A respected BYU physics professor, Dr. Steven E. Jones, is stirring national controversy over 9/11. Physics and other fields of science have a lot to say about what happened in New York City that day, and the message is disconcerting. He presents an interesting case that something more than a couple of airplanes brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center – and another building, WTC 7, which many people haven’t heard about. If Dr. Jones is correct, the official explanations of the Federal Government simply don’t fit the facts, when viewed with the lens of science. While I am no expert in this field, I think he has a compelling case. Americans need to demand that the truth be told and a genuine investigation take place.
You can see a flash presentation of one of his slide shows at http://www.checktheevidence.com/911/BYUStevenJones/Flash/. You can also see a video of a presentation from Dr. Jones.
In the abstract of his paper, “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?“, Dr. Jones writes:
In this paper, I call for a serious investigation of the hypothesis that WTC 7 and the Twin Towers were brought down, not just by impact damage and fires, but through the use of pre-positioned cutter-charges. I consider the official FEMA, NIST, and 9-11 Commission reports that fires plus impact damage alone caused complete collapses of all three buildings. And I present evidence for the controlled-demolition hypothesis, which is suggested by the available data, testable and falsifiable, and yet has not been analyzed in any of the reports funded by the US government.
For many of us, 9/11 may have been the most dramatic national event of the past decade. Clearly it was an event that has changed this nation and the world. It is vital that the truth about this event be known. Dr. Jones, thank you for having the courage to put truth above your career in speaking out on this vital topic.
9/11 – what is the truth??
Oct. 22, 2006 Update: A rebuttal to many of the assertions from Dr. Jones has been posted at Implosionworld by demolition experts. I find the rebuttal to be credible, and would be interested to know if Dr. Jones has a response to it. Dr. Jones has just resigned from BYU after getting into trouble for some controversial views he has expressed.
I don’t know what actually happened and am awaiting further information, but I appreciate the efforts of others to dig deeper. I think it is foolish to instantly dismiss those who challenge official and mainstream views.
Some people have to find conspiracy theories in everything. What reason would the governemnt have for lying to the American people about how this was done? What about the other buildings that got hit by airplanes… why didn’t they have cutter charges placed? It all seems rather silly to me.
50 years ago a B-52 bomber got lost in the fog and hit the Empire State Building head on. Several people died and yet, nothing more than a gaping hole appeared in the side of the building.
WTC 7 was not even hit by a plane. Offically, it collapsed due to fire. The ONLY time in history a steel-framed building has collapsed due to fire.
What reason does the gov’t have for lying? Wow. Where to begin.
Steven Jones and his group don’t actually have any science to back them up. They have a lot of speculation, however, and rely on debunked 9/11 conspiracy websites.
They have never been able to refute the world’s structural engineers, physicists, chemists, and forensic scientists, much less the scientific investigations like NIST. They would like you to believe they have, however.
History has always had it’s snake-oils salesmen and charlatans.
It was a B-25, NOT a B-52. And the Empire State Building is of an entirely different construction then the WTC towers.
WTC 7 was structurally damaged from debris from the falling WTC 1 and burned for 7 hours before collapsing. To compare it to any other fire of steel buildings is just plain illogical; no two fires and circumstances are alike.
Where to start? By educating yourself and the reasons 9/11 conspiracists make unsupported assertions to deceive you, that’s where.
You’ve gotta be KIDDING me! PLEASE do yourselves a favor and visit these websites about the 9/11 conspiracy theories.
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pentagon.htm
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/rumors.htm
I think this guy is out to lunch.
NIST Response to the World Trade Center Disaster, Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of World Trade Center Disaster, Part IIC–WTC 7 Collapse, April 5, 2005
(link)
http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/WTC%20Part%20IIC%20-%20WTC%207%20Collapse%20Final.pdf
Please, please don’t tell me you are serious Jeff. This has got to be one of the most embarassing conspiracy theories anyone has been involved with.
Jeff,
Structural engineers have debunked the crazy BYU prof. One doesn’t even need to paint him as a conspiracy theorist to counter him. His engineering just doesn’t hold.
I can add my two cents, because I actually worked at one of the WTC buildings in 1976 for a few weeks that summer.
I worked pretty high up. And the first week was scary, because in strong winds, the buiding SWAYED by a few FEET. I don’t remember how many feet the lateral movement was, but it was over 1 foot, and likely 2 feet at the height our office was.
