Was Thermite used in the twin towers?

Squaddy

Professor Steven Jones proves that the twin towers were demolished by means of incendiary devices and the release of the conclusive evidence is imminent.

The material that was first brought into question on the back of photos and video clips of the twin towers showing a dripping molten substance and floating white ash can now be confirmed as being thermate, combining thermite which is used as an incendiary device to bring down structures and sulfur, which cuts through steel quicker and leaves a yellow residue.

Pools of molten yellow metal were also found underneath both towers and Building 7 subsequent to the collapses.

"The evidence points directly to controlled demolition which means an inside job brought these World Trade Center buildings down," Jones told radio host Alex Jones in a video interview.

Jones says that, "using advanced techniques we're finding out what's in these samples - we're finding iron, sulphur, potassium and manganese - these are characteristic of a variation of thermite which is used to cut through steel very rapidly, it's called thermate."

"In order to have thermite in these buildings in this way, to help bring the buildings down, that means that thermite had to be planted in the buildings which of course implies directly and inside job - someone had to have access into the buildings," said Jones.

Jones' has conducted over 40 peer reviewed scientific studies two of which were published in Nature and Scientific American.

Jones stated that thermite was a "clever" choice because its ingredients, aluminum and iron oxide do not require identifying tags by law, meaning they couldn't be traced back to their manufacturers.

Watch the following video and observe how thermite completely melts a car engine in a matter of seconds, without the addition of sulphur, and also completely resists neutralization by liquid nitrogen. Notice how the dripping substance is identical to that seen in the south tower video.

Check out this link and watch the Brainiac Science Abuse clip

billy the squid

what is your opinion?

I may add a rule similar to politcs in relation to posting articles verbatim without offering a viewpoint.

bonkey

It is worth noting at the outset that Dr. Steven Jones does not claim to have proven that thermite was used nor anything else for that matter.

Dr. Jones (correctly) claims that he has a hypothesis, not a theory and definitely not a proof. He believes (and argues) that his hypothesis is strong enough to cast the existing theory on collapse into doubt, which he argues can only be (and should be) resolved by reopening the investigation. Note that even in the short extract, we see Prof. Jones saying "the evidence points to" controlled demolition as opposed to claiming that he has established beyond doubt that a controlled explosion occurred.

It is interesting to note that this is not what those championing his paper are saying. They bill it as proof, as the OP's article suggests. Where Prof. Jones talked about his evidence pointing to something, the author of the piece wrote that it can now be confirmed that thermate was used. That the OP did not disagree with this claim would suggest that is also their stance - that they believe it is proof.

This is somewhat strange.

On one hand, we are presented a proper scientific work, by a somehat-relevantly qualified scientist. This cannot simply be dismissed out of hand. It merits proper analysis and consideration as a hypothesis.

On the other hand, we are presented this proper scientific work as something other than it is. This suggests that those championing it either do not understand it themselves, are actively misrepresenting what it is, or are simply regurgitating someone else's claims about what it is without bothering to actually check it themselves. None of these three options are particularly flattering, I admit.

If someone would care to offer an alternate reason why a hypothesis can be called a proof, and why evidence supporting a hypothesis can be considered as confirmation of fact....I'm more than willing to listen to them.

Don't get mwe wrong: Jones' claims are not without merit, and I intend to offer my opinion on them when I have time to do so. However, it should be cleared up from the start that Jones' claims are far from what the quoted article makes them out to be. It should also be noted that Jones himself should be credited with not overstating his case, regardless of what those choosing to champion his paper decide to claim instead.

civdef

Brainiac trumps NIST!

oscarBravo

Squaddy wrote:

Jones says that, "using advanced techniques we're finding out what's in these samples - we're finding iron, sulphur, potassium and manganese - these are characteristic of a variation of thermite which is used to cut through steel very rapidly, it's called thermate."

...

Jones stated that thermite was a "clever" choice because its ingredients, aluminum and iron oxide do not require identifying tags by law, meaning they couldn't be traced back to their manufacturers.

Um.

Iron, sulphur, potassium and manganese. I'm not a metallurgist, but wouldn't you expect to find all of the above in steel?

Also, aluminum [sic] and iron oxide - is anyone surprised that these two substances were found in abundance among the remains of the WTC?

Kernel

oscarBravo wrote:

Also, aluminum [sic] and iron oxide - is anyone surprised that these two substances were found in abundance among the remains of the WTC?

Iron oxide is basically rust, so I would hope you would not find much. The thermite theory could more adequately explain the pools of molten metal which were found under the rubble, than simply they were caused by a small (relative to the size of the building and materials) jet fuel fire.

Perfect way to bring down the steel core.

oscarBravo

Kernel wrote:

Iron oxide is basically rust, so I would hope you would not find much.

Given the amount of iron, heat, air and water present on the site, I would expect to find quite a lot.

bonkey

Red iron oxide (Fe2O3), or rust, is not the form of iron ocide typically used in thermite. The reaction is far more vigorous with blue or black iron oxide (Fe3O4).

Jones considers the possibility of thermate, claiming it is suggested from the presence of sulphur. Thermate, he says, is even better because it will get the job done faster.

So....take one guess as to which type of Iron Oxide he believes was used, either in thermite or thermate.

bonkey

Its gets better and better.

Jones discusses the allegations of molten metal found weeks later. I've been looking into this area a bit recently, so I thought I'd comment bit on this.

