The Turin Shroud – surely the most cunning, dastardly con trick in history (14th century France)

Site banner: see how a simulated sweat imprint (my wet hand pressed down onto dark fabric) responds magnificently to 3D-rendering computer software (ImageJ) before and after tone-reversal (negative back to positive image). Remind you of anything? Like those supposedly “unique”  and “encoded” 3D-properties of the Shroud of Turin body image? For a more realistic aged/yellowed sweat imprint, see the many postings on this site since 2014 obtained with the aid of my Model 10 (imprinting off  parts, notably head and hands, of a real body (mine!) onto linen with white wheaten flour, followed by heat-development of the image to generate carbon-based and thus bleachable straw-coloured melanoidins via Maillard reactions between wheat proteins and reducing sugars). 

Update: October 29, 2016

Oh dear. I have began to acquire a hunch regarding the Turin Shroud that no one, to the best of my knowledge, has previously suggested before. Er, I now strongly suspect that the fabric is NOT linen (derived from flax)  as universally assumed, but from HEMP (derived from a sub-species of cannabis). I have added a short section to the end of this posting, and will be setting out my reasons in the COMMENTS section under this posting, currently up to 25 pre-hemp appearance.

No, there will not be a new posting on the “hemp” hypothesis for the forseeable future. OK, so in  an ideal blogging environment there would be. However, thanks to manipulative, micro-managing Google and other so-called search engines the ‘blogosphere’ is NOT an ideal environment for the dissemination of new thinking. Indeed they serve merely  passively and/or actively to frustrate attempts to put new unconventional thinking online (the same applies to wikipedia). God bless Silicon Valley and environs.

Nuff said here. First see tail end below (once has to scroll down a long way)  then see future comments for why I think the TS is NOT linen, but hemp. Yup, an  expert and impartial re-examination of that relic is Turin is I belive needed as a critical test of authenticity (while reiterating that authenticity is not and never has been this blogger’s chief concern, my being more interested in the mechanism that produced the superficial body image that is said to ‘defy scientific understanding’.

Original posting:

One picture they say is worth a 1000 words. Here’s a picture. It’s assembled from this investigator’s own recent photoarchive, so is not new.

Centre: plastic Galaxy Warrior, approx 1/12 human scale, to represent full grown man. Left: the 2D negative imprint left by that 3D figure on linen, deploying this investigator’s  novel two-stage thermal flour/oil imprinting technology – see previous posting. Right: the same contact imprint, after image -processing with ImageJ software (conversion of natural colour to monochrome, tone reversal then 3D-rendering).

It’s posted here simply to make a point – science can at least MODEL the Shroud image and its peculiar characteristics (negative image, 3D properties, microscopic properties etc). Indeed, I said as much over a year ago, here and on the (discontinued) Dan Porter site. Response from sindonology (generally pro-authenticity, indeed emphatically so  with few exceptions) has been ZILCH (bar some unexpected and appreciative comment from Thibault Heimburger MD here on this site, see below, who previously expressed strong opposition to the Garlaschelli model, also deploying a powder  (mineral-based) as imprinting agent).

I leave it to others to produce a full-size replica if they wish (science being about models that demonstrate the underlying scientific principles – not having to produce exact replicas of other people’s artefacts, least of all one that is centuries old with no accompanying documentation).

I say that the Shroud body image was fully within the capability of medieval technology, once it’s appreciated that the imprinting agent (flour/oil) is no longer visible or indeed detectable, a consequence of the oven roasting/soap washing regime. All that was left at the end was the faint, fuzzy, ghost image,  deposited on the linen fibres by a coloured fabric-staining exudate seeping out from the imprinting agent when subjected to high temperatures (though insufficiently high, approx. 200 degrees C,  to colour the linen per se).

Sorry to repeat myself, but the TS image is NOT a photograph, nor a proto-photograph, or indeed any kind of photograph. It’s a THERMOGRAPH, easily mistaken for a negative photograph.

