Posted on 03/30/2002 8:54:56 PM PST by Swordmaker
Abstract: In 1988, Carbon-14 findings from three Accelerator Mass Spectrometer (AMS) Labs independently dated a sample removed from the Shroud of Turin: unarguably the most widely studied linen cloth in history. The dates reported ranged between 1260 -1390 A.D.; thus, leading to the conclusion that the cloth originated in the middle ages. This paper, previously presented on August 28, 2000 at the Worldwide Congress "Sindone 2000" in Orvieto, Italy, presents evidence that the sample tested by the three AMS labs contained a "patch" of material from the 16th Century(!). The authors examine the theory that this extraneous material was skillfully spliced into the 1st Century original Shroud cloth in the C-14 sample used by the laboratories for testing. According to hypothetical calculations performed by AMS laboratory, Beta Analytic, the world's largest radiocarbon dating service, the observed proportion of medieval material in relationship to assumed 1st Century material, closely matches the findings of the AMS Labs in 1988.
It is well known and documented that the Shroud has been repaired several times in its history, including in the area from which the C-14 sample was taken. The most recent was in 1973 after Professor Gilbert Raes, a member of the Turin Commission that studied the Shroud in 1969 and 1973, was given some samples. But is it possible that other undocumented repairs were made to the Shroud? Enzo Delorenzi, also a member of the Turin Commission, made the very significant statement:
"…I should like to mention the impression I received during the course of my examination, namely, that more pairs of hands have carried out the darning than is suggested in the historical records (the four Clarissas of Chambery, the Blessed Valfre and the Princess Clotilde). "(Delorenzi 1976, pg. 111)
In light of the compelling evidence that we are about to present, we believe that the theory that the Shroud has literally been patched with medieval material from the 16 th century, in the C-14 sample itself, explains the medieval carbon dating results. Furthermore, several other sindonologists have identified various anomalies that also seem to point to undocumented repairs (Gervasio, 1986: 264, 268), which adds credence to the hypothesis that the C-14 sample area may have been similarly enhanced.
Giovanni Riggi, the person who actually cut the C-14 sample, which was from the same area from which the 1973 “Raes piece” was taken, stated:
"I was authorized to cut approximately 8 square centimetres of cloth from the Shroud…This was then reduced to about 7 cm because fibres of other origins had become mixed up with the original fabric …"(Riggi 1988:182).
Italian author Giorgio Tessiore, discussing the sample taking, noted, “…1 cm of the new sample had to be discarded because of the presence of different color threads” (Tessiore, 1988:44).
Upon microscopic examination of the Oxford C-14 sample, Professor Edward Hall, head of the Oxford lab, noticed fibers that looked out of place. A laboratory in Derbyshire determined that the rogue fibers were cotton of “a fine, dark yellow strand.” According to Peter South of the lab, “It may have been used for repairs at some time in the past…” (Rogue Fibres found in the Shroud, 1988:13).
Professor Raes, who extracted the above cited Shroud sample in 1973, believes that in the 1988 Oxford sample he examined, the cotton he observed was contained inside the threads, which could help to explain the difference in fiber diameter (Raes, 1989). We believe that the heavier, blended material may explain why the C-14 sample apparently weighed about twice as much as expected (Petrosillo and Marinelli, 1996:63).
However, one also needs to find chemical differences to support the theory of a medieval patch. The late Dr. Alan Adler, a chemist and member of the STURP team that studied the Shroud in 1978, noted:
"So you can talk all you want about how reproducible the date is, but you can’t talk about how accurate it is. You have no way of knowing if the area you took the C14 sample from represents the whole cloth. That’s an area which has obviously been repaired. There’s cloth missing there. It’s been rewoven on the edge. They even cut part of it off, because it was obviously rewoven on the edge. The simplest explanation why the date may be off is that it’s rewoven cloth there. And that’s not been tested." (Case, 1996:73).
Fire tends to emit all the original components, leaving the less volatile -- hence LEAVING a lot of carbon.
