phrases cited by Garcia are descriptive of a pathology of collective consciousness, but do not characterize Jung’s description of the phenomenon of multiple sightings of UFO’s in the 1950’s.[1] Footnote [1] following Garcia’s citations is not traceable in the online CounterPunch article available to me,[2] so it is difficult to trace the context or accuracy of the quotes. The phrases are more reminiscent of the work of Wilhelm Reich in his 1933 work Massenpsychosen, or The Mass Psychology of Fascism, banned in Nazi Germany in 1935 along with all other political psychology books. The other term coined by Wilhelm Reich is the “emotional plague” of industrialized peoples of the modern world who have become passive and afraid of human freedom. Garcia attributes a “psychological infection” or “epidemic” to those who distrust the scientific findings of a report commissioned and funded by a government that spends intensive time and money setting the world stage for imperial projects. Garcia himself has written about the dangerous strategies of empire in his 2005 articles “Industrialized Greed Produces Pandemics” and “Fuel Conservation and Sustainable Mobility” for the online journal Dissident Voice.[3] However, when it comes to explaining away the benefits to Empire garnered by the sophisticated staging of false-flag terrorism, Garcia resorts to defending the narrow science of a report that doesn’t even try to explain the collapse of WTC 7 or the multiple ‘exit holes’ in the Pentagon. Based on the false premise that Jungian psychology pathologizes radical differences in perceptions of reality, Garcia vainly makes a distinction between what he characterizes as fear-based theories of what happened on 9/11 and science-based theories found in the NIST Report.
Unlike other Freudian-based psychologies, Jung’s life-long explorations into dream, myth, and imagination were carried out with a spirit of awe and reverence for the anima mundi (soul of the world) and the collective unconscious. His therapeutic approaches to personal and collective psychological disturbances were based on the premise that the psyche has an autonomous capacity to restore balance, health, and wholeness. Jung’s studies of the continuum of human psychological adaptations evident in world-wide patterns of myth, the arts, and historical events, led him to conclude that radical shifts in personal, tribal, and cosmic stories derive from“..changes in the constellation of psychic dominants, of the archetypes, or ‘gods’ as they used to be called, which bring about or accompany, long-lasting transformation of the collective psyche” (Jung 15-16).
Jung’s work is also characterized by a phenomenological mode of inquiry which he applied in all of his explorations of the irrational and the unconscious. Jung carried the paradoxical tension of this method in a way that few can. In his opening to Flying Saucers, Jung takes care to note that his researches into the UFO phenomenon had led him to the same conclusion reached by Edward Ruppelt, project chief of the USAF Project Bluebook: something is seen, but one doesn’t know what (Jung 16). This is the beginning of a scientific mode of inquiry that applies to both physical and psychological phenomena.
An appeal to a psychological understanding of conflicting hypotheses of what brought down the World Trade Centers 1, 2, and 7, is worthwhile and valuable. How else explain that perceptions of the same event can result in differing means of formulating a scientific proof of what really happened. Engineers and physicists can disagree on (1) what determines the questions which form the basis of the hypothesis to be tested, and (2) what determines the selection of facts, i.e., evidence, to be applied in a test of the hypothesis. It is not impossible to reach very different scientific explanations for the same phenomenon. The ways in which an individual and/or group perceives and subsequently inteprets events are characteristics of a particular constellation of influences (Jung’s “psychic dominants”) that mediate the sensory engagement with reality. If we are concerned about the kinds of psychic dominants that generate a collective story, or myth, it is important that we also try to clearly understand the social dynamic. Psychic dominants, or archetypes, constellated as power complexes in the mass mind allow the same complexes to guide the masses in their adherence to guiding principles. Once these principles are embodied in militaristic and totalitarian authorities, human life on the planet is at risk.