I may add postscripts (like some acerbic comment on the prospectus for the Shroud conference planned for July next year in Pasco, Washington State, USA, it being like no other prospectus for a scientific congress I have previously encountered in a lifetime of scientific research and education). Sample (in red):

What is on the Shroud?

1.  Rigor mortis in feet shows that the victim was on the cross for a significant amount of time after he had died.

Er, what victim? What evidence does the writer have that the imprinted figure of the Man on the TS was (a) a victim (b) dead, as distinct from alive (c) crucified, bar those bloodstains. Why assume that the TS image is a photograph, equivalent to that of a cadaver laid out on a mortuary slab? How can a diagnosis of rigor mortis, one involving muscle stiffness,  be made from an image, one for which nothing is known for certain as to the mechanism of imaging? Attempting to run before one can walk (in this instance running with the pro-authenticity ball)?

What about the recent Lucotte et al paper that,  based on detailed microscopy, identifies the “bloodstains”  on a Riggi di Numana (1978) sticky tape sample taken from the subject’s ‘face’ at the time of the STURP visit as accumulations of  specific named coloured minerals – hematite, biotite, cinnabar etc?

Why travel (in my case) 6000 miles to  a so-called conference for which the prospectus shows such glaring pro-authenticity bias, and indeed scarcely mentions forgery scenarios, with frequent references to the radiocarbon dating  (1260-1390) as if some kind of problem or mistake, at odds with everything else?

Monday 19th September:

On a lighter note:

A vicar returns to his parked car to find it looks like the one in this photo:

What should he do next?

1. Search the neighbourhood thoroughly, on the assumption that missing wheels came off simultaneously without him noticing? In other words – a freak occurrence.
2. Assume it was an Act of God, maybe some kind of personal message, and use it as the subject of his next sermon? In other words – a supernatural event.
3. Assume that someone had jacked up his car to remove the wheels. (There might even be visible jack marks on the road, but one cannot assume that). In other words: a plausible explanation, not necessarily capable of immediate proof.

Clue: might something as simple and obvious as a jack and its human operators, neither visible in the photograph,  have been the true agent of change, both having to be IMAGINED, not conveniently left behind at the scene to assist with investigation…

Still Sep 19: it’s now just past midday here in the sunny Sarf of France:

Back, briefly, very briefly, to that venue for the 2017 Shroud Conference: it’s the TRAC Center, Pasco, Washington State. Here’s a Google Street View of the stunning architecture one will behold on arrival:

Er, yes. A fine example of its style (post modernist, indeed post most things one might say).

On a brighter note, Hugh Farey’s BSTS Newsletter (No.83) has just appeared on the shroud.com site.

As usual, there’s some interesting and perceptive comment on a number of issues. I may return later with some of my own.

The main reservation one has with the BSTS Newsletter is that it doesn’t invite or accept comments (but then the same might be said for its shroud.com host, bar those ancient undated comments that can be found on diligent site-searching – arguably mere window-dressing!).

I’m not sure what the solution is for a society  newsletter – given it has no ambitions to maintain a 24/7 internet presence. Suggestions invited.

Back again, Sep 21

So what am I doing to occupy my free time, while waiting for the world to notice there’s finally an explanation for the oh-so-enigmatic Shroud image? (Nope, I’m not relying on sindonology to spread the word, or even the UK’s hidebound anti-science media).

Answer: I’m attempting to marry the oil/flour-imprinting model with the “blood story”, notably the ‘blood before body image’ mantra.

Progress? Yes, there’s progress, the result of going back and taking another look at the contrast-enhanced (or as I prefer to say, contrast-restored) Shroud Scope pictures. Here are two from the same “spear site” in the side of the chest at two different levels of magnification.

I have just noticed this morning something I should have spotted years ago when first posting these pix. It was NOT necessarily ‘blood before image’, given that the flour-imprinting model provides TOTALcontrol over which parts of the body to imprint, or not to imprint. It could be ‘blood without  image’ in those parts where there’s blood!  Can anyone see what I’m driving at? Look for pale areas, paler, that is, than either the blood OR THE BODY IMAGE!