It was like being on a ship on the ocean and getting used to the gentle ocean swell.
So I read up on the building and its construction, and indeed it was constructed differently than other high-rises. It was built on a flexible spine structure. It was designed to move in the wind to relieve the pressure, and to withstand really high gusts.
In a traditional building of similar cross-section, you distribute the load-bearing columns in the corners AND throughout the floor plan all the way to the center. Colums are usually rigid steel or reinforced concrete.
However, the Trade Center towers were contructed with a FLEXIBLE load-bearing matrix as the spine in the center core only.
It’s design and construction was unique.
When I watched the collapse and the replays of the collapse, I understood exactly what was happening and could envision how the result was exactly to be expected based on a failure of a section of the core spine matrix.
You have to remember that this support matrix did not go out to the edges of the building. The floors were built on “ribs” that extended out from the spine. This “ribs on a spine” was what made the building flexible and able to withstand high winds.
The 20 floors (or however many it was) above the failure point was still a solid mass, but their descent of 1 or 2 floors vertical distance across the failure point had enough kinetic energy (potential energy of height converted to kinetic energy as it fell) to knock the next lower floor loose from the spine.
So the next section of the spine didn’t have to merely support the X tons of the floors above it, it had support X tons MOVING at Y feet/second, which it was NOT DESIGNED TO DO.
(And I can’t fault the engineers for not envisioning or pre-visioning an airplane crashing into the building and “cutting” the spine with burning fuel.)
The fall of the 20 story section across 1 or 2 floors created a new failure point in the spine, and the mass fell another 1 or 2 floors, converting more potential energy (due to height) to kinetic energy, and now it had gained another floor of mass too.
The “clean demolition look” to the collapse was due to the building’s structure. All the support was in the core, yet the outer edges of the building had only facade-type construction to keep it together, not heavy-duty support-type construction that would have held tightly and caused twisting due to uneven pressures.
Each floor was connected strongly to the core, so the forces were directly applied to the core all the way down.
Other things to remember, is that the burning fuel would have seeped down the core/spine almost all the way and prepared lower parts of the spine for failure by heating and softening them up.
The core/spine also functioned as a chimney funnelling air into the burning portion. Burning something in a vertical tube creates high winds in the tube, and that high wind acts like a blacksmith’s bellows and creates extremely high temps, enough to melt steel.
I realize your science is more related to chemistry than physics. But if you can envision the floors of the WTC being build on the ribs of a spine, and then envision how the mass of 20 floors (the floors above the impact point) moving AS A WHOLE downward across one floor as the spine melted at that point, then it could transfer enough energy to the next floor’s “vertebrae” to break it loose, then that new mass gaining even more kinetic energy as it fell another floor, I think you can picture what happened. It was almost a domino effect downward. It just “zipped” like a row of falling dominos.
Add another link that does a good job debunking these obnoxious 9/11 conspiracy theories.
http://www.geocities.com/debunking911/
Wow. This guy’s paper reads just like any standard anti-Mormon tract. And should be given the same credibility. The claims he raises are soundly answered elsewhere, but of course he doesn’t address the responses.
Hey Jeff, how can you still be Mormon? If you believe this crap you should believe the Tanners too.
Bookslinger, I was with you until you said:
“The core/spine also functioned as a chimney funnelling air into the burning portion. Burning something in a vertical tube creates high winds in the tube, and that high wind acts like a blacksmith’s bellows and creates extremely high temps, enough to melt steel.
I have read several websites dealing with this issue. One thing I found common to both pro-official theory, and anti-official theory sites, was that there is no way that any steel could have melted due to this crash.
Your theory makes plenty of sense, for the two main towers, but what about WTC7. Was it constructed the same way.
Also, what about all the molten metal found for several days at ground zero? I have yet to hear a plausable explanation for where it came from. If no steel melted (backed up by even the official reports now) then where did it come from, and why is no one asking about it other than professor Jones
It’s amazing to me how so many people can dismiss a theory when they have not even had time to read thw supporting evidence.
It’s sad, but most of you are walking completely blind into what our new future is becoming.
Hey there ‘Anonymous’…why do you think anyone is dismissing the “theory” (more like, unproven hypothesis) without evaluating the evidence? I first heard about this nut months ago and looked into it.
After seeing the overwhelming evidence of how the planes dropped the buildings, and checking this guy’s ideas (which don’t match up with facts), I dismissed him as a nutjob.
