About Studies on the Radiocarbon Sample from the Shroud of Turin

Hi,

I found one interesting article and abstract of which I copy below,
please take a look for your comments !!!

Best Regrads,

Hannu Poropudas

------------------------------------------------------------COPY
BELOW--------------------------------------------------------------------

In 1988, radiocarbon laboratories at Arizona, Cambridge, and Zurich
determined the age of a sample from
the Shroud of Turin.

They reported that the date of the cloth's production lay between A.D.
1260 and 1390 with 95%
confidence.

This came as a suprise in view of the technology used to produce the
cloth, its chemical composition,
and the lack of vanilin in its lignin.

The result prompted questions about the validity of the sample.

Preliminary estimates of the kinetic constants for the loss of vanilin
from lignin indicate
a much older age for the cloth than the radiocarbon analyses.

The radiocarbon sampling area is uniquely coated with a yellow-brown
plant gum containing
dye lakes.

Pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry results from the sample area coupled with
microscopic and
microchemical observations prove that the radiocarbon sample was not
part of the original
cloth of the Shroud of Turin.

The radiocarbon date was not valid for determining the true age of the
shroud.

(This is copy of the Abstract of the reference:
Rogers,R.N. 2005.
Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the shroud of turin.
Thermochimica Acta, 425, (2005), 189-194. )
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 9 Apr 2007 06:35:22 -0700, "mathematician"
wrote:

Hi,

I found one interesting article and abstract of which I copy below,
please take a look for your comments !!!

Best Regrads,

Hannu Poropudas

------------------------------------------------------------COPY
BELOW--------------------------------------------------------------------

In 1988, radiocarbon laboratories at Arizona, Cambridge, and Zurich
determined the age of a sample from
the Shroud of Turin.

They reported that the date of the cloth's production lay between A.D.
1260 and 1390 with 95%
confidence.
..............
so it is 600 years old, isn't that old enough for a museum piece?
did anyone really expect more?


w.
--
soc.culture.austria answering service
proposals and complaints to:

"H. Wabnig" .... .-- .- -... -. .. --. @ .- --- -. DOT .- - wrote in
message ...
On 9 Apr 2007 06:35:22 -0700, "mathematician"
wrote:

Hi,

I found one interesting article and abstract of which I copy below,
please take a look for your comments !!!

Best Regrads,

Hannu Poropudas

------------------------------------------------------------COPY
BELOW--------------------------------------------------------------------

In 1988, radiocarbon laboratories at Arizona, Cambridge, and Zurich
determined the age of a sample from
the Shroud of Turin.

They reported that the date of the cloth's production lay between A.D.
1260 and 1390 with 95%
confidence.
..............
so it is 600 years old, isn't that old enough for a museum piece?
did anyone really expect more?


w.
--
soc.culture.austria answering service
proposals and complaints to:



That's nothing. Last week the CSI crew tested the rock in front of the tomb
of JC, and found that it had the fingerprints of the twelve apostles on it,
it was sedimentary in nature,. from a massive sandstone formation in the
area, and another biblical story was an obvious fraud, as well. Since,
using scientific deductive reasoning, they proved that the twelve moved the
stone, removed the corpse and claimed resurrection.

One member of the CSI team had a theory that the twelve had actually
murdered JC and made the whole crucifixion thing up for the sake of the
story.

Now back to work on the movie "The Passion of Christy," starring a
surgically enhanced geologist . . . .

On Apr 9, 5:21 pm, H. Wabnig .... .-- .- -... -. .. --. @ .-
--- -. DOT .- - wrote:
On 9 Apr 2007 06:35:22 -0700, "mathematician"
wrote:



Hi,

I found one interesting article and abstract of which I copy below,
please take a look for your comments !!!

Best Regrads,

Hannu Poropudas

------------------------------------------------------------COPY
BELOW--------------------------------------------------------------------

In 1988, radiocarbon laboratories at Arizona, Cambridge, and Zurich
determined the age of a sample from
the Shroud of Turin.

They reported that the date of the cloth's production lay between A.D.
1260 and 1390 with 95%
confidence.
..............

so it is 600 years old, isn't that old enough for a museum piece?
did anyone really expect more?


