Is the Shroud of Turin Authentic or a Hoax?

[radagast]

Originally posted by Holodeckie
http://www.cerncourier.com/main/article/39/5/19

there you go chemicalsuperfreak. That is all the work I'll do for you for free. Research it yourself and don't stop there.

This site suffers from what most others suffer from, a lack of common sense.

Please name two bacteria that utilize CO2. How about just one that utilizes CO2 AND could live on a shroud in the dark. CO2 utlitizing bacteria are fairly uncommon. CO2 utilization is a plant-like trait, usually one that requires sunlight to convert the CO2 and water into food. Since the shroud has been sequestered away from light for most of the last 700 or 2000 years, depending on your choice of assumptions, it wouldn't have had light to grow. The mass of the bacteria would have to be a significant fraction of the weight of the shroud, given we are talking ratios of C12/C14. Since C14 has a HL of over 5000 years, most would still be there, even after 2000 years.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by radagast
You have already stated that nuclear explosions are one of the reasons that C14 dating is inaccurate. For it to cause us to misdate the shroud, the shroud would have to have been exposed to intense neutron radiation, or the C14 in the atmosphere, where the plant source of the fabric, would have to have been unnaturally increase by said explosions/irradiation. Since you and I both believe the cloth's plants to have grown much before the advent of nuclear weapons, that leaves neutron irradiation of the shroud itself. Since there have been no nuclear detonations within a hundred miles (much less the .1 to 1 needed) then the dating of the shroud isn't subject to the dating flaws you mentioned.

You still haven't answered why you are so insistent that this is the shroud of Jesus, since they have duplicated the process by which it was ostinsibly faked, since it was common, in the middle ages, to fake holy relics for profit, and because all the evidence points in the direction of it being a fake. It being faked doesn't, in any way, undermine the basis of christianity.

You have either confused me with someone else or you are talking through your hat. I said this and only this:

First, the carbon dating is flawed. This is caused by an enzyme present on the fibers of the cloth. The cloth is to be cleaned and then retested. We do not currently know the age of the shroud. I have seen this confirmed in an interview with the scientist who invented carbon dating.

Also, the shroud was in two fires I think. Carbon from these fires, one of which was in the 14th or 15th century may have also skewed the results.

I can't vote until these carbon dating tests are repeated with uncontaminated material.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by radagast
The chemist and Nobel Laureate, Dr. Willard Frank Libby is credited for developing (not inventing) the technique known as C-14 dating in 1947. No co-inventor or co-developer is credited. Dr. Libby died Sept 8 1980. No mention is made of any problems he found with C-14 dating. A year before developing the C14 techniques, he showed that naturally occurring tritium is formed from cosmic rays. He also worked on the Manhattan project.

Dr Martin Kamen and Dr Samuel Ruben are the co-discoverers of Carbon 14. They discovered it in 1940. Dr. Ruben died Sept 28, 1943 in a laboratory accident. Dr Kamen, winner of the Enrico Fermi award, in 1995, died Sept 7, 2002. Again, no mention is made of any problem with Carbon 14 dating.

.

I never said anything about who discovered carbon 14.

In response to the rather bogus research you produce. The amount of fungus and bacteria on the shroud would be insignificant to testing, unless the bacteria/fungus was eating the shroud. If they were eating the shroud, then they would test the same age as the shroud. Carbon 14 only dates living beings to the date they quit taking C14 from the atmosphere. Since only plants take C14 from the atmosphere (as CO2), they are the only ones that 'start the clock ticking' with their death. Anything that eats them will date to the point of the plants death. For most living entities, this difference is insignificant - for termites eating wood that's 2000 years old, or bacteria eating cloth 1000 years old, the difference is significant.

Like I said, your argument is with the source:

""This is not a crazy idea," said Harry E. Gove, PhD, co-inventor of the use of accelerator mass spectrometry for carbon dating. Dr. Gove is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Rochester in New York.

"A swing of 1,000 years would be a big change, but it's not wildly out of the question, and the issue needs to be resolved," he said."

The reason I quesion and challenge you on this is you have taken something as true, simply because you want it to be true. Hook, line, and sinker, without questioning the source, without critical examination of the evidence, and without knowledge of the subject. I can go out in the front of my yard, stand on a soap box and claim that the scientists are lying and the world is really flat. That doesn't make it so. The reasons you've given for C14 being incorrect are bogus.

