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.

[grey_whiskers]

...and in other news, Joe Nickell is fully credentialed from Harvard, Oxford, MIT, Princeton, Cornell, Stanford, and Cal Tech. With Law degrees from Michigan and a post-doc in economics from Chicago.

...and an IQ of 330.

Cheers!

[Swordmaker]

The goofballs who suggested it referred directly to "French Re-Weaving". I had a suit done in the 80's. It uses a matching peice of excess cloth from a hem that is then spliced in to match.

Again the ad hominem attack.

I, too, have had a suit repaired by reweaving. However, that is not the known technique of "French Invisible Reweaving" in which a very expensive Arras or Tapestry was repaired by a technique designed to be invisible from both sides, duplicating the cloth and weave, and inter-twining the new threads' fibers with the old. The technique you are referring to merely interwove the threads themselves and left the ends hanging below the cloth on the inside. Invisible from the outside but easily distinguished on the inside. The French Technique is indistinguishable from BOTH sides. I have seen examples. It is not a lost art and is still done today to repair very valuable cloth.

In other words, if Benford and Marino were right, the patch would have had the same date as the original because it would have been original cloth.

Are you REALLY that much of a biased debater that you misrepresent what the argument is to people who are completely familiar with it? This is an excellent example of a strawman, set up merely to knock it down.

The patch material DID NOT COME FROM THE SHROUD. It was made of NEW materials (c. 16th Century) dyed to match the color of the original cloth and woven in the same style as the original cloth. Each new thread was inter-twined with the old threads, then the newly installed woof and warp threads were hand woven to match the original weave pattern. As such, the area of the patch that is wholly made up of new material would carbon date to the 16th Century... while a sample cut from the area where the inter-twining of old and new threads exist would give a date that is the average of amounts of both old and new.

The cloth that was actually c-14 tested was completely consumed in the process. These critics have NO basis for saying the sample was corrupted.

No, a sub-sample of the C-14 master sample has been retained. It was NOT destroyed in C-14 Testing. Again, the 3:1 herringbone is irrelevant as is your claim that no threads are missing.

This is the picture you linked to.

Gee, do you notice the sudden change in thread thickness and "stair-stepping" crispness that starts about half way up the left hand selvage and exists below diagonal line running to the lower right corner of the sample? Above the diagonal change the weave is made of tightly spun threads and is distinct in its weave with the herringbone very tight. Below, the threads are loosely spun and the weave is loose and indistict, with the steps in the herring bone appearing as a straight line instead of clearly delineated steps. In fact, the bottom portion of this particular sub-sample is pretty sloppy compared to the weave of the top portion. Is that not DIFFERENT from the cloth above the diagonal line of change? To any unbiased observer it is.

As to the "missing thread," the original sample was approximately 7 centimeters by 1 centimeter, the picture above is only a 1x.5cm sub-sample of the original sample cut from the Shroud. Your point is pointless.

Benford and Marino who came up with the invisible patch are absolute crackpots.

Perhaps, in your opinion. However, Raymond N. Rogers, who is a well respected scientist, who undertook his research into their theory with the intent of falsifying it. instead, to his amazement, found that what they had proposed was absolutely correct. That peer-reviewed research has NOT been invalidated by any scientists who have bothered to actually look at the data, the samples, or tried to duplicate his studies. In fact, it has now been confirmed by multiple independent scientists working with different methodology.

[Swordmaker]

It isn't a Los Alamos team. It is a few old Catholics who happen to work at Los Alamos that were part of a group that analyzed the shroud in the 70's.

You are correct that the STURP scientists were not backed by Los Alamos National Laboratory. Many of the were scientists that worked there and the two founding members were senior scientists at Los Alamos.

You are spreading lies when you claim that STURP members are "a few old Catholics" when the STURP team is actually composed of Catholics, Protestants, several Jews, agnostics, and at least a couple of atheists.

Quit lying about such easily refuted facts, Soliton. It might make your weak arguments stronger.

[Swordmaker]

The statement that it is a photographic negative is false.

The factoid that the Shroud is a "photographic negative" is a convenient popularization of what scientists actually know it to be. In fact, the lack of light or photographic artifacting is one of the major mysteries of the Shroud. There are not shadows or other light based image characteristics. The image on the Shroud is a quasi-terrain map in which the intensity of the image forming "pixels" is proportional to the closeness of the body to the cloth. This gives the image an appearance of being a "photographic negative" when it is not.