If they measured the age of some of the patches of the Shroud of Turin
then the right conlusion
would be that the date of patching of the Shroud of Turin would lay
between
A.D. 1260 and 1390 with 95% confidence ?

w.
--
soc.culture.austria answering service
proposals and complaints to:


Best Regards,

Hannu Poropudas

"An opinion is like a rear end, everyone sits on his own"

mathematician wrote:

On Apr 9, 5:21 pm, H. Wabnig .... .-- .- -... -. .. --. @ .-
....
In 1988, radiocarbon laboratories at Arizona, Cambridge, and Zurich
determined the age of a sample from
the Shroud of Turin.

They reported that the date of the cloth's production lay between A.D.
1260 and 1390 with 95%
confidence.
..............

so it is 600 years old, isn't that old enough for a museum piece?
did anyone really expect more?


If they measured the age of some of the patches of the Shroud of Turin
then the right conlusion would be that the date of patching of the Shroud
of Turin would lay between A.D. 1260 and 1390 with 95% confidence ?

Wouldn't the warranted conclusion be that the material of the patches
was grown between those periods, irrespective of when it was patched

--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

I found one old posting (year 2001) of mine which I copy below.

Unfortunately I coud not any more find articles from those
references (two below) which was mentioned then.

(http://www.thenoiseroom.com/archnews...ive/150699.htm

http://www.thenoiseroom.com/archnews...ive/080899.htm)

Q1. I would like to ask that how reliable you think these two articles
are (copies are below) ?

Hannu

"An opinion is like a rear end, everyone sits on his own."

----COPY BELOW-----------
Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!postnews1.go ogle.com!not-
for-mail
From: (Hannu Poropudas)
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: AGE and ORIGIN of Turin Shroud: Contradictions found between
Radiocarbon Dating and Archaelogy Data ?
Date: 8 Nov 2001 03:20:29 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com/
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Message-ID:
NNTP-Posting-Host: 194.252.181.100
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Trace: posting.google.com 1005218429 25576 127.0.0.1 (8 Nov 2001
11:20:29 GMT)
X-Complaints-To:
NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 Nov 2001 11:20:29 GMT

Age and Origin of Turin Shroud: Contradictions found between
Radiocarbon Dating (three different laboratories!) and
Archaeology Data ?

Radiocarbon Dating Labs mentioned a
1 - Department of Geosciences,
2 - Department of Physics,
University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA
3 - Research Laboratory for Archaeology and History of Art,
University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3QJ, UK
4 - Institut für Mittelenergiephysik,
ETH-Hönggerberg, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland
5 - Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory,
Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964, USA
6 - Research Laboratory,
British Museum, London WC1B 3DG, UK.


Please take a look copies below:

-----------------
"ARCHAEOLOGY news"

New Discoveries



Tuesday 15th June 1999 Holy Land evidence of Turin Shroud

JERUSALEM (AP) - Plant imprints and pollen found on the Shroud of
Turin, revered by many as Jesus' burial shroud, support the premise
that it originated in the Holy Land, two Israeli scientists said
Tuesday.
The scientists did not address the issue of the age of the linen
cloth,
which was brought to France by a 14th-century crusader
and has been enshrined since 1578 in a cathedral in Turin, Italy.

http://www.thenoiseroom.com/archnews...ive/150699.htm

-----------------------------------------------------------

"ARCHAEOLOGY news"

New Discoveries



Tuesday 8th August 1999 Shroud of Turin said to be pre 8th century

A new analysis of pollen grains and plant images on the Shroud of
Turin places its origin to Jerusalem before the 8th century. The study
gives
a boost to those who believe the shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus
and refutes a 1988 examination by scientists that concluded the shroud
was made between 1260 and 1390. The earlier study also indicated the
shroud came from Europe rather than the Holy Land. "We have identified
by images and by pollen grains species on the shroud restricted to the
vicinity of Jerusalem," botany professor Avinoam Danin of The Hebrew
University of Jerusalem said Monday during the International
Botanical
Congress here. "The sayings that the shroud is from European origin
can't hold."

