Science in the Bush: When Politics Displaces Physics

By Dr. Crockett Grabbe and Lenny Charles

09/08/07 "ICH" -- -- The majority of us accept as fact that the current administration manipulates science for political ends. Few were surprised to hear experts from industry challenge overwhelming evidence of man-made climate change. Frustration within the scientific community had grown so much that by Dec. 2006 more than 10,000 scientists, including 52 Nobel laureates and 63 recipients of the National Medal of Science, had signed a statement accusing the Bush administration of "distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends".

Scientific integrity within the administration has often not been rewarded. Recently fired US surgeon general Richard Carmona said after leaving, "In public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds."

Truth, even when grounded in strong scientific evidence, is the first casualty of war, and the US is at war.

The pattern is clear, and it affects us all.

On September 11th the whole world watched as jetliners crashed into the World Trade Center. These heinous crimes were labeled as acts of war. However, scientific principles show much more happened that day than we were told. The most striking feature of these World Trade Center collapses is that each came down within a few mere seconds of the time it would have taken a brick dropped from the buildings' tops to hit the ground. Through the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Committee Studies our government told us that the damage from the planes hitting the buildings and the resulting fires caused them to collapse at near freefall speed.

What we were told is physically impossible without additional forces to bring the buildings down.

We were told that the undamaged towers below the impact zone offered very little resistance -- effectively little more than air -- resulting in the complete destruction by the accelerating mass of the smaller top sections cascading downwards. But principles of physics starting with Sir Isaac Newton's Laws of Motion show that what we were told happened by the NIST Commission's Reports is not possible. Principles like Newton's Laws of Motion are facts that cannot be dismissed. The NIST Reports absurdly failed to carefully consider these physics principles when it told us the damage and subsequent collapse was caused by fires from the jet fuel. The swift collapse we witnessed, in fact, could not have been caused by the fires or any other damage from the planes.

Applying 2 basic principles, conservation of energy and conservation of momentum, the government explanation quickly unravels. NIST conspicuously ignored these principles in their Reports. NIST also ignored the observed twisting of the top 34 floors of the South Tower before it toppled down. This twisting clearly violates the conservation of both linear and angular momentum unless a large external force caused it. Where the massive amounts of energy came from that were needed to cause the complete collapse of the intact parts below for each Tower, when their tops were in virtual free fall, is not answered in NIST's numerous volumes of study.

The only explanation supported by the physics is multiple explosions in both Towers. Without an additional energy source to blow the lower floor support structure out of the way of the falling upper mass, the observed fall speeds were unachievable. Any true scientific model must take into account the fact that that the kinetic energy of falling material would continually be dissipated to break more structural energy of parts of the remaining building unless explosions have already done the job. Thus, without explosions this mandatory expenditure would continually decrease the fall velocity through all the levels. In other words,

the top portions of the buildings as they came down would be significantly slowed down by the undamaged parts of the buildings below.

Even if the fires had gutted the entire building, causing universal structural weakening, the fall times would still be about 2-3 times longer than the fall time observed. In reality, the North Tower had 92 floors and the South Tower had 77 floors of intact structure designed to withstand major adverse damage below the impact zone and fires. If the planes and fires did more minor damage to the buildings before setting off the supposed critical fall, either building would take
3-10 times as long for complete collapse than was observed, even if complete collapse could occur and even then if it occurred all at once.

Is there proof of how the buildings came down? Examining the more technical details of the collapse shows direct evidence that explosives caused the collapse. Videos and photos taken clearly show the very-quick appearance of rapidly growing dust clouds in the collapse of the both Towers. These clouds expanded much faster than the gravitational pull could produce, clearly indicating that explosive heat energy caused that expansion. Multiple squibs (material ejecting horizontally from high-pressure regions) traveling over 160 feet a second were observed in both towers, and could only be generated by explosions. Several parallel squibs came out of the South Tower just a floor or 2 below where the plane hit less than an hour before, and these explosions that caused the twisting of the top 34 floors that initiated the collapse of that tower. Multiple squibs were also seen at the times of collapse of building 7, which collapsed later that day and was not hit by any plane. The appearance of these squibs in all 3 cases came within seconds of the time each building started to collapse.

These squibs provide clear direct evidence of explosions, as simple math elaborates. Data taken from a photograph by KTLA channel 5 news shows a streaming clear line of ejecting material which is similar to several other squibs photographed that day. This stream is mostly made up of bits of material large enough that air resistance is small compared to the ejection force, and after ejection from the North Tower it has traveled nearly 70 feet in a horizontal direction, whereas the distance it has descended because of gravitational pull is small. If we estimate that the front end of the ejecting material has fallen about 3 feet, then, for material for which air friction is small (e.g. a 3-inch piece of glass or 1-inch piece of steel) we find it has been just under 0.5 sec since the front end first ejected from the building. The material in that squib is traveling horizontally at over 160 feet/sec.

Defenders of the NIST Reports have tried use to explain these squibs as compressed air and gasses coming out of the collapsing buildings, but that cannot begin to account for the energetic focused horizontal blasts observed. Explosions produced those extremely high speeds, making the ejecting material into a swath of bullets shooting out of the buildings.

So where does this squib hit the ground? Assuming the height of ejection is about 1300 feet (400 m), gravitational descent of that ejection to the ground lasts for 9 seconds if air resistance is negligible. In 9 seconds that squib has shot out almost 1300 feet, or about 1/4 mile away from the building. There is unmistakable evidence of damage from this high-speed material away from the Towers. Pictures on the Web show remains of hundreds of autos that were broadsided and severely damaged by such streaming material for blocks from the collapsing buildings. Many such explosions were necessary to produce these devastations scattered around over the 40 acres of the site.

The evidence is mounting and accredited scholars are coming out every day questioning the NIST Studies. In recent weeks alone, former NIST scientist James Quintiere has declared that he no longer accepts NIST's work and has called for a new investigation. World-renowned scientist Lynn Margulis strongly rejected the NIST Studies, suggesting that "the glaringly erroneous official account of 911 be dismissed...".. These are some of the finest scientists in the world. Can the mainstream press catch on? Reporters and pundits selectively use science to support less controversial issues but is this an inconvenient science. The rapidly expanding huge concrete dust clouds from the towers, the very-quick appearance of multiple squibs on all 3 collapsing buildings, and the destruction of hundreds of autos for several blocks around the World Trade Center from these squibs, are some of the dramatic examples clearly pointing to explosions. Scientific methods imply these were the cause of our greatest destruction in the 21st century.

Crockett Grabbe is an applied physicist engaged in research at the University of Iowa who received his Ph.D. from Caltech. He has been profiled multiple times in Who's Who in Science and Engineering.

Lenny Charles is the creator and producer of the International News Net World Report, one of only 2 daily alternative national televised news programs in America.