The Science of Ghosts by Joe Nickell

Author:Joe Nickell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prometheus Books

The horrific events now known as “9/11” occurred on September 11, 2001. Nineteen terrorists commandeered four commercial airplanes, crashing one into each of the World Trade Center's twin towers and another into the Pentagon near Washington, DC; only the heroic actions of passengers and crew aboard a fourth hijacked plane prevented it from reaching another target—probably the US Capitol—and instead caused it to crash in a rural Pennsylvania field.

The attacks prompted an immediate investigation by the FBI, which linked the strikes to the terrorist organization al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden (who initially denied involvement). On July 22, 2002, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States issued its report, which gave an account of the circumstances that surrounded the suicide attacks—including issues of preparedness and response.

The United States Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conducted a technical investigation of the twin towers’ collapse, culminating in a ten-thousand-page report explaining that the crashed planes caused severe initial damage and that the subsequent fires weakened the floors’ support trusses, causing floors to sag and pull on the exterior steel columns, which then buckled and became unable to support the structures (Dunbar and Reagan 2006). As it happens, I was invited to lecture on critical thinking at NIST on June 28, 2007, and I was able to view some of the steel girders from the collapsed twin towers that had been analyzed by NIST experts (see figure 28.2). (In 2002, I had visited the “Ground Zero” site where the towers had stood.)

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