Dr. Jones brings up some interesting points in his presentation that really made me question the 9/11 Commissions conclusions. However, as I read through his presentation, I kept asking myself “why would the Bush administration perpetrate such an act?”
Just prior to 9/11 the US economy was just starting to recover from the market crash a year earlier. This attack reversed this recovery and stalled the economy.
Another contradiction is how could the Bush administration be so skilled in creating this well planned cover-up and mis-judge the scope of the war in Iraq?
If the idea was to justify a ‘Christian/Muslim war’ I would think a government that was skilled enough to pull off kind of cover-up would figure out a better way to accomplish the same thing without screwing up our economy.
The telling part of his presentation was his conclusions. They seem to be taken right out of the Democratic Party’s talking point: Illegal war, Illegal wire taps, Halburton, etc. In my mind, this showed the real intentions of his presentation–Blast Bush in anyway possible. This killed his credibility.
Dr. Jones may be completely wrong, but some of the responses don’t seem to refute key points of his thesis, though some have merit.
Let’s start with with Stacey’s reply:
You’ve gotta be KIDDING me! PLEASE do yourselves a favor and visit these websites about the 9/11 conspiracy theories.
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pentagon.htm
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/rumors.htm
OK, I checked them out. The first one deals with the Pentagon, not the WTC. It’s irrelevant to Dr. Jones’ work. The second one critiques a wide variety of rather silly urban legends around 9-11, none of which deal with the analysis of Dr. Jones or with the substantial issues he discusses, such as the evidence of demolition with thermite charges. Sorry, it’s irrelevant.
Now the NIST document that John Mansfield points is relevant and does provide some useful analysis to explain how column failure could lead to the observed deformation and collapse of the building. At least a paradigm is offered. What is missing is the analysis to show that this could result in near free-fall velocities, or that the temepratures achieved could cause column failure, or that this could explain other pheonomena that appear to more closely fit a demolition model. The issue is not settled, and Dr. Jones calls for modeling work and further analysis.
More to follow….
I have to wonder what role Dr. Jones’ credentials have to play in this? He’s a BYU professor and is quoted in a Mormon blog. Would a respected professor from UC Berkeley get the same assumption of credibility?
I question this because Dr. Jones is not speaking on a subject where his Mormonism (or affiliation with the Church) has absolutely no bearing on what he says.
So that begs the question. Do we automatically give more credence to what someone says because he is LDS? Why?
Schuyler’s last comment is right on the money. The conspiracy theorists can’t explain how the Bush Administration could pull off a perfect snow job on 9/11 — including silencing the hundreds of people who would have to have been involved — and yet so badly bungle everything else they’ve set out to accomplish.
Time to turn off The X Files reruns. 9/11 was caused by 19 Islamic fundamentalist hijackers and a federal bureaucracy that was so large and inept that it couldn’t put the pieces together.
(And, while I’m on the subject, Lee Harvey Oswald was the only shooter in Dealey Plaza.)
Hilarious. Not Dr. Jones, the comments here. I know Steve very well and he’s no nutjob. Eccentric? Perhaps. Intelligent? Extremely. Crazy? Not so much.
schuyler, you dismiss all of Steve’s research based on two shaky assumptions:
a) Presidents of the USA (and those under their command) have the best interest of the country in mind.
b) Anything the party you don’t like (in your case, the Democrats) says about the party you do like (Republicans, including Bush) is automatically false.
Those who casually dismiss ALL alternate theories must by default accept the Official explanation. Do you really trust every agency of the federal government and every person involved to always give you, a mere member of the masses, the best information possible? Do you trust them to make the best possible decision?
I don’t. Apparently Jeff doesn’t either. Neither does Steve. Neither do a lot of people.
So who are we to trust? Nephi offers some counsel I’ve found valuable: “Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, or maketh flesh his arm, or shall hearken unto the precepts of men, save their precepts shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost.”
Christopher: I don’t claim any special knowledge that Steve is correct on all or any counts. But I think he’s got something. The physics are solid, and his conclusions are very conservative considering what he’s presented. Finally, knowing Steve as well as I do, I have reason to believe that he will follow the Spirit in this research, just as I’ve watched him do that in every other aspect of his life.
Do I find it hard to believe that the Bush Admin. could pull this feat off? Absolutely.
But I don’t know if it’s harder to believe than our intelligence failing to warning us about the attacks in the first place.
