Shroud of Turin and the Resurrection of Jesus & More

notes - Nerve Toxin and Lemonade

Nathan Wilson's father has jumped into the fray over his son's totally unscientific Shadow Shroud hypothesis. Now, I have no argument with a father standing up for his son and defending him. But this is a bit weird:

On his advocacy blog, Doug Wilson, Nathan's father, has written:

[A]dversaries [are] upset because this discovery [shadow shroud] came out of the Moscow Christ Church/New St. Andrews community. I am afraid there is no reasoning with this group [meaning those who disagree]. If Nathan had discovered the cure for cancer, or a way to rid the world of Barry Manilow songs, or the way to peace in the Middle East, they would still insist on venting their spleen. In this world of petty malice, the issue is not the argument, or the facts, but rather the push and pull of emotional politics. But what such people considered  as "beneath consideration" (because it would bring well-deserved  recognition to Nathan, and to NSA) are now having to deal with a  theory that is being taken seriously all over the world. Now what will they do? I am not sure, but it will probably involve sputtering." [brackets mine]

On my primary website, I have avoided the subject of Doug Wilson, Christ Church Moscow and this small Christian school called New St. Andrews College. But here I will bring it up. Those who wish to may go read Doug Wilson's Blog* and also an article appearing on the Southern Poverty Law Center website*. Here are a few choice quotes from the article:

Wilkins and Wilson [Nathan's father, part founder of Nathan's college and pastor at Nathan's church] have together probably done more than any others to construct the theology now animating much of the neo-Confederate movement. But there is more to their ideology than a defense of the South and slavery. [brackets mine]

The world as Wilson sees it is divided not by race but by religion ( biblical Christians versus all others. As he says in one of his books, "[I]f neither parent believes in Jesus Christ, then the children are foul ( unclean."

Woman "was created to be dependent and responsive to a man," Wilson writes. Feminists seek "to rob women of their beauty in submission." Women should only be allowed to date or "court" with their father's permission ( and then, if they are Christian, only with other Christians.

If a woman is raped, the rapist should pay the father a bride price and then, if the father approves, marry his victim.

Cursing one's parents is "deserving of punishment by death," Wilson adds. "Parental failure is not a defense." And Christian parents, by the way, "need not be afraid to lay it on" when spanking, he says.

Indeed, "godly discipline" would include spanking 2-year-old children for such "sins" as whining. (On a similar note, Dabney called opposition to whipping wrongdoing slaves "Godless humanitarianism.")

Wilkins summed up many of his and Wilson's ideas in 1997, when he told The Counsel of Chalcedon, a Reconstructionist journal edited by Morecraft, that he wanted "the principles upon which the South stood" reinstated.

The whole point of criticism of Nathan Wilson's "theory" is that, while Nathan created something that looks like the images on the Shroud of Turin, it is not at all like the images as they are constituted chemically and physically. One chemist, who has talked with Wilson, says that while he can create a glass of nerve toxin that looks like lemonade, that doesn't make it lemonade; and Wilson's Shadow Shroud is that much unlike the Shroud of Turin.

* Links:

http://www.dougwils.com/

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=376

notes - A Simple Problem for the Shadow Shroud

It is a well known fact that the images on the Shroud of Turin are superficial. At any place on the real Shroud where there is a brownish colored image, the image is confined to the outermost two or three fibers of the thread. Look inside the thread and you will find white fibers. The color is only on the outside.

See: http://www.shroudstory.com/shadowshroud.htm

For example, on the real Shroud of Turin the tip of the nose is brown. This is because a superficial color has formed there; and it is not at all deep. Chemical analysis tells us that the brown color at the surface is an amorphous caramel-like substance adhering to just a few fibers.

On the Shadow Shroud created by Nathan Wilson of Moscow, Idaho, the tip of the nose  is brown because it was not bleached by the sun. We don't even need to look beneath the surface of Wilson's image to realize that below the topmost fibers, all the fibers of the thread will also be brown. It is impossible with sunshine to bleach the inside of a thread without bleaching the outside.