I could care less how this turns out. I have no beliefs that depend on these results.

Next, you seem incapable of quoting me correctly. Do you have a problem with keeping the facts straight?

I was first called a liar. I have produced a source to confirm my statement. I think your problem is with him.

 

[radagast]

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[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by radagast
I am sorry, I did have you confused with HoloDeckie.

My apologies.

No problem. I got a little hot before I realized that this may have happened.

Really and truly, I hold no position on this except that some controversy does seem to exist. I am holding out until further notice.

 

[radagast]

Originally posted by Ivan Seeking
.

I never said anything about who discovered carbon 14.

No, I included that for completeness.

Like I said, your argument is with the source:

""This is not a crazy idea," said Harry E. Gove, PhD, co-inventor of the use of accelerator mass spectrometry for carbon dating. Dr. Gove is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Rochester in New York.

Willard Libby is the sole developer of the technique of Carbon-14 dating. Which he developed in 1947. When you stated the co-inventor (and techniques are generally developed, not invented) it seemed to imply Libby. If Gore co-developed a Mass Spec method then that was apparently confused with the C14 method originally developed.

"A swing of 1,000 years would be a big change, but it's not wildly out of the question, and the issue needs to be resolved," he said."

Perhaps, but it sounds like Dr Gore was out of his area of expertise when he starts talking about bacteria and fungi affecting the dating. The vast majority of bacteria do not utilize CO2, and none of the fungi. If bacteria were growing on the shroud, they were eating it, thus the C12/C14 ratio should remain unchanged.


I realize that you haven't been arguing these points, but the idea that their is a 2D projection on the shroud still hasn't been addressed. This is the type of image someone would fake, given they are making what people would expect to see, assuming they haven't though it through.

Nor does it address that a chemical alteration of nuclear structure doesn't happen.

Next, you seem incapable of quoting me correctly. Do you have a problem with keeping the facts straight?

As I mentioned earlier, I did confuse you with Holodeckie.

I was first called a liar. I have produced a source to confirm my statement. I think your problem is with him.

I've not claimed anyone here is a liar or has lied. There are a number of people I consider to have stated things incorrectly, but I wouldn't say that they were a liar without a great deal of evidence.

 

[radagast]

<double post - content deleted by author>

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by radagast
Now I believe it is you that needs to check the correct quotations. I've not claimed anyone here is a liar or has lied. There are a number of people I consider to have stated things incorrectly, but I wouldn't say that they were a liar without a great deal of evidence.

Well, I think a review of the comments made by you and Quantumcarl will show that as much was clearly implied. But I agree; no one said this outright.

I know that I probably irritate a lot of people, but understand that I am a scientist first; all else second. I just insist on a highly biased consensus before I consider something as golden. Edit: If I discover that controversy does exist that has a credible source, then I wait to see where this goes; sometimes these things take years or even decades to resolve.

 

[quantumcarl]

Off topic.

What is Mu?

Mu is the ancient name for what the Romans called "Lemuria".

http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=540

This is a link to some information and photos concerning a site in southern Japan that has particular features matching the descriptions of Lemuria or Mu.

There are reports of this architecture extending 300 miles underwater just south of this "temple".

Ancient Japanese stories refer to this site as the site of the famed and fabled "Hiro".

 

[megashawn]

Scientists have unearthed an ancient city where evidence shows an atomic blast dating back thousands of years, from 8,000 to 12,000 years, destroyed most of the buildings and probably a half-million people. One researcher estimates that the nuclear bomb used was about the size of the ones dropped on Japan in 1945.

8 to 12 thousand years? Wow. Thats a long time. Tell me something. Don't you also believe in creation, bible, shroud of turin, jesus is god, etc?

According to your religous beliefs, the universe should not have existed at the time this ancient nuke was dropped.

So which is it?


Anyhow, I would highly doubt that, as was mentioned, there has been no widespread coverage of that find. Not one mention, I check news sites daily, have been for about 3 years now. No. I'd love to see some true evidence for this. Let's try yahoo shall we?

Searching for the line "Atomic Blast in Ancient India" gives us the following results:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Atomic+Warfare+In+Ancient+India+&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-top

Among the results, I see a lot of fanatic sites, conspiracy sites, personal whacko sites. The one kind of site I don't see is one with any credit for telling the truth. Not one msnbc.com or cnn.com or even news.yahoo.com. Surely something as that article you linked to claims would have had a week devoted to it on the History channel.

