Barrie Schwortz writes to members of Shroud of Turin Website Mailing List:
Just a short note to let you know that another huge update to Shroud.com is now online. Just go to to our Home Page and click on the August 31, 2013 Latest Update link to see the details.
This update includes our newly redesigned Main Menu/Home Page, custom Mobile Phone Versions of our Home Page in English and Spanish, three more issues of Shroud Spectrum International, the latest (and possibly the last) issue of the BSTS Newsletter, new Shroud papers and books, information on recent and upcoming Shroud conferences, several Special Features, an update on David Rolfe’s Shroud Affair project and much, much more. Rather than trying to list them all, just click on the above link and get started! We think you will find a lot of useful information that will keep you busy for some time to come. And don’t forget to visit the Private Subscribers Page for exclusive offers not available to the general public.
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Quick Links…
That’s not a mobile page. A mobile page detects the device being used and automatically adjusts just like this blog does for all of its pages, menus, etc.. Smart phones and tablets have different characteristics. All subsequent pages, at least non-pdf ones, should automatically adjust based on the device detected. That doesn’t work. Having to click on a so-called mobile page is nonsense.
Do you have the script that provides that capability?
Here is the announcement in the update about the 2014 St. Louis conference:
There will be an international Shroud Conference titled “Shroud of Turin: The Controversial Intersection of Faith and Science” in fall 2014 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Due to scheduling issues with several potential speakers, the exact date has not been picked, but it likely will be September 18-21, September 25-28, or one of the weekends (Thursday through Sunday) in October. The date is expected to be selected very soon. The conference is being co-sponsored by Resurrection of the Shroud Foundation and Salt River Production Group.
Subject matter for the papers is open to any major aspect of sindonology, eg., Science, History, Art, Theology and can also include other relevant artifacts such as the Sudarium of Oviedo, Manoppello Cloth and the Tilma of Guadalupe. Abstracts should be submitted electronically to Joe Marino no later than 15 March 2014. If for some reason the abstract can’t be sent electronically, please send to Joe Marino / 2408 Sovron Ct. / Dublin, Ohio 43016 / USA. Authors will be limited to a maximum of 2 (two) papers as primary or secondary author. Abstracts will be sent to selected reviewers, who will not be informed of the identity of the author. Authors will also be required to send vitaes. English will be the official language of the conference. Abstracts are to be submitted and papers are to be read in English.
Many new and exciting papers are expected to be presented. It is hoped that the conference will draw numerous established sindonologists, as well as many new ones. As more details become known, they will be disseminated via http://www.shroud.com and http://www.shroudstory.com.
The most awesome thing that I find in this new update of Barrie’s website is a paper from Ray Rogers that was never published before, which deal with the question of the discontinuous distribution of the colored fibers in the image area. I will read this with great attention and, already, after having made a fast reading of the conclusion, I can say that Rogers was truly thinking that this discontinuous distribution could have been the result of a totally natural process, just like the two Italians scientists Fazio and Mandaglio who published some papers about the Shroud in the last few years. What is the most interesting thing to note is the fact that such a conclusion from Rogers is somewhat different than what he wrote in his book A Chemist’s Perspective on the Shroud of Turin: “However, identification of a probable chemical process does not explain one of the perplexing observation on the Shroud, the discontinuous distribution of the color on the topmost part of the weave.”
In the end, I believe the most important thing to note is the fact that the conclusion from this “new” paper of Rogers fits perfectly well with what Fazio and Mandaglio’s wrote in the conclusion of their paper “Stochastic distribution of the fibrils that yielded the Shroud of Turin body image”, which was published in July 2011 in the scientific journal Radiation Effects and Defects in Solids. To me, the fact that these researchers agreed to say that the discontinuous distribution of the colored fibers in the image area IS NOT, theoretically speaking, an obstacle to the idea that the body image was formed naturally is important.