That is but one of many reasons why Wilson's Shadow Shroud is not like the Shroud of Turin. His claim that a medieval could have created the Shroud using his method is false.

notes - The Shadow Shroud

Well the Shroud of Turin as a news subject got quite a bit of attention during Holy Week. ABC World News Tonight did a story on a hypothesis by Nathan Wilson, an English teacher at a small Christian college, New St. Andrews College, in Moscow, Idaho. Wilson thinks he can show how a medieval artisan might have created the images on the Shroud. I responded with a page on my website entitled "What Is Wrong with the Shadow Shroud"

Shroud of Turin Facts 2005

The ABC story was followed up by an AP Story in over 100 newspapers with some quotes from me. Then a radio discussion on a widely syndicated talk show featured Wilson and I.

These were Peter Jenning's exact words on his television broadcast: "The Shroud of Turin has mystified scientists for years. Now a literature professor from Idaho says he can prove it's a fake."

In fairness, I doubt that Nathan Wilson said that. On his website he is more precise and less certain. I wonder if anyone at ABC read it). He writes: "the results of a crude experiment that could potentially explain how the Shroud was produced . . . The Shadow Theory postulates that such an image could be created using only painted glass and sunlight."

Actually he DOES NOT do this, as I explain on my website. He has created an image that looks something like the Shroud, but he fails to meet almost all of the chemical, physical and forensic characteristics of the image.

One of the best explanation I found on the Internet comes from Frank Cheng, a chemist at the University of Idaho. Being in the same town, he has tried to reason with Wiison.

Cheng writes: "However, since a phenomenon cannot be explained it doesn't mean it's faked. His faux-Shroud doesn't conform to the chemical and physical aspects of the Shroud. Just because he has a look alike doesn't mean he has the explanation. I can produce two glasses one filled with lemonade and another with a nerve-toxin both looking quite similar. The chemical contents are dramatically different though."

So far, many archeologists, historians, chemists, physicists, botanists, palynologists, forensic pathologists, image analysts, art historians and textile experts have expressed disagreement with Wilson's hypothesis. I have yet to see one scientist agree with him.

Wilson has accomplished nothing except to convince many people who get ALL their news from television that the Shroud is a fake.

notes - To commit lunacy to posterity

The most recent issue of Sindone News is at once uproariously funny, sad and a tad bit insulting. How can an intelligent person read it and not see in it a pitiful attempt to gloss over the truth and fabricate history?

The publication of this puff piece is to commit lunacy to posterity.

Moreover, it will only expand the divide between the Clique of Turin and those who recognize that the restoration was reckless. It will only clarify that there are two points of view: Turin's and those who give credence to peer-reviewed scientific journals.

A simple example will illustrate the fabrication of history. Tom D'Muhala, Isabel Piczek and Michael Minor wrote:

"The international media was well represented at the conference. Representatives from many major newspapers, magazines, television networks and film and documentary producers were among the media who attended the conference. NBC News from New York City sent a crew of four to film and cover the conference."

And how much news was reported? The Fort Worth, Texas, newspaper did write two incredibly inaccurate, deeply buried stories. Other than that I saw no coverage. In fact, I hardly saw any media people at all. Who is kidding who?

And how are we to interpret these words by Pier Luigi Baima Bollone? What can he possibly mean? Who are those who among believers "tend to interpret their own work as a form of privileged relationship with God."? Are they to be compared to atheists he mentions? Good grief. How judgmental Bollone is. He wrote:

"Psychologically it happens that those who work with the Shroud tend to interpret their own work as a form of privileged relationship with God. This may be seen both in the believer and in those who as atheists believe that his or her God is Reason or Truth. Privileged relationships are by nature exclusive and it is for this reason that there are - at least in my personal opinion - some attitudes of intolerance towards those who are working in a parallel direction.

"This is not right," wrote Bollone, "Neither for the image that the Shroud bears which we are called upon to study, nor for the tolerance of the true scientist such as, among many others, Vignon, Barbet, Hynek and, in more recent times, the unforgettable Alan Adler and Ray Rogers."

