This YouTube video of Barrie just showed up on a blog, Putting focus on science: Scientific photography and visual representation of science at its best. It runs 55 minutes. It is good lecture, worth watching. Click on the image to link to the video.
“Scientific photography and visual representation of science at its best.”
That I don’t question. But what about the claims for “striations” and “discontinuities” in Shroud image fibres? What’s the source of those claims. Is it really the x35 photographs that bear the name of Barrie Schwortz and/or Mark Evans that one sees in pdf documents? Was that really the top magnification available to folk like Fanti et al (2010), the list including Thibault Heimburger, because if it was, then my ageing eye sight is simply not capable of seeing the detail that is claimed to be there. Is there a fancy Latinized term not just for seeing things that are not there, or not seeing things that are there, but as of this moment in time, not seeing things that are not there? Who’s to say these features, if present, are not a characteristic of retted flax fibre that are shown up in the imaging process, but in reality are also in latent form in non-image fibres? Might those discontinuities and striations be visible in the edges of the 1532 scorched fibres too? Has anyone looked? Were they photographed at high magnification too? So much to do, so little material to work with… maybe.
I’ve just this minute put a screen grab on my site of those under-magnified pictures if anyone’s interested in seeing the problem/non-problem (?) with their own eyes.
http://shroudofturinwithoutallthehype.wordpress.com/2013/11/09/can-you-see-those-supposedly-inimitable-discontinuities-and-striations-in-shroud-image-fibres/
Colin,
You wrote: ” But what about the claims for “striations” and “discontinuities” in Shroud image fibres? What’s the source of those claims. Is it really the x35 photographs that bear the name of Barrie Schwortz and/or Mark Evans that one sees in pdf documents? Was that really the top magnification available to folk like Fanti et al (2010), the list including Thibault Heimburger, because if it was, then my ageing eye sight is simply not capable of seeing the detail that is claimed to be there.”
The only source? No
In ” A Comprehensive Examination of the Various Stains and Images on the Shroud of Turin” by Jumper et Al (ACS advances in Chemistry N°205, Archaeological Chemistry III, 1984), we read:
“Body-only images (…)
Macroscopic Characteristics: (…):The yellowed fibrils are not yellowed continuously over their entire length. We observed a fibril that was yellow only on the part that was on the uppermost portion of the thread but lost its coloring as it left the upper portion of the thread in its normal course of following the twist to the lower portion of the thread (…)
In examining the cause of the differing integrated densities of the body-only images as seen by the eye, we found that the darker portions of the image were not due to a variation of the degree of the yellowing of the fibrils, but rather to the presence or more yellowed fibrils per unit area. Thus, the extent of yellowing of a given fibril was the same, to within 10% (of full scale) of any other yellowed fibril on the basis of the microdensitometric measurements of the color micrographs. (..) In this regard, it should be noted that there are ubiquitous examples of yellowed fibrils lying adjacent to unyellowed fibrils”.
At least 3 (or 4 ?) of the 6 authors of this paper were members of the STURP team that performed the in situ observations in 1978, namely Jumper, Jackson and Pellicori (concerning Druzik, I don’t know).
Thus, the “discontinuities” and the fact that bundles of colored fibrils are found adjacent to uncolored fibrils is fully confirmed.
Perhaps you can see that better in Fig.20 to 23 in my pdf: the scorch hypothesis revisited…
” Who’s to say these features, if present, are not a characteristic of retted flax fibre that are shown up in the imaging process, but in reality are also in latent form in non-image fibres? Might those discontinuities and striations be visible in the edges of the 1532 scorched fibres too? Has anyone looked? Were they photographed at high magnification too? So much to do, so little material to work with… maybe.”
Very good questions.
Reviewing the Mark Evans (ME) collection disk I have, I can say that none of the 3 facts seen in the TS body-only image, i.e: striation, ” interruption” and bundles of colored fibers adjacent to uncolored fibers in a given image-only thread (how to name this property ?) is specific to the body-only image area.
It is also found in light scorches and waterstains borders.
What does it mean?
You wrote: ” Who’s to say these features, if present, are not a characteristic of retted flax fibre that are shown up in the imaging process, but in reality are also in latent form in non-image fibres? ”
Probably yes.
Each of the 32 ME microphotograph I have is about 15-20 MB!!
I’ll try to write a pdf with the images showing what I wrote above (There is no other mean taking into account the weight of the images).
I want to collaborate with anybody who has a correct attitude.
Thibault.
Thanks, Thibault, there is much food for thought there, so pardon me if I deliberate on that (partial) clarification for a day or two. For now, I would simply say that I had considered that “striations and discontinuities” were features that were additional to “half-tone effect and localised crown-thread scorching”. Oh, and we really do need high mag HD photographs in the public domain (if available, if possible).
My attitude is always incorrect. It’s the only method that works for me. ;-)
On Youtube, the title of the video is “Shroud of Turin: Hoax or Proof of Resurrection?”
How many times do we see such titles associated with the Shroud? I’m always amazed to note how most people (including most Shroud researchers these days) don’t seem to understand that the most probable answer for the Shroud can well be hidden right between these two extreme positions (i.e. not a hoax and not a by-product of the Resurrection, but more likely a natural (but amazing nevertheless) product of the dead body of Jesus of Nazareth)!
As long as most people will only seek the answer for the Shroud and its body image in these 2 extremities, I have a feeling that we’ll never found the real cause for the image.
Look people, the Shroud is a real bloodstained burial cloth of a real crucifed man that suffered the same set of tortures as Jesus of the Gospel and the image on it represent what look like Jesus Christ right after his Passion and death.
Taking that into account, don’t you think the most logical and rational (and thus probable) cause for this body image has to be some kind of natural interaction between the dead body and the cloth?
And finally, when you also take into account (without any religious or anti-religious preconceive notions) the professional judgment of radiation experts like Rogers, Fazio and Mandaglio (who all categorically stated that the image cannot be the product of any kind of high energetic radiation and cannot be the product of a forger), then you are kind of “forced”, like me, to come to the sad conclusion that most people today don’t understand the Shroud correctly as they only tend to see an hoax or a proof of the Resurrection while looking at this cloth, when they should see instead a possible proof of God’s Incarnation in our humanity and a proof of the validity of the Gospel accounts concerning the Passion and death of Jesus (and, by extension, a pretty good clue that Christ’s disciples were truly convinced of the reality of Jesus’ Resurrection).
Last thing: I have not watch the video of Barrie’s presentation but I will and I’m sure that, as usual, it is well done and interesting…
And finally, when you also take into account (without any religious or anti-religious preconceive notions) the professional judgment of radiation experts like Rogers, Fazio and Mandaglio (who all categorically stated that the image cannot be the product of any kind of high energetic radiation and cannot be the product of a forger)
Elsewhere you describe this Fazio as a radiation expert and say that we should embrace all his ideas re stochastic processes, latent image formation, naturalistic mechanisms that are kick-started a slow process of image formation, and therefore dismissing my own ideas as naive and untutored.
Methinks it is you who needs to do your homework, anonymous. First, I have a strong suspicion that you have confused your G.Fazio (Giovanni Fazio) with joint appointments at two Sicilian institutes with the heavyweight stargazer Giovanni G.Fazio in the USA with a 63 page cv and strings of honours and awards.
Did you even trouble to read the papers of your man before stating that his “professional judgement” as a “radiation expert” could be totally relied upon, with an aside to religious/anti-religious preconceptions? If so, then what did you make of the footnote in his pdf that reads
The discussions with Father Giuseppe Gentile about biblical literature
are acknowledged. When G. F. writes about about the Shroud of Turin always remember Father Letterio Ruggeri: Gospels’ scholar and many people’s educator
http://www.sindone.info/FAZIO2.PDF
Gospels’ scholar? What’s that doing on a supposedly scientific paper? More “theophysics”? No thanks. There’s already enough as it is, elsewhere in Italy and the USA.
Methinks you have your Fazios mixed up, “anonymous”, and have wasted a great deal of my time (hours in fact) trying to get any science out his “stochastics” and then going through dozens of pages on Scholar in order to nail the evidence that he and his G.Fazio namesake in the USA are two entirely different people. In fact, the USA-based thorough-going professional now uses “G.G.Fazio” (can’t say as I blame him).
Most unscholarly, “anonymous”. Must do better.
First, the paper of Fazio you mention talks mainly about a hypothesis he proposed (which I don’t think is the most probable by the way!) concerning one aspect of the Shroud’s dorsal image that is mainly based on the possible presence of burial ointments on the back part of the Shroud. In this context, the fact that a nuclear physicist ask some questions to a biblical scholar about the ancient Jewish method of burial and burial ointments is completely normal and part of the proper way to do a good scientific research. I don’t see any problem there and, in fact, I see this as another proof of the professionalism of this person.
And secondly, you can be certain that the Giovanni Fazio I often refer in my comments, as well as his colleague Mandaglio, are two real experts in radiations and, therefore, we must listen very carefully to what they have to say about the image formation that, in their opinion of expert (as well as the opinion of the late Rogers, who was another true expert in radiations), cannot have been caused by a man made forgery (including a scorch), no more than a release of some high-energetic radiations by the dead body of the Shroud man, but on the contrary, must have been caused by a natural interaction (still undetermined) between the cloth’s surface and the dead body.
And if you don’t believe me when I say that both Fazio and Mandaglio are true experts in the field of radiations, take a good look at the details of where Fazio and Mandaglio are currently working:
Fazio: 1. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Catania, I-95123 Catania, Italy.
2. Dipartimento di Fisica e di Scienze della Terra, dell’Università di Messina, I-98166 Messina, Italy.
Mandaglio: 1. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Catania, I-95123 Catania, Italy.
2. Dipartimento di Fisica e di Scienze della Terra, dell’Università di Messina, I-98166 Messina, Italy.
3. Centro Siciliano di Fisica Nucleare e Struttura della Materia, 95125 Catania, Italy.
Last thing: I know Fazio personally via emails and, as he told me, he and Mandaglio have absolutely no pro-religious or anti-religious agenda behind their backs (just like Rogers by the way) and the only motivation they have is to explore the mystery of the Shroud in a purely scientific way, which is only based on all the pertinent data related to the relic.
Additional comment: Unfortunately for the diehard skeptics and the supernatural and religious fanatics, the professional conclusions of radiation experts like Roger, Fazio and Mandaglio concerning the nature of the image formation do not fit at all with their preconceived ideas. And since the major part of those interested by the Shroud comes from these two “extreme” categories, I think that explain why these particular conclusions have generally not been well accepted by most Shroud researchers as well as by most shroudies.
Yes, I know his place of work, but that has not helped in tracking down his published work, Putting fazio g stochastic into Google scholar only turned up his Shroud paper with 5 citations. If one adds radiation, the listings are then swamped with the Smithsonian G.G Fazio’s papers, and even when a single G Fazio appears (rarely) one finds its GG who has dropped a G.
If you’re going to idolize scientists who you like (clearly chosen for fitting your ‘naturalistic’ preference re image formation) then please don’t making a song and dance about their being “expert” in this or that. That tag is virtually meaningless.
Since you have wasted hours of my time, but say you are in email contact with the hard-to-find single G.Fazio, then perhaps you would now oblige by asking him for his cv and list of published work.
Just for your information, Fazio and Mandaglio have organized two important conference last month and this month in Italy that were summarized like this by Fazio in a private email to me:
“The conferences (October and November) organized by us et al., are related to thte following topics: 1) meson interaction, 2) heavy ions reactions.
