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Gold9472
04-10-2006, 10:19 AM
Physicist says heat substance felled WTC
Extremely hot fires caused structures to fail, BYU expert says

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635198488,00.html

By Suzanne Dean
4/10/2006

EPHRAIM β€” A Brigham Young University physicist said he now believes an incendiary substance called thermite, bolstered by sulfur, was used to generate exceptionally hot fires at the World Trade Center on 9/11, causing the structural steel to fail and the buildings to collapse.

"It looks like thermite with sulfur added, which really is a very clever idea," Steven Jones, professor of physics at BYU, told a meeting of the Utah Academy of Science, Arts and Letters at Snow College Friday.

The government requires standard explosives to contain tag elements enabling them to be traced back to their manufacturers. But no tags are required in aluminum and iron oxide, the materials used to make thermite, he said. Nor, he said, are tags required in sulfur.

Jones is co-chairman, with James H. Fetzer, a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a group of college faculty members who believe conspirators other than pilots of the planes were directly involved in bringing down New York's Trade Towers.

The group, which Jones said has 200 members, maintains a Web site at www.st911.org. A 40-page paper by Jones, along with other peer-reviewed and non-reviewed academic papers, are posted on the site.

Last year, Jones presented various arguments for his theory that explosives or incendiary devices were planted in the Trade Towers, and in WTC 7, a smaller building in the Trade Center complex, and that those materials, not planes crashing into the buildings, caused the buildings to collapse.

At that time, he mentioned thermite as the possible explosive or incendiary agent. But Friday, he said he is increasingly convinced that thermite and sulfur were the root causes of the 9/11 disaster.

He told college professors and graduate students from throughout Utah gathered for the academy meeting that while almost no fire, even one ignited by jet fuel, can cause structural steel to fail, the combination of thermite and sulfur "slices through steel like a hot knife through butter."

He ticked off several pieces of evidence for his thermite fire theory:

First, he said, video showed a yellow, molten substance splashing off the side of the south Trade Tower about 50 minutes after an airplane hit it and a few minutes before it collapsed. Government investigators ruled out the possibility of melting steel being the source of the material because of the unlikelihood of steel melting. The investigators said the molten material must have been aluminum from the plane.

But, said Jones, molten aluminum is silvery. It never turns yellow. The substance observed in the videos "just isn't aluminum," he said. But, he said, thermite can cause steel to melt and become yellowish.

Second, he cited video pictures showing white ash rising from the south tower near the dripping, liquefied metal. When thermite burns, Jones said, it releases aluminum-oxide ash. The presence of both yellow-white molten iron and aluminum oxide ash "are signature characteristics of a thermite reaction," he said.

Another item of evidence, Jones said, is the fact that sulfur traces were found in structural steel recovered from the Trade Towers. Jones quoted the New York Times as saying sulfidization in the recovered steel was "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the (official) investigation." But, he said, sulfidization fits the theory that sulfur was combined with thermite to make the thermite burn even hotter than it ordinarily would.

Jones said a piece of building wreckage had a gray substance on the outside that at one point had obviously been a dripping molten metal or liquid. He said that after thermite turns steel or iron into a molten form, and the metal hardens, it is gray.

He added that pools of molten metal were found beneath both trade towers and the 47-story WTC 7. That fact, he said, was never discussed in official investigation reports.

And even though WTC 7 was not connected to the Trade Towers β€” in fact, there was another building between it and the towers β€”and even though it was never hit by a plane, it collapsed. That suggests, he said, that it came down because a thermite fire caused its structural steel to fail.

Jones said his studies are confined to physical causes of the collapses, and he doesn't like to speculate about who might have entered the buildings and placed thermite and sulfur. But he said 10 to 20 people "in the know," plus other people who didn't know what they were doing but did what they were told, could have placed incendiary packages over several weeks.

BoneZ
04-10-2006, 04:06 PM
this doesn't make sense. unless these "devices" were explosives, what caused the squibs and all of the core columns simultaneous collapse?

is he coming off of his demolition theory and going closer to the government theory? this is what it sounds like.

Gold9472
04-10-2006, 06:03 PM
this doesn't make sense. unless these "devices" were explosives, what caused the squibs and all of the core columns simultaneous collapse?

is he coming off of his demolition theory and going closer to the government theory? this is what it sounds like.

My letter to Professor Jones...

Dear Professor Jones...

I read the latest piece in the deseret news, and I have one question... does thermite cause an "explosion" of sorts?

Thanks,

Jon Gold

His response...

Jon,

Thermite is a mixture of aluminum POWDER and iron oxide POWDER. The fineness of the powder determines whether or not the thermite is incendiary ("melting" through steel) or explosive -- the latter requiring ultra-fine aluminum powder, sometimes called nanoaluminum, and the thermite is then called "superthermite."

Thus, one can tailor thermite to cut more slowly, without causing explosions, or more quickly with explosions. The evidence is consistent with both types of thermite being used, although HMX or RDX could also have been used -- with a danger that the required taggants would be observed for HMX and RDX explosives.

Oh -- I should have pointed you to my paper where more detail is provided:

http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html

Sincerely
Steven J

awepittance
04-12-2006, 07:34 PM
wow, i just saw this steven jones article posted on fark.com , the 9/11 stuff is really snowballing.

maybe another mainstream media TV show without the bow-tied bastard will give him a fair interview

take a look , interesting dicussion going on at fark.com right now, this story has more comments on it than any other story of the day

link to the fark comments about the article (http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=2009351)

jetsetlemming
04-12-2006, 08:37 PM
So this guy's evidence that thermite was used to blow up the tower is... Thermite can be an explosive. What a dick.

Gold9472
04-12-2006, 08:39 PM
So this guy's evidence that thermite was used to blow up the tower is... Thermite can be an explosive. What a dick.

Shoo.

awepittance
04-13-2006, 04:02 AM
ad hominem logical fallacy regurgitation pt 234

fixed

jetsetlemming
04-13-2006, 02:30 PM
His only goddamn evidence that thermite was used on the towers is that thermite exists. That's like saying you are a rapist because you have a penis.

awepittance
04-13-2006, 08:34 PM
His only goddamn evidence that thermite was used on the towers is that thermite exists. That's like saying you are a rapist because you have a penis.

you seem very troubled, why so much anger? Attempted alternate explanations for the collapses infuriate you or what?

jetsetlemming
04-13-2006, 11:14 PM
The whole 9/11 thing just annoys me. I really don't care at this point. I used to, but jsut hammering over and over and over on the same useless points that will never ever convince anyone that 9/11 was an inside job BECAUSE NOBODY WANTS TO BELIEVE IT, AND NOBODY WANTS THAT ON THE HEAD OF THEIR HOME FUCKING COUNTRY! Even if this conspiracy made sence nobody would except it, because they live in America, and they don't want that going on America's record, even if it should be. This guy isn't thinking about "attempting alternate explainations", the article says, "A Brigham Young University physicist said he now believes an incendiary substance called thermite, bolstered by sulfur, was used to generate exceptionally hot fires at the World Trade Center on 9/11, causing the structural steel to fail and the buildings to collapse". Not "thinks thermite is a possibility in the wtc collapse, not "Thermite might have been used on 9/11", it's he believes. With no evidence other than thermite goes boom.