Yup,  I now suspect that at least some of the areas earmarked for blood were deliberately left free of body image, i.e. flour, at least for the site above, and I believe, for a number of other blood sites.

See this earlier experiment with masking/protection from imprinting agent that illustrated the principle of blood-without-image.

Left: masking to protect underlying skin from imprinting agent. Right: roasted imprint before washing.

Attenuated imprint after washing, both before and after addition of “blood” (beetroot juice) to the protected image-free areas.

I also believe these pix show evidence for two types of superimposed blood-imaging, maybe separated by a considerable time interval (decades at least).  The first blood was real, or a reasonable approximation thereof, while the second  ‘touching-up’ blood was entirely artificial, e.g. the particulate, non-organic mineral mix discovered by Lucotte et al  ( hematite, biotite etc). Which is which? Hard to be certain at present, but I suspect that the first blood was the wishy-washy plum-coloured areas, maybe much bolder to start with, and then largely flaked off. That was followed by the much denser red-brown additions of mineral paint that one sees above.

I may append more pix in due course that make the same points – painting blood initially onto image-free areas followed later by touching up with ‘artificial’ blood.

 Back again: here’s another enhanced Scope picture showing the bloodstain on the wrist:

Many moons ago, I was directed to this picture, and instructed to note the ‘serum halo’ at extreme top left, extending beyond that dense tip of the limb. My reply? How come it’s seen in a Shroud Scope photo, taken by Durante in 2002 in visible light? Aren’t those serum haloes supposed to be seen in uv light only? And if it’s a serum halo at the one location, why don’t we see them at the edge of every single bloodstain (no reply!).

Now hold your laptop at arms length, take in the entire image. Do you see what I see – namely a pale zone, as if blood had been painted onto an image-free zone?  In other words, what have been described as ‘serum haloes’ at least in visible light may be nothing of the sort, but parts of a blank image-free zone that were not completely painted over/infilled with blood.  One could go a step further (possibly a step too far) and suggest that the fluorescence attributed to “serum” exudate  under uv light is again nothing of the sort, or at any rate not the entire explanation. Linen has an intrinsic blue fluorescence under uv light that in my model survives oven-roasting in the areas that are free of flour imprint.  So who’s to say that the blue fluoresence in and around the Shroud’s bloodstains is not due to the linen per se in image-free zones deliberately selected by the ‘forger’ for painting with blood AFTER oven-heating and washing? It makes sense, does it not, to apply the blood to image-free zones AFTER those two drastic steps that generate the final fuzzy, washed-out looking body image, but which would damage or wash out blood that was applied too soon in the procedure.

 Back again (still Sep 21)

Here’s another example – upper part of one of the forearms: Note the many pale areas in and around the blood, paler than body image:

Serum haloes? I hardly think so, not in a photograph taken under visible light… Nope, I say the blood was painted onto carefully pre-selected  areas that were carefully kept free of  image-imprinting medium, ie. flour.

 September 22

Which of these two ‘event venues’ would you prefer to use for something billed as an ‘international conference’? The one on the left, or the one on the right (main entrance shown in both instances)?

In fact, they are pictures of the same venue – that chosen in Pasco, Washington State for the 2017 International Shroud Conference.

It’s amazing what can be done with a fish eye lens, one that makes straight facades seem pleasingly curved, and waiting till evening for some low-level artificial lighting…

Some might think that tarted-up TRAC image is not the only instance one could cite where a warped and glossy view has been substituted for the real thing. Warped and glossy sells so much easier and quicker!

Here’s a link for those wishing to book the TRAC Center Pasco for THEIR international conference!

 Sep 23 2016

In just 1 month and 1 day, the flour/oil imprinting model will be two years old!

I discovered it initially through trying to scorch linen with hot metal at lower temperatures, impregnating the linen with dry white flour. Success, as reported in the above posting on my sciencebuzz site (Oct 24 2014). That’s when a crucial step was taken – to see if one could ‘turn the technology on its head’, and imprint off cold metal, or any other 3D template for that matter!). Again, success! The horse brass or brass crucifix could be smeared with oil, dusted with flour, pressed onto linen to leave an oil/flour imprint, and then it was the linen that was gently roasted!