But nonetheless, simple chemical processes such as fire are unlikely to significantly differentiate between C14 and C12, so the results are hardly "skewed." To make a thing appear younger by C14 versus C12 analysis, you'd have to get rid of more C12 and keep more C14. Explain how fire does that, and explain in what degree it might do it.
As dumb as you might think the ancients were, 3D, i.e. statutes and scupltures, date back to the most ancient artifacts found -- 10's of thousands of years ago. The concept of "3D" was not invented the year you bounced off the turnip truck.
The VP-8 Image Analyzer was a very special device developed for doing analysis of the moon's surface. NORMAL PHOTOGRAPHS DO NOT GENERATE 3-D images nor do paintings.
The following is from: http://www.shroud.com/78strp10.htm or just CLICK HERE to go to that page.
Please attempt to read the following before making such rash statements. It was basically Los Alamos Scientists and other high tech folks who were very confused when they put the Shroud of Turin into the VP-8 Image Analyzer and saw it behave like things generated for this device, even though the Shroud is 2000 years old.
The Drs. Jackson and Jumper (both Captains in the USAF) formed a team for NASA to study the Shroud. It was this image analyzer that caused the 1978 study to be done.
Designed in the 1960's for creating relief maps from moon photographs and for other topographical imaging purposes, the VP-8 Image Analyzer is an analog device that converts image density (lights and darks) into vertical relief (shadows and highlights). When applied to photographs made specifically for this type of analysis, the result is an accurate, topographic image showing the correct, natural relief characteristics of the subject. These results are often referred to as "three-dimensional."
In 1976, a group of scientists working on various projects at Los Alamos National Laboratories put a 1931 Enrie photograph of the Shroud of Turin into the VP-8 and discovered that these same three-dimensional properties exist in the Shroud image. This particularly intrigued two of the researchers present at the test, Dr. Eric Jumper and Dr. John Jackson. Stimulated by their startling discovery, they decided to form a research team to investigate what might have formed the image on the cloth and within a few months, the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) was born. Two years later, that same team would perform the first ever, in-depth scientific examination of the Shroud of Turin.
When input to a VP-8, a normal photograph does not result in a properly formed dimensional image but in a rather distorted jumble of light and dark "shapes." That is because the lights and darks of a normal photograph result solely from the amount of light reflected by the subject onto the film. The image densities do not depend on the distance the subject was from the film. Yet the image on the Shroud of Turin yields a very accurate dimensional relief of a human form. One must conclude from this that the image density on the cloth is directly proportionate to the distance it was from the body it covered. In essence, the closer the cloth was to the body (tip of nose, cheekbone, etc.), the darker the image, and the further away (eye sockets, neck, etc.), the fainter the image. This spatial data encoded into the image actually eliminates photography and painting as the possible mechanism for its creation and allows us to conclude that the image was formed while the cloth was draped over an actual human body. So the VP-8 Image Analyzer not only revealed a previously unknown and very important characteristic of the Shroud image, but historically it also provided the actual motivation to form the team that would ultimately go and investigate it. Interestingly, only sixty VP-8 Image Analyzers were ever constructed and only two remain functional today.
On May 1, 1997, I was fortunate to spend some time in North Carolina with my friend Kevin Moran, retired Senior Technology Specialist from Eastman Kodak's Estek Products Division and a Shroud researcher since 1978. Kevin owns one of the two functioning original VP-8 units and was kind enough to welcome me into his home and spend the next 14 straight hours working with me to videotape "new" VP-8 images. Actually, the real thanks should go to his dear wife Anne, who put up with the two of us working until 4:00am!
To maximize the quality of the somewhat dated and temperamental imaging system, I replaced the existing camera and lens with a new high resolution CCD camera and lens and used first generation black & white prints made directly from my original 4x5" negatives as source images. I recorded the results off the VP-8's green screen monitor using a Sony BetaCam SP system. The image at the top of this page is a frame taken from the videotape we made during that "all-nighter".
The video tape footage was shot for the interactive simulation of the VP-8 being created for inclusion on "The Shroud of Turin CD-Rom." This "Virtual VP-8" will let you raise and lower the level of 3-D "gain", rotate the image 180 degrees and tilt the image from a flat edge-on view to a 90 degree view. And you will be able to compare a number of different Shroud images with a normal photograph.
