We missed this story last month (April 11, 2012) in the Daily News Record of Harrisonburg, Virginia. It is about shroud researcher and friend, Professor Ray Schneider. Maybe it was fortuitous because the article deals with the issue of image characteristics that we have been discussing lately. Ray sees it somewhat differently in a constructive way:
There are four properties, which I call the STAR properties, that are also mystifying. These properties deal with how the image was created. The STAR properties have to be satisfied collectively by any image process and that’s a very, very tall order.
Superficial
The shroud image is ephemeral. It only penetrates into a miniscule portion of the fibers, called fibrils. Microscopic examination of these fibrils shows that the image only penetrates the first 200-300 nanometers of the fibers. One nanometer measures one billionth of a meter.Three Dimensional
Using a VP-8 image analyzer as well as linear scans, the image has been shown to render a convincing three-dimensional representation of the human body.
Areal Density
Another mystifying property is that the image is similar to those produced by half tone printing. Those qualities are variations in image lightness and darkness and the same color density.
Resolution
Most processes in nature are isotropic, that is they spread out pretty evenly in all directions. Natural processes tend to produce fuzzy images that are blurred. The fact that the shroud image is not blurred, and is relatively high resolution means that the image is not isotropic, but parallel in a direction that is likely vertical.