First flour/oil imprint from a cold 3D template, October 2014, using a hot oven for image development.

I should have the tried imprinting off human flesh – like my own hand – but didn’t, not immediately. Instead the research took off at a  tangent in an entirely new direction, time-consuming and useful after a fashion (helping to exclude rival models like wet dye imprinting, sulphuric acid-etching etc.).  But it finally looped  back, some 6 months later, to the same science, the same technology, i.e. oil and flour.

Yup, two years almost since the flour/oil model was flagged up, but you wouldn’t know it from scanning the ‘mainstream’ sindonology literature, still hung up on its uv laser pulses, neutron beams etc! How  much longer before these narrative-driven enthusiasts return to planet Earth?

 Sep 24 2016

ADVANCE NOTICE: 2018 INTERNATIONAL SHROUD CONFERENCE – DUXFORD AERODROME, UK !

Venue’s chief attractions? Ample floor space – can easily accommodate the thousands expected! Spillover easily accomodated onto hundreds of square miles of surrounding fenland. Handy too for London (Stansted) Airport.  (Duxford’s present hangars and runways are presently being used temporarily for display of WW2 vintage aircraft).

Why Duxford?  Well, it’s part of a carefully-planned recruitment drive for sindonology, you see,  the surrounding area boasting as it does the highest concentration of PhDs in the UK – it’s called Cambridge University!

The fact that Duxford’s a mere half hour’s drive from where I happen to live had  ABSOLUTELY nothing whatsoever to do with  the decision…

My role?  I’m glad you asked that. I shall be the patron, prime mover and star attraction, needless to say,  using the Conference to promote my thermal flour/oil imprinting model for the Turin Shroud. (The old adage that goes: “Invent a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door” being demonstrably false …).

 Sep 26

Hey ho. One has just raised the model another notch on the dimensions scale, doubling the height (now approx 1/6th human) and trebling the width:

The “Hulk” left performed approximately the same as the “Galaxy Warrior” right, though it has to be said that plastic is somewhat inferior to human skin for imprinting purposes. (it’s to do with the efficiency with which a thin dusting of flour transfers from the plastic to the wet linen).

 Sep 28, 2016

See below the  snapshot of an experiment, correction, two related experiments, both performed yesterday. They are probably worth a posting to themselves. But there’s no point in my continually adding new postings to this site, for reasons that should be apparent to those who have noted my earlier observations re what is clearly a boycott by sindonology on a model that was submitted for scrutiny well over a year ago – including the shroudstory site while still active. (I exclude Thibault Heimburger MD and a handful of others from that, while awaiting with interest TH’s conclusions from his flagged-up experimental evaluation of my model when complete).

Expt.1 (left): effect of stepped temperature increases on colour development in the flour/oil imprinting model, using own hand as template. Expt.2 (right) :  testing a prediction from Expt. 1, namely that linen could be folded and scrolled into compact package for oven-heating provided there was careful control of time and temperature, with  option of intermediate inspection, i.e. removal from oven,  to check on progress and gauge when best to stop heating.

Late insert: note the two creases across the back of the hand in Expt.1. They unintentionally/fortuitously  model a feature visible on the TS, one I used to refer to as “baked-in creases”, notably the prominent one that is seen in the neck/chin region. I’ll expand on that detail here in a day or two. For now I’d simply say that I’ve always maintained that those creases on the TS that match the image colour, but have an image-free central zone, constitute prima facie evidence for a contact image that is imprinted under manual pressure, out of sight of the artisan(s), allowing the blemish to go unnoticed  until it’s too late.  More later.

And here’s the compact folded/rolled linen suspended in a fan oven.

The flour/oil imprinted wet linen was first allowed to dry, a spacer sheet of blank linen placed on top of the imprint, the two folded in half along the shorter of the two dimensions, and the assemblage then rolled up, starting at the fold.

