BYU Physics Prof Finds Thermate in WTC Physical Samples

Sal The Butcher

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does anyone think this article isnt authentic?
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/06/341238.shtml

Based on chemical analysis of WTC structural steel residue, a Brigham Young University physics professor has identified the material as Thermate.
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i didnt know that professor jones had acess to debris, is there any reason to doubt the validity of this article?(i dont mean do you think jones is right, i just mean did he really say this? if so discussion would be appreciated)
 
Article provides no information how the analysis was done, what controls were in place, chain of custody of evidence, how they eliminated other sources of sulfur(gypsum walls, etc) as possible sources of the sulfur, etc.

Also, I think this was touched upon in the last 10 pages or so on the Loose Change III thread.
 
Even the NIST report, IIRC, discovered sulfer residue.

However, saying this is thermate is a bit disingenious.

Alex Jones has claimed some form of thermite was used since the beginning, so this would not be out of line with his claims. However, his claims are not supported well by the evidence.

Thermate consists of only 2% sulphur, with the vast majority being Aluminum, Iron, and Barium Nitrate. There should be large amounts of Aluminum Oxide slag near the sulphur deposits, as well as Barium Oxide residue and elemental iron. These elements being found together would go a long way towards proving Thermate, but sulphur by itself does not suuport the idea.

The sulphur residue is currently thought to be due to sulphur from various fuels at the site, as well as possibly coming from the gypsum in drywall.
 
Huntsman said:
Even the NIST report, IIRC, discovered sulfer residue.

However, saying this is thermate is a bit disingenious.

Alex Jones has claimed some form of thermite was used since the beginning, so this would not be out of line with his claims. However, his claims are not supported well by the evidence.

Thermate consists of only 2% sulphur, with the vast majority being Aluminum, Iron, and Barium Nitrate. There should be large amounts of Aluminum Oxide slag near the sulphur deposits, as well as Barium Oxide residue and elemental iron. These elements being found together would go a long way towards proving Thermate, but sulphur by itself does not suuport the idea.

The sulphur residue is currently thought to be due to sulphur from various fuels at the site, as well as possibly coming from the gypsum in drywall.
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i dont know about sulfer/thermite so im not gonna argue..

but i think you confused him with the conspiracy master, i think the professors name is steven jones, he has, however, been making arguments that thermite was used for a LONG time
 
im not doubtinmg what you are saying, but where exactly do you think the aluminum came from? was it common in the building?
 
Sal The Butcher said:
i dont know about sulfer/thermite so im not gonna argue..

but i think you confused him with the conspiracy master, i think the professors name is steven jones, he has, however, been making arguments that thermite was used for a LONG time
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You know, you are right. I was confusing the Jones's :)

However, Stephen Jones is the one I intended to talk about.

Alex Jones has been mentioned recently, which is where my typo came from.
 
Sal The Butcher said:
im not doubtinmg what you are saying, but where exactly do you think the aluminum came from? was it common in the building?
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It was common in the building
Yamasaki and engineers John Skilling and Les Robertson worked closely, and the relationship between the towers’ design and structure is clear. Faced with the difficulties of building to unprecedented heights, the engineers employed an innovative structural model: a rigid "hollow tube" of closely spaced steel columns with floor trusses extending across to a central core. The columns, finished with a silver-colored aluminum alloy, were 18 3/4" wide and set only 22" apart, making the towers appear from afar to have no windows at all.
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http://www.ussartf.org/world_trade_center_disaster.htm

During the pre-planning stage, over 100 schemes were studied, including a plan for a single 150-storey tower which was discarded due to an excessive scale and replaced by a design with twin towers. The completed WTC plan was introduced in January 1964 and after slight alterations, like the abandonment of a plan enclosing the plaza with a low-height building "wall" or change of cladding material from stainless steel to an aluminium-alloy, the construction was started with groundbreaking on August 5, 1966.
...
The elevator complement consisted of 23 express elevators and 72 local elevators in each zone. There were 43,600 windows in the towers; glass, however, comprised only 30% of the towers' facade area, the rest being taken up by the aluminium-clad columns that leave between only narrow, slot-like windows. In order to allow the top floor observation facilities better views, the top floor windows had to be widened by one-third. In each tower, a specially-designed window washing machine travelled up and down the facades and took half an hour to wash one vertical stripe of windows.
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http://www.greatgridlock.net/NYC/nyc3b.html
 
Sal The Butcher said:
im not doubtinmg what you are saying, but where exactly do you think the aluminum came from? was it common in the building?
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As Arkan stated, aluminum was common.

