New: Shroud of Turin carbon dating proved erroneous ( performed on non-original cloth sample)

Ohio Shroud Conference ^

[dascallie]

PRESS RELEASE: Los Alamos National Laboratory team of scientists prove carbon 14 dating of the Shroud of Turin wrong

COLUMBUS, Ohio, August 15 — In his presentation today at The Ohio State University’s Blackwell Center, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) chemist, Robert Villarreal, disclosed startling new findings proving that the sample of material used in 1988 to Carbon-14 (C-14) date the Shroud of Turin, which categorized the cloth as a medieval fake, could not have been from the original linen cloth because it was cotton. According to Villarreal, who lead the LANL team working on the project, thread samples they examined from directly adjacent to the C-14 sampling area were “definitely not linen” and, instead, matched cotton. Villarreal pointed out that “the [1988] age-dating process failed to recognize one of the first rules of analytical chemistry that any sample taken for characterization of an area or population must necessarily be representative of the whole. The part must be representative of the whole. Our analyses of the three thread samples taken from the Raes and C-14 sampling corner showed that this was not the case.” Villarreal also revealed that, during testing, one of the threads came apart in the middle forming two separate pieces. A surface resin, that may have been holding the two pieces together, fell off and was analyzed. Surprisingly, the two ends of the thread had different chemical compositions, lending credence to the theory that the threads were spliced together during a repair. LANL’s work confirms the research published in Thermochimica Acta (Jan. 2005) by the late Raymond Rogers, a chemist who had studied actual C-14 samples and concluded the sample was not part of the original cloth possibly due to the area having been repaired. This hypothesis was presented by M. Sue Benford and Joseph G. Marino in Orvieto, Italy in 2000. Benford and Marino proposed that a 16th Century patch of cotton/linen material was skillfully spliced into the 1st Century original Shroud cloth in the region ultimately used for dating. The intermixed threads combined to give the dates found by the labs ranging between 1260 and 1390 AD. Benford and Marino contend that this expert repair was necessary to disguise an unauthorized relic taken from the corner of the cloth. A paper presented today at the conference by Benford and Marino, and to be published in the July/August issue of the international journal Chemistry Today, provided additional corroborating evidence for the repair theory.

[js1138]

Here is proof that your offset is way too large to produce anything resembling the quasi-3D image the technique will produce.

Reducing the height setting will not change the fact that the image is sensitive to the angle. I've tried it, and anyone can try it.

I will grant that the standard set of Photoshop filters is not ideal for this work. I think I have a copy of Bryce 4 somewhere. I'll play with it when I get time.

None of this alters the fact that the 3D effect is made by manipulating the gradient. The question is whether the shroud has a preferred angle of shift. It does. Even with the most conservative settings the image is degraded when you get the angle wrong.

[Swordmaker]

Here is proof that you changed the offsets. These are screen captures from my Photoshop:

The first duplicates the setting used by you to create your fraudulent muddle:

Note the settings: Angle: 18º, Height (offset of layer above base level) 60 Pixels, amount 48%

Now, here is the same angle, with a more correct offset.

Note the settings: Angle: 18º, Height 17 Pixels, amount 48%

I sat here and rotated that angle around all 360º and found that the image was quasi-3D in all degrees. Changing the contrast would improve the 3D effect at some angles... but it existed quite obviously at all degrees around the image.

I rest my case.

[Swordmaker]

Obama looks like he plans to look on his Presidential coin... not a full 3D appearance.

Photographs do not have adequate spacial reference encoded in the gradients, That's why his lips are flat in one of your attempts and inset on the other. You just prove our point. You really cannot get adequate 3D info out of a 2D photograph.

[Swordmaker]

Here's Obama using the settings you used for your fraudulent Shroud picture:

Where's the 3D? Lost in nose over eye, etc.

And here he is with a more reasonable offset:

Now, do you see why your settings are wrong?