Well, I have "thought again" and I conclude either you are playing an April fools joke, or you don't know the signifiance of the symbols C12, C14 and C-60.
C-60 usually refers to a CHEMICAL arrangement of 60 carbon atoms, also known as a buckminsterfullerene. However, C12 and C14 refer to isotopes of the carbon atom. An isotope of an element varies in the number of neutrons it has. For instance, C12, has six protons and six neutrons. C14 has six protons and eight neutrons. C14 is, however, unstable, and will radioactively decay with a half life of about six years.
Chemically C12 and C14 are very similar, because they both have six protons, and therefore electron clouds and chemistry that is essentially the same. There are slight differences due to the extra mass of the nucleus, and with careful chemical techniques, these slight difference can lead to the ability to seperate the two isotopes. That's how, for instance, fissle uranium isotopes were isolated for the atomic bomb from non-fissle uranium isotopes.
C14 is created in the upper reaches of the atmosphere when nitrogen atoms are struck by extra-terrestrial radiation. So C14 is constantly being produced. And it constantly decays away. But during its lifetime it acts just like regulare carbon (C12) and finds its way into plants, and then animals, and humans, and every biological entity. But when an entity dies, carbon uptake stops, and the ratio of C12 to C14 would be fixed -- except for the fact that C14 keeps disappearing due to radioactive decay.
So a ratio of C12 to C14 in a dead entity will give you a good measure of the year in which it died. Naturally, as the time goes back further and further, the amount of C14 is less and less. Eventually there just isn't enough to detect. And that sets the upper limit to C14 dating. It's good for human history, not good for dating dinosaurs and the like.
If you read my previous post about the VP-8 Image Analyzer, you will see that the analysis done of very old photograph (one made in the 1920's I think) was used by some folks at Los Alamos Labs. They did not understand how the Shroud acted like images they had labored to create of the landscape of the moon to get 3-D images. The Shroud itself did not act like a photograph or a painting -- but something that was meant to be analyzed by the VP-8 Image Analzyer -- a high tech device used for the "race to the moon".
This resulted in such interest that the original scientific team was formed. One of them, a Jewish fellow, was converted because of the Scientific study. In fact, quite a few of the scientific team was converted by working on the "scientific research of the Shroud"(found under www.shroud.com).
What may be interesting are the pollens from plants that only existed in Israel up to 2000 years ago.
Along with the fact that it was some sort of "energy" that created the Shroud makes this whole thing rather interesting.
It is interesting how the Media only played up the C-14 stuff, when in fact that type of testing was the most "error prone of all the testing".
Why? For centuries people used candles to "venerate the shroud" -- giving off carbon into the fibers.
Also the Shroud was burned in a fire -- also another time when the Shroud was contaminated by even more carbon.
It proves how really stupid the media really is.
The fire hypothesis briefly is this: The shroud was stored folded and encased in a wood casket with a silver reliquary for the Shroud created in 1509 CE by Flemish artist Lievin van Latham, and commissioned by Marguerite of Austria at a cost of more than 12,000 gold ecus. The casket was constructed presumably from recently felled wood. In 1532 a fire broke out in the chapel where the Shroud was kept (eventually destroying the building!) The fire both melted the silver lining and destroyed the wooden casket. The molten silver entered the interior of the reliquary and damage on corner fold through 8 layers of the ancient linen. The theory is that soot from the contemporary casket wood carried both Carbon 12 and Carbon 14 and infused the fibers of the shroud with Carbon 14 from the much more modern wood. This added contemporary Carbon 12/14 with its very recent ratios would burn with the much older Carbon 12/14 ratios of the original linen of the shroud and skew the results.
Tests have been performed in which old Linen was exposed to modern wood fires and their sooty smoke. It was found that the "new" carbon did skew the resulting Carbon 14 test when that old linen was tested... but not by a very large number of years. If I remember correctly, the skewing was on the order of 50 years younger for the infused linen as opposed to the control samples taken from the same cloth before it was exposed to the pollutants. They even attempted to expose the linen to sooty smoke under temperatures approaching that of molten silver IN the presence of molten silver to see if silver vapors might have acted in someway to enhance the infusion... no enhancement was noted beyond that found in the original test.