http://www.thenoiseroom.com/archnews...ive/080899.htm




-----------------------------------------
Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin
(http://www.shroud.com/nature.htm)
by
P. E. Damon,1
D. J. Donahue,2
B. H. Gore,1
A. L. Hatheway,2
A. J. T. Jull,1
T. W. Linick,2
P. J. Sercel,2
L. J. Toolin,1
C.R. Bronk,3
E. T. Hall,3
R. E. M. Hedges,3
R. Housley,3
I. A. Law,3
C. Perry,3
G. Bonani,4
S. Trumbore,5
W. Woelfli,4
J. C. Ambers,6
S. G. E. Bowman,6
M. N. Leese 6 &
M. S. Tite 6


Reprinted from Nature, Vol. 337, No. 6208, pp. 611-615, 16th February,
1989 Copyright 1989 Macmillan Magazines Ltd. - All Rights Reserved
Reprinted by permission.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 - Department of Geosciences,
2 - Department of Physics,
University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA
3 - Research Laboratory for Archaeology and History of Art,
University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3QJ, UK
4 - Institut für Mittelenergiephysik,
ETH-Hönggerberg, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland
5 - Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory,
Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964, USA
6 - Research Laboratory,
British Museum, London WC1B 3DG, UK



Very small samples from the Shroud of Turin have been dated by
accelerator mass spectrometry in laboratories at Arizona, Oxford
and Zurich. As Controls, three samples whose ages had been
determined independently were also dated.
The results provide conclusive evidence that the linen of the
Shroud of Turin is mediaeval.

The Shroud of Turin , which many people believe was used to wrap
Christ's body, bears detailed front and back images of a man who
appears to have suffered whipping and crucifixion. It was first
displayed
at Lirey in France in the 1350s and subsequently passed into the
hands
of the Dukes of Savoy.
After many journeys the shroud was finally brought to Turin in
1578 where, in 1694, it was placed in the royal chapel of
Turin Cathedral in a specially designed shrine.
Photography of the shroud by Secondo Pia in 1898 indicated that the
image resembled a photographic 'negative' and represents the first
modern
study. Subsequently the shroud was made available for scientific
examination,
first in 1969 and 1973 by a committee appointed by Cardinal
Michele Pellegrino 1 and then again in 1978 by the
Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP)2. Even for the first
investigation, there was a possibility of using radiocarbon dating to
determine the age of the linen from which the shroud was woven.
The size of the sample then required, however, was ~500cm, which
would
clearly have resulted in an unacceptable amount of damage, and it was
not
until the development in the 1970s of small gas-counters and
accelerator-mass-spectrometry techniques (AMS), requiring samples
of only a few square centimetres, that radiocarbon dating of the
shroud
became a real possibility.

To confirm the feasibility of dating the shroud by these methods an
intercomparison, involving four AMS and two small gas-counter
radiocarbon laboratories and the dating of three known-age textile
samples, was coordinated by the British Museum in 1983. The results
of this intercomparison are reported and discussed by Burleigh et al.
3.

Following this intercomparison, a meeting was held in Turin in
September-October 1986 at which seven radiocarbon laboratories
(five AMS and two small gas-counter) recommended a protocol for
dating the shroud. In October 1987, the offers from three
AMS laboratories (Arizona, Oxford and Zurich) were selected by the
Archbishop of Turin, Pontifical Custodian of the shroud, acting on
instructions from the Holy See, owner of the shroud. At the same
time, the British Museum was invited to help in the certification
of the samples provided and in the statistical analysis of the
results. The procedures for taking the samples and treating the
results were discussed by representatives of the three chosen
laboratories at a meeting at the British Museum in January 1988
and their recommendations 4 were subsequently approved by
the Archbishop of Turin.

---
*(missing figure 1)*
http://www.shroud.com/nature.htm
---

FIG.1 Mean radiocarbon dates, with a ±1 sd (sd = standard deviation)
errors, of the Shroud of Turin and control samples, as supplied by
the
three laboratories
(A, Arizona; O, Oxford; Z, Zurich) (See also Table 2.)
The shroud is sample 1, and the three controls are samples 2-4.
Note the break in age scale. Ages are given in yr BP (years before
1950).
The age of the shroud is obtained as AD 1260-1390,
with at least 95% confidence.