We will have, in Messina, scientists of the USA, China, G. B., France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Japan, . . .
For us, this will be a great engagement.”
I hope now that you can understand the fact that both Fazio and Mandaglio are true experts in the field of radiation, just like Rogers was and that these guys had no other motives regarding the Shroud than to find the truth about it. No pro or anti-religious agendas behind their backs and, just for this (and along the fact that they know what they are talking about when it comes to radiations), we should listen carefully to what they have to say.
Complement to my last sentence: So if they all claim that the Shroud image cannot be the product of a forgery or of a burst of high-energetic radiation of any kind, I don’t know why we should waste our time by keeping to explore those paths. The fact that all these radiation experts were so categorical about that give me a great confidence to say that those paths are wrong paths regarding the Shroud image. Shroud researchers would gain to look into the path of some natural processes.
Radiation theory too hot, medieval forgery too cold. Naturalistic explanation just right!
Ah the joys and simplicity of Goldilocks science.
Quote: “Naturalistic explanation just right!”
Comment: That’s where the whole picture given by the Shroud data is pointing very strongly… Just like Fazio, Mandaglio and Rogers, I have absolutely no doubt that the answer to the “mystery” of the Shroud image MUST lie there. Sorry for all the anti and pro-religious freaks out there (some of which have made a lot of $$$ over the years with their irrational explanations versus the Shroud).
One little question: We know for a fact that the bloodstains on the Shroud have a naturalistic origin, so why not the body image? Good question don’t you think?
No, not a good question, because the two – blood and image – are entirely different in the demands they place on evidence. Blood is a physical entity that is acquired merely by contact, producing a simple stain. The image is an entirely different matter, because people standing next to or in contact with linen do not normally find their image on that fabric as if by photography, nor has it ever been modelled by any photographic process, if requiring the presence of a converging lens and photographic emulsion. The mystery is primarily in the non-photographic mage, not the blood.
The transfer processes are certainly different I agree but that doesn’t mean at all that both cannot be due to natural phenomenons (different of course). Concerning precisely this subject matter of the difference between the blood and the image transfer, look for a new and very interesting paper of Fazio and Mandaglio that will possibly be published in a peer-reviewed journal in a near future… It is kind of a summary paper of their conclusions. Interesting paper.
And think about it Colin: The bloodstains prove the Shroud is a real bloodstained burial cloth of a real crucified man. So, if the Shroud image would not be the one of the person who left his blood on this cloth, that would mean a forger had to take a used and bloodstained burial cloth of a real crucified man and then, make an image (with a scorch technique or another one) AROUND those bloodstains so perfect that it would be a match so great that it would have completely fooled all the medical and forensic experts who analyzed the cloth over the years! Such a scenario is completely ridiculous… Look for some natural process (or processes) my friend…
What exactly is Fazio and Mandaglio’s hypothesis for the formation of the shroud? I can only find a quotation in “The Shroud of Turin: An Imprint of the Soul, Apparition or Quantum Bio-Holgram,” which says that they do think it was due to electromagnetic radiation of some kind. Is that correct?
This question of Hugh is very telling! It’s absolutely not normal at all that people who are going deep into the study of the Shroud are not aware of what can be the most rational and close to the truth hypothesis versus the image formation on the Shroud! It’s very telling because it prove what I’m saying for years now: Most people interested by the Shroud do not want to hear anything regarding a possible (probable in my mind) naturalistic phenomenon that can explain the image formation on the Shroud… It’s sad but it’s the reality my friends. For Hugh and anyone’s interested to seek real truth, here’s the 2 summary papers of Fazio and Mandaglio on the subject that were published in the BSTS newsletter:
1- http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n74part3.pdf
2- http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n75part10.pdf
You can also read the most recent paper of Fazio that was recently published: http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CEMQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sjmmf.org%2FDownload.aspx%3FID%3D7362&ei=ZS6CUtymL9bh4APV04CwDA&usg=AFQjCNETEeOqDNLHO7AYgeRWsMHJDIuKhg&sig2=5zvFt-NkSwbUdUxz2Cn0zA&bvm=bv.56146854,d.dmg
This paper is the best so far that I’ve read from this nuclear physicist. Note that it talks about the hypothesis of Rogers as a possible solution for the image but more in the context of a stochastic process that would have only produced a very small release of post-mortem gases (so small that it would not have been able to color every affected fibers)…
Hugh wrote: “I can only find a quotation in “The Shroud of Turin: An Imprint of the Soul, Apparition or Quantum Bio-Holgram,” which says that they do think it was due to electromagnetic radiation of some kind. Is that correct?”
Answer: No. They think the most probable source of weak energy that could have caused the image formation on the Shroud is the natural thermal radiation that could have been emitted by the fresh corpse. And as I said in a previous comment, they also leave the door open to the possibility that Rogers’ hypothesis could be correct.
By the way, Rogers also thought that thermal radiation (or heat coming out of the corpse if you prefer) could have taken part in the image formation process, but he didn’t thought this was the main source of energy.
Hugh wrote: “I can only find a quotation in “The Shroud of Turin: An Imprint of the Soul, Apparition or Quantum Bio-Holgram,” which says that they do think it was due to electromagnetic radiation of some kind. Is that correct?”
New answer: YES. And the sort is heat from the corpse. See this other comment of mine: http://shroudstory.com/2013/11/09/video-barrie-schwortz-at-the-pikes-peak-prophesy-summit/#comment-50972
When I first read “electromagnetic radiation”, I thought you were referring to corona discharge or something similar. I think the other comment of mine get the point straight.
Thank you, Anonymous. As a “true scientist” myself I am not only aware of the three papers you cite, but have read them carefully. That was why I asked the question – what do these people think caused the image? Apart from references to “a small quantity of energy” several times, and the absurdly overused word “stochastic,” there is a reference in all of them to “electromagnetic radiation,” but the rejection of UV and corona discharge.
Taking the third paper, I do not think Jackson’s “Image intensity” equation can be converted to Fazio and Mandaglio’s “Energy absorption” equation as easily as they seem to think. Jackson could make an empirical measurement that the shroud had a background colour (Ib) which was further darkened by a supposed negative correlation between image and body/cloth distance (Io(1-z/Ro)). That there is a background colour is not disputed, but to supposed that it was caused (as in Fazio’s derived equation) by “the average energy received by the cloth by electromagnetic radiation” is wholly unfounded and unless explained further, almost meaningless. The rest of the equation also refers to the absorption of electromagnetic radiation from the body. Whatever it means, it is clear that “the little quantity of energy” postulated by Fazio is indeed, radiation.
The paper makes a stab at the cause of the “little quantity of energy” by suggesting “emission of thermic energy.” Well, well. That’s heat to us “true scientists.”
So, sorry, Anonymous, but in spite of a feeble attempt to attribute the source of their “emission of thermic energy” to “the low temperature chemical processes between reducing sugars and amine,” which surely could only occur actually on the surface of the cloth, the entire thrust of the paper is that the image is proportional to the intensity of radiation it received across varying distances.
But it’s worse than that, even. It is assumed, wholly without justification, that there is a linear correlation between the energy transmitted from body to cloth and the distance it travels, which is wholly unjustified, and no consideration is given to the exact direction in which the radiation is supposed to have gone – vertically, horizontally, perpendicularly to body or cloth, shortest distance or any other.
Finally, if Fazio and Mandaglio were really interested in Rogers’s vapour theories, they should have looked at equations regarding gas dispersal, not electromagnetic radiation intensity.
p.s. If anyone is looking for a Peer-Reviewer for this sort of stuff, I volunteer.
p.p.s. Anonymous is very welcome to pass this review on to Fazio and/or Mandaglio for their comments.
The bottom line is this : the discontinuous distribution of colored fibers in the image areas is theoretically inconsistent with any hypothesis involving a man made forgery or a high-energetic radiation of any sort. Period. That mean that whatever kind of energy have produced the image, it must have come from a natural release (most probably biological in nature: heat from the corpse, post-mortem gases, etc.) that doesn’t implied a high amount of energy. We will possibly never know for sure what was exactly this mild energetic release but one thing’s seem to be certain: it was natural.
I will transmit your highly critical review to Mr. Fazio anyway, just to see if he can answer you properly.
Note: this message was a reply to another message by Hugh who simply disappeared from the blog… So, if it doesn’t reappear, I won’t be able to send it to Mr. Fazio.
I don’t know why it dropped out. It is back.
I’m still waiting for links to show that your G.Fazio (and Mandaglio) are “radiation experts”. The pdf you proffered failed to download on my laptop, but if it’s like the first one one I saw, it was submitted to a sindonological “internet” club. Can we please have links to recognized journals?
As for your comment No.9, in which you say the pair have organized conferences, the topic matter is “mesons amd heavy ions”. Mesons are short-live hadrionic particles, and heavy ions are, well, heavy ions. So where’s the evidence that either of those gentleman are radiation experts? Which part of the electromagnetic spectrum may I ask, between low frequency radio waves and high frequency gamma rays? And where’s the relevance of “burial ointments” to radiation physics?
Incidentally, I put Y.Clement (someone whom is said to be scholar) into Google Scholar but got back no returns. What am I doing wrong? Perhaps he writes and publish under a pseudonym. Alternatively, he confines his publications to pdf la la land.
I have post this highly critical review to Mr. Fazio and if he reply, I will print his words right here…
Here’s the reply of Mr. Fazio and Mandaglio concerning the highly critical review of Hugh Farey that we can find just above (link: http://shroudstory.com/2013/11/09/video-barrie-schwortz-at-the-pikes-peak-prophesy-summit/#comment-50952):
“ Dear Hugh Farey,
we have read your intervention on our Shroud papers. Your approach shows that you do not know the stochastic processes. Besides, you do not use the language of the ”true scientist”, you write as a teacher of Natural Science. Therefore, WE INVITE YOU TO PRODUCE A SHROUD ARTICLE ON THESE QUESTIONS IN A INTERNATIONAL REVIEW. Later, we will answer and if your ideas are without mistakes, we will accept the results that you have obtained.
THE COMPARISON OF THE IDEAS (the one among “true scientists”) HAPPENS BY INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS. In a blog, on the web, in a bar, on the beach, a person can write and say anything.
We are nuclear physicists and our articles are, generally, published in: Phys. Rev. , Phys. Rev. Lett. (USA), J. Phys. , Eur. Phys. J., Phys. Lett. , Nucl. Phys. , Few Body System , Europhys. Lett. (EUROPE)), Yadernaia Fizica , Izv, Rossiiskoi Ak. Nauk (RUSSIA) , J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. , Prog Theor. Phys. (JAPAN) ,Nucl. Science Tech. (CHINA) Mod. Phys. Lett. , Int. J. Mod. Phys.
Therefore, as you can understand, the comparison for us is necessary and, when it is the case, we admit the errors. So, we continue to believe, without presumptuousness, our Shroud papers while, WE WAIT FOR AN ARTICLE OF YOURS IN AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW.
Sincerely,
G: Fazio and G: Mandaglio “
Note from me: After this post of Mr. Fazio and Mandaglio, I hope there will not be anyone left (not even Hugh!) to believe these 2 nuclear physicists don’t know what they are talking about when they categorically say that no known form of high energetic radiation (whether it be a scorch, a burst of UV light, a Corona discharge, a burst of protons, of neutrons, etc.) can produce the kind of body image we see on the Shroud with all its very particular characteristics, especially the spatial encoding, the highly superficiality of the image AND the discontinuous distribution of colored fibers in the image area.
