Manuel Garcia Sees Physics That Don't Exist


December 27, 2006

Another Opportunity to Understand Our Predicament


With the case of Manuel Garcia, and his three recent, rapid-fire articles in Counterpunch, we appear to have another opportunity to examine the phenomenon of Bush science. Here we see a fully educated scientist making strong supportive statements of the Bush Administration's 9/11 theories, despite the fact that he must know those theories are based on false or unsubstantiated claims. For our own understanding, let's take a closer look at Manuel Garcia and his efforts.




Quantum Behavior

In his "Physics of 9/11", Garcia offered his new "twisted joints" theory, adding more conjecture to the miasma that NIST spent three years crafting. Garcia may have twisted a few joints himself before writing these articles, but it is clear that he did not put much time into reviewing NIST's WTC report before putting his reputation, and perhaps much more, on the line to defend it. NIST did not actually describe the all-important forces that supposedly pulled in the tower's external columns. In their computer model, these forces were phantom forces, applied to the external columns by sagging floors that had, paradoxically, been disconnected from those columns. Garcia's talk of twisting joints is, therefore, only imaginative conjecture at best.


The greater part of this first article is simply wild speculation, a crime in itself at this point. Although NIST admits that many scientists, given millions of dollars and several years to work on it, could not describe the dynamics of collapse for the towers, Garcia makes a one-man job of it in order to put those silly conspiracy theorists in their place. He offers equations and terms like "wave trains" to ensure that those of us who need to "expand [our] range of rationality and hence [our] political maturity" can do so, if only we can follow his superior thought processes. In Garcia's dreamlike world of superiority, strange things happen. Floors vanish and buildings begin crashing to the ground, as a result of fire-softened steel, at an initial speed of 16 mph. That is, there is no zero point at which such a building begins to drop. These skyscrapers actually exhibit quantum behavior, as large multi-floor sections go from rest to a speed of 16 mph instantaneously! Garcia appears humble when describing this monumental discovery, telling us little about the "rippling wavelets" that make it so. He finally sums up his findings by simply stating that "The towers shattered, and the pieces fell to the ground." Perhaps someone should call the Nobel committee.

The Energy Crisis Solved

Garcia's second article, "The Thermodynamics of 9/11", does not improve upon the first. Here he repeats his ridiculous claim of the importance of high temperatures in the impact zone (far from the failure zone), and then states that the "fatal element in the WTC Towers story is that enough of the thermal insulation was banged off the steel frames by the airplane jolts…". Of course, those of us who have actually followed NIST's investigation know that they could not produce any "robust criteria" to establish that fireproofing was lost through forces of vibration. Instead, NIST performed a shotgun test to see if the fireproofing could have been lost through shearing forces.




In the absence of this explanation, Garcia proceeds to apply this tremendous amount of mysterious energy to the heating of the materials involved. But instead of taking the quantities of steel, concrete, and other materials into account (don't forget the aircraft itself) Garcia helps us to "expand our range of rationality" by dumbing-down the scenario using a "fictitious homogenized" substance called "ironcrete". Garcia muddies the water with his ironcrete because, although he doesn't give the calculations, this allows him to use a sleight of hand, giving a value for specific heat that is less than that of any of the starting materials. Few would notice, but this means that, in support of Garcia's purposes, it takes less heat to increase the temperature of each kilogram of ironcrete than it would to increase the temperature of the steel and concrete used in the WTC towers. Since he's using eight times more energy than could have been available anyway, this minor scam doesn't seem worth the effort.


The Dark Matter of Intelligent Fuel

By the time we get to Garcia's third article, we're either believing this guy is the greatest scientist in history, or we're understanding that his series in Counterpunch may be something more of a sucker punch. In this third article, "Dark Fire", Garcia claims to have single-handedly solved the problem that baffled FEMA and NIST, as well as all objective people around the world -- the collapse of WTC 7.




Additionally, we know that FEMA spent eight months of exhaustive work on the investigation, finally claiming that "The performance of WTC 7 is of significant interest because it appears the collapse was due primarily to fire, rather than any impact damage from the collapsing towers." They then added that their "best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence." NIST has spent several years trying to come up with a legitimate, non-explosive explanation, so far without success. But our hero Garcia takes FEMA's low probability scenario, embellishes it a bit, and boldly declares "This is what happened", leaving no room for doubt.

The initiating event of Garcia's low probability theory is a "hot volley" of "incandescent metal and heated stone" that destroyed a fuel oil distribution pipe in the southwest corner of WTC 7. Where the stone came from we'll never know (maybe it was an asteroid), but the probability that the temperature of the steel from the towers, which NIST measured at 250 C, could cause that steel to glow in incandescence, is essentially nil.










Garcia's "Dark Fire" piece might as well have been about the combustion of that elusive dark matter, because even if we really wanted to believe his extended string of astounding events, he doesn't address the primary problems of the collapse dynamics. Instead, he simply states "a progressive collapse propagates up and material falls freely." And as with the work of NIST, we're expected to believe that just saying so makes it true.

Begging Off and Catching On

When questioned more closely about his speculative articles, Garcia claimed in an email that he was done talking and writing about these issues, and that folks would need to rely on the authoritative information provided by Frank Greening and Popular Mechanics. In this plea, Garcia says that Greening's results jibe with his, although he was unaware of Greening before he wrote his series. It is clear from his "thermodynamics" piece that Garcia might subscribe to Greening's "Fruit Crumble" theory, where ultra-fine Aluminum and Iron Oxide spontaneously form in the buildings to produce "natural thermite", distributed in just the right forms and places. It could be that Garcia would buy Greening's "They Just Forgot to Use the Bolts" theory as well, if it comes to that. (4)




If our new Democratic Congress will not call for impeachment or a new 9/11 investigation, will they at least repeal the Military Commissions Act, or the Patriot Act? Will they stop construction of Halliburton's secretive "detention centers" or put an end to the illegal 9/11 Wars? Will our government's efforts to protect us from unexplained terrorism ever stop looking exactly like the efforts they would take to protect themselves from us? In other words, will these new leaders, in practice, be any different than the neo-cons? Over the next few months we will realize the answers to these questions, and perhaps then we can begin taking more responsibility for the deception in our lives.


2. Therese McAllister explains NIST's vague, sweeping assumption of fireproofing loss in her presentation here.
4. Gordon Ross explains some of Greening's desperate sounding theories here.