I don’t know if it’s harder to believe than our intelligence failing us in the Iraq debacle.
I don’t know if it’s harder to believe than our intelligence failing to locate Osama Bin Laden during the past 4 1/2 years.
And where’s the outrage over the illegal war, wiretaps, Halliburton, etc.? Nothing will change as another of Bush’s followers will eventually take his place. Absolutely ridiculous.
MistaBen,
What conclusion is more shakey: somebody planted explosives in three buildings to take them down just after jets crashed into them or somebody doesn’t like Bush’s policies so they create a story to fit a few facts to show he conspired to take down the WTC?
I don’t have the expertise to validate Dr. Jones’s theory, but I did spend a few hours reading his papers. Other scientists have refuted his claims by the same scientific means he uses, so how does one judge? One way is to find out what motivates him. I can only do this through statements he has made. When his conclusions are basically the democratic party’s talking points it makes me question his motives. If this happened to a democratic administration and Jones cited Republican talking points, I’d come to the same conclusion: Facts may have been manipulated–even unitentionally to fit his politics.
MistaBen,
What conclusion is more shakey: somebody planted explosives in three buildings to take them down just after jets crashed into them or somebody doesn’t like Bush’s policies so they create a story to fit a few facts to show he conspired to take down the WTC?
I don’t have the expertise to validate Dr. Jones’s theory, but I did spend a few hours reading his papers. Other scientists have refuted his claims by the same scientific means he uses, so how does one judge? One way is to find out what motivates him. I can only do this through statements he has made. When his conclusions are basically the democratic party’s talking points it makes me question his motives. If this happened to a democratic administration and Jones cited Republican talking points, I’d come to the same conclusion: Facts may have been manipulated–even unitentionally to fit his politics.
I can guarantee you that Prof. Jones is far from being a member of the Democratic Party.
What Democratic talking points is Jones using? I don’t hear the Democratic Party saying much at all these days about anything.
Have we considered that simply because Jones’ observations are correct that his “conspiracy theory” is incorrect?
To jump from his findings to a “Bush orchestrated everything” (or even something) is a leap no smaller than Indiana Jones’ leap of feath.
Let’s just not lock ourselves into a diametric where either the planes caused everything or Bush caused everything. It simply isn’t wise, as the future archives will probably indicate a third way.
Look, in my LDS blog here, I occasionally highlight interesting things involving Mormons in the news. Whether it’s an LDS CEO, author, artist, or professor, I don’t mean that they should automatically be given credibility because of their religion, but I am inclined to give them some publicity. Discussing Dr. Jones is fair game, though I’m certainly more comfortable discussing theological issues or Book of Mormon issues.
Just as one’s religious association should not automatically give one credibility in non-religious matters, neither should politics determine the credibility of scientific arguments that are made. Those who trust President Bush or government in general are immediately challenged by observations that suggest fire could not fell the buildings, but our political beliefs should be put aside in evaluating Dr. Jones’ commentary on the physics behind the collapse of 3 buildings.
Schulyer said he was put off by Dr. Jones’ comments on wiretapping, Haliburton, etc. Help me out – I don’t see those in his paper nor in his flash presentation. Were you confusing someone else’s comments with his, or did I miss a link?
Bookslinger said that the structure of the WTC would allow the rapid fall shown. The mechanismm you describe is plausible: collapse of the major support columns in upper floors could lead to a downward avalanche with one section after another failing as the load above fell. BUT this analysis repeatedly leaves out some important but basic physics. If I understand correctly, the building fell almost as rapidly a bowling ball in free fall dropped from the upper floors would have fallen. The collapse would have taken several seconds longer using the mechanism given in the official theory.
It’s easy to see why. Let’s simplify the problem in terms of two clumps of sticky peanut butter of equal weight, one above the other, both being suspended by their own threads that are barely strong enough to hold each of them up. The thread holding the higher clump is cut and it begins to fall until it hits and sticks to the lower clump of peanut butter, causing its support to fail. The two clumps are now traveling together. Just before the moment of impact, the upper clump had a high velocity corresponding to the free fall velocity of the first clump having fallen the distance that was initially between the two clumps. Once the two clumps collide and beging to fall together, the momentum of the two clumps is the same as the momentum previously possessed by the upper clump alone, which is now shared by twice the mass, so the downward velocity drops by 50%. It picks up speed again, only to slow again for any other hanging peanut butter clumps encountered further below. Here, the clumps of peanut butter correspond to floors, and the string to the supports for the floors.