Note 1: You can find this same quote from Rogers’ book at #141 in the paper I published about Rogers work, along with an important comment from me that makes a reference to Fazio and Mandaglio’s conclusion about the discontinuous distribution of the colored fibers): http://shroudnm.com/docs/2013-01-10-Yannick-Clément-Reflections-on-Ray-Rogers-Shroud-Work.pdf
With this publication of Rogers’ paper, I guess I will need to do a new update of this paper of mine in order to include his conclusion and maybe to also include some other interesting quotes that I will find…
Now, the question that remains open is why the quote I just gave you from Rogers’ book seems to be so different than the conclusion he wrote in this 2001 paper? Do this means that Rogers changed his mind about this important question before his death or does it simply means that identifying one single chemical process (like the Maillard reaction for example) is not suffiscient to explain the discontinuous distribution of the colored fibers in the image area?
I really think my second guess is the best one. And I think that this quote from Rogers paper strongly suggest that I’m right about that: “A partial explanation for the discontinuous and superficial nature of the image color and its chemistry might be found in the study of the technology of the production of the cloth. The technology coupled with Pellicori’s observations (of the body image fibers) might explain the nature and distribution of the color of the image.” This quote seem to suggest that, for Rogers, the discontinuous distribution of the image WAS NOT due solely on the nature of the chemical process that lead to the formation of the image but ALSO on the nature of the image chromophore, which is located, if we believe Rogers (and not Fanti or Jackson), only in a thin layer of carbohydrate impurities on-top of the cloth that were left there because of the type of technology (ancient) that was used to make the Shroud. On this subject, I can say that Rogers’ conclusion was somehow a bit different than the conclusion of Fazio and Mandaglio in the sense that, for those 2 Italian researchers, the discontinuous distribution of colored fibers was only due to the very mild nature of the (natural) process that formed the image. I think such a difference can be simply due to the fact that Fazio and Mandaglio didn’t agreed with Rogers’ conclusion about the impurities and remained convinced (like STURP was) that the chromophore is located in the structure of the linen fiber itself… But, as I said earlier, the most important thing to note is the fact that, for Rogers, as well as for Fazio and Mandaglio, a completely natural process IS NOT AT ALL in contradiction with the discontinuous distribution of colored fibers in the image area. This is what is the most important thing to remember…
Note 2: In December 2011, Fazio and Mandaglio published a summary paper of their analysis concerning the stochastic (discontinuous) distribution of colored fibers in the image area on the Shroud in the BSTS Newsletter. You can read it here: http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n74part3.pdf
LAST NOTE: Since this “new” paper of Rogers was given to Barrie by Joe Marino, I must say a big THANK YOU VERY MUCH to you Joe for this great and potentially important finding!
Sorry, I completely forgot to give you the link to this new and interesting publication from Rogers. Here it is: http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/rogers10.pdf
Along with my thank you to Joe for this finding, I just want to also say thank you to Barrie Schwortz for giving us, the general public, a chance to read anything that was ever written about the Shroud by someone as professional and unbiased as Ray Rogers…
After more reflection, I want to add this important note:
What Rogers is suggesting us with the conclusion of his “new” paper is the fact that, in order for a fiber to get colored, at least three “facilitating” factors had to be present. These three factors are:
1- The proximity of a fiber to the corpse (STURP estimation was that over a distance of 4 cm, no fiber were able to get colored, while Mario Latendresse estimated that over a distance of 2 cm, the image formation phenomenon had already lost around 80% of its coloring capacity).
2- The amount of “coloring agent” released in one particular spot of the dead body (for Rogers, this was related to the amount of amines, including amoniac gases, released by the dead body).
3- The amount of impurities present over one particular fiber.
This is important because, a lot of time, the image formation process is not explained and understand like this. Effectively, the third factor is rarely considered, while it can well be one of the most important factor that lead to the coloration or not of a particular fiber of the Shroud!
In sum, if Rogers was correct about the whole issue, we can conclude this:
1- If one particular fiber was located at more than 4 cm away from the body, no dehydration (coloration) process could occurred, even if this fiber was sumbit to a suffiscient amount of “coloring agent” (amines in Rogers mind) and/or there was a suffiscient amount of carbohydrate impurities over it.
2- If one particular fiber wasn’t submit to a high level of “coloring agent” (amines in Rogers mind), no dehydration (coloration) process could occurred, even if this particular fiber was located at less than 4 cm from the body and/or there was a suffiscient amount of carbohydrate impurities over it.
3- If one particular fiber did not had a certain amount of carbohydrate impurities over it, no dehydration (coloration) process could occurred, even if this particular fiber was located at less than 4 cm from the body and/or was submit to a suffiscient amount of “coloring agent” – amines in Rogers mind.