Turin has made a series of mistakes. The restoration was one and they seem intent on keeping it a lively issue until all fall into line. Their involvement in a stage-managed conference, which only signals their attitude, is another: their way or the highway; their science or peer-reviewed science. This puff piece is the latest.

In the future, I am sure, there will be open and honest Shroud conferences. And perhaps there will also be carefully orchestrated conclaves with glorious reports. But it would seem to me that sooner or later the Vatican will realize how far things are out of control.

Nothing would be better for advancing the science of the Shroud than cooperation with Turin. But it will not happen by pretending.

Dan Porter

notes - New Shroud of Turin Website

Check out this new website. It is truly informative: The Sugar Coated Shroud of Turin

The introduction reads:

For decades, scientists, archeologists and historians have struggled to answer two questions: how old is the Shroud and how were the images made. If we could answer those questions, perhaps we could know if it really is the burial cloth of Jesus.

Studies in 1978 seemed to suggest that it was the real thing. Then, in 1988, carbon 14 tests showed that it was medieval. But the carbon 14 test have been proven invalid. New scientific findings show that it is much older, possibly 2000 years old.

Some have claimed that the images were painted. Others speculated that they were produced by an unknown form of medieval photography. More recent, spectral analysis proves otherwise.

The shroud is sugar coated. A clear polysaccharide residue coats the outermost fibers of the cloth. In places, that residue has changed to a caramel-like substance. That brown substance forms the images.

notes - Avoiding the lunatic fringe

How ridiculous! A headline in the Christian Examiner asked
the question, "Is image a hoax or visible projection of Christ's resurrection?"

The article was about the Shroud of Turin. The reference to the image was a reference to the two enigmatic images – front and back – of a much wounded, crucified man on the Shroud.

The very idea that there are but two options to consider; that the images were faked or that they were formed in the slipstream of the Resurrection is sadly a very common public perspective. In reality there are other possibilities, perhaps several. All of these other possibilities embrace one commonality and two inescapable facts. 

The commonality is perplexity. No one really knows how the images were formed or how old the cloth really is. 

The two inescapable facts are observable by scientific methods, documented, materially accessible for review and published in respectable, peer-reviewed, secular, scientific journals.

1)  The images are of a caramel-like substance that is a selective chemical change to a layer of starch fractions and sugars that seems to coat the outermost fibers of the entire cloth. This coating is as thin as the wall of a soap bubble, as thin as most bacteria, as thin as the glare-proof coating on modern eyeglasses. How that coating got there and how some of it was chemically changed, in bits here and there, to an image are matters of speculation: are matters for forensic science.

 

2) What was dated by carbon 14 testing is chemically unlike the rest of the Shroud. It was not until December 2003, fifteen years after the carbon 14 dating that a reserved bit of the sample cut for carbon 14 dating was made available for testing. Another year was needed for testing, independent confirmation and the rigors of peer review: the tests were invalid. It wasn't the fault of three carbon 14 laboratories but the fault of church officials who ignored carefully planned and documented protocols. Moreover, chemical tests for the kinetic decomposition of vanillin in the Shroud suggest that when the Shroud made its first documented appearance in Western European History in 1356, it was already several centuries old. 

notes - How do you know that the radiocarbon sample was not valid for dating the Shroud of Turin?

The 1988 radiocarbon age determinations were carefully done. The sample preparation methods, the measurement technologies and procedures, and the data reduction were adequately planned and executed to answer the most important question: was the Shroud produced in the First Century? Damon, et al., reported that "The age of the shroud is obtained as AD 1260-1390, with at least 95% confidence." However, that date does not reflect observations on the linen ­production technology nor the chemistry of fibers obtained directly from the main part of the shroud in 1978. The independent analyses from the different laboratories scatter more than would be expected for a homogeneous sample, raising other questions.  

The 1988 sampling operation was described as follows: "The shroud was separated from the backing cloth along its bottom left-hand edge and a strip (~10 mm x 70 mm) was cut from just above the place where a sample was previously removed in 1973 for examination. The strip came from a single site on the main body of the shroud away from any patches or charred areas." The use of a single sample, assuming it was representative of the whole cloth, defied normal procedures and protocols established before the radiocarbon study. It was a serious mistake.