A building collapse driven by the successive failure of one floor after another due to impact from falling mass above must fall significantly slower than a building brought down by demolition, in which the key internal supports are removed at the bottom, allowing the internal beams to begin dropping and allowing the whole building to fall, with the outside structure initially falling more slowly than the inside supports, but generally resulting in a collapse close to free fall speed for objects dropped from the top.
What we observe with both the Twin Towers and WTC 7, which was not hit by a plane, was collapse with the same demolition-like characteristics: highly symmetrical descent almost as fast as pure free fall from the top, a behavior seen in each of the three buildings and unparalleled in other tall buildings that have suffered from intense fire.
And the avalanche theory, even if it was accurate, would not leave you with molten steel in the basement of the building.
So how do we account for these observations? If you presented the physical observations to an expert in building collapse and asked if anything other than demolition could explain it, what answer would you get? (Other experts have joined Dr. Jones in speaking out about this.)
I think we need to consider the physical issues more carefully before we go on a rampage about who’s a nut and who hates Bush, etc. Internal demolition does not mean that Bush did it, or that the CIA or Al Qaida did it, or that wire tapping all your conversations tonight is necessarily a bad thing.
I don’t know who did what – but I’m intrigued with a respected BYUI professor who seems to be putting his career on the line to raise some questions worth discussing intelligently – and not just ranting about conspiracy theories. I’m surprised at how many people automatically rule out something if there was the possibility that some kind of corruption was involved. How can anyone read the Book of Mormon’s numerous warnings about secret combinations in our day without being at least a little open to the possibility that maybe it’s good to ask pointed questions about government?
If I understand correctly, the building fell almost as rapidly a bowling ball in free fall dropped from the upper floors would have fallen. The collapse would have taken several seconds longer using the mechanism given in the official theory.
You don’t understand correctly. The buildings fell much slower than free fall, as is noted by one of the URL’s above.
What we observe with both the Twin Towers and WTC 7, which was not hit by a plane, was collapse with the same demolition-like characteristics: highly symmetrical descent almost as fast as pure free fall from the top, a behavior seen in each of the three buildings and unparalleled in other tall buildings that have suffered from intense fire.
Nope. Look for “symmetric” here. WTC 7 didn’t fall symmetrically, as is obvious from the debris.
All the buildings have tremendous moments of inertia, and it’s not surprising that they didn’t rotate much as they began to fall. However, they’re nowhere near the “symmetric” collapse done routinely by professional demolitions experts, as is obviously evident from the front page of that same URL.
And the avalanche theory, even if it was accurate, would not leave you with molten steel in the basement of the building.
How many 120-story buildings have you collapsed along with a plane-load of burning jet fuel? None? That’s right. In fact, there was more than sufficient energy to melt steel.
I think we need to consider the physical issues more carefully before we go on a rampage about who’s a nut
We can investigate, but this guy’s a nut. To quote him:
Thus, we find substantial evidence supporting the current conjecture that some variation of thermite … was used on the steel columns of the WTC Tower to weaken the huge steel supports, not long before explosives finished the demolition job.
He is claiming that people demolished the building after the crashes. This would require a conspiracy of a grand scale, with no leaks. His most significant claims are easily explained by conventional theories, and he is incorrect about much of the easily observable evidence (e.g. the symmetric collapse of WTC which wasn’t actually symmetric).
I don’t know who did what – but I’m intrigued with a respected BYUI professor who seems to be putting his career on the line to raise some questions worth discussing intelligently – and not just ranting about conspiracy theories.
Um, sorry–he is ranting about conspiracy theories.
This reads just like any anti-Mormon tract, or any of numerous people claiming we didn’t go to the moon. It begins by presuming what things should be like, then shows how they aren’t like that. But that’s not science. We look at what happens and then try to understand what physical laws are behind it.
I repeat: the collapse of the WTC is entirely explained by conventional physics, and does not require the “unnecessary multiplication of personalities” Jones requires for his claims. Occam’s razor makes it obvious what to believe.
How can anyone read the Book of Mormon’s numerous warnings about secret combinations in our day without being at least a little open to the possibility that maybe it’s good to ask pointed questions about government?
Nice straw man Jeff. We can ask pointed questions about government without being a nutjob. I don’t trust the government very much, and am no Bush apologist, but I am also more interested in truth than in conspiracy theories.