Removal of samples from the shroud
The sampling of the shroud took place in the Sacristy at Turin
Cathedral on the morning of 21 April 1988. Among those present when
the sample as cut from the shroud were Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero
(Archbishop of Turin), Professor L. Gonella (Department of Physics,
Turin Polytechnic and the Archbishop's scientific adviser), two
textile
experts (Professor F. Testore of Department of Materials Science,
Turin Polytechnic and G. Vial of Musée des Tissues and Centre
International d'Étude des Textiles Anciens in Lyon),
Dr M. S. Tite of the British Museum, representatives of the
three radiocarbon-dating laboratories (Professor P. E. Damon,
Professor D. J. Donahue, Professor E. T. Hall, Dr R. E. M. Hedges and
Professor W. Woelfli) and G. Riggi, who removed the sample from the
shroud.

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. Three samples, each ~50 mg in weight, were
prepared from this strip. The samples were then taken to the adjacent
Sala
Capitolare where they were wrapped in aluminium foil and subsequently
sealed inside numbered stainless-steel containers by the Archbishop of
Turin and Dr Tite. Samples weighing 50 mg from two of the three
controls were similarly packaged. The three containers containing the
shroud
(to be referred to as sample 1) and two control samples (samples 2 and
3)
were then handed to representatives of each of the three laboratories
together with a sample of the third control (sample 4), which was in
the form of threads. All these operations, except for the wrapping of
the
samples in foil and their placing in containers, were fully documented
by video film and photography.

The laboratories were not told which container held the shroud sample.
Because the distinctive three-to-one herringbone twill weave of the
shroud could not be matched in the controls, however, it was possible
for a laboratory to identify the shroud sample. If the samples had
been
unravelled or shredded rather than being given to the laboratories as
whole pieces of cloth, then it would have been much more difficult,
but not impossible, to distinguish the shroud sample from the
controls. (With unravelled or shredded samples, pretreatment cleaning
would have been more difficult and wasteful.) Because the shroud had
been exposed to a wide range of potential sources of contamination
and because of the uniqueness of the samples available, it was
decided to abandon blind-test procedures in the interests of
effective
sample pretreatment. But the three laboratories undertook not to
compare results until after they had been transmitted to the
British Museum. Also, at two laboratories (Oxford and Zurich),
after combustion to gas, the samples were recoded so that the
staff making the measurements did not know the identity of
the samples.

Controls
The three control samples, the approximate ages of which were made
known to the laboratories, are listed below. Two were in the form of
whole
pieces of cloth (samples 2 and 3) and one was in the form of threads
(sample 4). Sample 2. Linen (sample QI.T/32) from a tomb excavated
at Qasr Ibrîm in Nubia by Professor J. M. Plumley for the
Egypt Exploration Society in 1964. On the basis of the Islamic
embroidered pattern and Christian ink inscription, this linen could
be dated to the eleventh to twelfth centuries AD.

Sample 3. Linen from the collection of the Department of Egyptian
Antiquities at the British Museum, associated with an early second
century AD mummy of Cleopatra from Thebes (EA6707). This linen was
dated in the British Museum Research Laboratory using liquid
scintillation counting, giving a radiocarbon age of 2,010 ± 80 yr BP
(BM-2558). This corresponds to a calendar age, rounded to the nearest
5 years, of 110 cal BC - AD 75 cal at the 68 per cent confidence level
5 (where cal denotes calibrated radiocarbon dates).

Sample 4. Threads removed from the cope of St Louis d'Anjou which is
held in a chapel in the Basilica of Saint-Maximin, Var, France.
On the basis of the stylistic details and the historical evidence
the cope could be dated at ~ AD 1290 - 1310 (reign of King Phillipe
IV).