So when does this scholarly credentials pissing match end? Colin, you’ve already stated previously that there really isn’t anyone involved with sindonology that has credentials that passes muster. Everyone is just playing pretend at being serious researchers. Except those C-14 labs who are above approach of course.
Perhaps you could put together your own team of ‘real’ scientists — the Anti-STURP and collaborate with the C-14 labs that still have samples and blow this whole invisible weave theory out of the water.
That would be more productive than this credential skeet-shooting game. Perhaps not as much fun, but more productive.
It may have escaped your attention, David, but I only started to investigate the credentials of Shroudie celebs prior to their joining STURP when John Klotz described me as a “poodle barking at a Great Dane” in reference to John H Heller., implying that Heller’s credentials were vastly superior to my own. Note the word “prior”. And no, John Heller’s credentials as a researcher are/were NOT vastly superior to my own (let’s leave it at that) as can be seen from Google Scholar.
The performance of the “Great Danes” as part of STURP is an entirely different matter. I make no apologies for pointing out shortcomings in their science and/or objectivity. Science progresses by (constructive) fault-finding.
But if contributors here wish to play dirty pool, making invidious comparisons between me and Shroud celebs, probably not bothering to do background research, then rest assured I will not submit meekly.
What does Google scholar (suddenly the go-to source for everyone’s scholary back-check needs) say about the scientists that did the C-14 testing? Does anyone know their names, I’d be happy to do the check. Due diligence and all.
In a comment above, Hugh wrote : ”…there is a reference in all of them (meaning all their papers about the Shroud) to “electromagnetic radiation,” but the rejection of UV and corona discharge.”
My reply: Here’s a scientific definition for you that I found on the internet in order to understand that when Fazio and Mandaglio use the words “electromagnetic radiation”, they mean the release of heat from the body that is even possible for a fresh corpse: Thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation generated by the thermal motion of charged particles in matter and it can take the form of heat, light, ultraviolet, or other electromagnetic waves.
In the case of Fazio and Mandaglio’s hypothesis, the “electromagnetic radiation” they are talking about is precisely the heat (weak energy for sure that could have been released by the dead body of the Shroud while inside the Shroud.
Ah, all is now clear. When you say they are “radiation experts” you mean they are experts in body heat, especially that which emanates from recently deceased people. Is there a “Journal of Post-Mortem Infra-Red Radiation” where one can learn more of their contributions to this exciting new branch of nuclear physics, one that is attracting hordes of conference-attendees to Sicily from all over the world?
Ha come on… This is not serious. They are expert in radiations and perfectly know that there is not even one high energetic process that can produce the kind of discontinuous distribution of colored fibers like we see in the image area on the Shroud. Not one. Sorry but not even something called a scorch. All those things are way too “energetic” to yield that kind of stochastic result. Period. And this conclusion doesn’t come from me but from 2 physicists experts in radiations. They know what they are talking about.
I have to write again my last paragraph (sorry): In the case of Fazio and Mandaglio’s hypothesis, the “electromagnetic radiation” they are talking about is precisely the heat (weak energy for sure) that could have been released by the dead body of the Shroud while inside the Shroud.
One last thing: The main point of Fazio and Mandaglio is the fact that every high energetic radiation are much too strong to yield a discontinuous distribution of colored fibers in one particular image area such as it has been seen on the Shroud by the STURP team. And it’s also true for every possible man made forgery technique. In that context, the real image formation mechanism that happened on the Shroud must have been related to a natural process (or processes) that implied only a very weak amount of energy that was not able to color every affected fibers but only an unpredictable portion of them (this kind of thing is known as a stochastic process), which lead to the formation of a latent image that took years and even decades to fully “developed”.
Well, here, for starters, is a link to the Scholar entry on Oxford’s Christopher Bronk Ramsey.
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=c.b.ramsey&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5
To say the man is highly regarded, preeminent in his field, would be an understatement, as shown by his published work and citations. I leave others to do the same for the Arizona and Zurich team leaders.
Having said that, I find myself increasingly contemptuous of these attempts to diss the people who, invited to test the Shroud, then returned the Wrong Answer. One thing’s for certain – had it been the Right Answer, they would now be candidates for sainthood.
PS: Don’t forget that he is/was also known as Christopher Bronk, for which there’s a separate Scholar listing (including the 1989 Nature paper)
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=Bronk+C+R+&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5
PPS: Oh, and there’s pages and pages of published work for Michael Tite of the British Museum. His involvement in dating the Shroud is almost lost among the listings.
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&q=m+s+tite&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=
Colin, Professor Christopher Bronk Ramsey is a practicing Christian who does not believe the Shroud is authentic. Yet, he has kept an open mind to a certain extent, his weak argument about how the Shroud image could have been formed having been tackled in the book “The Shroud. The 2000-year-old mystery solved.”
Impeccable credentials. As I’m sure most of the others mentioned will have as well, and thus they have no excuses. Why are these scholars not making any discernable efforts to re-examine or retest the surviving samples?
You fail to see why these good gents are ‘dissed’. It’s not because they came up with the “wrong answer” – – it’s because when faced with new questions and theories questioned the ‘answer’ these scientists have not replied ‘hmmm let’s go back to the source materials and look into that’. Instead they insist in Pharoanic fashion that “what we have written, we have written”.
Why don’t you turn your critical eye on that gap in the scientific method for a few hours.
But for what it’s worth, John was out of line with the dog comparisons. I don’t blame you for barking back.
Sorry, Pilatian fashion. Pharoanic would be ‘so I have written, so let it be done’. Either fits actually.
Thanks, Anonymous. So if the stochastic distribution of the image fibres derives from radiation from a decomposing body, it does not derive from the reaction of reducing sugars and amines, as postulated by Rogers. This reaction does not require heat, merely the contact of the vapour with the supposed coating on the cloth.
Rogers’s concluding lines to “The Shroud of Turin: Radiation Effects, Aging and Image Formation” are: “I believe that the current evidence suggests that all radiation-based hypotheses for image formation will ultimately be rejected.” I take it you now reject that?
If you read well the papers of Fazio and Mandaglio, you will notice that an image formation process involving a release of heat from the corpse is only the best “proposal” of explanation for them. The most important thing in their conclusion is that the discontinuous distribution of colored fibers in the image area strongly suggest a natural phenomenon that did not implied a great amount of energy and, because of that, they did not wanted to reject the hypothesis proposed by Rogers because that kind of chemical reaction also doesn’t imply a lot of energy and, therefore, could also have produced a stochastic distribution of colored fibers if the post-mortem gases were not released in great amounts. That’s what Fazio and Mandaglio think. This was not exactly what Rogers thought. For Rogers, the discontinuous distribution of colored fibers was not due to an image formation process that was stochastic but it was mainly due to the evaporation-concentration phenomenon that happened at the end of the making of the cloth, which produced a discontinuous distribution of carbohydrate impurities on the top surface of the cloth (as well as on the top of the affected fibers – this is truly important to understand). In other words, concerning Rogers hypothesis, this evaporation-concentration phenomenon would have been the stochastic process leading to a discontinuous distribution of colored fibers in the image area instead of a stochastic image formation process.
But anyway, I think it’s possible to merge the 2 hypotheses into a viable one that would be very interesting…
Additional comment: Rogers believed that heat could have taken part in the image formation process, along with a diffusion of post-mortem gases and you can find a proof of this in the 2001 paper of Rogers that was recently published on Barrie’s website. Here’s the quote: “…I do not think we can rule out long-wave heat transfer (from a dead body) as contributing to the image-formation process. It could not have been the sole contributor.”
If Rogers thought that heat “could not have been the sole contributor”, it’s probably because he did not thought of the possibility of a stochastic process involving only a very small amount of energy that would have produced a latent image on the Shroud. I’m pretty sure Rogers was thinking of a process that produced a higher amount of energy released by the dead body than the very tiny quantity (still undetermined) that is probably needed to produced a stochastic process that could yellowed some fibers of linen… That’s what I think. But one thing’s for sure: Rogers, no more than Fazio and Mandaglio, excluded a release of heat by the fresh corpse of the Shroud man, as a possible solution for the Shroud image (at least partially).
My quotation was from 2005. Clearly Rogers had changed his mind by then, and rejected radiation completely.
You keep telling us you are not a scientist (indeed, I can find no published work under your name) yet here you are again laying down the law on scientific issues. What’s more, the phenomenon being referred to as a “discontinuity” has become a mantra on this site, yet so far I have seen no high quality photomicrographs to appreciate precisely what is being described. If you are going to tell us who to believe or not to believe on “discontinuity”, or how YOU would detect a “stochastic” mechanism on Shroud pictures, then don’t you think you should provide links to source material? You have not even responded to my request for links to G.Fazio’s work in recognized journals (as distinct from pdfs on his internet club site), or told us what position he holds in that Institute of Nuclear Physics.
I have not answer yet because I don’t have those information in details… All I know is that both Fazio and Mandaglio organized 2 important conferences about radiations with scientists coming from all around the world! Read again this please: http://shroudstory.com/2013/11/09/video-barrie-schwortz-at-the-pikes-peak-prophesy-summit/#comment-50783
After reading this, if you still think they don’t know what they are talking about when it comes to stochastic processes and the effects of radiations, then you got a major problem my friend.
The issue is not what I think about their work – I can form no opinion until I have seen work in peer-reviewed journals (being unable to make any sense of their pdfs). The issue is whether you know what YOU are talking about. You are the one who is claiming them to be experts on radiation (which you had to heavily qualify when challenged) and you are the one who is being dogmatic about imaging mechanisms, despite offering no evidence that you know or even care about the precise nature of “discontinuities” and “stochastic mechanisms”. In short, you are attempting to bludgeon us into submission, using your choice of “experts” as weapons. This is not scientific debate, or any kind of debate for that matter. It is pure dogma. Oh, and stop addressing me as “friend”. I am not your friend. I despise dogma of any kind, especially when dressed up as science.
On Barrie’s website scientific papers page, you can already find 2 peer-reviewed papers from Fazio and Mandaglio on the subject we discuss. Here’s the 2 references:
•FAZIO, G – MANDAGLIO, G – Can a latent image explain the characteristics of the Shroud body image? (2011) Radiation Effects and Defects in Solids, DOI:10.1080/10420150.2011.595413 (Abstract Only without Subscription) [Jan 2012]
•FAZIO, G – MANDAGLIO, G – Stochastic distribution of the fibrils that yielded the Shroud of Turin body image Radiation Effects and Defects in Solids, 166: 7, 476 — 479, First published on: 13 April 2011 (iFirst) (Abstract Only without Subscription) [Jan 2012]
And you can also add the paper from Fazio I referred to in a previous comment. Here’s the link: •FAZIO, G – MANDAGLIO, G – Can a latent image explain the characteristics of the Shroud body image? (2011) Radiation Effects and Defects in Solids, DOI:10.1080/10420150.2011.595413 (Abstract Only without Subscription) [Jan 2012]
•FAZIO, G – MANDAGLIO, G – Stochastic distribution of the fibrils that yielded the Shroud of Turin body image Radiation Effects and Defects in Solids, 166: 7, 476 — 479, First published on: 13 April 2011 (iFirst) (Abstract Only without Subscription) [Jan 2012]
This paper from Fazio was also published in a serious peer-reviewed journal. What more do you need to understand that Fazio and Mandaglio are true experts in radiations? Their personal C.V.?