So these are fair question to anyone engaged in the practice of verifying accounts of important events: What Myth is guiding your method, and What Myth does your method serve? Manuel Garcia takes the path of assuming he knows the myths that guide whoever disagrees with him, without identifying the myths that guide his self-imposed mandate to defend and legitimize the science of the NIST Report. As if having assured his readers that only those with unstable psyches represent the detractors of the official word, Garcia quickly drops the language of psychobabble and plunges into the language of formulas designed to impress readers with the incontrovertible nature of certain hypotheses being defended and promoted. What follows is a challenge to Garcia’s method and selection of evidence to support the theories of NIST Scientists whose job it was to explain the official story outlined in the 9/11 Commission Report.
Constance Eichenlaub, Ph.D.
Comparative Literature
Seattle, WA
Part II
Rebuttal to Garcia’s Summary of the NIST Findings
by Rodger Herbst, BAAE, ME
Woodinville, WA
On August 21
2002, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) kicked off its
“building and fire safety investigation of the World Trade Center
disaster.”
The resulting report, released in September 2005, concluded
that damage due to impact of commercial
aircraft (Boeing 767-200ERs) caused an unfavorable redistribution of forces.
This, in conjunction with the softening
of steel due to ensuing fires led to the collapse of upper undamaged floors
onto undamaged floors below the aircraft impact zone. This in turn resulted in
global collapse of WTC1 and WTC2, the North and South World Trade Center towers
on 9/11/2001.
Manuel Garcia Jr, in a paper recently published on Counterpunch, “We See Conspiracies That Don’t Exist,” appears to lend
uncritical support to the entire NIST WTC study and it’s conclusions. The
following paragraphs briefly consider first the NIST study and conclusions, and
then Garcia’s “continuation” of the NIST concept of global collapse.
It is not obvious that the floors
impacted by the aircraft should have failed in the first place. Only floors
95-96 and 97 of WTC 1 sustained significant damage. NIST indicates that only about 9 of the 47 core columns were
significantly damaged, and about 15% of the 244 peripheral columns failed in
the crash zone of each tower. Yet
according to the "premier construction industry" publication, Engineering News-Record (ENR), over 25% of the peripheral columns
on the ground floor could be removed, and the building could still withstand
100 mph winds from any direction (1).
NIST notes that because of severed columns, loads on adjacent columns,
including the effects of the hat trusses, increased by up to 25%. NIST also found little evidence that steel
ever reached 600 deg. C, (the half strength critical temperature of steel being
650 deg. ), yet their report concludes column and floor assemblies softened due
to fire, leading to "collapse initiation." This scenario contrasts markedly with the claim found in ENR that loads on perimeter columns
could be increased by a factor of 20 before failing.(2) If the ENR
claim were correct, even at half strength, the load on the perimeter
columns could be increased by a factor of 10 without failing.
The engineering community has raised questions about the results of the NIST WTC investigation. An article in the popular British construction industry magazine New Civil Engineer International (NCEI) notes:
Controversy still surrounds the exact collapse mechanism of the Twin Towers, despite three years of detailed investigation by the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) team. Some engineers believe the collapse was influenced by factors other than the fires caused by burning aviation fuel which weakened vital structural steel elements. And they have accused NIST of repeatedly changing its explanation of the collapse mechanism. “In this latest version, the hat trusses on top of the towers play a crucial role in the redistribution of stresses after the impact,” one leading US structural engineer told NCE in New York. “In earlier versions they are hardly mentioned.”(3)
Regarding
the analysis used to bring the towers to the point of being “poised for
collapse,” NCEI notes: “NIST had
obviously devoted enormous resources to the development of the impact and fire
models…The software used has been pushed to new limits, and there have been a
lot of simplifications, extrapolations and judgement calls.” The same article notes NIST is “refusing to
show computer visualisations of the collapse of the Twin Towers despite calls from
leading structural and fire engineers…Visualisations of collapse mechanisms are
routinely used to validate the type of finite element analysis model used by
the investigators.”(4)
Refusal
to provide a detailed simulation of the collapses is supported on the grounds
that there was sufficient energy in the descending blocks to crush the lower
structures, once initial failure had occurred.