It was found that merely burning or charring the existant fibers and carbon contained in them did not alter in any way the results of a carbon-14 test... as expected.
One interesting sideline to these investigations is that it has been discovered that NO ANCIENT LINEN carbon tests accurately! I.E. Carbon dating of linen wrappings of mummies has consistently dated 1000 to 2000 years YOUNGER than the carbon dates of the mummies themselves or of the caskets containing the mummies!
It proves how really stupid the media really is.
You're playing Barry Sheck from the O.J. Simpson trial, and you call the media stupid for not buying your "conspiracy and contamination" defense?
Now, C-60 is a natural form of carbon, not man made. Understand yet? C60 is found in nature. Chemical my butt. The April Fool's joke here is you. You haven't thought on this a second. Now, the shroud burned at one point. (Got that yet?) What happens when an item burns. I'll lead you through it since you can't understand it, obviously. Carbon forms. Yes! Carbon! What will this do to testing? Why do you think they haven't tested any wood from left over pre-historic campfires? The burning of the wood would skew the results. What do you think happened to the shroud when it, too, burned? I am sorry, you can't understand this. Have a good night, I know I will.
That's fine. However, C14 dating is calibrated -- compared against samples from artifacts that are independently dated (dated by some other means.) Dating being off by 1000 years in 2000 would be a significant issue in the science of carbon-14 dating. It would upset a lot more archeology than just the shroud controversy.
Now, C-60 is a natural form of carbon, not man made. Understand yet? C60 is found in nature. Chemical my butt. The April Fool's joke here is you. You haven't thought on this a second.
Well, you are good for a laugh (unintentional I am sure.) But you do seem to have a nacsent interest in learning things scientific. So I will humor your native ignorance a bit.
There are two distinct aspects of any element, such as carbon. The "chemical" and the "nuclear." "Chemistry" refers to the outer orbiting electrons and their behaviors with respect to the electrons in other nearby elements. C-60 is a chain of carbon atoms held together by electron bonds.
C12 and C14 are, however, individual carbon atoms. They are made up of sub-atomic particles in the nucleus. Protons and neutrons. The protons carry a positive electrical charge (the orbiting electrons carry a negative electrical charge.) The neutrons are neutral, but have about the same mass as the protons. The electrons are about 2000 times lighter than the protons or neutrons. Anyhow, the C12 atom has six protons, and six neutrons in the nucleus, and a matching six electrons in orbit. C14 isotope atom has six protons, eight neutrons, and six electrons in orbit. So "chemically" it is similar because of the electron shell similarity. It is different at the "nuclear" level because it has more neutrons. Hence it is referred to as a nuclear isotope.
What happens when an item burns. I'll lead you through it since you can't understand it, obviously. Carbon forms. Yes! Carbon!
Carbon doesn't "form" due to fire. The carbon was there. What happens is that other more volatile elements/compounds boil away, leaving the existing but less volatile carbon behind.
What will this do to testing?
Nothing much, since heat won't differentiate C12 versus C14.
Actually, they do all the time.
I mentioned calibrating C14 dating. They do that by using growth rings in trees such as bristlecone pines, some of which date back to 5000 years ago. They measure the C12/C14 ratios of each growth ring and establish the C14 production rate for that year.
Now I also have to correct an earlier mistake by myself. I said the half life of C14 was six years. Well more like 6000 years, 5730 to be more exact. That means if you take a bunch of C14 atoms, after 5730 years, half of them will have decayed.
One interesting sideline to these investigations is that it has been discovered that NO ANCIENT LINEN carbon tests accurately! I.E. Carbon dating of linen wrappings of mummies has consistently dated 1000 to 2000 years YOUNGER than the carbon dates of the mummies themselves or of the caskets containing the mummies!
jlogajan said in another post (regarding carbon dating):
You're playing Barry Sheck from the O.J. Simpson trial, and you call the media stupid for not buying your "conspiracy and contamination" defense?