Sorry, for the second part of my above comment, I made a mistake in my copy-paste links. Here’s the correct link for the paper of Fazio: http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CEMQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sjmmf.org%2FDownload.aspx%3FID%3D7362&ei=ZS6CUtymL9bh4APV04CwDA&usg=AFQjCNETEeOqDNLHO7AYgeRWsMHJDIuKhg&sig2=5zvFt-NkSwbUdUxz2Cn0zA&bvm=bv.56146854,d.dmg
Whether they are experts in radiation or not is neither here nor there, the term being so broad as to mean virtuallly everything and nothing (and with you heavily qualifying earlier to mean just thermal radiation, i,e, heat). What matters are the techniques that have been brought to bear on the Shroud, the nature and validity of the image being analysed (presumably not the Shroud per se, but photographs, but whose in particular, at what level of magnification and resolution)? Then one has to know whether the project is being tackled in a truly objective fashion, or whether it is what I call theo-science – and first impressions do suggest the latter given the references to burial ointments.
Having read 4 abstracts, and scanned some pdfs, I’m starting to think that further attempts to understand their work or accept its objectivity will bear little fruit, but I shall persevere a little while longer.
Yes, I have finally tracked down some of their non-Shroud work, e.g. on nuclear fusion, usually multi-author, and note the generally low citation rate (while making allowances for the work being somewhat specialized). However, I would still like to know precisely what positions Fazio and Mandaglio hold at their places of work, and it is surely not unreasonable to ask researchers to reveal their cv (many publish it to the internet without being asked).
The Journal of Modern Mathematical Frontier is a predatory website which will accept anything from anybody providing they can pay. It is not listed at http://www.scimagojr.com. It is not on the Thomson-Reuters master journal list.
For all I know Fazio and Mandaglio have published a number of thoroughly distinguished papers in reputable journals. This, however, is not one of them.
And what about “Radiation Effects and Defects in Solids” in which they published 2 or 3 papers about the Shroud?
I guess everybody knows who Anonymous is but nobody says it?
I thought I knew who you were, but when I entered that name into my new toy (Google Scholar- name search) nothing came back by way of published work, so my initial hunch was surely wrong. I mean to say, no one without proven scholarly credentials would be so brazen as to berate those who do possess them, especially on matters of science. But then I realized that was wrong too, simply by entering the known name of a certain well known archaeopalaeocrypto..(very crypto) academic and getting no returns again, It’s just not my day, finding all my (charitable) assumptions being negated in this manner by Big Brother Google….
Needless to say, if everyone stuck to discussing the issues, and desisted from questioning the right of others to comment and criticize, or from making invidious comparisons between credentials – real or imagined – then it might be possible to make progress in disentangling a complex set of variables regarding a relic with two entirely different sets of stains. that need to be discussed independent of one another (at least in the first instance). Reductionism first – then holistic remedies when all else fails.
Forget who say it and concentrate on what is said please. That’s what really matter.
Mr CB your “impeccable” credentials do not mean you are C*** & B******* proof as far as Shroud Forensics and Archaeology are concerned. I very much like to know how your
alleged “Big S(cience)” as a foodie chemist can lead you to conclude the man depicted on the Lirey Pilgrim Badge “looks like” Jacques de Molay unless you created a new field in image perception/cognition (chemistry of appearances?)…
Actually you have not the foggiest notion of what you are talking about and your credentials can only impress the gullible. Your flabbergasting ignorance is showing in terms of Forensics (archaeological blood pattern analysis), Iconography (image analysis) and Templar History and Archaeology. Now most if not all your theory is based on alleged “archaeological blood pattern expertise”, alleged expertise in “Templar archaeology and History” and alleged expertise in “medieval image analysis” when actually you cannot even correctly read a medieval image… Now you claim you can read one of the most complex of images aka the Turin Shroud image even when actually till recently you could not told which side of the Turin Shroud bears the image (Is it on the “warp side” or the “weft side”?). Thilbault and I had to tell you…
Dr IgnOrAmus, you are lacking too many PhDs “my nonfriend”. The archaeological approach I created (Archaeocryptology) is a holistic approach. I am a professional cryptologist. Since I am interested in too many fields, I have always thought it was a waste of time to get a PhD unless you wanted to make a specific career (and make money) or be just an Academic. Almost naturally, I developed a holistic approach.
I could easily demonstrate your reading of the Pray Hungarian MS is mostly if not totally off the mark (the true fact is your level as a scholar is that of a beginner or very poor first year student in Medieval Art History or Archaeology, see your alleged “expertise” of the Lirey Pilgrim Badge and PHM). I am just back from Spain and have to go to Portugal this week. As soon as I can spare a few hours (5-7), I’ll write away a paper on the PHM demonstrating you’re intellectually/scholarly blind. It does not take a PhD (or list of scientific publications) to guess you DO have serious shortcomings and blind spots as far as forensics iconography and archaeology are concerned.
At least you have moved on from claiming I am a fraud operating under a “homonym”… That’s progress of sorts. The next step is to realize that unlike you I don’t claim to be an authority on anything Shroud- related, except the fundamental underpinning science which I taught up to pre-clinical level (Honorary Lecturer, Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine). Oh, and I’m not a “foodie chemist” – a biomedical scientist with wide-ranging interests would be a more accurate description.
You misquoted me (again, getting used to it): I just said sometimes you are dreaming you are Sir Colin Berry while you are just a Mr CB. You haven’t moved on from NOT claiming you are first and foremost a foodie chemist and the Man of the Lirey Pilgrim Badge is jacques de Molay-like… That speaks volumes.
Typo: while claiming the Man of the Lirey Pilgrim Badge is Jacques de Molay-like…
In order for every one to understand the ideas of Fazio and Mandaglio, two Italian nuclear phycisits, here’s a short summary of their conclusions :
1- The sum of the known characteristics of the image on the Shroud that were defined by the STURP team, and especially the fact that there is a discontinuous distribution of colored fibers in the image area, indicates for these 2 radiation experts that such a property is totally inconsistent with any kind of high energetic radiation, whether it be a burst of UV light, a corona discharge (or another kind of electrostatic discharge at the time of a highly hypothetical earthquake), a burst of protons, of neutrons, etc. Such high energetic radiation are way too much “energetic” to produce the kind of discontinuous distribution of colored fibers that was observed in the image area of the Shroud by the STURP team. In all logic, if the body of the Shroud man would have released one of those high energetic radiation (which is, by the way, scientifically impossible for a dead body), the result would have been a coloration of every fibers hit by such a radiation. In sum, for one particular linen thread that would have been hit by such a high energetic radiation, we should expect to see a coloration of every exposed fibers of that thread (which is not what is seen in the image area on the Shroud) and we should also expect to see a coloration of fibers more deeply into the cloth in the zones of the cloth that were in direct-contact with the body (which is also not what is seen in the image area on the Shroud were there is no more penetration in zones of direct-contact than in zones that were most probably at a small distance away from the body).
2- This conclusion also applied for every possible man made forgery technique that could have been used to artificially produce the image on the Shroud, including a scorch or a rubbing. In these cases, as it is for every possible hypothesis involving some kind of high energetic radiation, we should expect to see a coloration of every exposed fibers of one particular colored thread (which is not what is seen in the image area on the Shroud) and we should also expect to see a coloration of fibers more deeply into the cloth in the darkest zones of the body image (which is also not what is seen in the image area on the Shroud were there is no more penetration in zones of direct-contact than in zones that were most probably at a small distance away from the body).
3- Considering these 2 previous conclusions (which are extremely hard to dismiss from a purely scientific point of view), Fazio and Mandaglio turned their attention to a possible natural process (or a series of processes) that could fit better with the portrait given by all the known characteristics of the image and realized that these characteristics (especially the discontinuous distribution of colored fibers in the image area and the extreme superficiality of the image, which is the same in zones of direct-contacts between the cloth and the body as well as in zones of non direct-contacts) were very similar to the results that can be produced by a series of processes known as “stochastic processes”, which always imply a very tiny amount of energy and always give an unpredictable and uneven kind of result that doesn’t affect all the “population” submitted to this small amount of energy (pretty much like we see in the image area on the Shroud were some fibers were colored and others kept their original background color). And here’s an example of this kind of process and the result it could produce (note that such an example is well-known by these 2 nuclear physicists and they gave it in a few papers they wrote about the Shroud image): “It is this kind of process that occurs when many persons absorb small doses of radiation. Such an emission of a little quantity of energy triggers a mechanism with chemical modification that only appear after decades. These modifications, that always affect only a portion of the sample, consist in tumors for some of the persons exposed to small doses of radiation and in yellow fibrils for some of them located in the areas of the fabric that were exposed to a small dose of energy (still undetermined). The same stochastic result can also happen when a group of persons is exposed to a faint pollution due to chemical substances.” In sum, we can say that in face of all the known properties of the Shroud image, Fazio and Mandaglio conclude that the kind of known process that is the most able to yield this sort of very superficial and discontinuous image is a stochastic process, which is totally natural.
4- So now that they became convinced that the image formation on the Shroud was most probably of the same nature than others known stochastic processes such as the one they described, which involved small doses of radiation on a sample population, the question they had to face was this one: What kind of weak energy could have been present inside the Shroud while the dead body of the Shroud man was lying there for less than 48 hours? And they came up with the hypothesis that involved a small release of thermal radiation from the fresh corpse (which, as they wrote, is totally possible in reality and, if we think seriously about it, I believe we can even add that it is probably even truer for the fresh corpse of someone like the Shroud man who had been tortured for a long time prior to his death on the cross). And along with this most probable source of weak energy, they also left the door open to the possibility of a weak release of post-mortem gases that could have affected only a portion of the exposed fibers on the surface of the cloth (because of the stochastic distribution of the carbohydrate impurities as described by Rogers and/or because of the stochastic nature of the coloring process that could have been produced by such a weak release of post-mortem gases).
5- Finally, no matter what has been the real source (or sources) of this weak energy that has produced the Shroud image with all its known characteristics (including the discontinuous distribution of colored fibers and the extreme superficiality of the image), the fact that, in their mind, this must have been a stochastic kind of process (or processes) have surely produced a latent kind of image that could have taken even decades before it became fully visible to the naked eye.
That’s about it my friends! Now you got a pretty good summary of the conclusions of Fazio and Mandaglio and you’re free to reject them in block or, on the contrary, to consider them, like I do, as one of the most rational (and therefore, possible) hypothesis that has ever been given by some serious scientists regarding the formation of the Shroud image! But note this: Such a naturalistic hypothesis (as well as Rogers’ own hypothesis) doesn’t discard at all the possibility of a Resurrection of the Shroud man! It’s very important for everyone to understand this. In sum, it’s not because the image on the Shroud would not have been produced by a by-product of the Resurrection or by a miraculous act of God that this means that Christ’s Resurrection is an invention of his disciples! NOT AT ALL… Linking absolutely the two things (the image and the Resurrection event) is not the best way to look at the Shroud in my opinion and it’s even dangerous on a faith level, because if the Shroud image would be proven one day to be 100% natural (this could well happen if a new series of direct researches are allowed by the Vatican one day), this could go as far as destroying the faith in Christ’s Resurrection of some of those who desperately wants to make such a direct link between these two things and that would be a total shame.