“It was understood that once an upper block of the building was
in motion the structure below would be unable to counter the dynamic forces,
and collapse would proceed to the ground.”
In other words, NIST and Garcia assert the building collapsed globally
because it collapsed globally, a classic example of a tautological argument.
The
question of course is, how did NIST understand this? Garcia notes that the NIST investigation was extremely
detailed. It is incredible that a
project employing hundreds, with a budget of millions of dollars, and which
produced 10,000 pages of final documentation, and which was charged specifically
with determining the cause of global collapse, would merely assume global
collapse was only “natural.”
Still, Garcia “carries the story
downward” from the instant the towers were “poised for collapse.” Controversy centers around what happened
when the upper undamaged 16 story segment of WTC1 (hereafter called the “Upper
Block”) impacted the lower undamaged 86 stationary floors (hereafter called the
“Lower Block”). How does Garcia’s
analysis hold up?
First,
let us roughly characterize the actual WTC tower structure. The 1375 ft. tall towers of 110
12.5 ft. floors consisted of a perimeter of 244 structural steel columns forming a square plan, with horizontal bracing
(spandrels) and extremely rigid chamfered corners.
The peripheral steel columns from
the 9th through the 106th floors spanned three floors
vertically, and were built into massive steel wall sections measuring about 10
ft wide by 27.5 ft. (three floors) tall, consisting of three 14 inch square
hollow box columns spaced three ft. four inches apart, and welded to thick
steel plate spandrels.
The building core, of dimensions
79X139 ft., was a veritable forest of 47 columns, horizontal
and diagonal cross braced, which housed primarily elevator shafts.
According
to ENR, the 47 core columns varied in
thickness with floor height. Individual
core columns in the lower core measured 52 x 22 in. (in plan), and were formed
of 5 and 3 inch plate into almost solid steel shafts that weighed up to 56 tons. Other sources note the average core box
column cross section to be 12" wide x 36" deep x 2" thick,
having a cross sectional area of 176 square inches. The box cross section construction changed to relatively light
I-beam cross section above the 85th floor; that is, above the Lower Block. Each tower
weighed 500,000 short tons or 454545 metric tons ( 1 metric ton=1.1 short
ton). The intact 16 story section above
aircraft impact weighed 58000 metric tons.
Thus, the upper 16 of the 110 floor system, or 14.5 % of the floors,
weighed only about 12.7 % of the total building weight, so the majority of the
mass per floor was in the lower floors.
According to Gordon Ross, member of
Scholars for 9-11 Truth, who holds degrees in mechanical and manufacturing
engineering, steel floor trusses connected the core columns only with the mid
wall peripheral columns.(6) Floor trusses were not connected directly from the
perimeter corners to the core, but rather from the perimeter corners transfer
trusses and then to the core. Concrete floors were hung upon the steel floor trusses.
Since peripheral columns span multiple floors, and all columns are otherwise continuous for the height of the towers, the 244 peripheral and 47 core columns may be thought of as being 1375 ft in length, with restraints which retard buckling every 3.7 meters (floors).
The momentum of the Lower Block is transferred to the Upper Block at the point of impact between the two. The structures initially impacted are steel columns, both in the Lower and Upper Blocks. The property of bulk modulus (the ratio of the change in pressure to the fractional volume compression) results in propagation of a stress wave which travels upward as well as downward from the point of impact at a speed of 4500 m/sec.(5)
Steel,
as other metals, undergoes three phases of deformation under compressive
stress: elastic, plastic shortening, and plastic deformation or buckling. In the elastic range, steel columns acts
like springs, compressing linearly as a function of Young’s Modulus and stress
(force per unit area) by up to .2 percent of their original length. In the shortening phase, the steel column
contracts about an additional 2.8 percent of its original length with no
increase in stress. In plastic
deformation, ability of the steel columns to sustain stress reduces markedly,
and the columns buckle.