Again you raise a false strawman argument, knowing it has already been shot down by scientists examining the Shroud over the past 110 years since Pia Seconda took the first photograph of the Shroud and noticed the negative qualities.

That still does not invalidate Joe's point that any medieval artist would have to first conceive the concept and then work his art, perfectly, so as to "fool" 20th and 21st Century science. It ads a level of complexity to making such a fake... and also raises the question as to why such complexity is necessary to fool peasants into giving up their hard earned sous and ecus.

[count-your-change]

Nor would there a need to prove it was or could be a burial cloth of Jesus. Because people want to impart great powers to something connected with their beliefs they have to prove that the shroud is authentic. The reason “gazillions” of studies aren't being made is that access to the material is limited and most of us don't attach importance to relics like dead men’s bones and purported shrouds.
In fact in Deut. chapter 34:5,6 God hides Moses body lest it be used as a relic or worshiped and it was Satan according to Jude 9 that had a dispute over the body of Moses. With God's blocking anyone from knowing it's location Moses’ body would not be used in some sort of relic worship.

[muawiyah]

You reasoning does not compute.

Here, think of it this way. I have a piece of cloth made, possibly, in 30 AD, and another piece of cloth made, possibly, in 800 AD. They both look to be of equal age (because I am doing this in 1300 AD or thereabouts I have no way of knowing otherwise so I just go on appearances).

Having an infinite amount of time to tend to the chore I carefully weave each piece together a thread at a time.

Years later in examining my handiwork they chop off a sample right at the seam picking up some threads from the older piece and other threads from the not so older piece.

Part of each sample is carefully destroyed to perform an exacting measurement of its C-14 content.

Part of each sample is retained for later examination in light of the C-14 report.

Ain't no thang ~ very straight forward.

What it means is that to date no one has sampled the "original piece", but they've probably found evidence of a repair made in the Middle Ages with old cloth.

No doubt in the future better measurements will be made using more advanced techniques.

I find it absolutely amazing that modern people could be so opposed to discovering when and where photography was developed.

[muawiyah]

Turns out, alas, that it's not a true negative, but a 3-D negative ~ which modern computer systems can evaluate to give us a realistic representation of the individual so imaged.

No doubt the artist who came up with this process made many thousands of copies which are to be found in the back shelves of libraries throughout Eur-Asia.

[Swordmaker]

STURP used less sensitive tests for blood, and shazzam, they found it! Around the STURP team grew up a circle of quacks that found all kinds of miraculous things. The real scientists never did.

More BOVINE EXCREMENT, Soliton. We have debated this before and I have provided linked chapter and verse from peer-reviewed science while you have merely cut-and-paste from out-dated skeptic articles by non-scientists or scientists whose field of expertise is completely outside of the science they are critiquing.

It was McCrone and the original Italian team that used less sensitive tests for blood, not STURP. STURP brought in some of the world's formost experts on blood and blood fractions to do the tests using much more sensitive tests. McCrone and the Italians used tests that were presumptive but not conclusive that were designed to be used on blood that was not more than a few years old. Their tests could not recognize denatured or fractionated blood. The list of tests used by Heller (a world renowned expert on Book), Adler (another expert on blood), Cameron (who is the world's foremost expert on hemoglobins and its derivatives) that ARE specific for blood, and indeed human blood, is extensive.

The STURP dudes flipped. They took away McCrone’s samples and tried to ruin him.

More misrepresentations.

First of all, the samples were not McCrone's. They were on loan to him from STURP and are actually, at the time, the property of the exiled royal family of Italy. It was McCrone who was refusing to release the samples and was later proven to be obfuscating other's attempts to research the issues. After more than a year of trying to get McCrone to return the samples, or to pass them on to other researchers, the leaders of STURP had to physically repossess them from McCrone. When they did gain possession, they found that McCrone had violated the protocols under which he was loaned the samples, damaging them. This is undisputed.

Secondly, no one tried to "ruin" McCrone. McCrone's own statements did that well enough. I am not going to repeat what I have already posted to you on this subject, with citations from McCrone's own work changing and re-changing his "findings", as well as others, again. It is obviously pointless.

The sampling had been very closely scrutinized and no one confirms the existence of these threads and microphotographs of the samples do not show any missing threads. He (Gonella) did not have authority to distribute any samples.