What is true isn’t new, and what is new isn’t true. (More later – am watching a good war film).
The last bit is more than correct.
Back to school:
Heat transfer 101 (from the BBC’s site)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks3/science/energy_electricity_forces/energy_transfer_storage/revision/5/
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Thermal energy can be transferred by:
Conduction
Convection
Radiation
Conduction
When a substance is heated, its particles gain energy and vibrate more vigorously. The particles bump into nearby particles and make them vibrate more. This passes the thermal energy through the substance by conduction, from the hot end to the cold end.
Convection
The particles in liquids and gases can move from place to place. Convection happens when particles with a lot of thermal energy in a liquid or gas move, and take the place of particles with less thermal energy. Thermal energy is transferred from hot places to cold places by convection.
Radiation
All objects transfer thermal energy by infrared radiation. The hotter an object is, the more infrared radiation it gives off.
No particles are involved in radiation, unlike conduction and convection. This means that thermal energy transfer by radiation can even work in space, but conduction and convection cannot.
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Thank you Auntie BBC. You can go now.
Only 3 modes of heat transfer? Now, can anyone guess what’s coming next?
Hint: in the real world, there are in fact 7 ways of transferring heat in any given situation, providied it’s an extended, i.e. non-instantaneous time frame, not just 3.
Think SM, DM and TM modes of presentation (of which there are 3, 3 and 1 respectively).
More later.
Course of physic 101: It is totally impossible to get a discontinous distribution of colored fibers like what have been seen on the Shroud with the means of a scorch or a burst of energetic radiation of any kind. This is not me speaking, this is Fazio and Mandaglio, 2 nuclear physicists who know what they are talking about.
And if you don’t agree with them, this just prove that you already got a set-up mind on what kind of process must have produced the Shroud image, which is certainly included in all the processes that have been totally rejected by Fazio and Mandaglio has being unable (scientifically speaking) to acheive the discontinuous distribution of colored fibers in the image area. It’s sad for you but only a very weak transfer of energy can produce such an uneven, highly superficial and unpredictable result in every area of the Shroud image, no matter if it was in direct-contact or not with the corpse. And in such a context, it’s pretty evident that such a weak transfer of energy must have come from a natural (most probably biological) source, which cannot be many other things than the dead body of the Shroud man (no matter if it was a release of heat from the corpse or a release of a small amount of post-mortem gases or another release from the corpse involving some other molecules).
That’s where Fazio and Mandaglio are standing versus the Shroud image and I agree completely with this line of thinking.
Some people are trying to run before they can walk. Let’s take this one step at a time, if you don’t mind.
Expect another instalment within the hour.
Figured it out yet?
In the real world, on a real finite time scale, there are in fact 7 single or conjoint modes of heat transfer:
Single mode
Conduction only
Convection only
Radiation only
Double mode (in either order)
Conduction /convection
Radiation /conduction
Radiation /convection
Triple mode (in any order)
Conduction/ Convection/Radiation
Next step: to see how each of these 7 modes can operate in principle or in practice to dehydrate linen carbohydrates, producing a yellow or brown discoloration of the fabric (heat scorch). But before doing that, a few words are needed re Rogers’ ‘naturalistic’ Maillard reaction, excluded deliberately from the above list, whether assisted or not in a thought experiment by a small post-mortem temperature rise .
(Expect another instalment re Rogers within the hour).
So why no listing of the Maillard reaction? Answer: it’s not simple heat transfer. It posits a chemical reaction between amine and reducing sugar (almost certainly with unfavourable kinetics and possibly even thermodynamics at environmental temperatures, one that would benefit greatly from an appreciable temperature rise above immediate post mortem body temperature, e.g from 37 C to at least 60C or higher). See Lea and Hannan (1949) in Biochem.Biphys Acta for early studies with model systems.
It is outside the scope of this enquiry unless the amine and reducing sugars are specified, and, more importantly, have left identifying traces on linen (e.g, a surplus of nitrogen in image-bearing areas, or unreacted reducing sugars in non-image areas).
Raymond Rogers omitted to do these simple tests, making no attempt to test for nitrogen, and making vague and unsupported claims for the presence of traces of “starch” (which is in any case not a reducing sugar, and would have to be extensively degraded to fit that description).
This contribution is about known physics, not speculative chemistry. In any case, even if there were chemical evidence for Maillard products on linen, it would still be highly problematical as to how homogeneous imaging could have taken place, as others have pointed out previously. In short, the evidence of the naturalistic model based on Maillard browning reactions is tenuous to say the least.
Another instalment to follow, later this evening,
Complementary comment : Here’s a quote from the upcoming paper of Fazio and Mandaglio about the Shroud image that is very telling regarding the present debate : « We will demonstrate that the known physical and chemical characteristics of the body images and the bloodstains that have been found and/or confirmed by the scientific study of the cloth done by the STURP team in the late 1970s and early 1980s are sufficient to reject the radiative hypotheses (ultraviolet radiation, corona discharge, etc.) and those involving an artistic forgery. Indeed, the physics and the chemistry of the ventral and dorsal images agree with a natural mechanism able to eliminate the apparent discrepancy between the characteristics of the body images and those of the bloodstains. For us, on the Shroud, there are latent body images (ventral and dorsal), yielded by the action of a stochastic process. Therefore, the hypothesis involving an artistic forgery or a miraculous event must be discarded. In every case, the scientific study of the Shroud of Turin must not be influenced by religious or anti-religious feelings. Unfortunately, these kinds of biased studies have already been done many times since 1898 and will certainly occur again in the future, which is something that has contributed to stopping, or at least restraining, the collaboration among many Shroud researchers. Actually, we see many scientists who are involved in Shroud research who are not inclined to the possibility of changing some of their ideas or even just seriously taking account of other points of view about the Shroud. These researchers appear motionless in their convictions and are unable to consider other possible solutions for the problems they study. » Now, I’ll let you meditate on those truths…
Goodness me. Anonymous’s short summary of their conclusions is about 70% of the original article’s entire length. Not so much a summary as a paraphrase, and for what? The points I made in my review are not one whit discredited. Fazio and Mandaglio postulate low levels of thermal radiation to account for the stochastic distribution of coloured sections of flax fibre on the shroud. Their evidence that such a distribution exists at all is weak, their equation relating energy levels to distance radiated is unfounded, and their evidence that such low levels of energy can or do produce any effect at all is non-existent. Their statement that “deterministic processes show great difficulty in the attempts to explain the Shroud body image. Therefore, they must be discarded,” is simply arrogant. If low levels of thermal energy are able to produce a stochastic distribution of degradation on flax fibres, it could obviously be done just as well with a warm statue as a dead body.
Not understanding that you cannot produce a discontinuous distribution of colored fibers with any kind of man made forgery or any kind of high energetic radiation make you look anything but like a real scientist Mr. Farey.
And what about your last statement: “If low levels of thermal energy are able to produce a stochastic distribution of degradation on flax fibres, it could obviously be done just as well with a warm statue as a dead body.”
If you still believe that a hot statue could have produced the Shroud image while the forger would have taken a real bloodstained burial cloth to do is work (which is what he must have done) and anyway succeed to produced a body image so good that it fooled every medical and forensic experts who have studied the Shroud, then I don’t know why I should waste my time exchanging with you. This is purely ludicrous and such a scenario have been put aside since the STURP days. Come on! Let’s try to discover a rational answer to the Shroud image that take everything into account, including the fact that the bloodstains were there on the cloth prior to the image formation, which exclude the idea of a forgery.
Hugh, I just want to summarize my idea like this : Because of the bloodstains (especially the high level of bilirubin in there and the fact that they stained the cloth before the formation of the image and the fact that most of them are made of exudates of moistened blood clot and the fact that they are all forensically accurate), we know for a fact that the Shroud is not a forgery. Starting from this, we come to this simple and rational conclusion : the image must have been caused by some form of interaction between the real dead body of a crucified man and the surface of the cloth. There is scientifically no other possible solution than this one. If we could agree on this, that would be a very good base to start talking seriously. And if we believe experts in radiation like Rogers, Fazio and Mandaglio, this kind of interaction that can theoretically produced the kind of very superifical and discontinuous image we see on the Shroud MUST BE one that implied only a very weak amount of energy and therefore, we must exclude every known high-energetic radiation as the possible source of energy responsible for the Shroud image. Now, what is left? NATURAL PROCESSES MY FRIEND! ONLY NATURAL PROCESSES! And as Fazio and Mandaglio wrote in a paper about the Shroud : the only « mystery » that remains versus the image is what exactly was the source of this weak energy? These 2 Italians physicists PROPOSED (only a proposal and not a certainty) that a release of heat by the corpse could be the answer. And since it is theoretically possible for fresh corpse to emit thermal radiation, we cannot exclude this hypothesis for the moment, no more than the one proposed by Rogers relative to a release of post-mortem gases (since it is theoretically possible for fresh corpse to emit some post-mortem gases, especially ammoniac). I don’t say that the real source of the weak energy must have been heat and/or post-mortem gases. I just say that it is possible that these source of weak energy could have played a role in the formation of the Shroud image. All this summarize my thoughts pretty well concerning the image formation on the Shroud. If you don’t generally agree with this, then we got a problem!
I need to rewrite one sentence like this: And if we believe experts in radiation like Rogers, Fazio and Mandaglio, the kind of interaction that can theoretically produced a very superifical and discontinuous image like the one we see on the Shroud MUST BE an interaction that imply only a very weak amount of energy and therefore, we must exclude every known high-energetic radiation as the possible source of energy responsible for the Shroud image.
“Not understanding that you cannot produce a discontinuous distribution of colored fibers with any kind of man-made forgery or any kind of high energetic radiation makes you look anything but like a real scientist, Mr Farey.”
On the contrary, Anonymous, I understand your point of view with crystal clarity. I understand the way you take unsupported assumptions as axiomatic, the way you use non-sequiturs as a way of deflecting attention from contrary arguments, the way you reiterate opinions as facts and the way you assume vague generalisations to be logical conclusions.
The variation of colouration of contiguous image fibres has almost nothing to do with the process of their degradation, and much more to do with the individual cellular structure of the fibres themselves. I can produce, and have produced, the discontinuous distribution of colour your describe simply by wiping a heated spatula rapidly over the surface of a piece of cloth. So could you, except that you are not a “real scientist.”
You wonder why you waste time exchanging with me if I believe a hot statue could have produced the shroud image, without actually considering what I, or Fazio and Mandaglio, have claimed. They claim that the image could have been made by low level thermal radiation. They do not claim that this radiation must have come from a dead body – it could have come from anything, including a statue. If the image was made by some other process, then a hot statue may not be an appropriate alternative, but that’s not Fazio and Mandaglio’s conclusion.
For what it’s worth, I have another experiment underway. Two pieces of cloth in my laboratory, one lying on a table, the other on a heater at about 45°C. Tomorrow I will place both of these in a hot oven, and inspect them every minute or so. If low level thermal radiation has any latent effect, which has not been demonstrated by Fazio or anyone else, then the cloth which was on the heater will discolour faster than the cloth which was on the table. Care to place a bet?
If anyone is doing another heated statue experiment, I’d be interested in seeing the result when using a statue with a minimum of three levels of contact – approximating the three levels of the body in the Shroud (top hand, bottom hand, lower trunk). Spatulas and coins are a good start but an object with more detailed 3D would be very helpful.