This posting is long enough as it is,  without adding more screed, so the thinking behind the above experiments, and the unexpected windfall (Expt.2) will be continued in Comments below.

Here are the imprints, before v after washing, obtained from the rolled-up linen. Not bad, eh?

Here’s the same, after 3D-rendering in ImageJ. Not bad eh?

October 5, 2016:

This comment appeared from Stephen Jones yesterday on his cantakerous so-called “blog”, read poison pot. (Or should that be ‘plot’, given his madcap KGB theory re the Shroud’s radiocarbon dating?).

“Now that Porter’s blog has closed Berry has a problem in that he cannot post comments to the two major Shroud blogs (Porter’s and mine) so as to entice their readers to view his minor Shroud anti-authenticist blog.”

I’ve just this minute searched google.uk under (shroud of turin) and confirmed what I have suspected for a while, namely that this site has steadily been closing the gap with Jones’s. Right now, mine is immediately behind his in the listings (both currently top of page 4). Mine has been gently rising these last few weeks, Jones’s site site steadily sinking. See the first two returns on this morning’s Page 4:

Stephen will have to find this entry for himself. I have ceased alerting him to any new content here, or linking with his site.  All it does is elicit more abuse and misreporting (like claiming I post anonymously to his site – a mischievous and potentially damaging claim if ever there was, as he knows full well – given I always make my identity clear, previously  as “sciencebod”, as registered with Blogger,  or more recently appending my real name in full to the end of a brief comment, alerting him to my ‘thermograph’ model).

As for the description of my style as “discursive” (a term one rarely encounters), maybe Stephen needs to learn the difference between hypothesis-driven experimentally-based science on the one hand and his agenda-driven non-experimental polemics on the other, the first being open to new suggestions and ideas, the latter essentially closed. The first may seem aimless wandering to the impatient and uninitiated. It took this reseacher from Spring 2012 to Autumn 2014 to discover flour/oil imprinting. The last 2 years have been a process of cementing the model as feasible, realistic, soundly-based in theory  etc etc. Call it ‘discursive’ if you like Stephen. I say it’s patient and thorough, leaving no stone unturned.

 October 6, 2016

What was that you were saying about “minor” blog, Mr. Stephen E. Jones? You really do need to check and re-check your facts before getting too puffed up with your own self-importance – or dismissive of others…

Postscript: this investigator has other interests too, above and beyond the Shroud of Turin, having set up his generalist ‘sciencebuzz’ site in 2009. See the most recent posting, setting out my view on the true purpose of Stonehenge (and indeed, most stone circles and/or henges in Neolithic  Britain) namely as sites for AFS (avian-facilitated skeletonization), better known as “sky burial”, followed in many instances by facile end-stage cremation of the mainly-excarnated bones.

http://colinb-sciencebuzz.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/its-time-to-get-real-about-stonehenge.html

Nope, not pleasant to contemplate, but there were probably sound practical reasons for employing this method of disposal of the dead in an era that predated bronze and other metal tools for excavating graves and/or lack of dry timber for fuel- efficient funeral pyres.

October 9, 2016

Have just taken a quick look at Stephen Jones’s site. He seems to have erased all those pejorative references to me and this site that I was commenting on above!

Here’s a passage in his current posting that I consider totally bizarre:

… Turin amateur photographer Secondo Pia (1855–1941) took the first photographs of the Shroud and discovered that the negative on his photographic plate was a photographic positive, which meant that the Shroud image was a photographic negative! See the above negative photograph of the Shroud [right], which is a photographic positive, thus proving the Shroud image is a photographic negative [left].

Here’s the result of an exercise I did back in January this year.  Compare the two images, top and bottom. What would you, dear reader, or Stephen Jones conclude?

The one on top is clearly a negative, i.e. light/dark reversed, as can be seen by looking at the lower image that has been tone-reversed.

So that means the top image is a photographic negative, right, because it responds to tone-reversal to give a positive?