Garcia’s argument is made using
“suggestive” text and math equations.
His force balance calculation for the uppermost floor of the Lower
Block:
F/(m*g) = 1 + dv/(g*dt) = 1 + 0.5/(9.81*0.01) = 6.1,
indicates that the uppermost floor of the Lower Block would sustain a load of six times the weight of the Upper Block.
Based on reports from ENR, loads on the perimeter columns could be increased by more than a factor of 20 before failing, so a load factor of six may not be a problem. Can one analytically determine if the load factor, whatever it is, is really enough to allow the columns to fail?
Gordon Ross provides a very rough estimate of the amount of energy that would be transferred downward from the point of impact of the upper floors. Ross assumes, as does Garcia, that the 16 upper stories fall under full gravitational acceleration through one floor, taken to be a distance of 3.7 meters. Given the acceleration of gravity “g” to be 9.81 m/sec^2, the resulting downward velocity is 8.52 m/sec at .88 seconds, at the time of impact of the Lower with the Upper Block.
For a first cut, Ross considers only 3% shortening of the columns of the first impacted floor of the Lower Block. The first order of business, Ross notes, is for the energy of the Upper Block to shorten the columns of the top floor of the Lower Block by 3%, sufficient to complete the plastic shortening phase. Only after this has occurred could buckling (failure) occur.
The resulting distance of .03(%) * 3.7 meters (height of floor) or .111 meters would be required, and at a constant speed of 8.5 meters per second, would take a minimum of 0.013 seconds. Ross does not assume any slowing of the upper block due to impact with the lower block. Because mechanical stress is propagated in steel at 4500 m/sec, Ross calculates that the propagation wave of the impact force would have traveled a distance of 58.7 meters, or about 16 floors downward. “These stories would thus suffer an elastic deflection in response to, and proportional to, the failure load applied at the impacted floor.”
Ross goes on to calculate the total amounts of potential and kinetic energy available and required for collapse and concluded that the amount of energy available would run into a deficit before completion of the 3% shortening phase of the first impacted floor, and thus the collapse would not proceed.
Ross finds that by considering the effects of elasticity in his analysis, stress is distributed through many lower floors, and collapse is arrested. Garcia’s force balance equation on the other hand, does not include the effects of elasticity and wave propagation, and therefore implicitly assumes the load factor of the upper block acts only on the very top floor of the lower block. Following the NIST Gospel, Garcia assumes this top floor will “crumble.” This allows Garcia to calculate a free fall time and velocity of impact on the second floor of the Lower Block, which will sustain a load factor. In the same way, the columns of this floor will be assumed to “crumble.” The assumption that each floor of the Lower Block will “crumble” individually, regardless of the load factor, allows him to continue his floor- by-floor cycle of free fall and impact delay all the way to the ground in only 10 seconds.
Zdenek Bazant is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and was an early supporter of the official theory that aircraft impact and ensuing fires caused global collapse. As he notes, steel on compressive failure will most probably buckle (7), and certainly will not “crumble” like concrete. If Ross’s 3% shortening had proceeded further downward, beyond the top floor of the Lower Block, failure would still not occur. Rather, the 3% shortening would continue to absorb energy, thus further favoring collapse arrest. Once 3% shortening has occurred over a sufficient length of columns (number of floors), failure, or buckling would be possible.
So how many floors would be required before bucking would be possible? Using a standard modification of Euler’s load formula, which provides stress as the product of a constraint factor K, multiplied by pi squared times Young’s Modulus, all divided by slenderness ratio, one can calculate an ideal minimum slenderness ratio, or column length, beyond which bucking will occur. If one plugs in 34000 psi for critical stress, or stress at failure, and allow K to equal 4, because columns were constrained by intact floors on both ends, and Young’s Modulus equals 30 times ten to the sixth power, one obtains a slenderness ratio of 186. The slenderness ratio of one floor of column can be calculated as the square root of the area moment of inertia of the column cross section divided by column area of cross section. Using the rough column dimensions of 14 inch square hollow tube of thickness 2 inches, a slenderness ratio of about 28 is obtained. Thus from a simple calculation, the number of floors required for bucking is roughly 186 divided by 28, or about 6.6 floors. This is an ideal value; the actual value, because real loads will never be perfectly concentric, will always be less than this.