Measurement procedures
Because it was not known to what degree dirt, smoke or other
contaminants might affect the linen samples, all three laboratories
subdivided the samples, and subjected the pieces to several different
mechanical and chemical cleaning procedures.
All laboratories examined the textile samples microscopically to
identify and remove any foreign material. The Oxford group cleaned
the samples using a vacuum pipette, followed by cleaning in
petroleum ether (40° C for 1 h) to remove lipids and candlewax,
for example. Zurich precleaned the sample in an ultrasonic bath.
After these initial cleaning procedures, each laboratory split the
samples for further treatment.

The Arizona group split each sample into four subsamples. One pair
of subsamples from each textile was treated with dilute HCL, dilute
NaOH and again in acid, with rinsing in between (method a). The
second pair of subsamples was treated with a commercial detergent
(1.5% SDS), distilled water, 0.1% HCL and another detergent
(1.5% triton X-100); they were then submitted to a Soxhlet extraction
with ethanol for 60 min and washed with distilled water at 70° C in
an ultrasonic bath (method b).

The Oxford group divided the precleaned sample into three. Each
subsample was treated with 1M HCL (80° C for 2h),
1M NaOH (80° C for 2 h) and again in acid, with rinsing in between.
Two of the three samples were then bleached in
NaOCL (2.5% at pH-3 for 30 min).

The Zurich group first split each ultrasonically cleaned sample in
half, with the treatment of the second set of samples being deferred
until the radiocarbon measurements on the first set had been
completed.
The first set of samples was further subdivided into three portions.
One-third received no further treatment, one-third was submitted to
a weak treatment with 0.5% HCL (room temperature),
0.25% NaOH (room temperature) and
again in acid, with rinsing in between. The final third was given a
strong
treatment, using the same procedure except that hot (80° C) 5% HCL and
2.5% NaOH were used. After the first set of measurements revealed no
evidence of contamination, the second set was split into two portions,
to which the weak and strong chemical treatments were applied.

All of the groups combusted the cleaned textile subsample with copper
oxide in sealed tubes, then converted the resulting CO2 to graphite
targets. Arizona and Oxford converted CO2 to CO in the presence of
zinc, followed by iron-catalysed reduction to graphite, as described
in
Slota et al. 6. Zurich used cobalt-catalysed reduction in the
presence hydrogen, as described by Vogel et al. 7,8.

Each laboratory measured the graphite targets made from the textile
samples, together with appropriate standards and blanks, as
a group (a run). Each laboratory performed between three and
five independent measurements for each textile sample which were
carried out over a time period of about one month. The results of
these independent measurements (Table 1) in each case represent
the average of several replicate measurements made during
each run (samples are measured sequentially, the sequence being
repeated several times). The specific measurement procedures for each
laboratory are given by Linick et al. 9 for Arizona, by Gillespie et
al. 10 for
Oxford and by Suter et al. 11 for Zurich. Arizona and Oxford measured
14C/13C ratios by AMS and determined the 13C/12C ratios using
conventional mass spectrometry. Zurich determined both
14C/12C and 13C/12C quasi-simultaneously using AMS only.

The conventional radiocarbon ages were all calculated using the
procedures suggested by Stuiver and Polach12, with normalization
to Ó13C = -250/00, and were accordingly reported in
yr BP (years before 1950). The errors, which are quoted in Table 1
at the 1sd level ( sd is standard deviation), include the statistical
(counting) error, the scatter of results for standards and blanks,
and the uncertainty in the Ó13C determination (Arizona includes
the Ó13C error at a later stage, when combining
subsample results; Oxford errors below 40 yr are rounded
up to 40).



Table 1 Basic Data (individual measurements)

Sample 1 Sample 2 Sample 3 Sample 4
Pretreatment and

replication codes
Arizona AA-3367 AA-3368 AA-3369 AA-3370
A1.1b* 591±30 A2.1b 922±48 A3.1b 1,838±47 A4.1b 724±42
A1.2b 690±35 A2.2a 986±56 A3.2a(1) 2,041±43 A4.2a 778±88 a,
method a

---

Best Reagards,

Hannu Poropudas
Vesaisentie 9E,
90900 Kiiminki
Finland

I found from the article below that professor Danin identified figures
of three types of plants in the Shroud of Turin

- chrysanthemum flowers,

thorns of Gundelia tournefortii and

leaves of Zygophyllum dumosum.

