Physicist says heat substance felled WTC

Extremely hot fires caused structures to fail, BYU expert says

EPHRAIM — A Brigham Young University physicist said he now believes an incendiary substance called thermite, bolstered by sulfur, was used to generate exceptionally hot fires at the World Trade Center on 9/11, causing the structural steel to fail and the buildings to collapse.

"It looks like thermite with sulfur added, which really is a very clever idea," Steven Jones, professor of physics at BYU, told a meeting of the Utah Academy of Science, Arts and Letters at Snow College Friday.

The government requires standard explosives to contain tag elements enabling them to be traced back to their manufacturers. But no tags are required in aluminum and iron oxide, the materials used to make thermite, he said. Nor, he said, are tags required in sulfur.

Jones is co-chairman, with James H. Fetzer, a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a group of college faculty members who believe conspirators other than pilots of the planes were directly involved in bringing down New York's Trade Towers.

The group, which Jones said has 200 members, maintains a Web site at www.st911.org. A 40-page paper by Jones, along with other peer-reviewed and non-reviewed academic papers, are posted on the site.

Last year, Jones presented various arguments for his theory that explosives or incendiary devices were planted in the Trade Towers, and in WTC 7, a smaller building in the Trade Center complex, and that those materials, not planes crashing into the buildings, caused the buildings to collapse.

At that time, he mentioned thermite as the possible explosive or incendiary agent. But Friday, he said he is increasingly convinced that thermite and sulfur were the root causes of the 9/11 disaster.

He told college professors and graduate students from throughout Utah gathered for the academy meeting that while almost no fire, even one ignited by jet fuel, can cause structural steel to fail, the combination of thermite and sulfur "slices through steel like a hot knife through butter."

He ticked off several pieces of evidence for his thermite fire theory:

First, he said, video showed a yellow, molten substance splashing off the side of the south Trade Tower about 50 minutes after an airplane hit it and a few minutes before it collapsed. Government investigators ruled out the possibility of melting steel being the source of the material because of the unlikelihood of steel melting. The investigators said the molten material must have been aluminum from the plane.

But, said Jones, molten aluminum is silvery. It never turns yellow. The substance observed in the videos "just isn't aluminum," he said. But, he said, thermite can cause steel to melt and become yellowish.

Recent comments

• Most Popular
• Most Commented

1. Utah Jazz: Construction work ahead
2. LDS missionary dies in England
3. Putting Murray on the map
4. High school track and field results
5. Utah Jazz: Where amazing almost happens — Jazz stage late comeback, but come up one '3' short
6. BYU basketball: Plaisted confirms rumor — He's hired agent
7. LDS Church expresses disappointment in California gay marriage decision
8. Time for a confession: I heart Kobe
9. Ogden woman, two children die in Colorado traffic accident
10. Texas sinkhole becomes a lake, home to alligator

1. LDS Church expresses disappointment in California gay marriage decision 343
2. Utah Jazz: Pau, right in the kisser 248
3. Long litany of legal disputes begins in FLDS raid 201
4. Utah Jazz: Where amazing almost happens — Jazz stage late comeback, but come up one '3' short 162
5. Plans for FLDS families are not so individual 147
6. California court backs gay marriages 135
7. Chairman says Texas CPS workers mistreated FLDS 131
8. Ex-FLDS bride's book released 128
9. California gay marriage ban overturned, but ruling not likely to impact Utah's ban 95
10. Time for a confession: I heart Kobe 91
11. (Stories published in the last five days with the most comments)

• A & E
• LDS news
• Sports