Anonymous, I myself have totally discarded both the supernaturalistic and fraudulistic approaches as biased whether religiously or anti-religiously or for lack of a truly holistic approach. These are archaeological and scientific dead-ends. The sad thing is the two approaches are currently promoted at the expense of good archaeology and alternative good exegesis. Hence what we got is mostly pseudo-Shroud science whether it comes from the fraudulists or the miraculists.
why not a miracle?
My wife and I were doing the dishes on Monday night at a late hour (11pm), a very odd rattling of the dishes in the cupboard occurred (for about 7 or 8 seconds). Now there’s hardly any earthquakes here in Adelaide, and one wasn’t recorded that night. We looked in the cupboard and there were no rats etc. Indeed there’s no way they could get into that cupboard.
The next day we found out that the woman my wife cared for in New Zealand passed away just before that weird event. My wife and her were very emotionally / spiritually close.
I have no doubt that the events were linked, of course skeptics will try and rationalise this experience as some sort of delusion. But I don’t give a toss if they do.
Miracles / spiritual events beyond the material DO occur. I’m not saying a miracle created the shroud, I’m just saying it might have. In fact I BELIEVE it did. And I am not subscribing to any radiation type effect. The supernatural by its very definition is beyond materialistic explanation, so I believe some effect beyond our knowledge limits (including radiation) created the shroud image.
But that’s just my belief, and I could well be wrong.
Fourth instalment: So what examples can one cite for the more complex non-single modes of heat transfer listed that defy simple or rather simplistic analysis?
Here’s just 3 for starters, all “conjoint”.
1. Garlaschelli technique : baking in oven for 3 hours at 215 to 220 degrees C of linen that carries a temporary frottage (rubbing) imprint using ochre pigment from real human being (plaster of Paris template for head) .
Garlaschelli, 2010 (Life-size reproduction of the Shroud of Turin and its Image, Journal of Imaging Science and Technology, 54(4)040310-040314.
One sees differential browning – area under ochre pigment and background both acquire aged look (browning) but the pigmented area more so than background. The pigment can be washed out – or drop away naturally – to leave a faint scorched-in image, or as LG described it, etched (possibly assisted by acidic impurities in the ochre that aid dehydration reactions)
Likely mechanism: dual (convection/conduction, possibly accompanied to a minor extent by radiation/convection).
2. My own ‘thermostencilling’ technique, in which a dry charcoal sketch or slurry painting is irradiated with heat (and light) from an incandescent light bulb, to produce a scorch under the charcoal.
http://colinb-sciencebuzz.blogspot.fr/2012/01/how-to-make-your-very-own-turin-shroud.html
Again, the charcoal can (though occasionally with some difficulty) be washed out to leave the scorched-in image.
Likely mechanism: radiation/conduction
(Only later did I realize that my thermostencilling was similar in principle to GLs, the difference being the form of thermal energy used to heat up the sensitizing solid.
3. Direct contact scorch e.g. from pressing a heated metal or ceramic template against the linen.
Likely mechanism: conduction (primarily), possibly (probably?) with secondary convection (superheated steam and other pyrolysis gases produced by dehydration of linen carbohydrates in direct contact with hot metal, producing some linen degradation at points not in immediate contact, especially deeper into the interstices of the weave).
Having listed just three, non-single mode, i.e. more complex conjoint mechanisms, the next step is to go back to the summary of the Fazio/Mandaglio paper,(s) and see what is true but not new, and what is new but not true. At this stage there need be no consideration of the nature of the scorch at the microscopic level, which is probably more a matter of impression unless or until accompanied by high magnification pictures.
Thanks Colin for recalling us the basic theoretical physics of heat transfer (I knew that).
The problem is that I don’t clearly understand your goal.
I do not want to discuss the Fazio/Mandaglio paper.
I want to see if any kind of image produced by any kind of technique using heat transfer match the fundamental properties of the TS image.
I agree that, at this stage, we have only to look at the results at large scale (the whole image, 3D properties.) and at small (fabric, thread) scale (but for that you need a microscope using low resolution).
For Garlaschelli, Fanti and myself published 2 papers. No match.
For the “direct contact scorch”, you know what I think.
For the “thermostencilling technique”, I do not know.
No question that all of these techniques are able to give a (more or less) faint yellow image.
And then ?
What do you want to do now ?
PS: I don’t forget the other subject (striations etc..)
This is the problem with the blogs. We are jumping from a subject to another…
Not comfortable for me.
Quote: I want to see if any kind of image produced by any kind of technique using heat transfer match the fundamental properties of the TS image.
Answer is simple: Only if this heat transfer imply only a very weak amount of energy like the heat coming out of a body (dead or alive).
Of course, what I said is only true in theory (if we believe radiation experts like Fazio and Mandaglio). It would take some lab experiments to see if this kind of weak release of heat could really start a latent image that would end up developing like the Shroud image (with all its known properties). But one thing’s for sure : the discontinuous distribution of colored fibers we see in the image area on the Shroud cannot be acheive with a scorch or any kind of high-energetic radiation. It’s not me who say this but true radiation experts.
Complementary note : A scorch or any form of high energetic radiation release an amount of energy that is so strong that every exposed fibers of one affected thread will always be colored or at the very least transformed chemically, which is NOT what has been seen in the image area on the Shroud by STURP. Also, as I said previously, in all logic, with those kind of high-energetic transfers, we should get more colored or transformed fibers deeper into the cloth in zones of direct-contacts versus zones were the cloth was not in contact with the cloth, which is again NOT what has been seen in the image area on the Shroud by STURP. In all logic, the only kind of processes that can produced the kind of weak energetic transfer that is needed to acheive the kind of very superficial and discontinuous image we see on the Shroud is some undetermined natural process, most probably related to the biological state of the Shroud man. Rationally speaking, the answer must lie in that direction. Again, all that I said is based on the opinion of true experts in radiations who know much better than me or you Thibault (or Colin Berry obviously) what they are talking about…
Since I’m sure Hugh will say « And what about the hypothesis of a hot statue » when he will read my posts of this morning, I just want to say this about that particular hypothesis :
I think you should read this good paper from one of my friend : http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n76part5.pdf
After reading it, maybe you’ll start to understand that from the evidence of the bloodstains alone is enough to discard any idea of a forgery made with a hot statue, with a scorch technique or with any other man made technique you can imagine. The simple fact that the bloodstains were on the cloth before the body image should be enough to make you understand this. Imagine a forger taking the real burial cloth of an anonymous crucified man (by the way, this would certainly have been done prior the abolition of crucifixion by the Romans during the reign of Constantin and not during the Middle Ages) that would have been covered with exudates of blood clots everywhere and then, manage we don’t know how to create a perfect body image around all those stains (including many serum stains) in a perfect forensic way and without disturbing or damaging all these biological stains! I prefer believing in Santa Claus than to believe is such a ridiculous scenario… But of course, you’re free to keep on in your belief, if that what make you happy.
“The simple fact that…” Heaven preserve us from simple facts. The Truth, as Oscar Wilde observed, is rarely pure, and never simple.
As it happens, I rejected the “hot statue” hypothesis long ago, as I reject the “hot dead body” hypothesis, but the reason has nothing to do with the distribution of coloured fibres. There; that’s flummoxed you, no?
I have spent many happy months doing what Colin is working on as well, namely scorching cloth and observing the intensity gradient on ImageJ, but I drifted off down a parallel path, namely attempts to produce to scorches that a) were yellow rather than brown, b) totally invisible on the back of the cloth, and c) didn’t fluoresce. And I was disappointed to note that although I achieved a and b, I was never able to suppress the fluorescence without producing a brown, rather than a yellow discolouration of the fibres. I have Thibault Heimburger to thank for setting me off on this path (thank you Thibault!). I don’t know how to make linen discolour without fluorescing, and I’d bet my life Fazio and Mandaglio haven’t thought about it for a second, but that’s what I’m working on now.
Forgetting the very important evidence of the bloodstains on the Shroud (which indicates that it is a real burial cloth of a real crucified man and, consequently, we can forget every man made forgery hypothesis) is not very worthy of a scientist Hugh. If it makes you happy, I don’t mind that you try hard to scorch a linen with the same properties as the Shroud image (even if it is theoretically impossible, especially concerning the discontinuous aspect of the image) but I really think it’s a pure waste of time regarding the Shroud. Like it or not, the answer MUST be found in some natural process that produced a very weak transfer of energy between the corpse of the Shroud man and the cloth. I really don’t think there’s any other viable path to follow.
Well, that’s OK. We’ll let you know when we’ve discovered something…
(Bloodstains? There are bloodstains? Can’t think how I missed them…)
What you obviously miss Hugh is not the bloodstains themselves, but the very important implications that the presence of those biological stains on the Shroud should cause versus the question of the image formation…
Good evening Thibault. I still have a few more observations to make regarding the fundamental physics, but the main point has been made, namely that while there are only 3 textbook mechanisms for heat transfer, there are in fact 7 when you put them together in their various combinations. That gives one a greater range of options for creating subltety if setting out to reproduce the Shroud image, even if we have still not achieved that to everyone’s satisfaction (probably an unrealistic objective anyway, given that some view the modelling as having to meet aesthetic as well as scientific criteria).
One needs also to be mindful of the effect of ageing on the Shroud image. As Luigi Garlaschelli has pointed out, we are not seeing the image as it would have appeared at its moment of birth so to speak. To give just one example: we know that image-bearing fibres are mechanically weaker than non-image fibres, probably more brittle and prone to fracture. So when we see a scattering of pale yellow fibres we must not be too quick to suppose this implies some profoundly mysterious process of image-imprinting. It may merely mean that more densely scorched images have broken off in the course of time, and we are simply seeing the ones that have survived through being only minimally-scorched.
Do you suppose that Fazio and others, when speaking of discontinuities, are merely using a different term for the so-called half-tone effect, which arises from having all image fibres uniformly pigmented, with image density being due to numbers of image-bearing fibres per unit area only? Or is there some other meaning with maybe transverse banding as well, such that a single fibre could be uncoloured for some of its length, and then abruptly become coloured? But if that were the case, would that not be totally consistent with contact scorching?
It’s almost a year since I bought an item at a street market in the south of France that would seem to fit the bill.
http://shroudofturinwithoutallthehype.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/antibes-market-wall-crucifix-manual-correct2-jpg/
I’d almost forgotten about it. Now then, let’s see if I have any linen left (or will cheaper cotton do for starters if concerned for now with macroscopic aspects only?). But who’ll be first to accuse me of being sacrilegious? To which the answer is: we’re only dealing with a lump of cast metal.
Colin – I admire your inquiring mind.
I am not a scientist, so I cannot comment on that realm with any authority.
But as an architect, I think I have a fair understanding of images, representations, artistry etc.
I have a major question about your scorching theory. To me, it beggars belief that a statue, bas relief or whatever would have been created that would match the very lifelike and non-statue-like characteristics of the dorsal image, especially the leg / feet positions and angles etc. If a bas relief / statue had been created to make the shroud via scorching, do you not agree that we would likely have seen a far less natural image (dorsal in particular). More along the lines of backs of legs flat against the cloth as in a usual lying position.
I just find it very hard to think an artist would have created a bas relief with those leg / feet positions.
The art historian de Wesselow has said similar things.