No, of course not. The top image is NOT a photograph (in the first instance). It’s a contact imprint, a brass-rubbing to be precise, selected from internet photo-archives. Like all CONTACT imprints, it is tone-reversed, compared with the brass from which the image was obtained by rubbing.

Jones’s logic is flawed, and seriously so, given the blind spot it reveals about the nature and provenance of the Turin Shroud. He may have other grounds for rejecting the idea that it’s a contact imprint, but baldly making the statement one reads above to support his “resurrection image” ideas  – ones that are emblazoned on his site’s tagline –  is frankly unbelievable, coming as it does from someone who boasts a science degree.

Note: the above exercise would have been better if I could have found a rubbing taken from a brass that had been cast in a mould to give smooth contours (as distinct from the line- engraving technique) since the retsored ‘positive’ would have looked even more ‘photograph-like’. I shall keep hunting those photo archives for just such a image that matches the TS image characteristics more closely.

Afterthought: for other recent results with imaging my own hand,  which some may prefer to plastic figurines, see the posting preceding  this one, and another on a resurrected site (abandoned 3 years ago, and presently below the search engine radar!):

Here’s a link to the  posting:

https://strawshredder.wordpress.com/2016/10/11/in-photos-10-simple-steps-for-reproducing-a-turin-shroud-like-image/

Having discovered that the above posting appeared briefly, then disappeared from my search engine listings (past 24 hrs, past week, past month  etc) I became curious, and posted to my currently dormant sciencebuzz site, addressing some of the more controversial aspects of sindonology, like the shameless intermixing of science and pseudoscience, which has been a bone of contention these last 5 years or so:

Here’s a screen grab of the title page:

Here’s the link (in full):

http://colinb-sciencebuzz.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/turin-shroud-how-agenda-driven-so.html

Guess what? It shared the same fate, appearing briefly, then disappearing completely (and I mean COMPLETELY, not even searchable under its full title!). It’s been ‘disappeared’, to use the current jargon. thanks those shadowy forces unknown – no doubt  with a big stake in keeping the age-old TS show on the road…

Go figure as they say…  It’s not just the print  and other mass media that are being manipulated (and filtered!)  by certain vested interests in sindonology, but the internet too! I shall continue to speak my mind, regardless of whether my views are searchable or not. The truth will out… It’s just a matter of time, with the need to remain patient and focused on essentials.

16:30, October 16, 2016

Here’s a screen shot of the sitemeter supplied by my sciencebuzz site, showing the cumulative number of visits to most postings:

Sitemeter for my sciencebuzz site, Oct 16, 2016

Just 18 hits in 6 days for my most recent posting? In fact, most of those 18 accrued in the first day or two when the current posting was first posted, and visible to those checking most recent postings. Then the number froze at the above 18 for several days (20 at the time of writing), coinciding with the disappearance of my site from searches under (shroud of turin) and  even the posting’s full title!

Why am I reporting this? Because my Shroud of Turin investigation was intended – probably uniquely – as a day by day, month by month, year by year report in real time on the INTERNET  of an actual hands-on  research project. Anything that prevents my findings – or conclusions therefrom – must, for an accurate and complete record,  also be reported. It’s as important, if not more so, to report these failures of one’s current thinking to be searchable online as it is to resolve difficulties and uncertainties re the nature of the Shroud image. To say that I’m less than enamoured with the internet’s most resorted-to search engine would be an understatement. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – its rankings are clearly get-attable by those with money, influence or both... Something needs to be done…

October 29, 2016: See update just added to the start of this posting.

Thank you Barrie M,Schwortz, STERA President for your splendid photo of the unused portion of the TS sample supplied to Arizona for radiochemical dating.

Linen?  “Fine linen” as per biblical account, supplied to cross by Joseph of Arimathea? ?  Really?