Again, not true. Gonella, as the official Custodian of the Shroud, the duly designated representative of its current owner, the Pope, IS the person authorized to distribute and control who receives samples. If Gonella, the Pope's designated representative, was not authorized to release samples, WHO WAS? Only the Pope? God? Your veiled hints, without proof other than the assertion of equally biased "skeptics," that he, in collusion with other scientists such as Raymond N. Rogers, conspired to perpetrate a fraud on the world, is reprehensible.

Rogers wrote a paper that slipped through the peer review process and appeared in a real scientific journal. The press seized on it as proof that the c-14 tests were flawed. They weren’t. Rogers’ paper was nonsense covered in pseudoscience. Interestingly, he stole from McCrone in it making claims he had ridiculed earlier.

You are beneath contempt. It did NOT "slip" through the peer-review process. You only wish it did. Now you resort to slandering a dead man who cannot defend himself from your calumny. PROVE your assertion that Rogers stole ANYTHING from McCrone. PUT UP OR SHUT UP, Soliton.

The STURP true believers have lied, stolen, and violated Vatican rules to keep the myth alive.

More unfounded libel and slander. PROVE IT.

Your sole purpose on these threads is to attack other Freepers and spread falsehoods and innuendo.

[muawiyah]

The prohibition is usually understood as being against the manufacture of "shamus"(sp?) ~ ordinarily a wool/cotton or wool/linen mixed weave.

According to a rabbi in our office this prohibition is commented on as a prohibition on fraud ~ the idea being that at different points of time one thread or the other is less costly yet a clever weaver can obscure the cheaper of the two and cheat the customer.

Our standards today are far different ~ we look for mixed weaves that combine the characteristic of different materials.

[Swordmaker]

This is factually incorrect and doesn't even map to the excuse Rogers gave. It has been demonstrated that "melange" wouldn't have produced the date that was arrived at. Rogers claimed that the whole sample was from the 14th century and was a later invisible patch. He claimed that Gonella gave him threads from the middle of the samples tested. This is a lie. No threads were missing from the samples. There is no provenance for the alleged threads. No one saw Gonella take them. No one knew of their existence, and Gonella and Ricci had been ordered to return all samples to the Vatican before Rogers did his alleged tests. The Raes samples he said he had were stolen property. All of the samples taken at that time were supposed to be returned to the reliquary. Rogers was a fraud and a thieif.

Either you are lying, Soliton, or your sources are lying. You are making claims that were NEVER stated. Your claims are FALSE.

I have come to believe that you cannot comprehend the science you are reading.

Rogers did not assert that the entire C14 test sample was composed of 14th Century material. His findings were that it was composed of a mix of possible SIXTEENTH CENTURY material and original Shroud material of unknown date.

The math used to date C14 samples is easily shown to compute that a mix (a melange) of 16th Century (approximately 1532AD- well within the 16th Century) and 1st Century materials, mixed in a 40-60% to 60%-40% mixture of old to new materials will produce an average C14 date that matches the dates reported in the 1988 C14 Shroud tests. The math is not difficult. The calculation of those percentages was done by Harry Gove, the inventor of the C14 testing procedure that was used on the Shroud, when he was asked what would be the results of such a mixture, not Rogers.

It is also known that a sub-sample was retained from the C14 test prime sample as a check and control and was NOT BURNED, and is in the possession of the Custodian of the Shroud. Threads taken from that retained sample were sent to Rogers.

Your claim that the Raes Sample threads were stolen. Prove your assertion. Raes Sample threads have been released to many researchers. However, if Rogers is correct, and the Raes sample is NOT shroud material but is actually part of the patch probably added in the 16th Century. What is known is that the Raes sample threads do not match the threads of the main body of the Shroud.

[Swordmaker]

Then what is the age of the shroud?

We don't know, for certain. Most of the evidence points to a 1st Century provenance.

Physical and documentary evidence show that the Shroud was in existence at least in the 10th Century... and other evidence suggests it existed much farther back.

[Grizzled Bear]

Soliton said - I am much smarter than you and my one month is worth more than your 15 years. I will prove it.

Don't even bother, dascallie. Arguing with an anti-theist is like getting into a battle of wits with an idiot. The idiot drags you down to their level and beats you with experience.

[Grizzled Bear]

Thus spake Biden.

He sounds more like the love-child of John Kerry and Al Franklin.

[Swordmaker]

The samples tested in 1988 were not adjacent to the Raes sample. The Ricci sample was and the Vatican still has it.