I think Radagast said it, don't believe it because its typed. 30 seconds worth of research turns what slight possibility of credibility that story had into 100% doubt.

Namely, because if they new how to build nukes back then, there would be more evidence of it.

Think about it. If all life on Earth is wiped out tommorow, do you really think in 10,000 years there will be little or no trace of us, or the effects are technology has created?

Do you really think they will only find the blast sites, like Hiroshima, and ponder about how us primitive humans built a bomb? No. For one, if they had the technology to build a nuke, then damnit someone would have made the logical step of creating indoor plumbing.

To many holes, to rediculous. Not to mention belief in that crazy idea totally contradicts believing a shroud was jesus.

So again I ask, which is it? 8,000 year old Earth or nukes blowing up 8,000 years ago?

 

[Chemicalsuperfreak]

Originally posted by Holodeckie
[ That is all the work I'll do for you for free. Research it yourself and don't stop there. [/B]

When you make a claim, especially a ludicrous claim, you have to be prepared to back it up. When I ask you to explain how atomic blasts effect C-14 dating you give me a link to a small book review on the topic of a certain mass spectroscopy technique. Only one line in this review mentions Hiroshima and Nagasaki and it has nothing to do with C-14 dating.

Now I'll ask you again to explain how it works and this time please don't be giving me links that don't give me any information and pretend that you're answering me.

 

[radagast]

Originally posted by quantumcarl
What is Mu?

Mu is the ancient name for what the Romans called "Lemuria".
...

"What is Mu?" is a zen koan. Though you're answer was quite interesting, somehow I don't think it will help me answer the koan.

 

[quantumcarl]

Scamp

Originally posted by radagast
"What is Mu?" is a zen koan. Though you're answer was quite interesting, somehow I don't think it will help me answer the koan.

Actually the whole of our ignorance surrounding the Shroud of Turin produces the effect of a koan... (in hind-sight said he)

Of the 10,000 various vantages concerning the shroud and its origins and purpose, each and every aspect or point of view is correct in specific and respective ways.

It's impossible to prove that someone did not imprint their image on the shroud and it is impossible to prove Leonardo did not create a photograph and dress it up to arrive at the fabled jesus burial shroud.

In fact both of these extreme explanations can exist simultaniously as valid sources in the creation of this work of genius.

How is this possible?

Cause and effect... they don't always follow what we consider a natural progression or what other's call "sequence".

Da Vinci pulled the old frozen fish in the safety deposit box practical joke. (That's where you deposit a frozen fish in a Safety Deposit Box at a bank you don't like... for the next few months no one can figure out what smells so fishy)

However, the frozen fish joke only becomes noticed as a joke a few days after its deposition. Da Vinci's Shroud was not disclosed to be his work (and his discovery of photography) (according to people like me) until 600 years after his death.

Leonardo, by my reckoning, was a true Scamp!

 

[Holodeckie]

more what if

http://www.cosmictribune.com/ct/Extraterrestrial/Arch/2003/0327.html

This lady is award winning and the article points out research done on burns on a sheet by an alleged abductee.

There is tremendous controversy surrounding the fellow in either an elaborate campaign to discredit him or ... he is a hoaxster.

Nonetheless, he claims a past of having healing abilities, lights, etc.

I do find it interesting that some of the discrediting photos don't take into account effects of time and lighting in the room. They seem more bent on making people assume it proves inaccuracy.

I don't have an opinion one way or the other. I believe in investigating things personally before I have a solid bias. The various web sites about him are as different as night and day.

ChemicalSuperFreak: If you can't think your way around what they are saying about atomic blasts and why I mentioned H&N blasts making imprints ... I'd only exhaust myself to offer explanations. As far as giving you formula or logged lab time on the issue -- not going to happen. I don't earn my living in the field. I'm just speculating due to some things I have read, and, no, I don't have to prove that to satisfy your demands unless you intend to set me up in a lab, pay me, and buy me a degree (while I do the hard work). Then I'd be happy to look into it further on your demand.

I'm amused by people who insist on old steadfast rules, rhetoric, and feign the inability for reading comprehension when links are given. I refuse to believe someone who cannot even put 2 and 2 together (even if you disagree with the results) would be on a physics forum.

