You still don’t seem to get it, do you? Please, you are starting to sound like those Climate Enablers, where ANY question doubting the "truth" is assailed and contradicted by questionable "proofs" of your own, created by people with an agenda who are posing as non-partisan.
Some day, hopefully within my lifetime, there will be a "Well, I'll be!" moment, and the Shroud will be found to be of human, not god-like origin.
As for the Damascus steel mystery, check THIS out.
Please, you are starting to sound like those Climate Enablers, where ANY question doubting the "truth" is assailed and contradicted by questionable "proofs" of your own, created by people with an agenda who are posing as non-partisan. You really don’t get it. I am presenting to you the facts gleaned from numerous scientific peer-reviewed articles on research published in real scientific journals, research done by real scientists working within in their fields of expertise, in areas in which they know what they are talking and writing about. These are NOT "questionable proofs" but peer-reviewed, published, checked, and re-checked, reproducible results scientific FACTS.
The partisans are the skeptics who generally are writers and/or some scientists working outside their fields of expertise, such as James (The Amazing) Randi, a failed stage magician, leading Atheist, and President of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), whose degree is in English Literature, and Joe Nickell, CSI’s Chief Research Fellow, is also a failed stage magician with a PhD in English, another Atheist, and claims he has worked professionally as a stage magician, carnival pitchman, private detective, blackjack dealer, riverboat manager, university instructor, author, and paranormal investigator, listing over 1000 personae on his website. He’s finally found something where he can make money long term.
Their most illustrious scientist on their side was the late Walter C. McCrone, a chemical microscopist, another Atheist, who was convinced he could see tempera pigments, egg albumin, and red ocher (in 10% solution — every scientist in the world should scratch their heads on that claim as without the fluid in which it was dissolved, no one can claim to be able to determine the original solution percentage just by looking at the residual particles left behind 700 years after they’d dried as McCrone claimed! McCrone, in various speeches on his findings had variously described he’d identified the actual source of the red ocher as being from differing sources, including in one speech to it have been jewelers’ rouge, which was an impossibility, as that had not been invented until 1818.) on the Shroud with his optical light microscope at a 300X magnification, and declared the Shroud a painting. McCrone declared the blood stains to be painted as well, using Vermilion (Mercury Sulfide and egg albumin) pigment, because "I’m skilled at recognizing it when I sees it." Very scientific, that. No tests, just his eyes.
No other scientists working using the same samples as McCrone found anything resembling pigment, even when they subjected the samples to examination under scanning electron microscopy, x-ray micro-spectroscopy, or Raman spectroscopic examination. No Mercury Sulfide. No Iron Oxide in Image areas. Iron oxide in blood stain areas was biological, bound up in old human hemoglobins and hemoglobin derivatives. McCrone refused to submit his work for publication in any peer-reviewed scientific journal except for his own self-edited journal "The Microscopist," published by McCrone Associates.
Then there’s Steven D. Schafersman, another Atheist, an actual living scientist affiliated with CSI, who holds a PhD in geology. He regularly challenges people who hold double doctorates in biology and medicine, double PhDs in nuclear physics and chemistry, world class status in their fields in pyrology chemistry, well, because he’s a geologist.
The Shroud skepticism is really in his field of expertise. Not. He claims those scientist who are doing testing on the Shroud are blinded by their "Catholic" faith, ignoring the inconvenient fact that three of the double science doctorates he was claiming were blinded by Catholicism were Jews. So too, incidentally, is Barrie Schwartz, an original member of STURP who maintains the Shroud.com web site, the online repository for all scholarly and scientific papers on the Shroud. . . was and is a practicing Jew.
These skeptics are the agenda driven people who are not following the science and prefer to keep citing outdated, un-peer-reviewed claims such as McCrone which have been falsified numerous times over 40 years since he made them.
You will gleefully pounce on any article on this topic that confirms YOUR bias, whether it has any basis in reality, ignoring the actual science involved, so long as the main stream media publishes it.
li>As for the Damascus steel mystery, check THIS out.
ROTFLMAO! Did you check any of those articles? You’re really arguing swords with someone whose handle is Swordmaker? Really?
These articles have the "secret" of Damascus steel being rediscovered at multiple times. Gunsmiths were laughing at these guys. These acedemics didn’t bother going out and talking to a blacksmith, did they? They watched Hollywood movies and heard the myth about the fabulous blades from Damascus. This was when Hollywood was making movies about Sinbad, and post Errol Flynn swashbuckling where they talked about the wonderful Damascus swords. There were also Toledo steel Blades from Spain, also Hollywood hype! The art was never "lost" as its not in cooling the raw ingot or any thing like that; the art is in the folding and forging the steel. And then acid etching the steel afterward to bring out the differing steel and carbon content alloys that were folded together and hammer welded under heat. SHEESH!
I own several knives (including a Damascus Steel pocket knife my dad got in the 1920s) and swords in Damascus steel. . . And some old shotguns with Damascus steel barrels. Nobody lost it.
Damascus Steel shotgun barrel from 1880
Damascus Steel sword production was essentially stopped due to economic reasons in the 1820s because modern rolled steel swords were being produced in mass quantities that had superior qualities to the Damascus Steel product.
One dirty secret about the Damascus steel swords is that because the steel mix was not homogenous, they didn’t take and keep an edge long. . , some parts of the edge could be brittle and could be chipped and cracked on fine honed edges when they struck other blades. They were constantly in need of honing, or even re grinding. Newer rolled steel resulted in higher, more consistent quality stronger, sharper weapons that required far less hand labor to produce.
Like today, the only reason then to continue producing Damascus steel products was vanity, the preferred looks of the final product. That’s why only high end shotguns got Damascus barrels, or high end knives get Damascus blades. . . They’re hand made.