[Iconoclast2]

The hyperlinked paper by the Professor is worth the read.

[Fzob]

He is just reiterating the same crap the loony left does. Nothing new, same crap different mouth.

[mosquewatch.com]

Must put on my tin hat for this one!

[Paleo Conservative]

BYU? They were probably powered by cold fusion.

[wardaddy]

tinfoil por favor?

[Paradox]

"It is quite plausible that explosives were pre-planted in all three buildings and set off after the two plane crashes — which were actually a diversion tactic," he writes. "Muslims are (probably) not to blame for bringing down the WTC buildings after all," Jones writes.

Why, aren't Muslims capable of calculating the neccessary explosives, and planting them in advance? Why the racism against Muslims? What a creep! :)

[GSWarrior]

Wow...he should write a book...oops, he is writing a book.

[js1138]

He better have tenure. This is as incompetent as it gets for someone in his position.

[Cicero]

Not Muslims? What were those 19 Arabs doing in the planes that crashed?

The collapse of the buildings can be explained 1) by the huge amount of jet fuel that was burning there from much larger planes than were ever expected or allowed for; 2) the environmentalist decision to stop cladding the steel with asbestos beyond the lower floors; 3) the domino effect of the top floors collapsing onto the floors lower down.

[Paradox]

BTW, this is what happens when you send a (biased) physicist to do an Engineers work...

[dfwgator]

[Doc Savage]

Absolute rubbish. I guess it wasn't Muslims who flew the planes into the towers according to this guy. I suspect if you asked him on the QT he'd tell you the Jews did it. There is an excellent review of the collapses by prominent architects who explain that to save money and weight the steel beams were not treated with fire retardant. They show an example of an untreated girder vs. a treated girder and subsequent failure.

What a moron this guy must be. Anything to get their names in the paper and sell a future book.

[billhilly]

Someone had better find this nut fast and get him back in the institution before he hurts himself.

[Doomonyou]

I'm gonna have to thing about that one...

[dead]

"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?" Jones asks.

What an idiot. They didn’t “undertake straight-down collapses of the buildings.”

They undertook flying giant metal planes loaded with innocents and jet fuel into the buildings.

Fire and gravity decided the manner of collapse after that.

[andyk]

Here

[bonfire]

He probably also believes God can be found in a hat.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

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

And physics tells him THAT precisely how.

I'll wait for his "physics" paper that disproves the Holocaust.

[oyez]

explosive such as thermite

Any boot Marine or Dog Face knows that thermite isn't an explosive. It is an incendiary. I would think a high caliber expert like Dr. Jones would have picked up on that fact.

[AuH2ORepublican]

I have a few questions for the professor. Why didn't anyone hear bombs go off in any of the three towers? And if there was a bomb in WTC 7, why did it detonate so much later than in the other buildings and why didn't al Qaeda send a plane to hit WTC 7 as well? And how can he possibly claim that the group that flew the planes into the buildings did not know that the buildings have bombs that would go off? If the plane hijackings and crashes were a "diversion tactic," surely al Qaeda at least knew that the buildings had bombs that would be detonated at a certain time.

I think the professor may have a lot to add to the debate if indeed the way the buildings collapsed is not consistent with having been hit by the planes, but his alternate theory is just absurd. He should have just limited himself to analyzing the physics of the building collapse and leave the alternate theories to people who actually have a scintilla of common sense.

[Old Professer]

There is an old method for cutting the tops off of glass cylinders; you soak a string in alcohol, tie it around the line at which you want the separation you want to take place and light it.

After it burns itself out, spray ice-water on the glass at that line and tap it sharply.

In that case, there is no column load; to demonstrate the effects of fire on a column load, I suggest you take an aluminum can and place a brick on the top, soak a similar string, tie it around the approximate upper part of the cylinder where the impact and resultant fire would have been on the towers, light it and see how much of the can deforms through gravity.

Of course the towers weren't cylinders, and the collapse was seen only from outside; what made it remarkable was that the structure seemed to come down through itself.