Hannu

(Text copied from a WORD document)
( Text: "Courtesy of Alan Whanger" above the missing figure of the
text )
(Professor mentioned in the text: Avinoam Danin of The Hebrew
University of Jerusalem)

----COPY BELOW----------
XVI International Botanical Congress: The Shroud of Turin Controversy
Returns


The Scientist 1999, 13(18):10

Published 13 September 1999

The topic of the last press conference on Monday, August 2, at the
XVI International Botanical Congress in St. Louis seemed to have
a nice mix of classical scientific observation, image analysis,
and palynology (pollen identification), as well as great historical
interest.
A team led by Avinoam Danin, a professor of evolution, systematics,
and ecology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, had tentatively
identified the ghosts of flowers past on the famed shroud of Turin.

1 The work resurrected the idea that the shroud held the body of
Christ,
countering radiocarbon dating evidence that it is of medieval origin.

2 This new look at an old story was sexy stuff, and by Tuesday
morning
the press room at the conference was festooned with qualified but
largely
uncritical clips from the likes of the Associated Press, USA Today,
and The New York Times. Interest snowballed. As the week progressed,
Danin found himself juggling phone interviews from all over the world
and
entertaining a steady stream of television journalists. Many tried
repeatedly
to pin Danin down to admitting that his work had authenticated the
shroud,
but he answered simply, "I am a Jewish botanist, not a theologian.
I identify images of flowers and tell their geographic origin,
not that this is Jesus or not."
The botanical congress offered so many symposia that a public
relations
firm was hired to funnel what it perceived to be newsworthy research
to the media. Standard procedure. They goofed by hyping work on an
African
bean extract with in vitro activity against Ebola virus. Seasoned
journalists
at the news briefing recalled reporting the work earlier, and finally
got the
speakers to admit that the substance faced the same 1:10,000 odds
of making it to the drugstore as any other natural product. A session
on algal
blooms was also familiar turf that oversimplified to the point of
using the
long-defunct term "blue-green algae" and committing
the taxonomic faux pas of calling them plants.
The shroud of Turin story, though, had appeal because it transcends
health and science. A closer look at the new botanical evidence,
and the radiocarbon dating that it questions, reveals the clash
between
media seeking an immediate, conclusive answer, and the slower,
much more skeptical pace of science.
Christ was buried, according to Jewish custom, before 6 p.m. on a
Friday,
three hours after he died. His body was wrapped in a shroud and
placed
in a cave guarded by large rocks. Three days later the body had
disappeared,
and the cloth somehow came to bear the life-size, full-body image of
the man.
In 30 A.D., a disciple of Jesus brought a cloth, presumably the
shroud,
to the king of Edessa (part of Turkey), where it supposedly
cured him of leprosy. Word spread, and other cities developed icons of
the
facial part of the image. The shroud survived a great flood in Edessa
in 525 A.D.,
then was taken to Constantinople in 944. Crusaders grabbed the shroud
in 1204,
and its whereabouts remained unknown until 1357, when it went on
public
display in Lirey, France. A royal family in what is now Italy
acquired
the shroud in 1453, and it began display in Turin in 1578, with a
brief
removal in 1997 due to fire.
The photographic history of the shroud of Turin begins in 1898.
That first photograph looked like a positive, and when it was
photographed,
the image of the crucified man that emerged was startling. In 1977
an enhancement of a 1931 photograph attracted the attention of Alan
Whanger,
professor emeritus at Duke University Medical Center, who is
a psychiatrist and a surgeon. Two years later a colleague of Whanger's
visiting
a sixth-century church in the Sinai desert was given a small, gold,
Byzantine coin.
"The [coin icon] was painted, the monks told him, from the shroud of
Turin,
and it had flowers," says Whanger.
Reasoning that the shroud could not have been faked in the Middle
Ages
if an icon reportedly from the sixth century resembled it,
Whanger and his wife, Mary, who works at the Council for
Study of the Shroud of Turin in Durham, N.C., developed an
optical technique to compare the coin and the image on the
shroud point by point.