[js1138]

You persist in ignoring the fact that since my original posting I have posted three series where only the angle changes.

It is a simple fact that the x-ray image is not sensitive to angle, but the shroud and Obama pictures are sensitive to angle. The x-ray image is formed pretty much the way some people are claiming the shroud image was formed — “lighted” from beneath.

Images lit this way do not show weird artifacts when processed by the emboss filter using arbitrary angles. Images lit by incident light are sensitive to angle. For an ordinary photograph, the nost natural looking effect is produced when the angle is close to the angle of incident light in the original scene.

[js1138]

You also ignor the fact that the cliam is absurd that th eshroud image is a “graph” of the distance from the clothe to the body.

The shroud image postd by diamond shows distinct pupils for the eyes, features that do correspond to differences in distance.

[Swordmaker]

You persist in ignoring the fact that since my original posting I have posted three series where only the angle changes. . . .

Images lit this way do not show weird artifacts when processed by the emboss filter using arbitrary angles. Images lit by incident light are sensitive to angle. For an ordinary photograph, the nost natural looking effect is produced when the angle is close to the angle of incident light in the original scene.

So you have... and that raises the suspicious question of why did you change the offsets on the Shroud images?

Here is your original Xray image:

Now, let's extrude it using the same settings YOU used on your bogus 3D Shroud image: Angle: 18º, Height 60 Pixels, amount 48%

What do we get? Oh, wow. We get garbage—just like you produced in your bogus Shroud picture.

Where is your claimed lack of angle dependence in back lit Xrays? Let's look at one of your examples extrusions:

Now, here is the same Xray as I extruded above using the 60 pixel (or more) offset you used in your bogus Shroud picture—which produced garbage—this time with an offset of only 9 pixels, using the exact same angle. (I did change the opacity ratio percentage from 48% to 223% to more closely match your opacity settings):

Again, Wow, it looks very similar to your examples that you claim are not dependent on angle. They aren't and the Shroud isn't. Both are, however, extremely dependent on the offset, as I have been telling you, because that is inherent in the technique.

Where is your claimed angle dependence on the Shroud? It simply does not exist. I have demonstrated that merely changing the amount of offset back to a more reasonable level restores the pseudo 3D that you claim is angle dependent. Your blurry, bogus picture is an artifact of your manipulation and/or lack of understanding of what you are doing. There is no light source angle on the Shroud.

By the way, here is your Xray, extruded to the settings used in your Shroud picture with the opacity setting you used in the Xrays:

Not very useful, is it? Unless you want a starting point for a Rorschach inkblot.

[js1138]

When I was asked for the settings I used I posted them. You persist in using settings that I did not use.

Now to prevent you from making a complete idiot of yourself in public, try this: take an image such as the x-ray, find settings that give a reasonable 3D effect, and then vary only the angle. That is my methodology in all of the examples I have posted. Anything else is just stupidity.

What you refuse to accept is that despite all the technobabble, all of these renderings are false 3D. They are just interpreting density gradients as depth. There is no guarantee that the interpretation of depth represents anything real.

There is a clue to be found, however, when you discover that a good looking interpretation goes kablooey due to changing the angle control, that the gradients in the original image were the result of incident light.

If you are so stupid to start with an interpretation that doesn’t look 3D, there is no point in playing with the angle.

Now, I have done what grey whiskers asked me to do. I published a series of images showing the effect of varying the angle. How about if you do something for me. Select an image, fiddle with it to make a plausible interpretation, then rotate the angle and show us the results.

[js1138]

May I point out that you have failed to show a series of renderings starting with one good one and demonstrating what happens whin you change the angle and nothing else.

You have also failed to explain how the pupil of the eye shows up in an image that is a graph of the distance from body to cloth.

[grey_whiskers]

Ummm, js?

That isn't what I asked you to do.

