Has anybody here heard the little theory presented by Steven Jones, a professor of Physics at BYU, that the World Trade Center buildings collapsed, not because the planes hit them, but instead because the buildings were brought down via controlled demolition?
Here is a paper he wrote on the subject. (Note: PDF)
Brief summary:
Nobody’s saying the planes didn’t hit the two World Trade Center buildings 1 and 2. They did. However there is evidence that the three buildings that collapsed (WTC buildings 1, 2, and 7) did not collapse due to the impact damage, but instead were ‘assisted’ in falling by the detonation of demolition charges placed in the building.
Jones cites, among other things:
photographic evidence of the speed and symmetry of the collapses (which were nearly free-fall velocity, implying that the supporting beams had been severed allowing intervening material to fall unimpeded);
the visible presence in videos of ‘squb’ smoke-puffs immidiately prior to and on floors below the actual collapse, which appear to be the detrius that the explosive charges are ejecting from the side of the building;
and the presence of molten metal which can be determined by its color to be far, far hotter than the maximum temperature of the fire, but instead seems consistent with the use of military-grade thermite.
Has anyone here heard of this theory? What do you think? Is this professor nuts?
Personally I find his arguments darned convincing, and highly damning of the current US Government (though he himself remains as impartial as humanly possible).
As a side note, I’ve only skimmed the paper myself; I actually saw a DVD of him presenting his material as a lecture. He sent this DVD to my dad; they were roommates in college. That being the case I’ve actually met the man a time or two some years back; he’s a nice religious person who I’d bet good money has voted republican all his life, the prior election or two excepted. He certainly did not strike me as a nutter or a conspiracy theorist. That was my impression, anyway.
I heard a rumor that the search function has been hidden by the govt. so people can not find previous threads on this subject. The person who told me is a professor at BYU, so he’s clearly not the type to believe in crackpot ideas.
The things you cite are all evidence of the presence of explosives. Thing is, nobody debates that there were explosives there. A whole lot of gallons of jet fuel make a great explosive. What anyone seeking to promote such a hypothesis (note: not a theory) must demonstrate is that the explosives were controlled and present before the planes hit. The only thing you mention there which could be any sort of evidence for that is the molten steel, and unfortunately, there’s not actually any evidence that there was any molten steel, despite claims to the contrary.
Interestingly, the controlled-demolition theory is listed by Project Censored as #18 of the “Top 27 Censored Stories of 2007.”
That does not, of course, make the theory any more or less credible. Nor does it make Project Censored any more or less credible. Nor does it make the mainstream media any more or less credible. But it is interesting.
Dan Blather, I tried searching; didn’t find anything. Nice ad-hominem, by the way. It looks good on you.
Chronos, jet fuel does not make a good explosive, especially not in WTC building 7, which was not hit by a plane. And there is photographic evidence for the presence of at least orange-hot steel; unearthed sever days (weeks) later.
Let’s say he’s right and the government did stage-manage the hijackings and the plane crashes. What possible benefit would there have been in gilding the lily by setting explosive charges in the buildings? Consider the risks:
Possible discovery of the charges before the planes hit by any of the thousands of people in the buildings.
Possible discovery of the charges by the police and fire officials swarming all over the buildings after the planes hit.
Possible discovery of the charges after they malfunction or fail to detonate because their placement or wiring has been disrupted by the planes crashing into the buildings!
Possible disclosure by any of the hundreds of conspirators who would have to have been in on this scheme.
There’s no upside if it works and a huge downside if you’re caught. All to accomplish something that might happen anyway if you’re lucky. It’s just a silly idea.
Unless Project Censored had very little credibiility before, I would say it most certainly does make them less credible, since the “controlled demolition” theory is pure, unadulterated crackpot bullshit.
I do not believe that, there’s too much proof the hijackers were real al-Qaeda members. But I would not be too surprised to learn somebody in the Admin knew the attack was coming and did nothing to stop it. (Not W himself – we all saw his deer-in-the-headlights reaction to the news in Fahrenheit 9/11, and I don’t think he’s that good an actor.)
I would be very, very surprised to learn that … however, it is at least within the realm of possibility. The controlled demolition idea is pure fantasy.
This may be a completely nutty, pointless conspiracy theory contradicted by most of the facts and expertise brought to bear in the Us, but in China, it’s a commonly known fact that the Us government was behind everything.
Also, China defeated Japan in WW2, didn’t you know?
The planes came on their own. (Well, with terrorist help.) Though it seems there was a convenient lack of fighter escorts on these known-to-be-hijacked planes…perhaps maybe somebody did know they were coming? And, you know, synchronized a little?
1, 2, 3) He speculates that the charges might have been placed in elevator shafts, which ran right next to the support columns. How many people, firefighters or not, traverse the elevator shafts outside of elevators?
In the DVD, at least, he points out that it doesn’t take as much demolition material as you might think to take out a building, and a few people could have made multiple trips. It does not take hundreds of people to demolish a building under normal conditions.
No upside? Would Bush and his hawks have been able to start this war if 911 hadn’t happened?
Huge downside? Possibly. Of course, if Jones is right, then somebody has been caught… not that it’s hurting anyone but the professors.
Ah, yes, it must be silly. All photographic evidence and the law of gravity aside.
To address the bullet points in the OP briefly without getting into the whole damn thing again:
Watch a real controlled demolition using explosives. They can do anything they want with a building these days. Mostly what they want to do is bring every last piece of the structure down into its own basement. Which they can do. the wreckage of the WTC doesn’t look like a controlled demolition, but rather like a building that fell on itself, spewing large chunks of debris every which way. Of course, there are those that might argue that is was carefully controlled to look exactly like an uncontrolled demolition… :rolleyes:
In some footage of the building 7 collapse, you can indeed see 4 puffs of dust around an area of the frame that resemble the explosiong of shape charges that are used in building demolition. Of course, in an actual demolition, you’d see these puffs of dust as the shape charges blew apart the support structures of the building. You’d see them all over the building in a particular pattern, depending on just how the engineers wanted to bring the building down. 4 ain’t gonna cut it on any building. the dust does indeed come from failing supports however. The weight of the collapsing building blew them apart.
Whether or not there was molten metal, all such claims stem from the notion put forth by the conspiracy folks that the jet fuel would have burned at too low a temperature and burned off too quickly to set anything else in the building on fire, a laughable notion at best.
If you would like to see controlled demolition footage, petition your local science museum to host Raise the Roof, a travelling exhibit created by the wonderful folks at the Science Museum of Minnesota* . Part of the exhibit is a video station where you can view footage of dozens of controlled explosive demolitions. That’s how I gained my layman’s knowledge of it, and I deem it sufficient to understand that the WTC collapse looked exactly nothing like a controlled explosive demolition.
*If they sound naggingly familiar, they made a splash on the net a number of years ago with their Name That Candybar web page.
