Shroud of Turin Blog

Yesterday, Thibault HEIMBURGER (TH) posted the following comment on Colin Berry’s (CB) blog:

CB wrote: “TH chooses the crudest “bas relief” template imaginable – a metal plate with a shallow, steep-sided recess to represent “relief”. He gets some scorches that not surprisingly have excessive differences in scorch intensity and contrast between the two flat-iron like planes, and then proceeds to enunciate general principles for why the Shroud cannot possibly be a scorch”.

Apparently, CB did not read my paper, [which Colin points to by saying, ‘see top-right hand corner on Dan Porter’s Home Page]. Otherwise he would have seen than the major part of it is dealing with the microscopical characteristics of ANY KIND of scorch at fabric and thread level and not with the problem of contrast or relief.

Because my model has no slightly rounded relief, CB thinks that all my observations and photographs are not reliable.

Does CB think that with a slightly rounded relief rather than with a flat template, the microscopical characteristics of the color distribution (and all my observations) at fabric, thread and fiber level should be very different ?

In order to produce an imprint one have to apply a hot surface on the linen.
I did it with the kind of “crudest bas-relief” I used because it was the only mean to test different temperatures, different pressures and different contact times.
Using a “better” bas-relief (in the sense of CB), one can certainly obtain a better “image” but its characteristics at fabric, thread and fiber level cannot be different than the characteristics showed in my paper because the fundamental mechanisms are similar.

And in any case, these characteristics are very different from those observed on the Shroud.

Looking carefully at the slightest King George VI horse brass picture (on the right), I can predict what follows:

With a microscope:
1) In the darkest parts (nose, hear, crown etc.) one will find all the characteristics of the “scorch” as described in my paper;
2) in the lightly scorched areas, one will find all the characteristics of the “light scorch” as described in my paper
3) In the white areas, one will find..no color (contrary to the shroud) or perhaps some fibers described as “very light scorch” in my paper.

To summarize, with a “good” template, one will find all the characteristics I found with my “bad template” but on a single image.

I challenge CB to prove that I am wrong but now with photographs at fabric and thread level.

We will see who is agenda-driven.

TH alias Thibault.

If you want to see CB’s retort then go on over to Colin’s site and scroll towards the bottom of Raymond N Rogers: STURP supremo chemist (RIP) who sadly lost the plot (due to an apparent blind spot, it would seem, for those ultra-thin and highly superficial primary cell walls of flax and linen fibres). | The Turin Shroud: but for the pseudo-science it might have been dismissed long ago as a medieval fake