:

To make matters worse, Mssrs. Franco Testore, professor of textile technology at the Turin Polytechnic, and Gabriel Vial, curator of the Ancient Textile Museum, Lyon, France, approved the location of the radiocarbon sample without any serious attempt at characterizing the sample. No chemical or careful microscopic sample characterizations were made. The 1988 work did not guarantee the validity of the sample.

 

The area where the radiocarbon sample was obtained had been photographed in 1978 with an ultraviolet source (see "UV fluorescence"). While making the UV photographs, the source was heavily filtered to exclude visible light and the camera was heavily filtered to exclude any effect of the UV on the film. All that appears on the film is the result of pure fluorescence. All fluorescence is a result of the chemical composition of the material.

 

The non-image cloth typically shows weak fluorescence (upper right). When image appears on the cloth, it quenches the fluorescence and gives it a brown color (see "Hands" below). The small, triangular, white area is where the Raes sample was cut in 1973. The radiocarbon sample was cut upward from there about 1 cm to the right of the seam and about 7 cm long. The area where the radiocarbon sample was taken is relatively dark, a fact that is not the result of dirt, image color, or scorching. The cloth is much less fluorescent in that area, brightening into more typical fluorescence to the right. The photograph proves that the radiocarbon area has a different chemical composition than the main part of the cloth. This was obviously not considered before the sample was cut.

 

Raes and radiocarbon yarn show colored encrustations on their surfaces. Some sections of medulla contain some of the material, showing that it had been able to flow by capillary attraction as a liquid. The encrustation is not removed by nonpolar solvents, but it swells and dissolves in water. There was absolutely no encrustation on either the Holland cloth or fibers from the main part of the Shroud.

 

Al Adler had found large amounts of aluminum in yarn segments from the radiocarbon sample, up to 2%, by energy-dispersive x-ray analysis. I found that the radiocarbon sample was uniquely coated with a plant gum (probably gum Arabic), a hydrous aluminum oxide mordant (the aluminum found by Adler), and Madder root dye (alizarin and purpurin). Nothing similar exists on any other part of the Shroud. The photomicrograph shows several fibers from the center of the radiocarbon sample in water. The gum is swelling and slowly detaching from the fibers. Many red alizarin/mordant lakes can be seen, and yellow dye is in solution in the gum. Several cotton fibers are visible, a situation unique to the Raes and radiocarbon samples.

 

The radiocarbon sampling area had been dyed to match the old part of the cloth. The sample chosen for dating was totally invalid for determining the true age of the Shroud.

notes - How do you know that the fire of AD 1532 did not start a long-term autocatalytic decomposition of the Turin Shroud?

Based on the facts of chemistry and current storage conditions, the Shroud of Turin is not now and has never been in imminent danger of catastrophic autocatalytic decomposition. The "restoration" of 2002 was based on an erroneous understanding of chemistry.  

Autocatalytic chemical reactions are those in which the rate increases as the amounts of reactants decrease, i.e., while the materials are reacting. The most important single factor in predicting effects is the temperature. When the temperature changes, the rate changes. The only severe heating episode the Shroud has suffered was during the fire of 1532. Any autocatalytic decomposition that occurred then has long since stopped as the Shroud is stored at normal temperatures.

The fundamental chemical-rate equation that describes an autocatalytic process is the following:

 

 

where ? is the fraction reacted at any specific time, t. The derivative, d? ?dt, is the rate of the reaction. E is the "Arrhenius activation energy," and Z is the "Arrhenius pre-exponential." Each applies only to a single specific, consistent reaction being studied. The value of the "rate constant," k is different at each specific temperature: It is a constant only at one temperature, and it applies only to one specific reaction. The values of E and Z are determined from a large number of k measurements at different temperatures.. Predictions of the Shroud's expected lifetime can not be made on the basis of a single rate constant. Observations made during a scorching event can not be applied to rates at normal temperatures.