With this comment of mine, I think it’s pretty easy to understand how complicated the image formation process that produced the body image on the Shroud really was!!! In other words, the fact that one particular fiber became colored or not was not simply due to one single factor but to a combination of many factors that could interacted together (if Rogers was right, there were at least three main factors).
Taking note of this very important fact, we can now understand better what Rogers wrote in his book: “If image color is not simply a result of color formation in the cellulose of the linen fibers, image formation must be a MUCH MORE COMPLEX PROCESS than we originally thought (note: here, Rogers is referring to the STURP work).”
I hope this summary of Rogers thinking versus the image formation issue will help some of you to understand how complicated this image formation process must have been. A lot of times, when I hear an interview or when I watch a TV documentary about the image formation process that occurred on the Shroud, only one of these three “facilitating” factor (two when we are lucky) is mentioned and it’s a shame because this do not help the public to understand correctly the most probable high complexity of the image formation phenomenon that occurred on the Shroud.
One last comment from me for today:
First I want to write more properly my list of three “facilitating” factors with a precision for factor #2:
1- The proximity of a fiber to the corpse (STURP estimation was that over a distance of 4 cm, no fiber were able to get colored, while Mario Latendresse estimated that over a distance of 2 cm, the image formation phenomenon had already lost around 80% of its coloring capacity).
2- The amount of “coloring agent” THAT WAS PRESENT OR released in one particular spot of the dead body (for Rogers, this was related to the amount of amines, including amoniac gases, released by the dead body).
3- The amount of impurities present over one particular fiber.
Note: I prefer to add “that was present or” before “released” because it is still possible (even if it’s improbable) to think that the image formation process that occurred on the Shroud was caused solely by a direct-contact interraction between the surface of the linen cloth and a biologicial or burial or another kind of substance that was present (maybe in liquid form) on-top of the skin (and maybe also on-top of the dried blood clots). In such a case, the expression “released” would be somewhat misleading because it fits much better with energetic radiations, post-mortem gases, biological molecules, etc. that could have been “liberated” from the dead body… That’s why I chosed to add the expression “that was present or” before the word “released”.
Secondly, I just want to say that, if Rogers was correct about the image formation that occurred on the Shroud, it’s not only imperative to talk about a VERY COMPLEX image formation process involving many facilitating factors (see the list above) but it is also imperative to talk about a VERY MILD process. Effectively, look closely at the three factors I talked about in my previous comment (and in this one) and note how a very slight change in one of the three facilitating factors could have had a huge impact on the final aspect of a particular fiber (i.e. whether the fiber would be colored or not).
All this lead me to conclude that I’m certainly not dumb to favored the idea that it was a completely natural process that lead to the formation of the image on the Shroud (because this idea fits very well with the probable nature of the image formation process, i.e. very complex and very mild)… And it also lead me to conclude that it’s not surprising, in such a context of a very complex and mild process, to note that no one has been able yet to reproduce the image we see on the Shroud with all the same chemical and physical characteristics. Imagine the amount of luck someone must have to reunite all those facilitating factors in the same form than what was present on the Shroud and on the body (and/or inside it) 2000 years ago! As I said before, in my mind, someone must need a highly tortured body to have some chance to reunite all those factors in the same form than what was present 2000 years ago, so I don’t expect we will see this hapening in a near future!
And you also need most certainly a linen shroud that would be made with a very specific (and ancient) form of manufacturing technology. I’m not so sure if anyone (including Rogers or those who made the recent pig experiment in England) has ever succeed to reproduced with a 100% degree of success the linen fabric of the Shroud in order to performed properly a coloring and/or an imaging experiment. I’m really not sure… And in the end, think about it: how can we’ll ever be certain about that? The historical truth is that there was more than one single method of making linen cloth in ancient times and since no one has been able to found the “manufacturing guide” of the Shroud of Turin yet, this lead to a lot of possible manufacturing methods… As you can see, things are never simple with the Shroud!
Dan ~ Please remove the private subscriber’s page link. Thanks. ~Andy
Andy, try it. As before, the link points to the page enabling one to become a subscriber. Isn’t that the objective of the private subscriber page?
Sorry Dan. Barrie told me it was a link to the sign up page. My apologies.