PS, if you decide to look at the link, the information I'll clue you to is what the scientist is saying about examining and testing the fibers and how unlike anything else it was in his experience.

 

[radagast]

Originally posted by Holodeckie
ChemicalSuperFreak: If you can't think your way around what they are saying about atomic blasts and why I mentioned H&N blasts making imprints ... I'd only exhaust myself to offer explanations. As far as giving you formula or logged lab time on the issue -- not going to happen. I don't earn my living in the field. I'm just speculating due to some things I have read, and, no, I don't have to prove that to satisfy your demands unless you intend to set me up in a lab, pay me, and buy me a degree (while I do the hard work). Then I'd be happy to look into it further on your demand.

I don't know what ChemSupFreak said about blasts and it's relevance to the shroud, but I will reiterate what I've said.

Imprints after the Hiroshima/Nagasaki blasts were shadows - hence why they were two dimensional projections onto a surface.

The shroud, if it were as represented, would be a three-dimensional surface projected onto a two-dimensional plane. It wouldn't look like a picture (as in the shroud) any more than the skin removed from an animal would look like a picture of the animal, or why a map of the Earth doesn't look like a picture of the Earth - they are both examples of a three-dimensional surface projected onto a two-dimensional plane.

I'm amused by people who insist on old steadfast rules, rhetoric, and feign the inability for reading comprehension when links are given. I refuse to believe someone who cannot even put 2 and 2 together (even if you disagree with the results) would be on a physics forum.

There is a difference between reading something, and accepting it hook, line, and sinker, just because you want it to be true. To me, the shroud doesn't have much significance - either way. "I don't have a dog in that fight" as it's so colorfully put. It sounds a lot like the researcher you mentioned is biased. If you look hard enough for something, you can find it, not matter if it doesn't really exist.

As to old steadfast rules - things like unusual claims require strong evidence - yep, I stick to that one pretty strongly. If you mean that when something smells like it came from the distal end of a bull that I ask for evidence, Again guilty as charged.

Do you have any scientific training, in the areas that this is being investigated in? If not, how do you evaluate the research you read? Has the research been published in peer-reviewed journals?

These are important questions, unless you are an expert in the field and can evaluate the data yourself. Otherwise, you're just taking someone else's word on this stuff.

 

[Chemicalsuperfreak]

piginally posted by Holodeckie [/i]
http://www.cosmictribune.com/ct/Extraterrestrial/Arch/2003/0327.html
I'd only exhaust myself to offer explanations. [/QUOTE]

Actually, you linking a UFO site is just about all the explanation we need.

 

[Holodeckie]

Ridicule Even Among Professionals

Originally posted by Chemicalsuperfreak
And the bull****ometer goes to red when you say things like "Scientists are a very organized group who agree to agree". You, sir, apparently have had no involvement whatsoever with the scientific community.

You came to mind today with your above opinion as I researched H. pylori.

The article I found began -- A young Australian doctor was ridiculed when he made claims about H. pylori and ulcers over 20 years ago.

The fellow's name was Barry Marshall.

To understand where I am coming from, research H. pylori and the progress they have made since admitting it existed. Consider this fellow trying to tell them 20 years ago and being laughed away, ridiculed, shouted down. How many patients have suffered because some expert with a bigger mouth, a better intellectual Bullometer loud scale, and belief in his/her rightness shouted him down, even with the lab results he got.

--

On the Shroud and Leonardo, I'm reading a very interesting book I found this past week about the knowledge of the Templars and why exactly Leonardo persistently hinted repetitive things in his commissioned works of art.

Separately, on the web, I serendipitously came across a blurb that in one of his self-portraits some "experts" have determined they see skin cancer on his face. I wonder if that was on the shroud?

One thing about the book, they point out that the head was severed from the body on the shroud which they feel points to issues and hints about John the Baptist.

 

[quantumcarl]

exspurts and spacimen

Originally posted by Holodeckie

Separately, on the web, I serendipitously came across a blurb that in one of his self-portraits some "experts" have determined they see skin cancer on his face. I wonder if that was on the shroud?

The "experts" you mention are preforming a bogus diagnosis from a tempura portrait that's over 600 years old... please direct us to the article.

