BYU physics professor disputes WTC collapse explanation

[Jeff Lebowski]

I can assure you that most of what he says is flat-out wrong. I find this article a great embarassment to BYU. He should stick to physics and stay out of civil/structural engineering.

[SoCalCoug]

I can assure you that most of what he says is flat-out wrong.

Specifics, please. You go by "homeboy" - that's supposed to be enough to take your word for it?

I'm interested to know what he's got wrong.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by SoCalCoug

Specifics, please. You go by "homeboy" - that's supposed to be enough to take your word for it? :)

I'm interested to know what he's got wrong.

Sheesh, where to begin...

1) First of all (on the non-technical side), he says:

"Muslims are (probably) not to blame for bringing down the WTC buildings after all."

That statement alone has me scratching my head. If in fact there were explosives in the building, how does he know they were not put there by muslim extremists? More significantly, it is clear that muslim extremists flew the plances into the building. If the explosives were NOT put there by muslims, is he implying that the muslims were:

a) Partners in a massive conspiricy? Who would be the partners? Many supporters of Jones's theory say that it was the Bush Administration ultimately hoping to insitute a world government via the UN. Yeah.... right.

b) Duped into flying the planes into the building? Did someone put the bombs there just waiting for the day that some planes would come?

Both scenarios are simply absurd.

2) Jones said:

"Why would terrorists undertake straight-down collapses of WTC-7 and the Towers when 'toppling over' falls would require much less work and would do much more damage in downtown Manhattan?"

What on earth makes him think that the straight-down collapse was planned in any way? They just flew the planes into the building. Further, if someone else planted the explosives, why would they be doing a straight-down collapse? Another absurd comment.

3) Jones said:

"No steel-frame building, before or after the WTC buildings, has ever collapsed due to fire. But explosives can effectively sever steel columns, he says."


Yes and there has never been a case where two buildings of this size had massive fuel-laden airplanes flown into them. Nothing remotely similar. This is evidence of nothing.

4) Jones said:

"With non-explosive-caused collapse there would typically be a piling up of shattering concrete. But most of the material in the towers was converted to flour-like powder while the buildings were falling, he says. How can we understand this strange behavior, without explosives?"

How does he know how buildings of this size are supposed to collapse in a non-explosive sense? Once again, there is nothing even remotely similar to this in the history of structural engineering. Once again, this is evidence of nothing.

5) Jones said:

"Horizontal puffs of smoke, known as squibs, were observed proceeding up the side the building, a phenomenon common when pre-positioned explosives are used to demolish buildings, he says"

There are lots of possible explanations for this. Any kind of pressure differential due to the collapse of the building would force smoke out the windows.

6) Jones said:

"Multiple loud explosions in rapid sequence were reported by numerous observers in and near the towers, and these explosions occurred far below the region where the planes struck, he says."

First of all, this is anectdotal. Second, the pressure from the collapses above could have causes structural members to burst, resulting in the noise and the "squibs" referred to above.

7) From the article:

"Jones says he became interested in the physics of the WTC collapse after attending a talk last spring given by a woman who had had a near-death experience. The woman mentioned in passing that "if you think the World Trade Center buildings came down just due to fire, you have a lot of surprises ahead of you," Jones remembers, at which point "everyone around me started applauding.""

Ahhh great. He gets his inspiration from a comment made by a woman who had a near-death experience. Boy, that adds a lot of credibility to his story, eh?

8) and finally, his theory implies that someone put a series of explosives throughout the building to do a controlled deomolition. Anyone who has studied controlled demolitions knows that this requires weeks of work and massive amounts of explosives, wiring, and drilling. To think that this could be accomplished without anyone noticing is beyond absurd. And why would someone go to all the effort to rig the smaller building (WTC7) with explosives?

This is junk science in the worst way.

[SoCalCoug]

I ran across this link:

http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtopic=3108

It's a physics forum where the problems with the physics of the WTC collapse are discussed by people with phyics backgrounds. The link was apparently started before Dr. Jones' paper was publicized (they link to it later in the thread).

I haven't read the entire thread (it's 51 pages long), but it has some very interesting discussions regarding the physics of the collapse. In case anyone is interested in what physicists are thinking about it.

There are also tons of links to other analyses, websites, and papers on related issues.

[SteelBlue]

Interesting blurb on BYU's recent response:

http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=2820


Saw this posted on cb today.

[All-American]

I found Dr. Jones' statement incredulous when I first heard it and everything I've seen about it since has not changed my mind.

Consider the Support structure of the building:



When the WTC was constructed, the common mode of construction of skysrapers was a simple steel grid skeleton, which spread the weight of the building throughout the structure. As shown by the image above, the World Trade Center's support structure did NOT follow this mode of construction. Instead, the main support structures which carried the vertical load (weight of the building) are the 47 larger red tubes located in the center. On each face of the building are 59 steel columns that countered horizontal forces on the building (wind) in addition to shouldering some of the vertical load. This effectively made the WTC towers a box within a box.

Now, imagine a plane crashes into the building. It will cut through some of the 59 columns on the outside, but since they don't carry the weight of the building, this loss is minimal. The real damage would have been caused by the impact to the central structures. Every tube compromised by the impact of the airplane would have increased the load carried by the remainder of the support structures. After surviving the physical impact of the plane and the explosive fireball that immediately ensued, you have that fire. Even if it was not hot enough to melt the steel, the heat would have made the steel much less able to bear loads. Think of a blacksmith sticking a steel tool in the fire-- the hotter it gets, the easier it is to bend the metal, even though it doesn't melt. With the increased pressure caused by the destruction of support structures due to the physical impact of the plane, the remaining support columns would have carrying an extra heavy load and been even more susceptible to failure.

One of Dr. Jones' big points is that the collapse of the towers was too cleanly done to have been an accident. If the collapse was due to failure of support structures located in the center of the building, the outer support structure would have acted as a wall containing the rest of the falling building. The outer wall was a support structure in and of itself, and while it would not have survived the collapse, it would have channelled the falling building into an implosion.

Dr. Jones' astute observation shows only that we don't know everything there is to know about what happens when we fly jumbo jets into skyscrapers. The buildings acted as one designed as they were would have under those circumstances. The inconsistancies are relatively minor compared to the ones suggested by Dr. Jones in order to make his theories work out.