Colin Berry writes in his blog in a Guest posting from Hugh Farey (yipee – another science bod!)
Some of you may be familiar with physics-trained Hugh Farey, who has been doing experiments recently with scorching of linen, and use of an ultraviolet lamp to check changes in fluorescence that may or may not accompany scorching from hot metal.
Yesterday he kindly sent me photographs of some of his current experiments. In the next day or two I will display his photographs here, together with his accompanying comments. Any thoughts of my own regarding Hugh’s findings will appear as comments, provoked or unprovoked by others’ observations and conclusions.
And with what I can only assume is a note to Thibault Heimburger, Colin writes:
Now that’s what I call a (bas relief) template. French physicians please note!
Go have a look. Click on the photograph (or here) for some additional information. This may turn out to be interesting after a bit more analysis and commentary.
When Rogers thought of a temperature gradient, it was to modulate the kinetics of the reaction, not the depth of colored fibers.
Are not the two inescapably connected, and probably directly correlated?
Hugh, If any others are watching, I think you may well get comments about the chromophore on the Shroud cloth being suspected as being in an impurity layer produced by the manufacturing process and not on the fibils themselves, as apparently asserted by Ray Rogers. If you’re planning to advance your experiments further, I suggest you might like to investigate this aspect further. I know that De Liso with her seismic / radon experiments obtained her best results when she imbibed her cloths with a solution of myrrh and aloes, but myrrh is fairly expensive stuff.
Concerning the banding effects from photo-compressing:-. I don’t use iPhoto mentioned on Colin’s site, so don’t know its capabilities, but I do quite a lot of scanning from various published photos. Scanning from published photos usually results in a similar banding effect. I find I can usually eliminate the banding using my photo editing software – PhotoImpact. PhotoImpact has a Blurring tool and also a Focus tool which I find usually eliminate the banding effect and enhances the clarity. Other editing software could well have similar tools
Thanks Dave. I have some myrhh, but as you say, it’s quite pricey (about £1 per gram) so I’m reluctant to slosh it about. Although it is quite viscous, it is difficult to brush it only on one side of the cloth – it seems to seep in quickly and make it quite translucent. It is slightly fluorescent, and does seem to react with urea solution, making a mark without needing heating, but I find liquids very difficult to control, they tend to spread out all over the place. I’m unhappy about the shroud contacting any liquids at all, in fact (except the blood of course) but if myrhh was sufficiently hydrophobic, it might do the trick nicely, preventing the liquid from seeping through. I’ll give it a go.
No idea where you get aloes from…
As for the photos, I think iphoto is fine, but the shots I sent Colin were 3MB or more, and may have gone funny when compressed for the web. He seems to have cracked it with the later ones though (as above).
Reminder: in the hypothesis the Shroud is Yeshua’s, the anointing procedure with oily spicy perfumes was not performed.
If the Shroud would have been soaked with aloes and myrrh, then the cloth would have been stained all over the place, as it was scientifically proven by coloration experiments done by Sam Pellicori of STURP. The fact that there is absolutely no coloration on the Shroud outside the body image is the most compelling fact that shows there was NO burial products used during the burial of the Shroud man, which is TOTALLY consistent with the Gospels, except for the Gospel of John. However, if we believe Pierre Barbet’s hypothesis that a mixture of aloes and myrrh in powder has possibly been used but only in smaller cloths used as bags and put all around the dead body inside the Shroud to remove bad odours and retard a bit the arrival of the first liquid of putrefaction, this would wonderfully explain why the STURP team (Rogers especially) never found any traces of aloes and myrrh on the cloth!