How is the collapse of the building being timed? It’s clear when each building starts to fall, but when do you stop the clock? Also remember that the “top” of the buildings would heaped several feet off the ground, which would throw off any calculations. From the videos I’ve watched, I don’t see how anyone can get an accurate, much less scientific calculation on the collapse.
Excellent points, emarkp. The analysis of momentum transfer makes sense, with the “slight” extra time for building collapse compared to free fall being within the scope of his demolition-free model. Does anybody know if Dr. Jones responded to the analysis in http://www.geocities.com/debunking911/freefall.htm?
But hey, even if Dr. Jones ends up being wrong, name calling is an inappropriate response. Alternative theories end up being discarded all the time in science, and people are often wrong. That doesn’t make them a “nutcase”. But let’s see if the debunking arguments hold up.
I’ve seen how adding air/oxygen increases the temperature at which a fuel normally burns. That’s the whole principal of a blacksmith’s bellows.
I’ve built and observed plenty of fires, both in fireplaces with chimneys and outside in the open like a bonfire. The chimney effect is noticeable and magnifies the fire.
So yes, the temps in the core support of the towers could have easily been high enough to melt steel.
I also believe the fuel not only covered the floorspace around the core, and made a lake around it on the floors of impact, but the flaming fuel would also have seeped down the core.
By the time the pancaking occured, the “vertebrae” were already severely weakened, so not as much kinetic energy had to be expended in breaking those connections.
In watching the videos, the building pancaked or “zipped” from the top down. It did not look to me like a demolition where they fire the charges in such quick succession that all floors appear to start falling at the same time.
Hey, if we’re going to talk conspiracy theories, I’m still stuck on the Branch Davidians and Oklahoma City bombing. I have a lot of questions about those that have not been answered to my satisfaction.
Here are some of the questions I want answered in the millennium:
1. Who all (plural) shot JFK, and who all were in on it? Who was in on a coverup, if there was one?
2. Did anyone in our government really have advance warning of Pearl Harbor? Was a malfunctiioning Teletype machine really to blame?
3. Did North Vietnam and Laos hold back American prisoners at the end of the Vietnam War, and did Nixon and Kissinger know about it?
4. Did the Soviets take American POW’s from Vietnam back to the Soviet Union?
5. What really happened with the Branch Davidians at Waco?
6. What really happened in Oklahoma City?
7. Was Hitler really a homosexual or a hermaphrodite?
8. Was J. Edgar Hoover a homosexual?
9. Was Jimmy Carter really that stupid?
10. [A zillion questions about the Clintons deleted for brevity.]
And yes, I have religious/spiritual questions, but I won’t enumerate them in this thread, so as not be irreverent.
Mormanity:
I can’t speak for his paper or flash presentation, but when he spoke here at UVSC, he talked a great deal about Haliburton, Bin Laden’s facial strucuture (the latter referring to the possibility that many of the tapes of Bin Laden were not authentic).
Just fyi
Had Jones simply said, “the physics doesn’t match the explanation”, I wouldn’t call him a nutjob.
When he started suggesting that someone must have used thermite and demolitions charges to bring the buildings down, and continues to make claims that are easily falsifiable (buildings falling at “free fall”, etc.), then I feel confident to label him a nutjob. When he (apparently) starts claiming that the different noses of bin Laden show that some bin Laden tapes are fake, I feel confident to label him a nutjob.
I label the moon hoaxers nutjobs too, because they are.
I label the Tanners as liars, because they are.
Okay, this is old news by now.
I’ve compared what structural engineers have to say about the collapse and what Dr. Jones has to say. Sorry Dr. Jones, but I’m going with the structural engineers.
There’s a lot of talk about steel melting. Remember that steel doesn’t have to melt to bring a building down, it just has to be heated enough to lose strength.
After the Pons & Fleischman fiasco with cold fusion, you would think Dr. Jones would learn to be careful about taking public positions that can’t be backed up. How can he back down now?!?
Jeff,
The more political statements are found towards the end of the second half of his presentation:
http://www.checktheevidence.com/911/BYUStevenJones/Flash/BYU-911EthicalQuestions%2001%20Feb%202006%20-%20part%202.swf
I haven’t dismissed his evidence outright. I just haven’t had time to study it. There may be other explanations for his observation that are more straight-forward. However, when his presentation took a political turn by blasting the Bush ad