3 The approach, called polarized image overlay, projects images
through polarizing filters at orthogonal angles revealing darkened
"points of congruence" that align the two objects.
The coin and the image on the shroud matched at 211 points--a much
closer correspondence than forensics use to match photographs
of faces or fingerprints, Whanger says.
But it is a chicken-and-egg argument. Couldn't a medieval artist
have copied the coin icon onto the shroud?
In 1983 another optical technique hinted that there was more to
the shroud than met the eye. German physicist Oswald Scheuerman
thought that he saw the faint outlines of flowers on a photo of the
shroud.
He used a technique called coronal imaging to track the
flow of electrical energy from a Van der Graaf generator over pieces
of plants held in front of linen, demonstrating that images of
flowers
and thorns can indeed be generated on cloth. Excited that his
optical points of congruence might be the flowers that
Scheuerman saw, Whanger became what he calls a
"late-bloomer botanist," poring over botany books, then traveling to
Israel to photograph flowers. He worked for four years, tentatively
identifying flora and attempting to publish his findings in 1989.
But Whanger's timing was off--the radiocarbon dating paper had
just appeared. "The fact that everyone thought the shroud was a fake,
and that I wasn't a botanist, combined to make the work ignored."
What Whanger needed was a botanist, and in 1995 he found Danin,
an authority on Middle Eastern flora. "He's a good scientist; he'll
look
at anything once. And in 20 seconds he said,
Those flowers are from Jerusalem,'" Whanger recalls.

Danin identified three types of plants--chrysanthemum flowers,
thorns of Gundelia tournefortii, and leaves of Zygophyllum dumosum--
whose

modern geographic ranges overlap between Jerusalem and Hebron.
Chrysanthemum is widely distributed, but Zygophyllum has a much
narrower range, with a very distinctive double leaf that falls off at
summer's end. Gundelia is a thistle that belongs to the sunflower
family, blooms between March and May, and is insect-pollinated,
indicating local origin, Danin says.
Supplementing Danin's flower identifications is a reanalysis of
pollen on the shroud by Uri Baruch from the Israel Antiquities
Authority.
The pollen samples were first collected in 1973 and in 1978 by
Max Frei, founder and director of the scientific department of the
Zurich Criminal Police. Frei obtained pollen with sticky tape,
but was familiar only with European plants, so that by the time
he died in 1983, the identifications were incomplete.
Although Danin admits that pollen analysis cannot date an
antiquity, the 313 pollen grains that Baruch scrutinized are
consistent with the species that Danin identified from
floral morphology. The group's conclusion:
The shroud hails from the region of geographic overlap.
But couldn't people have carried plants
from one place to another?
The suggested time frame is questionable too.
To support the sixth-century ballpark figure derived from
the coin icon, the researchers point to a facial cloth,
called the Sudarium of Oviedo, that was supposedly placed
directly over the face, beneath the shroud. The Persians
took this cloth through North Africa to Spain
n the eighth century. It bears dark stains in a pattern
similar to the facial likeness on the shroud, as well as
pollen from the same type of thistle. The nature of these
stains has been the focus of intense debate, with
identifications ranging from type AB human blood to paint.
Accepting the blood verdict, Danin and Whanger conclude
that the shroud must predate the eighth century, which
is the earliest time that the facial cloth's location is known.
"This pollen association, congruence of blood patterning,
and probable identical blood type suggests that the
radiocarbon dating of the shroud to only the Middle Ages
is untenable," they conclude in their paper. But again,
the facial cloth pattern could have inspired the later
image on a medieval shroud.

Danin and colleagues and others challenge the accuracy
of the radiocarbon dating. "Three labs used the same
sample from the dirtiest edge of the shroud that had been
water-stained and scorched.

