Originally posted by JKP+Aug 4 2006, 06:21 AM--> (JKP @ Aug 4 2006, 06:21 AM)Look through his page when you have some time, and let us know when you have a refutation.
http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html[/b]
I've had a quick browse and on first impressions, I can honestly say that I probably lack both the technical expertise and the time to offer a serious rebuttal to Professor Jones. However, I will try to read it all in the near and future and make some notes on it....and, possibly, deal with a few of his points on the required scientific level.
What I have done, for now anyway, is have a search on the internet for rebuttals. And, during my search, I came across a blog that contained a statement from Noam Chomsky on this paper:
Originally posted by Chomsky+--> (Chomsky)I'd heard about it from others. I don't have the technical competence to evaluate these proposals, but there must be plenty of people in mechanical engineering and related fields who do. But no one is risking anything by making proposals like these. There is no retribution whatsoever, quite contrary to questioning and protesting other matters, like the very obvious and conscious contributions of the Bush administration to enhancing terror (against Americans too) and nuclear war (which may destroy us all). If you check, I think you will find that no one has even received a tap on the wrist for the many proposals questioning the official story of 9/11. They are either left alone, or welcomed, even invited on MSNBC, as you mention -- unlike those concerned with issues such as those I raised, who endure quite a different reaction. That doesn't mean its wrong to do it, but it's about as riskless as anything I know of, and one shouldn't be deterred by any concern about that.[/b]
http://cruciblex.blogspot.com/2005/11/repl...e-steven-e.html (http://cruciblex.blogspot.com/2005/11/reply-from-noam-chomsky-re-steven-e.html)
I thought that was an interesting point, in and of itself. But still that doesn't deal with any of Jones direct points. On that, I came across and article and, it seems, the general consensus of the scientific community is that Jones is, well, a crank. As the article comments, "in the world of mainstream science, Mr. Jones's hypothesis is more or less dead on the vine. But in the world of 9/11 Truth, it has seeded a whole garden of theories." More interesting, was the following:
Originally posted by John Gravois
The Brigham Young college of engineering issued an even stronger statement on its Web site. "The structural engineering faculty," it read, "do not support the hypotheses of Professor Jones." However, his supporters complain, none of Mr. Jones's critics at Brigham Young have dealt with his points directly.
While there are a handful of Web sites that seek to debunk the claims of Mr. Jones and others in the movement, most mainstream scientists, in fact, have not seen fit to engage them.
"There's nothing to debunk," says Zdenek P. Bazant, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University and the author of the first peer-reviewed paper on the World Trade Center collapses.
"It's a non-issue," says Sivaraj Shyam-Sunder, a lead investigator for the National Institute of Standards and Technology's study of the collapses.
Ross B. Corotis, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a member of the editorial board at the journal Structural Safety, says that most engineers are pretty settled on what happened at the World Trade Center. "There's not really disagreement as to what happened for 99 percent of the details," he says.
Thomas W. Eagar is one scientist who has paid some attention to the demolition hypothesis — albeit grudgingly. A materials engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Eagar wrote one of the early papers on the buildings' collapses, which later became the basis for a documentary on PBS. That marked him for scrutiny and attack from conspiracy theorists. For a time, he says, he was receiving one or two angry e-mail messages each week, many accusing him of being a government shill. When Mr. Jones's paper came out, the nasty messages increased to one or two per day.
So Mr. Eagar has become reluctantly familiar with Mr. Jones's hypothesis, and he is not impressed. For example, he says, the cascade of yellow-hot particles coming out of the south tower could be any number of things: a butane can igniting, sparks from an electrical arc, molten aluminum and water forming a hydrogen reaction — or, perhaps most likely, a spontaneous, completely accidental thermite reaction.
Occasionally, he says, given enough mingled surface area, molten aluminum and rust can react violently, à la thermite. Given that there probably was plenty of molten aluminum from the plane wreckage in that building, Mr. Eagar says, it is entirely possible that this is what happened.
Others have brought up this notion as well, so Mr. Jones has carried out experiments in his lab trying to get small quantities of molten aluminum to react with rust. He has not witnessed the reaction and so rules it out. But Mr. Eagar says this is just a red herring: Accidental thermite reactions are a well-known phenomenon, he says. It just takes a lot of exposed surface area for the reaction to start.
Still, Mr. Eagar does not care to respond formally to Mr. Jones or the conspiracy movement. "I don't see any point in engaging them," he says.
http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i42/42a01001.htm
You could take that two ways, I suppose. Either the conspiracy is so widespread to cover virtually all of mainstream science and Strucutural Engingeering....or, much like Creationists, Jones' views are deemed so "out there" that they're not worth "engaging". And as the article linked above states, "Usually, Occam's razor intervenes." Well, for me it does anyway. <_<
Another site that looks useful, is this: 9/11 Myths (http://911myths.com/). I can't see whether they directly address Jones' report, but they have made him alter it:
9/11
[email protected]
NOTE: a previous version of this page addressed specific Manning quotes used by Professor Jones in his paper, “Why indeed did the WTC buildings collapse?”. Subsequently the paper was edited, addressing our comments, therefore we’ve now removed them.