Ross obtains a minimum buckling
length for one single column without lateral bracing as being at least three
floor heights for the upper section and four floor heights for the lower
section. According to Ross, when the lateral bracing provided to the external
columns by the spandrel plates and corner geometry, and provided to the core
column by the horizontal and diagonal core bracing is taken into consideration,
then this minimum buckling length would reach six or more floor heights.
The point here is that rough calculations show that buckling failure will not occur on a single floor, but will only occur after multiple floors have undergone a 3% shortening, yet Garcia, in order to use his floor-by-floor force equation, assumes single floors to fail.
Although Garcia does not include the
effects of elasticity and wave propagation in his force balance equation, he
devotes an entire section of his paper to discussing the destructive qualities
of wave propagation. He notes stress
waves rippling through and racing down the structure. We hear of stress on the lower floors shearing bolts and rivets,
and rupturing joints. We hear about the
powerful rebounding compression wave which reaches the bottom of the tower
structures and returns upward.
We do not hear that the propagation
wave, which may shear bolts and rupture joints on its way through the lower
floors to the ground are all good things, since all of these phenomena help to
distribute energy from the initial impact on the topmost floor through the entire
lower structure.
The situation is analogous to local
heating. Because of the high
conductivity of steel, a lot of heat added at one location is distributed
throughout the structure, thus preventing rapid local temperature increase. This is what helped to keep any significant
amount of steel in the towers from even reaching 600 deg. C. yet the half strength temperature is 650 deg C.
Wave propagation, including 3%
shortening, also extends upward into the Upper Block. As in the Lower Block, Garcia acknowledges the destructive
elastic processes present, but ignores the constructive effects. Wave propagation of energy upwards will not
only help the Upper Block survive, it will also provide an additional “cushion” effect to the impacted Lower Block,
which was not included in Ross’s original analysis, and would be another factor
favoring collapse arrest rather than collapse continuation.
Since Garcia has assumed each floor
collapses, he can say that each of these collapses sends out other shock waves
which may reinforce one another. “The
agitated latticework of stresses will probably cause many fractures and break
many joints.”
Garcia tries to use these multiply rebounding wave trains to account for
expelled jets of dust well below the collapse front: “The sudden shifts in the
volumes of the rooms and office spaces being compressed and twisted by the
elastic wave trains can easily expel jets of air and dust out of windows.” Yet elastic shortening is only 0.2% of the
length of a floor; and even 3% shortening of a 12.5 ft tall floor would only
result in a five inch drop from floor to ceiling; hardly enough to expulse much
dust. Garcia might argue that larger
room compressions could result from superposition of rebounding compression
waves. However, video evidence shows
the dust and gas being emitted from these alleged moving superimposed
compression waves are strangely stationary at floors far below, even as the
collapse front races down to overtake them.
Curiously also, these jets of dust appear only from the central windows
of the ejecting floors. Strange
behavior for an “agitated latticework of stresses.”
Interestingly, Garcia points out
that the shorter size (16 floors), and lack of foundation of the Upper Block
sped up its disintegration. We have also noted that the core columns above the
Lower Block were much less substantial than those of the Lower Block. Yet he and NIST conclude that “The lower structure was essentially crumbled by a
‘hammer’ of descending material, and the mass of this hammer increased during
the course of the collapse.”