Let me suggest all the readers to read this previous comment of mine in which I detailed this particular argument related to the total absence of a coloration outside the body image on the Shroud which goes against the possibility that there was aloes and myrrh applied directly on the cloth and/or on the body during the burial : http://shroudstory.com/2012/12/17/is-it-absurd-to-think-that-the-shroud-can-show-a-physical-trace-of-the-resurrection/#comment-20623
Maybe I’m wrong but I think I’m the very first one to have come up with such an argument that is based on Pellicori’s coloration experiments. There are some things that are very important to note from these experiments: 1- ALL the ancient burial products tested by Pellicori ALWAYS gave a visible color on his linen samples. 2- The coloration was a latent one and needed the use of the backing technique (to simulate ageing) in order to became visible on the cloth. 3- Except for the aloes, all the other ancient burial products used by Pellicori gave a color on linen that was very close to the Shroud’s image spectal characteristics. 4- Even a very light contact between a product and the linen cloth was enough for Pellicori to obtain a visible color on linen after baking.
And now, concerning Dave’s comment about the very probable fact that the Shroud’s image is located ONLY in a thin layer of impurities on-top of the fibers without having affected the fiber itself in any way, I see that my teaching have finally produced some fruits!!!! HA HA HA!!! This was one of my goal to make people around here understand this very probable fact because this question is crucial when it comes to evaluate to level of similarity of one particular image formation hypothesis.
And finally, here’s an advice for Thibault (if he can read this): Don’t you think you have lost enough time arguing with someone like Colin Berry who is not even able to understand that the evidence of the bloodstains on the Shroud is well enough to conclude that the Shroud is NOT the product of any form of artistic forgery???
One error… Here’s my point #2 again for Pellicori’s experiments: 2- The coloration was a latent one and needed the use of the BAKING technique (to simulate ageing) in order to became visible on the cloth.
Sorry… By the way, here’s the reference for Pellicori’s paper: Samuel F. Pellicori, Spectral properties of the Shroud of Turin, Applied Optics 19(12), 1913 (1980).
A “must read” article for anyone who is interested in Shroud science!!! It’s interesting to note that Pellicori used his results to back-up his personal hypothesis that the Shroud’s image was a natural one that came from an anointing of the corpse prior to his deposit into the Shroud, but this idea is inconsistent with the fact that there are some bloodstains and scourge marks located in places where there is absolutely no body image (no coloration) and also with the general lack of distortion in the body image even though we know for a fact that at some point during the burial of the Shroud man, a good portion of his corpse must have been in direct contact with the cloth. This fact come from the presence of bloodstains and scourge marks almost everywhere in the body image zones (front and back), while we know very well that all these stains could only have come from a direct contact. In this context, there’s no doubt that if the body would have been anointed, there would have been some colored stains in the actual places where there are some off-body bloodstains and scourge marks and also, the resulting body image would have been seriously distorted if it would have been formed by a direct contact with an anointed body, the way described by Pellicori.
Despite what Pellicori was thinking, the idea that the Shroud’s image could have been formed by a process acting only by direct contact is highly unlikely.
I merely observed that Hugh would probably get comments about the chromophore beng in the impurity layer, and Yannick’s comments demonstrate that this was a correct prognostication. I also observed that De Liso obtained her best imaging results with an imbibition of the cloths.
I do not expect that Colin wil ever be able to prove that the Shroud was produced by some kind of scorch. But at least both Colin and Hugh are conducting some experimentation, instead of merely relying on received wisdom. Who knows where such experiments may lead. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Science history is full of examples where experimentation produced unexpected results when the experimenters were looking for something entirely different.
I truly think that if the chromophore of the Shroud’s image would have been a colored layer of aloes and myrrh residing on-top of the cloth, some traces of these products would have been easily found by Rogers and the rest of the STURP team. Also, as Pellicori shown, these products have a dehydrative/oxidative capacity on the linen fiber itself, which doesn’t seem to correspond, as Rogers reported, with the ghosts of coloration and the diimide reagent, which both left a clean and undammaged fiber behind. I think every hypothesis of image formation that include a colored layer of aloes and myrrh on-top of the cloth must be considered as highly unlikely…