Posted on 01/21/2004 2:29:31 AM PST by Swordmaker
Raymond N. Rogers
Fellow
University of California, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, NM, USA
©2004 Raymond N. Rogers
All Rights Reserved
The samples were run at the Midwest Center for Mass Spectrometry (MCMS), University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This is a National Science Foundation "Center of Excellence," and it ranks among the foremost facilities in the world.
Walter McCrone had ignored agreements on how the STURP samples were to be observed, and he contaminated all of our samples by sticking them to microscope slides. All of the fibers were immersed in the tape's adhesive, Joan Janney (now Joan Rogers) laboriously cleaned and prepared Shroud fibers for analysis at the MCMS.
Mass spectrometry is based on the fact that charged particles in motion have their trajectories bent by electric and/or magnetic fields. Molecules in a high vacuum can be ionized (charged) by electron impact or chemical ionization. Chemical ionization uses collisions with excited atoms or molecules to ionize the sample, and it gives a much simpler mass spectrum than electron impact. Since we desired detection sensitivity rather than high resolution, we used a machine with moderate resolution, chemical ionization, and high sensitivity. The method was sufficiently sensitive to detect traces of the low-molecular-weight fractions (oligomers) of the polyethylene bag that Prof. Luigi Gonella had used to wrap the Raes threads.
It did not detect any unexpected pyrolysis fragments that indicated any Shroud materials other than carbohydrates. That is exactly what would be expected from a piece of pure linen. This helped confirm the fact that the image was not painted.
The oldest known paintings appeared in prehistoric times (ca. 30,000 BC), and they are found in the caves of France, Spain, and Africa. They were done in natural materials, e.g., red and yellow ochre and charcoal. There is evidence that the pigments were mixed with animal fat for application to the irregular cave surfaces. Tempera painting appeared early in history. It involves powdered pigments mixed with egg, plant gums, and/or glues. Aside from fresco, tempera was the principal painting medium before the introduction of oil paints.
The Flemish brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck are generally (probably incorrectly) credited with the invention of oil painting. Their careers are well documented between about 1422 and 1441. They normally worked on canvas that was made from either linen or a linen-cotton blend. It would be extremely unlikely that oil paints had been used to hoax the image during or before the 14th Century; however, we planned observations that would detect such materials. Oils were the favorite vehicles for pigments during the time of the 1532 fire. They could have been used in an attempt to reproduce the Shroud, if it had been totally destroyed in the fire . . .
. . .The pyrolysis-MS analyses did not detect any nitrogen-containing contaminants. This seemed rule out glair (egg white) as well as any significant microbiological deposits, confirming microchemical tests that were also made. They did not detect any of the sulfide pigments were used in antiquity, e.g., orpiment, realgar, mosaic gold, and cinnabar (vermilion, mercury sulfide, HgS). The Shroud's image had not been painted with any known vehicles and pigments. Many of the pyrolysis fragments observed by pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry would be the same products of thermal degradation whether they came from cellulose, hexose sugars, pentose sugars, or starches. However, the ratios of products can be characteristic and important . . .
The Shroud [all of the shroud except the area where the carbon-14 test material was taken - Swordmaker] is nearly pure linen. Notice that the hydroxymethylfurfural signal at m/e 126 is quite large: the furfural signal at m/e 96 is quite small.
The spectrum obtained for the Raes sample (cut in 1973 from the area adjoining the radiocarbon sample of 1988) shows absolutely no m/e 126 signal: the cellulose of the sample had not yet started to pyrolyze. There is, however, a significant m/e 96 signal: furfural was being produced at this temperature. This proves that the sample contained some pentose-sugar units. This is unique among all of the Shroud samples: no other area showed this pentose signal.
Chemical analyses have proved that the Raes samples are coated with a gum/dye/mordant system that has been used for millennia to color cloth. It is stained with a synthetic system. Apparently the intent was to make these threads look like the old, sepia yarn of the main part of the cloth . . .
. . . Maps of all of the other samples were also obtained. They all showed the same difference in product ratios: the Raes sample was unique. It was contaminated with some material that produced pentose pyrolysis products at relatively low temperatures. . .
Conclusion:
The pyrolysis/MS data confirm the identification of a gum coating on the Raes threads.
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This is an extract of the information contained in the Rogers report. The entire report (6 pages) can be downloaded at the source. It is a PDF file and requires Adobe Acrobat Reader to read. Swordmaker
I don't think it's a hoax, but at the same time I don't think it's what its supporters claim it to be. For some time now I've toyed with the idea that ionizing radiation might have produced the image. But where would the radiation have come from? If the prototype for the image had been a piece of statuary, it might have come from radioactive elements that occur naturally in many kinds of rocks, especially of the sedimentary variety. Now, the Byzantine story of the Mandylion (which many believe to have been the shroud, folded over and kept within a frame) says that the cloth-bearing image was found in proximity to a "tile" that had an exact copy of the image imprinted on it. Supposedly the cloth had been placed in a niche in the walls of Edessa, and the tile placed in front of it for protection; the image then sat in the niche for several hundred years before its discovery during a siege. Suppose, however, that this story has it backward: suppose that it was the tile that had been placed in the niche, and the cloth placed over it for covering. Over the course of several centuries, radioactive material in the stone might have produced sufficient ionizing radiation to oxidize and discolor the threads of the cloth in proportion to its proximity to the tile, thus producing the image we know as the Shroud of Turin.
The Edessans who discovered the tile would have been hard-pressed to explain what they had found, but to their minds the image on the tile would have appeared less miraculous than that on the cloth. Hence the cloth would have been regarded as divinely wrought.
Do you honestly think that this image is caramel? And that no one has tested for this juvenile thing?
SD
This is true, but if there was a napkin then there could be nothing resembling blood on the spots on the shroud where there appears to be a trickle of blood on the forehead of the man of the shroud.
And weren't those spots proved to have been dlood years ago?.
I'm not trying to be snide or disrespectful...but how old would you look after being scourged 39 times, punched, abused and made to haul 200 lbs. of lumber a long distance knowing full well you were to be crucified on it?
I don't think it has to. Don't be fooled by reports that bloodstained areas had no image fibrils underneath. That was based on a single, offhand remark that was itself based on a casual observation of a single fibril.
Sorry, no. Using a stamping scenario does not get the 3-D effect... not even close. It has been tried by numerous researchers. You wind up with a severely distorted caricature of a human face, not the subtle image of the shroud with its proportions intact. This is the same reason the "bacteria created" image fails... some of the image is from areas that there WAS no contact.
Done.
Excuse me but both your statements are wrong, counter to the research and peer reviewed papers.
Blood of Type AB has been identified on both the Shroud (in every location where you see blood that has been tested has tested positive.) The report of the image NOT being under the blood is much more than "an off hand remark" about a "casual observation of a single fibril." It was a specific object of investigation and was completely proven.
I'd be interested in seeing the report.
Good question. But if I recall correctly The Crucifixion and burial took place very close to Shabbat. If that were the case, there may not have been time before sundown to properly prepare the body at the time as no Jew of that period (or this one for that matter) would have done any of that work on Shabbat.
Wasn't it during Pesach (Passover) as well?
Oh?
(John 11:43 KJV) And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.
((John 11:44 KJV) And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.
(John 20:7 KJV) And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.
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