 

E, Z, and k are the most important values in a discussion of rates and associated lifetimes of materials. All of these values have fundamental meaning in the chemical reaction. R is the "gas constant (1.9872)," a universal constant that applies to many disparate physical and chemical processes, and it is known with great accuracy and precision. T is the absolute temperature, expressed in degrees Kelvin (0K = -273.2?C). The exponents p and q allow the prediction of the position of the maximum rate in an autocatalytic process, i.e., the amount reacted at the maximum rate - at constant temperature. Exponents higher than 2 are extremely rare.

 

Examples of simple and autocatalytic rate curves are shown in the figure. Notice that the rate increases with time in the autocatalytic curve, at constant temperature, until it reaches a maximum reaction rate. Then the rate decreases. However, the initial rate at any temperature is much lower than the maximum rate. The chemical decomposition rate of cellulose is essentially zero at room temperature. Most long-term degradation of cellulose that is observed in archaeological contexts is caused by microbiological attack.

 

When cellulose is decomposing autocatalytically at high temperature, the rate can be returned to its initial value by cooling.

 

 

Reaction rates in solids, especially crystalline solids like cellulose, are much lower than the values for the same material in a solution or melt, because a crystalline lattice is stabilized by its ordered structure. The crystal structure is called "fibrillar" in materials like linen.

 

A major cause for autocatalysis in cellulose decomposition is the destruction of crystalline order when the material is heated above its melting point, about 260^ºC. With the exception of the fire of 1532, the Shroud has never faced this danger. Secondary, chemical autocatalysis is discussed below. Rates in the normal cellulose solid phase are essentially zero in the absence of acids, bases, short-wavelength light, or water and microorganisms.

 

When the crystalline order of cellulose is destroyed by heating, the cellulose melt is also chemically autocatalytic. The possibility for chemical autocatalysis in linen depends on the products of cellulose decomposition. Feigl and Anger [Feigl, F. and Anger, V., 1966, Spot Tests in Organic Analysis, Elsevier Pub. Co., New York.] describe the effects of heating cellulose as follows: "When cellulose is heated it decomposes and the resulting superheated steam reacts with unchanged cellulose to produce hexoses, which in turn hydrolyze to give hydroxymethylfurfural." The only important chemical catalyst for the autocatalytic degradation of cellulose at high temperatures is superheated steam. Superheated steam does not exist at room temperature. There is no "memory effect." The Shroud should be as stable at room temperature as any other sample of linen. The Shroud was in no danger of autocatalytic decomposition.

 

The decomposition rate of a crystalline solid depends on crystal perfection. When crystals are put under stress, they develop high-free-energy defects, and decomposition is much faster at the defects than it is in the parent material. If autocatalysis were a real problem for the Shroud, significant differences should have been observed around the stressed and strained stitching of the patches. STURP observed those areas, and there was no sign of accelerated autocatalysis, indeed there is no sign of any autocatalysis. Autocatalysis is not a real hazard for the Shroud.

 

More detailed studies have shown that the major or secondary products of the thermal decomposition of cellulose are formaldehyde, furfural (2-furaldehyde), hydroxymethylfurfural (5-hydroxymethyl-2-furaldehyde), levulinic acid (4-oxopentanoic acid), and 3-pentenoic-?-anhydride. None of these are a significant catalyst for the autocatalytic decomposition of linen. Indeed, formaldehyde, furfural, and hydroxymethylfurfural are reducing agents, antioxidants. Furfural inhibits the growth of molds and yeasts. Scorched areas are less likely to show microbiological attack.

 

Observations and descriptions of the Shroud through the 470 years since the fire of 1532 do not support fear of catastrophic decomposition of the cloth. There is absolutely no evidence for attack on the cloth by acids, bases, or microorganisms. Samples from all parts of the Shroud were tested for pH by STURP. No impurities that could start autocatalytic decomposition were found, confirming what was observed through the 470 years of history.