OK, so some consider it and the contiguous samples supplied to Oxford and Zurich are/were not part of the original TS, but medieval repaired regions. I don’t as it happens, but that’s by the way. I personally doubt that what one sees above is linen, and that it’s actually hemp. No, the reasons are nothing to do with the gross appearance, but far more subtle and indirect, ones that will take some time to explain. Please check comments on this thread, starting today (29 Oct) for why one should  not uncritically accept the dogma (probably 600 years old at least) that the fabric one sees above, and indeed the entire TS, really is “linen”, i.e. flax-derived fabric.

Afterthough added 1st Nov, 2016

The above photograph of the Arizona sample risks making the TS fabric seem more rustic, and sack-cloth like than is really the case, due to the enlargement. Assuming the scale is marked off in millimetres, I have shrunk the photogaph in MS Paint so as to get the scale to match the mm graduations on my own steel rule. Here’s the result, both for the above photogaph, and another picture of the same sample discovered in Google image archives, but without the scale.

Shame about the loss of definition. But I still think it unlikely that I personally would have immediately described the sample as linen if shown the above photographs ‘blind’ and unlabelled , so to speak, regardless of enlargement.  Indeed, I doubt whether I’d have been convinced otherwise if told that the samples were exceedingly old, making linen seem less like linen.

Incidentally, does anyone know whether Gilbert Raes, Ghent University’s textile expert expressed any opinion on the assumed flax-derived origin of the TS when removing his ‘Raes’ corner in 1973? (It was from the ‘side strip’ needless to say, a questionable site to sample, some might think, about which I shall have more to say later, maybe with a new and original explanation for why that strip was excised and then reattached.

Have belatedly tracked down Barrie M.Schwortz’s pdf report on his macro-photographic mission. Yes, the scale is in millimeters.

Click to access arizona.pdf

Note the fatness of the threads, elsewhere quoted as comprising some 200 fibres!

http://www.academia.edu/4294684/Microscopic_and_macroscopic_characteristics_of_the_Shroud_of_Turin_image_superficiality

Hardly fitting the biblical description of “fine linen” one might think…

Have now tracked down a summary of Gilbert Raes’ investigation of TS fibres.My italics:

From textile expert Gilbert Raes in Shroud Spectrum International, 1991, available on shroud.com:

Analysis of the primary material of the threads
Several  microscopic  preparations  were  made  from  the  fibers  extracted  from  the  warp  and  weft  threads  of  Pieces  I  and  II,  as  well  as  from  the  sewing  thread.  The  preparations  were  examined  under  polarized  light  in  order  to  obtain  better  contrast.  The  basic  fiber  was  indisputably  linen,  for  both  Piece  I  and  Piece  II  and  for  the  sewing  thread.  The X-  and  V- structures observed are very characteristic and leave no doubt about the primary material.

Click to access ssi3839part3.pdf

But what are the “X-and V-structures”? Are they truly diagnostic for linen – there being no mention of hemp,  there being no specific reference to “X-and V-structures” in the admirably  detailed Czech paper by Wiener et al cited earlier (though it’s possible that X and V  are shorthand terms for the opposite directions of rotation described in Wiener et al’s  final section of polarised light microscopy).

Even as non-specialists, one would have wished for a fuller account of the techniques being applied, instead of being exposed  (as above) to telegraphic technical jargon, being kept in then dark as to the ‘shortlist’ of options re textile type that was under consideration.

There has to remain a scintilla of doubt as to whether hemp was positively excluded, or indeed considered… I repeat: is the TS really made of linen?

Here’s my initial attempt to estimate the number of fibres in a modern linen thread. I ‘unspun’ a stretch of dyed thread, then cut off a small section, approx 1cm, then teased out one end with a pair of needles.

Dyed linen, excised threads, needles, teased out fibres.

Closer view of above. Are there really 200 fibres per thread asclaimed for the Shroud? Half that number or less one would think…

Update: Nov 3

I began to have second thoughts about that estimate of 100 max fibres per dyed thread above, and started to suspect the rough and ready way of counting them (as per preceding image).

So I tried a different method, teasing out a short length of thread (less than 1cm) into small clumps of fibres, then ‘harvesting them’ with electrostatically-charged sticky tape (yup, the tape acquires an electrostatic charge when pulled from its reel!).