However, unless something new has been released recently, Stephen is basing his conclusion on the presence of sulphur alone. It was not coincidental with Aluminum oxide or barium oxide. It was found mixed with iron, but iron was also relatively common.

Even in thermite/thermate, the level of sulphur is low. The Barium Nitrate is primarily what enchances the incendiary effect...the sulphur is purely to assist in the ignition (it does not enhance).
There's 15 times as much barium nitrate as sulphur, and 25 to 30 times as much of the aluminum/iron oxide mixture. Yet all he found were sulphur and iron.
 
“The University is aware that Professor Steven Jones’s hypotheses and interpretations of evidence regarding the collapse of World Trade Center buildings are being questioned by a number of scholars and practitioners, including many of BYU’s own faculty members,” it reads in part.

“Professor Jones’s department and college administrators are not convinced that his analyses and hypotheses have been submitted to relevant scientific venues that would ensure rigorous technical peer review. The structural engineering faculty in the Fulton College of Engineering and Technology do not support the hypotheses of Professor Jones.”

http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/57724
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Maybe his belief in Mormonism is a predictor that despite his impressive educational credentials he is susceptible to believing the impossible and fantastic.
 
Sal The Butcher said:
so all the outside beams had so0me amount of aluminum?
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And that doesn't even include the likely amounts of aluminum outside the building structure proper, such as components in the various machines (computers, printers, generators, etc), piping and conduit, light fixtures, doorknobs, decorative pieces, "kickguards" on doors, bathroom stalls, etc, etc, etc.

It's hard to find a building without lots of aluminum in it, because aluminum is one of the most common, least expensive metals around, and useful for a lot fo things.
 
Kopji said:
Maybe his belief in Mormonism is a predictor that despite his impressive educational credentials he is susceptible to believing the impossible and fantastic.
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Cannot the same be said of any religious person?

As I've said before, I too am a mormon and I think that Jones (who claims his work has drawn threats and bribery attempts from government agents) is full of crap.

I've seen a number of anti-CT sites go after Jones for his religious beliefs. The problem with that is that you open the door to pro-CTs to make the same kind of attacks.

Two of the sources listed on the debunking 9-11 CD theories site ( http://www.geocities.com/debunking911/ ) are themselves mormon and therefore also believe that Jesus walked among the ancestors to the Aztecs and the Mayans.

A Woodruff Miller, Department Chair, BYU department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and D. Allan Firmage, Professor Emeritus, Civil Engineering, BYU are both mormons themselves (employees of church owned institutions like BYU are required to be members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in good standing, this includes paying tithing and submitting to annual "worthiness interviews").

That the faculty of his own school won't back him up is as effective a counter-argument to his work as any I could imagine. Dismissing Jones as a mormon means dismissing them as well.
 
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I havn't really been following all this, but let me get this straight. Are these lunatics claiming that naughty persons snuck around in the building structure of the towers, craftily planting thermite grenades and such, cleverly wiring them all together and rigging some sort of clever trigger that just happened to coincide with the impact of the hijacked airliners.....At the precise location that the airliners hit the buildings...?????

I have watched a number of Discovery-type segments on building demolition and implosion, and watched while they prepped and imploded one of our old dorms a couple of years ago. This takes a large work crew, and a lot of heavy-duty sawing, drilling, jackhammering, and so forth. The wiring for such efforts is extremely complex the explosions must occur in exactly-timed sequence.
 
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