This is a cut and paste of my text, the first time I asked you to do something, in post #255 (italics done by me, right now):

Tell you what. Give us the image in #252, and a link to the original image you fed into photoshop to get that image, and the version of photoshop you used. Then tell us the exact angle you fed in, and let other people try using all that information and the original photo, if they can produce the image you did in #252.

This is a cut and paste of my text, the next time I asked you to do something, in the repeated post #256-257 (again, italics mine just now):

Which is just why he is so suspicious of your image in #252. Can you give a test image (say of Barack Obama, since nobody on this thread is a fan of his), and tell us the settings on the filter you used to get the picture in #252, and we can see what Obama looks like under the artefact of the Photoshop filter?

So, let's identify which posts since 256 and 257 are yours. I see 258 as yours where you posted what looks to my tired old eyes to be the same as post 252. And you posted the following photoshop changes and photos in order:

1) Photoshop auto levels and convert from color to grayscale.

2) Photoshop emboss, angle 125, height 30, amount 150

3) Photoshop emboss, angle -90, height 30, amount 150

4) Photoshop emboss, angle 180, height 30, amount 150

Sword, in 258, you posted something like (italics mine):

JS, Here is proof that your offset is way too large to produce anything resembling the quasi-3D image the technique will produce. As anyone can easily see, you have offset the image far too much. The yellow arrows show the neck crease, the Green, Blue, Tan and Red are blood stains... and the corresponding colors on the non-manipulated 3D image to the same landmarks.

You set the angle to ~18º (I measured it) but the offset is, as I said, not the small offset required by this techique, but rather a gross offset that places unlike objects on top unrelated landmarks.

The problem here is I don't see anything in either JS's post 250 or Sword's 258 which explicity mentions which offsets were used for which picture.

But then we get to Swordmaker's #262 which he links together the angle, the offset, and the picture, for a series of pictures varying the offset.

And in #264 he does the same for Obama.

And in #267 for the pelvic X-ray.

In your post #268, you turned this into the following (again, italics mine right now):

Now, I have done what grey whiskers asked me to do. I published a series of images showing the effect of varying the angle. How about if you do something for me. Select an image, fiddle with it to make a plausible interpretation, then rotate the angle and show us the results.

That isn't what I asked. I asked for *all* the settings.

Swordmaker explicitly showed, for three different photos of three different subjects, from three different sources, that playing with a photoshop parameter *besides* the angle can screw up the image: and in fact can screw it up in the same way as your photo from #252.

Your response was to misquote me and ignore the one parameter which makes all the difference, and then claim that Swordmaker is stupid for using that parameter at all.

The problem is, the 3-D effect you claim is present, varying only the angle, doesn't look so good when the offset is screwed around with.

The reason Swordmaker varies the offset, is not to confuse the issue over the angle, but because he couldn't duplicate YOUR first picture from #252 in any other way.

So for you to claim that "take an image such as the x-ray, find settings that give a reasonable 3D effect, and then vary only the angle. That is my methodology in all of the examples I have posted. Anything else is just stupidity." is in fact a damning indictment of yourself.

Next point.

What you refuse to accept is that despite all the technobabble, all of these renderings are false 3D. They are just interpreting density gradients as depth. There is no guarantee that the interpretation of depth represents anything real.

That is a lie, which I covered extensively BEFORE any of the photos were posted, in #237 and #251.

Real physical interactions of light are physically responsible for gradations of density in an X-ray; and by analogy, if the image is the result of a consistent physical process, and that process is at all dependent on distance (say a temperature or concentration gradient), then the image will reflect real physical information.

A picture will mimic certain features of the physical information, but attempting to extract the information will result in inhomogeneities, artefacts, and things just plain out of scale.

Look at the Obama pictures which are pseudo-3D. They look like a coin, and not a true 3-D depiction of a human face with depth to scale.

Compare that to Diamond's image of the face on the Shroud.

Real 3-D information, not a trompe d'oeil where the brain processes the image, notes similarities, and infers things that aren't there.

