Steven Earl Jones (born March 25, 1949) is an American physicist. Among scientists, Jones became known for his research into muon-catalyzed fusion and geo-fusion. Jones is also known for his association with 9/11 conspiracy theories. Jones has claimed that mere airplane crashes and fires could not have resulted in so rapid and complete a fall of the World Trade Center Towers and 7 World Trade Center, suggesting controlled demolition instead. In late 2006, some time after Brigham Young University (BYU) officials placed him on paid leave, he elected to retire in an agreement with BYU. Jones continued research and writing following his early retirement from BYU, including a paper published in Europhysics News in August 2016. Education Jones earned his bachelor's degree in physics, magna cum laude, from Brigham Young University in 1973, and his Ph.D. in physics from Vanderbilt University in 1978. From 1974 to 1977, Jones conducted his PhD research at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), and post-doctoral research at Cornell University and the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility. Research interests Jones conducted research at the Idaho National Laboratory, in Idaho Falls, Idaho where, from 1979 to 1985, he was a senior engineering specialist. He was principal investigator for experimental muon-catalyzed fusion from 1982 to 1991 for the United States Department of Energy (DOE), Division of Advanced Energy Projects. From 1985 to 1993, Jones studied deuterium-based fusion in the context of condensed matter physics under DOE and Electric Power Research Institute sponsorship. Jones also collaborated in experiments at other physics laboratories, including TRIUMF (Vancouver, British Columbia), LANL (Los Alamos, NM), KEK (Tsukuba, Japan), and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford University. Around 1985, Jones became interested in anomalous concentrations of helium-3 and tritium found in gases escaping from volcanoes. He hypothesized that metals and high pressures in the Earth's interior might make fusion more likely, and began a series of experiments on what he referred to as geo-fusion, or piezofusion, high-pressure fusion. To characterize the reactions, Jones designed and constructed a neutron counter that was capable of accurately measuring minuscule numbers of neutrons produced in his experiments. The counter indicated that a small amount of fusion was occurring. Jones claimed that the results indicate that fusion is at least possible, although the process was unlikely to be useful as an energy source. Jones' interests extend to archaeometry, solar energy, and, like numerous professors at BYU, archaeology and