 

If Shroud deterioration is still a worry, one practical way to slow the rate is to keep it cold. That also has the advantage of reducing microbiological attack. As in the case of the use of "inert" atmospheres, storage at reduced temperature should carefully be considered. Too low a temperature could cause physical stress and might cause fibers to fracture. It would probably cause the thin coating of image color on the fibers to be loosened in some areas.

 

As a rule of thumb according to the Arrhenius expression, rates of normal reactions are increased by a factor between two and three for each 10?C increase in temperature. Some moderate cooling could have a significant effect on prolonging the life of the Shroud. Severe freezing could damage the cloth and image.

notes - Why are there bands of different colored linen throughout the Shroud, and what do they prove about image formation mechanisms?

Bands of slightly different color can be seen in Shroud photographs. They are most visible in ultraviolet-fluorescence photographs (see Hands UV). Both warp and weft yarns show this property. Some areas show darker warp yarns and some show darker weft yarns. In some places bands of darker color cross. In other places bands of lighter color cross. The effect is somewhat like a plaid.

 

All of the bleaching processes used through history remove lignin and most associated flax impurities (e.g., flax wax and hemicelluloses). The more quantitative the bleaching process the whiter the product. The bands of different color on the Shroud are the end result of different amounts of impurities left from the bleaching process.

 

Anna Maria Donadoni, a curator at the Museum of Egyptology in Turin, pointed out locations where batches of yarn ended in the weave and new yarn had been inserted in order to continue weaving. The yarn ends were laid side by side, and the weave was compressed with the comb. The ends are often visible, and the overlaps correspond to zones of different color in the weave. The different batches of yarn show different colors.

 

Where darker bands of yarn intersect image areas, the image is darker. Where lighter bands intersect an image area, the image appears lighter. This proves that the image color is not a result of reactions in the cellulose of the linen. Some impurities on the surface of the different batches of yarn produced the image color. This observation is extremely important when tests are being made on image-formation hypotheses. If image color is not simply a result of color formation in the cellulose of the linen fibers, image formation must be a much more complex process than we originally thought.

notes - How fast does cellulose (linen) decompose (produce a color) compared with the impurities found on the Shroud of Turin?

J. L. Banyasz, S. Li, J. Lyons-Hart, and K. H. Shafer [Fuel 80 (2001) 1757-1763] studied real-time evolution of formaldehyde, hydroxyacetaldehyde, CO, and CO2 from pure microcrystalline cellulose by EGA/FTIR (effluent gas analysis and Fourier transform infrared spectrometry). They detected 10 compounds simultaneously in the gas phase by FTIR. The cellulose decomposition is very complex. The quantity of formaldehyde produced is a function of heating rate, so decomposition mechanisms change depending on how fast you heat the cellulose. That is important in considering image-formation mechanisms and long-term stability vis-à-vis scorching processes.  

According to A. G. W. Bradbury, Y. Sakai, and F. Shafizadch, [J. Appl. Polym. Sci. (1979) 23, pp. 3271-3280], the induction process in cellulose can be neglected above 300^ºC. They observed two major decomposition mechanisms with the following constants:

 

E₁ = 47.3 kcal/mole Z₁ = 3.2 X 1014 _s-1

 

E2 = 36.6 kcal/mole Z2 = 1.3 X 1010 _s-1

 

They assumed that 65% of the products in the char-forming chain of reactions went to gas.

 

Glucose decomposes by a multi-step process. As with all of the other saccharides, the first is a dehydration/condensation reaction. The condensation processes yield carbon-carbon double bonds, which ultimately lead to color formation. Bruce Waymack of Philip Morris measured the kinetics of the first reaction as E = 23.9 kcal/mole and Z = 1.26 X 10⁷ s^-1.  The low-molecular-weight polysaccharides are much less stable than cellulose.

 

I measured the kinetics of vanillin elimination from lignin as E = 23.6 kcal/mol and Z = 3.7 X 10¹¹ s^-1. It is much less stable than crystalline cellulose.

 

Results of kinetics studies support a low­temperature image-formation process. The temperature was not high enough to change cellulose within the time available for image formation, and no char was produced.