Brent Blanchard, senior writer
a Implosion-World.com, recently
published an argument as to why the WTC collapses could not be
demolitions. In attempting to account
for the giant "mushroom" cloud
effect around the building perimeters during collapse, he states in his report:
"With the weight and mass of the upper sections forcing the floor trusses
below rapidly downward, there was no way for outer perimeter walls to fall in,
so they had to fall out. A review of
all photographic images clearly shows about 95% of falling debris being forced
away from the footprint of the structure."(8)
If 95%, or even 50% of the debris
formed during floor collapse is falling away, and the 16 floors of the lighter
Upper Block are included in that debris, how can the mass of these lighter 16
floors prevail over the 86 more massive
stationary undamaged floors below?
Garcia states: “NIST concludes
‘NIST’s findings do not support the [Professor Bazant’s] pancake theory of
collapse…Thus, the floors did not fail progressively to cause a pancaking
phenomenon.’” Note that Garcia provides
no references for any of his assertions.
What is the NIST section and page number of this statement?
Certainly NIST does appear to
support progressive collapse and pancaking. According to the March 2005 issue
of Popular Mechanics: ” ‘When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing,
it's going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window,’ NIST lead
investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM.
Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition,
Sunder adds, ‘but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception’.”
“Pancaking” to the general public
means progressive floor-by-floor collapse to the ground, regardless of the
precise structural mechanism. Certainly
the buildings collapsed to the ground.
Either the floors collapsed in progressive sequence, floor by floor, or
they failed simultaneously or by multiple floors at once. If NIST is saying the floors did not fail
“progressively to cause a pancaking phenomenon,” then how could NIST support
Garcia’s “Progressive Collapse”
successive floor-by-floor application of his “force balance equation”? How could NIST support Garcia’s argument
that each of the successive floor-by-floor collapses sent out shock waves which
intensified the destructive aspect of the wave train?
In summary, Garcia’s force balance equation appears to be incomplete and unsupported by NIST. His suggestive description is selective in favor of collapse continuation, and internally inconsistent. This brief discussion does not assume that Ross’s conclusion [that collapse would be arrested on the top floor of the Lower Block] is necessarily correct. However, Ross’s analysis appears to be more physically accurate, less selective, and more internally consistent than the Garcia analysis. A high fidelity tower structure and impact propagation model should be developed and simulations run. This should have been done by NIST, but although they provided a highly detailed tower model, they provided no impact propagation model or simulation of global collapse. This will need to be done in a completely transparent manner, allowing input from the engineering and technical community, before closure can occur on the issue of global collapse of the WTC towers.
Rodger
Herbst, BAAE ME
Notes
(1) Engineering News-Record 2 April 1964.
(2) ibid.
(3) NCEI 1 August 2005, “Hat truss theory adds to WTC collapse controversy,”
http://www.nceplus.co.uk/fastsearch/ArchiveArticleAssetPT/?AID=21810
(4) NCEI 1 November 2005, “Investigators resist call for collapse visualization,”
<<http://www.nceplus.co.uk/fastsearch/ArchiveArticleAssetPT/?AID=22994>>
(5) <<http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/sound/souspe2.html>>
(6)
Gordon Ross, Journal of 9/11 Studies,
Vol 1 2006, “Momentum Transfer
Analysis of the Collapse of the Upper Stories of WTC1,” <<http://www.journalof911studies.com/articles/Journal_5_PTransferRoss.pdf>>
(7) Zdenek P Bazant, Fellow ASCE, and Yong Zhou, Journal of Engineering Mechanics January 2002, original
article 9/13/01 expanded 9/22/01 appendices 9/28/01, “Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse?”
<<www.civil.northwestern.edu/people/bazant/PDFs/Papers/405.pdf>>
(8) <http://www.jod911.com/WTC
COLLAPSE STUDY BBlanchard 8-8-06.pdf>
[1] C. G. Jung, Flying Saucers, trans. R. F. C. Hull (New American Library, 1969). This wave of sightings began during the last years of WWII with the appearance of the Foo/feu fighters, light arrays, or balls of fire flying in the sky which interefered with Allied pilots on bombing missions over Germany.
[3] http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Oct05/Garcia1011.htm and http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept05/Garcia0923.htm