Are there any examples of buildings toppled by fires or any reason other than deliberate demolition that show large pools of molten metal in the rubble? I have posed this question to numerous engineers and scientists, but so far no examples have emerged. Strange then that three buildings in Manhattan, supposedly brought down finally by fires, all show these large pools of molten metal in their basements post-collapse on 9-11-2001.

Jones here forgets to note some essential facts. The WTC collapse was the largest collapse ever. So when Jones loooks for other buildings, what he's asking is whether or not this has been observed in smaller-scale events.

WTC was also fairly unique in that the underground fires which were known to exist were not aggressively attacked for the first 17 days.

Indeed, when fires started in the the worlds largest collapse were finally put out - some two months after the collapse, they were the longest-burning building fires in known history.

Back to Prof Jones:

It would be interesting if underground fires could somehow produce molten steel, for example, but then there should be historical examples of this effect since there have been many large fires in numerous buildings.

So Prof. Jones is basically asserting that there was nothing unusual about the scale of 911 - that it is directly comparable to other building-fires. I wonder...how many other large-building fires can he point to where the rubble was left to burn for 2 and a half weeks before anyone treated the subterranean fires aggressively?

Those who question the events of 911 are often quick to point out how its a day of many firsts. Its interesting to note how quickly this tactic is abandoned when the firsts count against their argument.

It is not enough to argue hypothetically that fires could possibly cause all three pools of orange-hot molten metal.

Thats correct. Its not enough. What you'd need is to have some sort of evidence to show that there were underground fires burning over a period of time which reached temperatures sufficient to melt steel (either euctectically or otherwise).

Unfortunately for Prof. Jones, temperatures of over 2000 degrees were measured. Furthermore, these hot-spots were not stationary over time, indicating that they are not simply well-contained super-hot regions, but rather that combustion is also continuing at a rate sufficient to at least maintain temperatures in this range. Now, if a fire is sufficient to maintain temperatures of 2000 degrees, there is little reason to assume it can't build to those temperatures from a lower starting point. So we don't need a thermite reaction to generate the initial conditions either.

So we don't just have the hypothetical reasoning Prof. Jones thinks would be nice to have - we have direct evidence.

Ah, but Jones' theory doesn't just centre on the molten and/or glowing-hot metals found weeks later. Nope, he reinforces his hypothesis by looking at pre-collapse events, prompting the following question:

Furthermore, we have seen published reports that "molten steel [or other metal] flowed in the pile of ruins still settling beneath her feet" -- how could building fires have caused that effect? Has it ever been seen before? We know of no such instances. However, thermite-derivative reactions as conjectured would produce molten flowing iron, as observed.

This, more than the molten-metal-weeks-later is indeed an interesting question and not one I pretend to have an answer to right now. I do have some questions about it though:

How has Prof. Jonest determined that these pictures are, in fact, of a metal at all?
We should be able to determine exactly where in the building this originated from. Was there anything unusual about that location that could play an active role in what we're seeing.
What does the location of this flow suggest about the placement of the alleged thermite charges
How long after the crash / before the collapse, and how does one explain these times?

To clarify on the thinking behind some of these questions...it can be clearly seen in the video he offers that this is coming from an area already on fire. The photographic evidence which accompanies it doesn't show the originating source, has a timestamp some 4 minutes later, but Jones says its of the same thing only closer to the ground. I'll ignore the time discrepancy and believe him...just as I believe him that this was shortly before the collapse.

So, we have a fire burning since the planes crashed, and then shortly before the collapse, we see this discharge. So we must assume either that thermite charges at this height in the building withstood the impact of the plane, withstood the ensuing fires, and then eventually were triggered, meltde steel, allowing it to flow from the inner core to the outside the building whilst remaining molten, and then the building remained standing without its supports for another few minutes.

As I said...I have questions - not answers - about this molten outflow. I don't believe, however, that these are non-trivial questions.

I believe that anyone positing the use of thermite should be able to show where the thermite charges were placed. Jones seems to be suggesting they were used high up in the building, whereas others seem to favour the idea of basement-located charges. Or perhaps they were used throughout the structure....but then the problem of co-ordinating the explosive sequence becomes less of a challenge and more of a logistical impossibility given how problematic radio transmissions inside the WTC were known to be and how impossible a wiring solution would be.

Overall, I find Jones' work more like the executive brief than a proper work. There are too many things dismissed or accepted without any suggestion of scientific rigour in either case. I'm not saying that he didn't apply such rigour, merely that it doesn't shine through in this paper.

For an additional example of this, search through the paper for references to RDX. Note how he argues that its not the right stuff for the job, but its the required mass of thia alternate explosive that he presents for showing how comparatively little would have been required to bring the building down. Not also how he attributes credibility to Rodriquez' claims of a sub-basement explosion (thermite isn't an explosive, so maybe RDX?) occurring before the plane-crash, but also argues that thermite caused the molten flow only minutes before the collapse.

bonkey

I've just noticed that the actual paper by Jones isn't yet referenced in this thread, despite it benig what I'm addressing.

To rectify that oversight: http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html

pH

North Tower during top-down collapse.
Notice mysterious horizontal plumes far below pulverization region.
(2/3 down the article approx)

The building is a long closed vertical box, the floors above are being pancaked down by the floor(s) above landing on them. This is compressing the air in the building and will eventually 'explode' out of weakened windows.