I spoke to one of the original members of the Research team from the 1978 research. He had the following to say about the C-14 dating:
(1) Chemicals were used to clean the cloth tested (from one of the corners of the Shroud).
(2) The original protocol was changed because there was only one piece of the Shroud given for this destructive type of testing.
(3) Various tests (flourescent light tests) showed this part of the Shroud to be of "different material". He noticed this difference personally.
(4) It was the opinion of this person that since this was a corner that was used for holding the Shroud for viewing over many centuries, it needed to be repaired.
There have been studies to come back and say that the C-14 testing probably was very flawed.
The fire damage and the exposure to candles would have been compensated for by the use of chemicals to clean the fabric. However, it is unclear if the chemicals themselves might not have "contaminated" the C-14 dating by leaving residue that might have been part of the C-14 dating.
This member of the research team said that the chemicals used for the cleaning were not disclosed.
He had called me, as I had ordered some of the research material, and it was he that would not let me off the phone, and was very interesting to talk to. (He was a Jewish member of the team.)
God does work in strange ways.
I am not sure where you get that the Shroud of Turin may have been repaired (at the corner tested) as being "contamination and conspiracy".
The Shroud of Turin was in a fire and it was held by the edges. So the fact it was repaired, and that is documented in the history, should not be a surprise.
The original protocol required samples tested from different locations (by the scientists).
The church only allowed the "edge" of the Shroud to be "torn off" for the tests. This is the fault of the church.
A better way to resolve the "issues" around C-14 dating is to do "microscopic inspection" of the fabric of any material used for C-14 dating to make sure it is not done with fabric "interwoven" as part of a repair.
This is from the Jerusalem Post dated April 14, 1997.
The Author of the article is Judy Siegler.
Local plant evidence supports authenticity of Shroud of Turinby JUDY SIEGEL
JERUSALEM (April 14) - Powerful evidence supporting the view that the Shroud of Turin - the garment in which Jesus is said to have been wrapped after his crucifixion - originated in the Land of Israel has been provided by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Duke University in North Carolina.
The scientists have succeeded in identifying 28 species of plants that grow in the Land of Israel among the images of flowers that appear on the shroud. All of them grow in the area between Jerusalem and Jericho, and most are spring flowers that apparently were picked during the period of the crucifixion and placed on the 4.1 meter by 1.1 meter piece of linen.
On the shroud appears the negative image of a man with long hair and a moustache who had been cruelly whipped, and a number of blood spots were spattered on it. The human image is similar to drawings of Jesus that have been seen since the fourth century CE. There are also hundreds of images of flowers and other plants and objects on the shroud.
HU Prof. Avinoam Danin, an expert on the plant life of the Land of Israel, was asked in 1995 by Dr. Alan Whanger - a Duke University medical lecturer - and his wife Mary to study images of flowers on the shroud. They used a special process of photography, along with negatives and ultraviolet light scanning, to increase the contrast and make visible images that are not easily seen by the naked eye.
The Whangers, who are believing Christians, found hundreds of images of plants, particularly in the area of the human figure's head. They then matched these images to drawings in the authoritative botanical work, Flora Palaestina, and in this way identified 28 types of plants.
Danin verified their conclusions and was even able to determine that additional images on the shroud could be associated with plants from the Land of Israel.
"I can't say for certain that it was Jesus's shroud," said Danin, who disclosed his findings in a lecture to biology students last week and is still "very excited" about them. "But this evidence backs up the possibility that it is genuine, and there is no doubt that it comes from the Land of Israel."
The researchers plan to study rock rose pollen grains removed from the shroud in the 1970s and compare them with pollen from the same plants collected in Israel. They will also study the images of other ossified objects found on the burial cloth, including a nail, hammer, broom, rope, a ring of thorns, and a sponge.
If the C-14 tests are the only evidence one looks at, then a person may be skewed.
And that assuming there were no "serious flaws" in the C-14 tests (because of unknown or things unprepared for such as "possibly" testing a part of the Shroud that had been repaired.)
Barrie announced the new research at the shroud symposium in Stockton, CA, last month.
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