To illustrate my point, I went to Christ Church (magnificent) in Oxford earlier this year. I saw the statue seen as the fourth image down on this link.
http://kdscout.blogspot.com.au/2012_12_01_archive.html
The underside of the knight’s legs are pretty much lying flush with the base, and if such an obvious depiction is flipped then naturally the backside of the legs will be shown as fairly level rather than bent – and then one would expect a consistent scorch image across the whole back of the legs, rather than the image which seems to imply knees were bent to some extent
Your theories may be scientifically feasible, but they seem to stretch artistic credibility in my view.
Unless of course the creator of this enigma was a very very clever man artistically and scientifically????
I have just done contact scorch imprints from the frontal side of my crucifixion brass template, with what I thought would be challenging 3D. The results in ImageJ are beyond my wildest expectations – and that’s without changing any of the optimised parameters (smoothing etc) from the last time I used that software on bas relief templates (and photographs!).
I’ll start putting up pictures on the same link to my site (on the French market purchase ) shown earlier, and then think about tackling the dorsal side (difficult on account of a mounting bolt that will have to be removed). Thanks for the interest (and healthy scepticism).
I was responding to a request from David Goulet. It’s called good manners. But then, you would not know about that.
You are at best a gifted amateur, Mr.Hamon, with no published work to your name – at least not on Google Scholar. You are certainly not entitled to describe yourself as a professional. And how professional is it anyway to go stalking and trolling me on this site even after you challenged me to provide my professional credentials, which I did, only to incur further abuse levelled at my degree-awarding institutes.
This trolling has to stop – as of now.
Big Brother Google is not always watching me…
I am a PROFESSIONAL cryptologist (since 2005).
Re your “Knight Templar Scorch theory’ and Templar archaeology (edited) As a professional cryptologist, I got published a paper on deciphering Templar enigmatic graffiti, see 4th National Symposium held in Loches on Ancient Graffiti (2006), proceedings published in 2010 (ed. Association Sauvegarde Patrimoine Archéologique et Glyptographique + General Council – Indre-et-Loire).
Max, where is this paper available? Merci.
Because my reply was displaced by Dan, I have to repeat it here for Louis not to miss it:
My paper is in French, see Loches, Graffiti anciens, “QUATRIEME RENCONTRE” 2006 (Proceedings of the 4th National Symposium of Glyptography, 2006 Loches). It was published in December 2010.
You can order the book to the Musée Serge Ramond “La mémoire des murs”, Place de Piegaro, 60550 Verneuil-en-Halatte France – Telephone :(00 33) 03 44 24 54 81.
Note: in 2012 I rewrote, revised and completed my paper to insert it in a collection of my 2004-2007 studies of the Coudray Tower enigmatic graffiti (Templar Glyptography). Hopefully the collection is to be published in December 2014…
BTW no less than 3-4 Templar graffiti in the Coudray Tower can be directly or indirectly linked with the Turin Shroud…
Max, please read # 112 above.
There’s a picture of it here: http://aggraphe.centerblog.net/45-colloque-de-loches, but I think you’d have to write snail mail to an address here: http://www.associations-patrimoine.org/annuaire-associations-patrimoine.php?page=65&ok=1 to get a copy. I’m afraid I haven’t.
Hugh, please read # 112 above.
Message to Dan Porter: enough is enough.
I’ve deleted some messages and instituted some measures to block future such insults.
Thanks Dan. I now have to decide whether to continue with my spiel on thermal transfer mechanisms, or break off to do some new scorching experiments, prompted by DG’s suggestion. Given I’m still not clear what folk mean when they refer to discontinuities (which seemed simple enough in Rogers’ papers) and still have not seen a single photograph of a discontinuity in close up (as distinct from bold pointers showing where to look) I think I’ll retreat to the kitchen with some cotton and linen and my brass casting the latter with some very challenging 3D relief. The letter to the Vatican can wait, while I gauge reaction to your latest posting. First reaction: a radiocarbon dating is a stand-alone result, like the mass of an electron (which does not stop folk arguing about where it is at any particular time or point in space, or even if it can vanish and then reappear.). Despite all the speculation, nobody questions the experimentally-determined mass. Mark Antonacci will have a field day if the second round comes back with something like 1335+/- 43 (sd) or even John Klotz with his Quantum Christ (maybe photon-like relativistic mass only?).
Dan, you deleted my reply to CB JUST telling him I was a PROFESSIONAL cryptologist. That speaks volumes how you allegedly “moderate” comments…
It is also six in the morning and I’m walking the dog. Focus on what is important.
Methinks we won’t see any bloodstain on his alleged “scorched replica”…
…it takes time to be a genuine cryptologist…
Beware the dog is not walking you…
OK, results posted, David, hot from the press(ing)!
Not bad eh? But I shall remain non-commital as to the optimal way of imprinting a scorch from a 3D subject onto cloth. What you see is the direct method, but there are alternatives, or variants, as mentioned earlier, notably Luigi Garlaschell’s indirect frottage method (that leaves a scorched image under his ochre pigment that is more intense than the surrounding fabric).
Feel free (anyone and everyone) to copy-and- paste my images, preferably with an acknowledgement to source.
PS: Here’s the link to save having to scroll back:
http://shroudofturinwithoutallthehype.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/antibes-market-wall-crucifix-manual-correct2-jpg/
Thanks for taking up the challenge so quickly. I was actually going to suggest a crucifix as a model – so some serendipity there. As to your results: they are similar to what we’ve seen before with scorches (which is why persons like yourself see validity in the theory). What’s needed now is to get the reverse image (like we have with the Shroud) and look at the 3D imaging properties. The crucifix, while better than a flatter model, only has one area of mild double-levelling (the loincloth).
This is where I have to agree with Matthias that with the Shroud, if it is a scorch fake, we see a level of precision that is hard to imagine a medieval artistan being able to execute given the complexity of the figure (three levels on the front, bent knees at the dorsal). If it is a fake, the artist went with one of the most difficult models around.
Experiments like yours increase the possibility of it being a scorch, yet at the same time decrease the probability, imo.
Still, well done sir!
Please state exactly what is meant by “discontinuous distribution of coloured fibres” and what your mean by “scorch”, and why you think one is incompatible with the other. Rogers used the term “discontinuous” simply to mean that coloured and uncoloured fibres could be adjacent to each other, and STURP described the character of the Shroud image as a scorch in all but name (dehydrated, oxidised carbohydrate). But who’s to say that there were not masses of adjacent coloured fibres originally, and that the more intensely-coloured ones have not fractured and fallen off. leaving just faintly- and evenly coloured fibres here and there that have given birth to this new term “stochastic” (Rogers and others have commented on the brittleness of coloured image fibres – such as remain).
Oh, and could you please stop trying to intimidate us with that tag “expert” that you attach to anyone with whom you agree? Some of us are experts in certain topics that bear on the Shroud, but how would you feel if we prefaced all of our remarks with “speaking as an expert…”. Folk should be able to deduce for themselves from the content of a comment whether a particular contributor has expertise to offer that is relevant or not to the Shroud, and in any case, anyone posturing as the self-appointed expert with all the right answers can generally reckon on being given short shrift, even if their expertise stands up to close scrutiny (which is not always the case).
Have you ever entered K Kearse into Google Scholar? I have, to discover we have a scientific heavyweight on the site. But when did you ever see him refer to himself as an “expert”?
Here’s the summary made by Fazio and Mandaglio concerning the discontinuous distribution of colored fibers in the image area: “In the regions where both body images lies, there are fibrils with the same background color as the ones located in non-image areas mixed with others that all have the same higher optical density value in comparison with those who have kept their background color. That means that there are only two types of fibrils in image areas: a) Fibrils that possessed the same background color as the ones located in non-image areas. b) Others that possessed a higher optical density value, which are responsible for the body images (ventral and dorsal) that we see on the cloth.”
And when I talk about a “scorch”, I talk about a transfer of heat much higher than the natural heat release of a human body (living or recently dead). I talk about a kind of transfer that would release a massive dose of heat energy that, if we believe Fazio and Mandaglio’s conclusions, is much too strong to produce the kind of discontinuous distribution of colored fibers we see on the Shroud that was summarized by them in the quote I just gave you (and which is part of their upcoming paper about the Shroud).
And here’s another very relevant part of the upcoming paper written by Fazio and Mandaglio on that particular subject: “In the introduction, we have affirmed that both radiative and artistic forgery hypotheses must be discarded. Indeed, it is theoretically impossible for these mechanisms to produce a subtle body image on linen like we see on the Shroud with an unpredictable mix of fibrils (10-15 µm each) that would be yellowed, along with some others that would preserve their background color in a same region (Pellicori and Evans, 1981). In fact, UV radiation (Di Lazzaro et al., 2010 and 2012) or the action of an electrostatic field (Fanti, 2010 and 2011), as well as manmade chemical and thermal treatment (Garlaschelli, 2010) always affect, without distinction, all the linen fibrils. On the contrary, in order to reproduce the Shroud body images (ventral and dorsal) correctly, the fibrils must be yellowed with respect to the trend (linear regression) of the correlation between the image intensity and the cloth-body distance. For the three mechanisms mentioned above, it is possible to yellow fibrils of linen, but without respecting the fact that on the Shroud, there are fibrils with background color mixed with others that have been yellowed by the image formation process, which all show the same greater value of optical density. In other words, the action of these mechanisms can yellow or color all the fibrils in the areas they affect with the correct image intensity values, but without being able, at the same time, to respect the discontinuous distribution of yellowed fibrils that has been noted, at microscopic level, on the Shroud of Turin by the STURP team (Pellicori and Evans, 1981). Nevertheless, we can acknowledge the fact that the radiative hypothesis can reproduce the very small thickness of the Shroud image (Mottern et al., 1980; Weaver, 1980), but without being able, at the same time, to reproduce the discontinuous aspect of the yellowed fibrils in the image area. On the other hand, the hypothesis of an artistic forgery is not able to account for the fact that the formation of the bloodstains on the cloth has preceded the body image formation. Indeed, in this case, the predisposed bloodstains would have been damaged by both chemical and thermal treatments. It should be noted that, in the case of Garlaschelli’s work, he created false bloodstains on the cloth after the creation of the body images (ventral and dorsal), without any respect for the reality of what really occurred on the Shroud.”
Now, if you still believe the Shroud image is the product of a scorch, that’s your freedom.
“Now, if you still believe the Shroud image is the product of a scorch, that’s your freedom.”
I prefer freedom to that morass of site-cluttering verbiage, but maybe I’m getting lazy in my old age…
You should reflect upon the evidence given by the bloodstains instead. Then, if you got some rationality and some honesty (I’m sure you can!), you should come to the very same conclusion as me: these stains are enough to discard any idea of a man made forgery and, consenquently, the image must have been formed by some kind of interaction between the crucified body of the Shroud man and the surface of the cloth (and I don’t think it is dumb to say that the most probable source of energy that caused the image must be found in some biological release by the corpse and that’s why scientists like Fazio, Mandaglio and Rogers have proposed heat and/or post-mortem gases as possible sources of this weak energy).
Thanks for the feedback David. The crucifix is now back on the hob, to do the reverse side with some height differences (“levels”) though whether they meet your exacting criteria or not is something we can discuss later (me being essentially “hands on” in the first instance, postponing age-impaired grey-matter involvement for as long as humanly possible).