http://www.911myths.com/html/fire_engineering.html
I'll carrying on looking....and, hopefully, I'll find a rebuttal to Jones online by a qualified Structural Engineer; which is backed by others in the field. That seems unlikely, however, because, as the wikipedia page on Jones comments, "Jones' paper has been met by widespread indifference, and general dismissiveness, in the larger scientific community. Since Jones' paper has not been published in a scientific journal, there are many academicians, including some from Jones' own university, who question whether the article has been properly vetted by other experts in the field." [Link; there are other critics listed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Jones#Critics)]
I mean, the big thing, for me anyway, is the way in which the Engineering community treats Jones....and the 9/11 conspiracies in general. I mean, a supporter of the theories could, feasibly, argue that the American community could be silenced, but everywhere else? I mean, there's obviously a potential to make money out of this....and, therefore, if there was any truth in the theories, then I imagine a group of non-American Engineers would publish a report. Yet as the article I linked comments, "engineers are pretty settled on what happened at the World Trade Center. "There's not really disagreement as to what happened for 99 percent of the details, he [Ross B. Corotis, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a member of the editorial board at the journal Structural Safety] says."
As it happens, I've commented on this before; here (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=49764&view=findpost&p=1292072819). Unfortunately, due to technical failures over at libcom, my post on there has been lost....a post which, if memory serves me correctly, was better than the one I just linked. For instance, in the libcom post I linked a piece by Popular Mechanics. I think it was this (http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html)....though the format seems different now. However, I think this has come under some attack due to Popular Mechanics being a Hearst publication. But, from my perspective, that's not all that important....and the article itself, is a decent introduction into what would be considered the "Official" story.
I mean, from my perspective, this event is one that does deserve further investigation....as I said in the post I linked. But, for me, that inspection would revolve around the number of dead immigrant workers who have been ignored and the amount of blame that can be given to the building owners for not keeping the Towers in a proper state of repair....the lack of fire proofing, for instance. And, also, the implications this event has for Structural analysis in general....particuarly the vulnerability of Skyscrapers to collapse. But these kind of things, are the things that are analysed by the "maistream"....after, for instance, Earthquakes, Engineers have learnt a lot from the damage to various structures.
The investigation really doesn't need to deal with the outlandish claims, because, essentially, they don't seem to have any basis. So it's not as if there's nothing to be learnt here....it's just that the stuff that can be learnt is the kind of stuff that deals with Steels performance under fire; and not the stuff that deals with the Government planting explosives and blowing up buildings. The following is a good example of what I'm on about:
Dave Parker
The US National Institute for Science and Technology (NIST) has spent three years analysing the collapses in unprecedented detail. Last week it formally presented its 10,000 word report with its 30 recommendations to the US Congress – to less than universal applause.
[....]
The major recommendations, covering structural design to resist fire and progressive collapse require extensive testing and research before they can be implemented and this could take up to 10 years.
This is hardly surprising, says NIST. Its fire tests on replicas of the floor trusses used in the Twin Towers showed wide diversions from the performance predicted by current codes. NIST says this proves that the small scale furnace tests which have formed the basis of fire safety design for nearly a century give little or no information on how a real building will react to a real fire.
[....]
Now leading UK engineers and designers are calling for Cardington to be re-opened and more tests to be carried out. They say that the NIST investigation together with evidence from a handful of tall building fires which have occurred since 9/11 have highlighted the serious gaps in the profession’s understanding of the behaviour of buildings in fire. The first Cardington tests were extremely significant, but the results can not be extended to cover all types of buildings, especially those with long span floors and beams. The computer models which form the basis of modern structural fire engineering must be validated against large scale realistic tests, the experts say.
http://www.nceplus.co.uk/b_bank/search_res...m=0&channelid=6 (http://www.nceplus.co.uk/b_bank/search_results_details/?report_ID=7012&report_num=0&channelid=6)
That's the important stuff to come out of all of this. Finding out that there are "serious gaps in the profession’s understanding of the behaviour of buildings in fire"....gaps which will, hopefully, be filled. And, furthermore, the things highlighted by that article in the New Civil Engineer, really highlight the different approaches used by scientists and pseudo-scientists. The scientists of this World are using the events of 9/11 in a way that will help us develop a better understanding of structures and their potential weaknesses....where as the Mormon pseudo-scientists are babbling about "controlled demolitions". One approach leads to a dead end, the other leads to the enhancement of the collective knowledge of the human species.
Furthermore, I just found this: World Trade Center - Some Engineering Aspects (http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc.shtml). The section called "Why Did It Collapse?" has a decent, if brief, summary of the Engineering aspects involved in the collapse....and the "Other Theories?" section, deals with some commonly raised questions.
I mean, if you look hard enough there's some really interesting stuff on the collapse of the Towers. The problem, however, is that it's hard to find because the internet is so clogged up with the conspiracy theories. But, still, if people do look for and find the serious stuff on the Engineering aspects involved, then I'm sure they'll find stuff that has interesting impications....just not the kind of implications that lead to grand conspiracies.
All this being said, as I said at the beginning of my post, I'll try to tackle Jones' report when I have some free time. And if you gave me a couple more years of learning, I'm sure I'd be able to destroy it. :P