Cheers!

[Swordmaker]

The shroud image postd by diamond shows distinct pupils for the eyes, features that do correspond to differences in distance.

Are you referring to this picture?

What you think are "pupils" are not. They are either coins or potsherds placed on the closed eyes to keep the eyelids closed. Archaeological excavations have confirmed this tradition. Skeletons from the first and second century C.E. have been found with a coin in each eye-socket in Jewish cemetaries at Jericho and at En Boqeq. Enhancement of the microphotographs of the right eye on the Shroud seems to show the outline, a liitus staff, and some Greek letters of a Lepton minted around AD 30-31 by Pontius Pilate.

---

AN ANOMALY THAT DOES NOT DECEIVE

Confirmed by three-dimensional analysis (figure 31), the discovery was found to be definitively corroborated by its very fruitfulness, for it led to some unexpected progress in numismatic science. Four Greek letters, Y CAI, are in fact all that are needed to reconstruct the inscription TIBEPIO [Y KAI] CAPOC, "of Tiberius Caesar". But there is an anomaly: on the Holy Shroud a Latin C replaces the initial Greek K of KAICAPOC, which figures on all the coin collections known up to 1980 (see figure 32).

Figure 31: Confirmation of the three-dimensional analysis. The letters Y CAI are clearly visible at the top left, as well as the staff and even the outline of the coin.

Figure 32: above, a coin of Pontius Pilate with the staff surmounted by the letters CAICAPOC, with a Latin 'C' instead of the Greek 'K'. Below: the imprint superimposed on a coin of Pontius Pilate shows that the letters Y CAI form the visible part on the Holy Shroud of the Greek inscription: TIBEPIO [Y CAI] CAPOC, "of Tiberius Caesar", with the same anomaly: 'C' instead of 'K'.

The YCAI Problem

Though the lepta (plural of lepton) minted in Palestine were Roman produced coins, the inscription of Tiberius Caesar would have been written in Greek as TIBERIOY KAICAPOC. Was the C, where a K was expected, a misspelling? This was a problem that seemed to preclude positive identification until an actual Lituus lepton was found with the aberrant spelling. Several have since been found. This anomaly seems to give credence to the coins identification.

(Other spelling errata on Leptons of the area and era include TIBERIOU KAISAROS, TIBERIOY KAICAPOC and TIBERIOY KICAROC.)

One argument I, Swordmaker, advanced against the coins on the eyes was the fact that the Shroud image presented the coin letters in the order Y CAI when, being a mirror image, I expected them to be IAC Y (reversed as a reflection) however, it turns out that many leptons, being produced by JEWISH workers, were made with the words in the reverse order, replicating the right to left nature of Hebrew writing. These are called Retrograde Leptons and evidently the one on the right eye of the Shroud image may be of that nature.

It should be noted that Barrie Schwortz, an expert photographer and principal light photographer for STURP, is of the opinion that the Shroud image does not have the resolution to reproduce identifiable coins. He thinks that while they may indeed be coins, they could just as easily be potsherds. On the other hand, many researchers using various enhancement techniques have come to the conclusion that there are indeed Roman (Palestinian) 1st Century coins on the eyes of the image on the Shroud. IKf the Shroud is genuine, I cannot conceive of Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man, using potsherds, usually associated with the burial of poor people, to fulfill the tradition of placing something on the eyes to keep them closed. He would have used coins from his purse.

In any case, your assumption of "pupils" is mistaken.

[MHGinTN]

By way of a BTTT, following along in rapt attention! Thank you for the continuing pings to expert discussion.

[Swordmaker]

May I point out that you have failed to show a series of renderings starting with one good one and demonstrating what happens whin you change the angle and nothing else.

OK. Fine. I assumed the examples I already posted would be enough for those who could understand what was going on. I could point out your non-responses to direct questions about things that totally falsify your fraud.

