Interesting article: New age teller from Russia: Voice of Russia:
Russian scientists of the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk have developed a spectrometer to establish the exact age of archaeological finds. Thanks to a new know-how the Russian spectrometer may even outmatch high accuracy spectrometers which are now used in Germany the US and Japan.
[. . . ]
Spectrometers enable archeologists to determine even the age of unique items. Earlier, to determine the age of the Shroud of Turin, the burial cloth of Jesus Christonly 150miligrams of cloth were required. The research in three laboratories in the US and Europe did not confirm the expectation that the cloth was about 2,000 years old. It turned out that the material was manufactured only 7 centuries ago.
Or not!
This only confirms that there is more work to be done. For all of Wesselow”s speculation on he reality of the Resurrection, he is an asset in dealing with the age of the Shroud.
I tend to be cautious on such breaking-edge technologies outcomes when instead of sending a paper to a scientific journal the authors try to convince plain citizens (or even the Shroud community) through articles on newspapers. I wouldn’ t rely on this new spechtrometer unless authors provide solid and scientific evidences.
I agree with your point of view Gabriel. In science, one of the greatest quality is to be prudent regarding any news that come out… It’s always a good thing to put things in question… I should add : Exactly like I do here regarding the hypothesis (not the theory !) of the Mandylion of Ian Wilson !!! Ha ha ha !!! :-) When I see something (like the hypothesis of Wilson) being accepted without too much critical analysis, it always raise a red flag in my brain ! In cases like that, I always have the sense that it is really suspect. Of course, I talk about things like the hypothesis of Wilson and not this new Russian technology which I know nothing about and don’t know if this is truly a good technology…
I agree.
Let me be clear. I agree with Gabriel.
You should agree with me too Dan… ;-) Especially for the Mandylion hypothesis ! I have even found the existence of one ancient document that is another piece of evidence that can really help to refute one of the most important argument put forward by Wilson to comfort his hypothesis, i.e. the argument that there is some ancient text of the legend of Abgar (in fact, there is only 2 !) that specify that the Mandylion was showing the image of the entire body of Christ and not just the image of his face… More about this later !!! One thing I can say right now is the more I go deep in my researches, the more I found the hypothesis of Wilson to be very weak.
I can only imagine that it still measures rate of radioactive isotope decay, which is about the only way that any spectrometer could ascertain age of artifacts. But if you screw up on your sampling protocol, you’re still gonna get GIGO! (= Garbage In, Garbage Out for the unititiated)
From what I can gather from the ‘limited’ article above, it seems it is not much different then the present AM spectrometer, just a little more robust and accurate in calculating the isotopes. Requiring less carbon and able to detect above the 50 thousand year limit of AMS~Yet to be proven though! But did anyone notice the little detail in the article pertaining to the 1988 14c dating? They used 150 grams (total), split three ways, then split again at the labs. It was determined back then that 5 grams would be sufficient to get a proper reading, which contradicts this paper of the minimal amount needed. Plus in 1988 the amounts ended up much lower then 5 grams per test! …Making the 1988 14c test results very questionable on a BASIC level. So there is another example of GIGO…
Ron
Should read as milligrams (mg) above in all instances, sorry for the error.
Ron
This looks more promising
http://www.archaeological.org/events/1780