I love the irony when your linked proof of your false assertion article disproves your assertion:

The Shroud of Turin Samples

The samples distributed to each of the labs involved in the testing were extracted from a corner of the Shroud of Turin directly adjacent to the site of a previous sampling done in 1973 to determine the nature of the Shroud textile - the Raes sample. The original sample extracted measured ~81mm x 21mm and weighed ~478.1mg. Since this sample contained stitching and remnant strands from the previous textile sampling, an ~ 5mm portion of the sample was trimmed from the stitched side, thus removing the stitching and shredded sample remnants. This process resulted in a sample that measured ~81mm x 16mm with a mass of ~ 300.0mg. This sample had one corner that contained a roughly triangle-shaped missing portion that was a residual of the Raes sample extraction. The resulting areal fabric density determined after taking this corner into account was estimated to be ~ 24.1mg/cm2.

The very first sentence in the very first paragraph disproves your claim. Ironic. Do you have difficulty in reading... or is just comprehending what you read?

[grey_whiskers]

???

You appear to be invoking a number of topics, any one of which could spawn an entire thread.

Slow down, slow down. Some of us still want to have time to read the Bailout threads and the Palin threads ;-)

Because people want to impart great powers to something connected with their beliefs they have to prove that the shroud is authentic.

This is intimately connected with the fact that the Shroud shows the image of a crucified man. If it were just the image of a Roman centurion picking his nose it would probably have not attracted the notice, nor been preserved for posterity. The circumstance that the unusual, not-readily-explained-nor-imitated image, was that of a crucified man, would suggest the Crucifixion of Jesus to most people in a Christian culture--whether or not the Resurrection was historically accurate, whether or not the image on the Shroud was that of Jesus. The *story* is so well known ("mindshare" for you marketing types), that the two unusual events would over time become associated -- without any *necessity* for people to "wish that the Shroud is authentic". (G.K. Chesterton once said that if there were a famous historical incident involving a man named Snith, then many years later, it would be inevitable that the histories recorded his name as 'Smith').

The reason “gazillions” of studies aren't being made is that access to the material is limited and most of us don't attach importance to relics like dead men’s bones and purported shrouds.

The reason access to the material is limited is related to the reason the Shroud is still around instead of being lost like however many other swathes of linen (or however many other fossils). If something is not noticed it does not get any special consideration, and tends to get lost over time. Fossils, as far as geologic processes go, are not marked by nature for special preservation--they get treated just like any other random piece of rock. Burial cloths, unless attached to some historical figure, aren't necessarily sought out OR kept OR preserved OR studied.

With God's blocking anyone from knowing it's location Moses’ body would not be used in some sort of relic worship.

As far as I can tell, the biblical accounts of the death of Moses and the death of Jesus follow somewhat different trajectories -- nowhere in the gospels is it suggested that Jesus' body will be "lost" to prevent relic worship; rather it is suggested that He will not *stay* dead in the first place...

Cheers!

[Grizzled Bear]

Do you have difficulty in reading... or is just comprehending what you read?

The problem is that he is much smarter than us. He'll tell you, just ask him.

[MHGinTN]

Bwahahahahaha, I see you’ve met the singular wave.

[count-your-change]

Beat evidence available 10th cen. then? O.K.

[Swordmaker]

1. They could not have sampled anything adjacent to the samples actually c-14 tested. The shroud has been put away for years.

They never said they "sampled" the shroud again. The Shroud has been put away for years, but there are lots of samples still in the hands of researchers and in the possession of the Custodian of the Shroud. So your point is, again, pointless.

2. Rogers did not have any part of the c-14 sample to test. It was all destroyed in the c-14 testing.

Yes, he did. And, no, it wasn't.

Even your linked post about the samples relates how the C14 sample was trimmed BEFORE the cut sub-samples were sent to the labs. In addition, a portion of the sample that was not trimmed was retained as a control and for future testing. Rogers received some warp and woof threads from that piece.

3. The Raes sample that he allegedly had illegally was not adjacent to the c-14 test area. It was adjacent to the Ricci sample that the Vatican still has. If they would release the sample, we could settle this once and for all, but they won’t.

Rogers did not have the Raes sample "illegally." He was authorized to possess Shroud samples. It is my understanding that Msgr, Ricci, the Vatican Archivist, "plucked" a few threads from various areas of the Shroud and did not cut any samples other than the C14 sample.

You are making false assumptions that show you to be wrong about most of your assertions and mistaken about the significance of most of the rest.

[count-your-change]

Oh alright! But just as soon as we get the economic problems of the entire world sorted out I’ll be back.