The shroud would not show any detail concerning the skin of the face. This is apparent when you think about the medium that has recorded the face (very crude photography and its in negative form) and because the face is a quickly constructed mask, probably made out of grog (sandy, quick drying clay) and the mask extends to the mid-chest of the dead body that DaVinci used as his model and his subject. The full-mask is a representation of an older DaVinci or an older Christ... give or take a few beard hairs.

Originally posted by Holodeckie

One thing about the book, they point out that the head was severed from the body on the shroud which they feel points to issues and hints about John the Baptist.

Of the three books I have read concerning the shroud there is no mention of the model's head being severed.

The mask Leonardo fashioned in his bid to fool the church was fitted over the head of the deceased body. The body was borrowed from the Turin Morgue. The first session of photography took so long that Da Vinci only had time to do the frontal image.

At the next opportunity, Da Vinci was able to procure another body but it was different from the first. Subsequently you will find that the back side image of the body is about 5 inches taller than the front side image.

Middle Age minds didn't notice stuff like that. They only saw what they were told was a miracle emblazoned into some antique Egyptian linen.

 

[radagast]

Originally posted by Holodeckie
You came to mind today with your above opinion as I researched H. pylori.

The article I found began -- A young Australian doctor was ridiculed when he made claims about H. pylori and ulcers over 20 years ago.

The fellow's name was Barry Marshall.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

At the time, Barry didn't have that amount of evidence. Today they do. Science doesn't always work in the short run, but that's not what we are talking about. We are talking the long run, where the motivations of new scientists and researchers are to make a name - like Barry Marshall. If Barry hadn't done the research and made his case he wouldn't be known for it today. He was exonerated, unlike the hoax known as the Shroud of Turin.

What amazes me is the extent people will go to, to convince themselves of things which have little or no proof, which defy common sense, which go against reason. For the shroud to have the image it does, the image would have had to have been projected onto the shroud, while the shroud was stretched flat, not while it was wrapped around a body. Had it been formed while wrapped around a body, the image would not have been photo-like, but distorted, just the same way police gathered fingerprints are much wider than the fingertips they come from.

Also, have you notived that the image is similar to the European idea of what Christ looked like - European, not a middle eastern Jew.

If you have any desire to find the truth, then think it thru. Understanding the shroud is a hoax doesn't attack christianity. It only acknowledges that there were unscrupulous individuals in the middle ages, just like today.

 

[Holodeckie]

Originally posted by radagast
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

What amazes me is the extent people will go to, to convince themselves of things which have little or no proof, which defy common sense, which go against reason.

If you have any desire to find the truth, then think it thru. Understanding the shroud is a hoax doesn't attack christianity. It only acknowledges that there were unscrupulous individuals in the middle ages, just like today.

Understanding the shroud may not be a hoax also would not be a vote for Christianity, nor would it be proof of Jesus. The head appeared severed. It would be a better understanding of phenomenon that scientific tradition is trying to use scientific tradition to explain.

One fellow calls the principle Perpetuation of Error.

http://www.pride-net.com/physics/Errors/index.html

You'll note how he expresses the challenge he got from other professionals among his other web pages.

Whatever it is, I do think there were fellows who knew who were trying to communicate a message about truths not allowed at the time due to religious notions. To dismiss it on carbon dating alone as a hoax is to end research into truth.

I don't know why people assume Christianity as the reason or unreasonableness in not being satisfied with the results of carbon dating on the Shroud. That is inaccurate in the reason for my stance on it.

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by Holodeckie
Understanding the shroud may not be a hoax also would not be a vote for Christianity, nor would it be proof of Jesus. The head appeared severed. It would be a better understanding of phenomenon that scientific tradition is trying to use scientific tradition to explain.

One fellow calls the principle Perpetuation of Error.

http://www.pride-net.com/physics/Errors/index.html

You'll note how he expresses the challenge he got from other professionals among his other web pages.

Whatever it is, I do think there were fellows who knew who were trying to communicate a message about truths not allowed at the time due to religious notions. To dismiss it on carbon dating alone as a hoax is to end research into truth.

I don't know why people assume Christianity as the reason or unreasonableness in not being satisfied with the results of carbon dating on the Shroud. That is inaccurate in the reason for my stance on it.

My question is, how many times do we have to look at a fake before accepting it is a fake? The Shroud of Turin is a hoax, and looking at it more isn't going to change that fact.