Here you go, starting with the original, embossed every 18º, Height = 15 pixels, Opacity amount = 103%:

The effect of CHANGING ANGLES on the Pseudo-3D effect on the Shroud of Turin

Is that granular enough for you, or do I have to do it every 10º or every 1º? The fact is, JS, that your assertion is just flat WRONG. Period.

Now, let's do a similar experiment with changing the offsets to 1, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, and 100 pixels.

The effect of CHANGING OFFSET on the pseudo-3D effect on the Shroud of Turin

And this is proof that you perpetrated a FRAUD on the readers of this thread. The picture you posted had the offset set to somewhere between 60 and 75 pixels.

That is the ONLY way that you can create this blurry, distorted mess you needed to try to prove your assertion.

Incidentally, JS, I am far from "stupid" nor can I be easily fooled.

[grey_whiskers]

js,

You can take off your mask, now, Mr. Biden.

Gov. Palin has offered you a safe conduct if you leave quietly.

...or are you intending to begin channeling The Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

To the rest of you:

You have just seen an example of WHY transparent peer-review is so important.

Cheers!

[MHGinTN]

Something tells me ‘js’ isn’t in a ‘peer’ category.

[grey_whiskers]

Something tells me ‘js’ isn’t in a ‘peer’ category.

*Crickets*

[Swordmaker]

*Crickets*

Has JS retired from the field in disarray?

[Diamond]

js1138 has been a longtime FReeper and because of that I have been trying to find a way to give him the benefit of the doubt on this.

The only way I can see at present that js1138 was being truthful when he said the only parameter he changed is the angle, is the possibility that he might have a different version of Photoshop, and that the respective versions might have different controls for the offset. That might sound farfetched, but since I don't have Photoshop, it would be helpful to see a screenshot of Swordmakers's version of Photoshop version and of js1138's version of Photoshop.

Cordially,

[grey_whiskers]

That's great, Diamond.

Did you notice I asked for that EXPLICITLY in my post #255 this thread, before the pissing match started?

Tell you what. Give us the image in #252, and a link to the original image you fed into photoshop to get that image, and the version of photoshop you used. Then tell us the exact angle you fed in, and let other people try using all that information and the original photo, if they can produce the image you did in #252.

Science is about reproducibility under controlled conditions, right?

In #268 js1138 wrote the following:

When I was asked for the settings I used I posted them. You persist in using settings that I did not use.

(SNIP)

But js1138 did NOT post all of his settings: the dispute is that the original picture of the Shroud in 252 which js1138 gave, Swordmaker could not duplicate without fiddling with the OFFSET, which js1138 did not mention the use of, or give a value for.

In Posts #262, #264, #267, Swordmaker uses the offset and the angle, and clearly identifies each and gives the resultant picture, for The Shroud, for Obama, and for the X-Ray. In each case he shows that the blurring (present in js1138's Shroud picture) can be created by using the offset value.

But js1138 left off the offset value in his post #252 - and then has the nerve to accuse Swordmaker of confusing the isssue:

Now to prevent you from making a complete idiot of yourself in public, try this: take an image such as the x-ray, find settings that give a reasonable 3D effect, and then vary only the angle.

Swordmaker finally has to show that for a fixed offset, you NEVER get the effect js1138 claimed came from angle only. He shows you only get the effect by playing with the offset.

He then goes on to misquote me or to lie about what I asked:

Now, I have done what grey whiskers asked me to do. I published a series of images showing the effect of varying the angle.

I called him out on this as an explicit misstatement, or lie, in post #270.

Can each of you tell us the version of Photoshop, and the version of the OS you are running on?

js1138, why don't YOU go first, since I had asked you a long time ago, and it is your credibility which is in question: Swordmaker has been more forthcoming, and less prone to try to change the subject or obfuscate, throughout this thread.

Cheers!

[Religion Moderator]

Everyone, keep this thread on the subject and do not let it become “about” another Freeper. That is a form of “making it personal.”