Garlaschelli reckoned that the body, except for the face, could have been imprinted first by frottage with his powder rubbing over a naked student volunteer (oooh Matron!) but that the face with its intricate contours may have needed a bas relief template – for which he used a plaster of Paris death mask technique it would seem. I have to get as much done today as possible, having heavy commitments elsewhere tomorrow.
My paper is in French, see Loches, Graffiti anciens, “QUATRIEME RENCONTRE” 2006 (Proceedings of the 4th National Symposium of Glyptography, 2006 Loches). It was published in December 2010.
You can order the book to the Musée Serge Ramond “La mémoire des murs”, Place de Piegaro, 60550 Verneuil-en-Halatte France – Telephone :(00 33) 03 44 24 54 81.
Note: in 2012 I rewrote, revised and completed my paper to insert it in a collection of my 2004-2007 studies of the Coudray Tower enigmatic graffiti (Templar Glyptography). Hopefully the collection is to be published in December 2014…
When I say Mr CB is unable to CORRECTLY read a medieval image I DO know what I am talking about… The man on the Lirey Pilgrim Badge IS NOT Jacques-de-Molay like at all… but in Mr CB’s dreams… Mr CB has still a poor descriptive knowledge of the Turin Shroud image.
Forensically speaking, the TS man IS NOT the depiction of a barbecued Knight Templar at all. How Dan can promote Mr CB’s Knight Templar scorch theory and ignore good archaeology and forensics and image analysis just beyond me… Methinks Dan is seduced and everyday his dog is walking him…
Lighten up Max. I am not promoting Dr. CB’s thesis.
Thanks for the appreciative comment, David. I would persevere without it, that being the nature of the inquisitive beast that lurks within, but it’s always nice to have some positive feedback from time time, no matter how qualified with ifs and buts.
I have just this minute finished imprinting the dorsal side of my brass crucifix, and made a posting of the new results (the existing ones getting a bit too long).
http://shroudofturinwithoutallthehype.wordpress.com/2013/11/14/a-challenging-scorch-assignment-that-i-had-been-putting-off-and-off-and-off/
To say I’ m astonished at the results (especially after turning up the fabric to imprint the soles of the feet) would be an understatement. I’ll put the images into ImageJ later this evening, and try to post to the same link.
More good work, though I’m not quite sure why you are so astonished by the results. There is precedent for what you’ve achieved, no? Is there a way to get the photographic negative image result where we could see if your shroud displays the depth and detail of the Shroud. When time permits of course, you’d accomplished a ton in a day so no rush.
We seem to be at cross-purposes here David. I am not attempting to reproduce the “depth and detail” of the Shroud, which I leave to those of an artistic bent, I am content merely to add ticks to a checklist of scientific criteria (superficial, non-directional, light/dark reversed image, 3D-enhancible etc).
In any case, I hardly think that the Shroud could be said to exhibit depth and detail when folk say one has to stand back several metres, simply to recognize it as the image of a man, and that the closer you get, the more the image seems to merge with the background coloration. Let’s not idealize.
The evidence of the bloodstains, you say? Yes, those bloodstains- those very prominent stains that do indeed look, or are meant to look, like bloodstains, but which we are supposed to regards as ‘serum exudates of bloodclots’ in order to get round some difficulties re the time lapse between crucifixion and placing in a burial shroud. And you have the gall to question others’ “rationality and honesty”?
Some of us have spent months, nay years, bringing rationality and honesty to bear on the enigma of the Shroud, and some other attributes too that you are sadly lacking (like a scientific bent), arriving at very different conclusions to you, but not immediately attempting to seize the moral high ground by bandying around terms like “honesty”. You are the unacceptable face of sindonology, something that was painfully apparent from the moment I first set foot on this site. You are an insufferable dogmatist, as well as a needle stuck in a groove. Some of us are still asking questions – while you claim to know all the answers. You don’t. And it’s painfully apparent that you are trying to short-cut to answers without doing the homework… For all your certitude and tub-thumping, you simply advertise that you have a slothful mind.
Max and Hugh, thanks for the leads.
Max, Have I understood you correctly when I think you have still not completed your study of the Chinon graffiti and the paper you refer to is about your work in another castle?
Max and Hugh, please read # 112 above.
I’m looking at the detailing in the photo negative, where we see shadows and clefts. When one looks at this image it seems like the body could actually be touched. If all we had was the basic image I think the scorch forgery theory would be more plausible. But that life-like photo negative with such fine detail has the real Wow factor. And because a medieval forger could never have known about this Wow factor he couldn’t have planned for it. It would mean it is an accidental byproduct of any scorched figure. We do agree that whatever the origin of the image, the photo negative effect is what makes the Shroud the enigma it is?
P.s. I did get the cross-purposes joke. I assume it was intended. ;)
Yes, but I’ve investigated and reported before on all these interesting facets of the Shroud image. Rather than provide links, why not do some experimenting yourself. Lay your hands on a shallow bas-relief, like a horse brass, preferably one with lots of detail, heat it on a cooker hob, then press onto linen or cotton not just once, but several times as it cools, and note the image intensity tapering off to zero. Then take some digital photographs, enter into ImageJ, and look first at the light/dark reversed image (using Edit Invert). That alone can have some of the character of the Secondo Pia negative. Then use the 3D-enhancement tool, and you may well be into wow factor territory.
You see, the mere act of light/dark reversal can totally transform the look of a negative image, such as a contact scorch, through promotion of white space, and demotion of harsh dark space. One can demonstrate this by doing a quick charcoal sketch of the Shroud image as-is (“light/dark reversed”) and putting that into ImageJ. Result – a luminous, ghostly image that has an almost photographic quality, except for the lack of directionality through having no lateral, asymmetric shadows. There are still shadows, though, like eye-sockets etc, but they are symmetrical – the left eye socket having the same shade intensity as the right.
It’s not rocket science, believe me. At the same time, it’s non-intuitive that thermal imprinting followed by light/dark reversal can produce something so photograph-like. 3D-enhancement is the icing on the cake. Wow!
I’ve been searching the internet for pics of negative photographs based on scorch images. For the most part only the Shroud and your bas relief experiments come up. So kudos for the pioneer work. It is a bit surprising that such a ‘promising’ explanation for the image formation has not been experimented with more. But people do have lives to live.
I’d be interested in any photo negatives of the crucifix you might get. The scorch theory still doesn’t work for me (for many other reasons) but I think you’ve demonstrated that the Wow factor — while still Wow — could be considered a very happy accident.
” It is a bit surprising that such a ‘promising’ explanation for the
image formation has not been experimented with more. ”
Sorry, David. This is not true. In fact it is an old story.
The scorch hypothesis has been studied (including experiments) in
John P. Jackson, Eric J. Jumper, William R. Ercoline. Three dimensional characteristics of the Shroud image. IEEE 1982 Proceedings of the International Conference on Cybernetics and Society, October 1982.
Does anyone of you have this fundamental paper?
This is not the only one. Other researchers have tried to reproduce a Shroud-like image (Pesce …). They failed.
All these experiments are consistent with my own results.
But it is true that CB introduces more subtle theoretical parameters that have to be studied in depth.
Let’s see the results in practice.
Because of the evidence given by the bloodstains, this is a pure waste of time regarding the Shroud… But if you want to do so Thibault, go ahead. It’s not me who will stop you. ;-)
Thanks for the appreciative words David. I’m out for most of today, but will process the rest of yesterday’s batch of crucifix pictures as soon as I get back, and then tack the results on to the end of my posting with the dorsal views you requested. It’ll be interesting to see how close-ups look when inverted/3D enhanced. Have a nice open-mind day…
(Thanks Dan. I think I can guess what algorithmic filtration means in the WordPress context. It may have been due to using the same link twice, or something like that, which the activated a spam alert).
Louis, actually I have completed my deciphering of the Chinon enigmatic graffiti (more than twenty of them can be attributed to Templars) as early as February 2007 and the paper I referred to is about an enigmatic graffiti stone I deciphered and identified as a 1308 Templar graffiti in the Coudray Tower of the Royal Fortress of Chinon (the Coudray Tower, a keep, was built during the reign of Philip Augustus, and in the early 14th century was used as a prison). This stone can be indirectly linked with the TS.
I presented an oral paper on my studies of the Chinon enigmatic graffiti at the invitation of both Serge Ramond, late Director of the Ancient Graffiti Museum, Ulysse Jollet Director of the Château de Chinon and the Director of Château of Loches.
My main professional activity (80%) is biomagnetic therapy and applying cryptology to psychophysiotherapy (cryptanalytical orientation). Besides Late Antique and Medieval Archaeology, I can also applied cryptology to criminology.
Because (when not deleted) my replies/comments are most likely to be displaced by Dan, once more I have to repeat it here for Louis not to miss it:
Louis, actually as early as February 2007 I have completed my deciphering of the Chinon enigmatic graffiti (more than twenty of them can be attributed to Templars) and the paper I referred to is about an enigmatic graffiti stone I deciphered and identified as a 1308 Templar graffiti in the Coudray Tower of the Royal Fortress of Chinon (the Coudray Tower, a keep, was built during the reign of Philip Augustus, and in the early 14th century was used as a prison). This stone can be indirectly linked with the TS.
I presented an oral paper on my studies of the Chinon enigmatic graffiti at the invitation of both Serge Ramond, late Director of the Ancient Graffiti Museum, Ulysse Jollet Director of the Château de Chinon and the Director of Château of Loches.
My main professional activity (80%) is biomagnetic therapy and applying cryptology to psychophysiotherapy (cryptanalytical orientation). Besides Late Antique and Medieval Archaeology, I can also applied cryptology to criminology.
Max. If you will stop attacking CB I will stop moderating your comments. If you continue double posting I will delete everything. I haven’t the time or inclination to be a referee for rock throwing games.
Does this mean Mr CB (and his wife too?) can insult me, overrate my field and provoke me without me firing back?
You let Mr CB insult late Dr Bucklin’s memory (see Paper Chase: The Findings of Robert Bucklin)… methinks you’ve got a most curious and partial sense of moderation…
Typo: underrate my field (cryptology)
Meanning “IF YOU”, if you were a fair moderator…
I’m not interested in being fair, just effective. Now drop it and let’s deal with the shroud and not personalities. Oh , BTW, Professor Hamon, it ‘s Dr Berry or just CB or Colin Stop trying to insult.
Thanks, Max, the topic is fascinating and if you have anything in pdf or some other programme you can send it directly to me by asking Dan for my e-mail address. Next week I will have to start work on a 575-page extremely abstract and time-consuming work on Spinoza for review, but hopefully some time will be made to read anything that is sent.
Perhaps you missed my comment earlier. If so, please answer a simple question. Why are there bloodstains running in rivulets down the hair? Blood issuing from thorn puncture wounds would matt the hair, not run in surface rivulets as if on bare skin.
Not to speak for Anonymous, but:
1. http://www.acheiropoietos.info/proceedings/LavoieWeb.pdf
2. Someone erred when using their leech pen
OK, Kelly, but I’d still like to hear Anonymous attempt to reconcile the anomalous hair blood flows with his insistence that blood patterns exclude certain otherwise scientifically-respectable options re image formation.
(Strictly entre nous, that paper you cite acknowledges that image and blood are somehow out of register, but then falls back on extra-scientific speculation by way of reconciliation (“The mechanics of the body-to-cloth image transfer cannot be understood nor defined through our ordinary understanding of space and time. This is probably not a
natural event.”)
Are you still there, Anonymous?