I’ve over- rather than underestimated the fibre count where there are still clumps of fibres, and counting all fragments, regardless of length, but with those two provisos, now consider that 200 is NOT an unreasonable fibre count for a modern linen fibre.

Update: Nov 13

Stephen E.Jones has this morning posted the following diagram to his current “image superficiality” posting, source unacknowledged.

Shame about his commentary, which imagines the “plant cell” shown on the left to be a magnified component of the fibril/microfibrils (right). It’s of course the other way round – the fibrils/microfibrils are a magnified part of the primary cell wall of the cell shown on the left.

Neither is it correct to describe the primary cell wall as “rigid” – it’s quite the opposite, in fact, being highly flexible and extensible.

I’ve sent him a corrective, but this demonised bogeyman does not expect to see a correction, far less a mention of me by name.

Update: 12:25 (still 13 Nov)

Glory be. Jones has replaced the above diagram with this one – and got the commentary right this time:

One day I may decide to devote an entire posting (on my sciencebuzz site) to the plant primary cell wall – a truly amazing piece of bio-engineering, given the multiple functions it has to perform.  There’s so much that folk (and the mass media) take for granted… The schools and universities too fail in my opinion to instil a proper sense of wonder as regards the natural world in which we live. Is it any wonder that those  same pupils in later life then fall prey to this or that snake oil salesman offering pseudo-scientific substitutes that ‘appeal to the imagination’. Less imagination please – more attention to the small miracles performed each day by living organisms.

November 30: Title  and image from the most recent posting on my sciencebuzz site (October 13, 2016):

“Turin Shroud : how the agenda-driven so-called science train came to be derailed”

Here we see the almost inevitable outcome of operating with a ‘one-track mind’.  The latter is fair description of most sindonologists who, with few exceptions, are unable to bring themselves to comment (whether favourably or otherwise) on my flour-imprinting model.  Yes,  most so-called (or self-styled) “scientists” who operate a one-track mind sooner or later come to grief in the above fashion, never to be see or heard of again.

2nd Dec 2016:

Buchner funnel with chemically-inert sintered glass filter. See proposed application (comments, this posting), after suitable modification (electrical heating element inserted/wrapped around the material on the disc).

 

Tuesday Dec 6, 2016

Here’s a tweet with accompanying piccy taken yesterday at the Royal Society of Medicine, London.

My daughter Miriam, a medical researcher in nephrology at Cambridge University, has just added another feather to her cap, in the form of a prize (awarded jointly with another Cambridge researcher in a different field) for her work in linking resistance to bacterial infection of the kidney with a properly functioning sodium pump.

Well done Miriam. You are a credit to us all, your Mum and Dad especially.

 Dec 11, 2016:   Day 2, Turin

Halleluja. Your blogger has finally been within a stone’s throw from where the Shroud is housed.  Admittedly it was from the top deck of the moving double-decker city tour bus, which explains the hand rail in my picture:

(Oops. The Hotel Urbani on Via Saluzzo  is not allowing me to upload my photograph – it’s a bandwidth thing you know – the hotel’s lousy wifi having  kept me disconnected from the internet for a full 24 hours no less until registering not just one but TWO complaints at the desk!).

Did you know that King Umberto only handed the Shroud over to Turin  on strict condition that it stayed in Turin (according to the running commentary on the bus tour)?

Dec 12, 2016

Let’s try again on that fleeting glimpse of the Shroud’s home , it being taken from a moving city tour bus with hand rail obscuring the view. . (Btw: the old historic heart of Turin, “old” being mainly 16th century, and later is truly, truly  impressive,  especially packed with swarms of Christmas shoppers,  despite – or because of – the largely rectilinear street grid plan).

 Added note: March 13, 2017

Here is some additional work on that “Hulk” imprint from earlier, requested on another site, to see the effect of the “Zeke” contrast filter available on Windows 10.

As-is photograph (left); post Zeke filter (right)

Close-up of particulate imprinting medium (roasted flour/oil) , post Zeke filter

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