This would produce a younger date," says Danin.
The shroud may also bear biological contamination,
some say. In 1993 two University of Texas at Austin
microbiologists, Stephen Mattingly and Leoncio
Garza-Valdes, described a "bioplastic layer" of
modern bacteria and fungi within the linen fibers
of the shroud, which could have thrown off the
carbon-14 date.4
But the radiocarbon dating paper is impressive.
A 10 x 70-mm piece from the shroud was cut
from a region free of char, snipped in three and
given to dating labs at the University of Arizona in
Tucson, Oxford University, and the Institute fur
Mittelenergiephysik in Zurich. Collaborators hailed
from Columbia University and the British Museum.
Controls were three samples of linen with known
dates. "The region was chosen very carefully by
textile experts to contain no material but shroud.
The shroud is a woven piece, and one region of it
is as representative of the whole as any other,"
explains Douglas Donahue, a professor of physics
at the University of Arizona who was present at the
April 21, 1988 sampling. Each lab subdivided the
samples to test them repeatedly, and treated
different pieces with different mechanical and
chemical cleaning methods. Then each sample
was examined microscopically to detect and
remove contaminants.
The results date the shroud
to 1260-1390 A.D., with 95 percent confidence.
This corresponds to the period when the shroud's
location was unknown, and is consistent with
a 14th-century bishop's report that a forger
had confessed.
Donahue defends the radiocarbon dating.
Neither water nor burn marks would alter the
date, he says, nor has Mattingly and Leoncio
Garza-Valdes' "bioplastic theory" been published
in a peer-reviewed journal. "The bacterial material
they propose is invisible to normal human beings,
including myself, is impervious to reasonable
chemical treatments, and is made of only modern
carbon. In order to change the radiocarbon
age of the shroud from the 700 years, which
we measured to 2,000 years, the shroud would
need to consist of 60 percent of this bacterial
substance."
By Thursday of the week of the botanical congress,
the story of possible new scientific evidence for the
authenticity of the shroud of Turin had made its way
around the globe. Then on Friday, August 6, the
Amherst, N.Y.-based Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP),
an international network of scientists who examine
pseudoscience, added its two cents. Their report,
compiled by CSICOP senior research fellow
Joe Nickell, claims that Frei's pollen-rich tapes could
not be replicated, and that all but one tape reexamined
after Frei's death had little pollen--and that this was an
old story. Nickell mentions other images seen
"Rorschach-like" in the shroud, attributes the
"blood" stains to tempera paint, and calls linking
the shroud to the Sudarium of Oviedo by the
pattern of marks and pollen "wishful thinking."
Danin and Whanger expected some skepticism,
and they were careful to limit any mention of dates
to "as long ago as the eighth century." Still, others
interpreted their work to mean that flowers adorned
the body when it was prepared for burial, with some
reporters likening an uneasy Danin to a messenger
from the almighty. But for many people, evidence
supporting the shroud as the burial garment of
Jesus Christ is moot. Those who believe that the image
formed as Christ rose will hardly be swayed otherwise
by radiocarbon dating, and will continue to see in the
faint flowers on the shroud what they want to see.
But from a scientific standpoint, about the only near
certainty regarding the new view of the shroud of Turin
is that it is likely to turn up as an episode of The X-Files.

Ricki Lewis ) is a contributing
editor for The Scientist.

· A. Danin et al., Flora of the Shroud of Turin,
Missouri Botanical Garden Press, 1999.

· P.E. Damno et al., "Radiocarbon dating of the
shroud of Turin," Nature, 337:611-5, 1989.

· A.D. Whanger and M.W. Whanger,
"Polarized image overlay technique: a new
image comparison method and its applications,"
Applied Optics, 24:766-72, 1985.

· L. Garza-Valdes et al., "A problematic
source of organic contaminant of linen,"
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in
Physics Research, Section B:504-7,
Amsterdam, ier, 1997.

---

"mathematician" wrote in article
oups.com...

I found from the article below that professor Danin identified figures
of three types of plants in the Shroud of Turin

- chrysanthemum flowers,

thorns of Gundelia tournefortii and

leaves of Zygophyllum dumosum.

Hannu

(Text copied from a WORD document)
( Text: "Courtesy of Alan Whanger" above the missing figure of the
text )
(Professor mentioned in the text: Avinoam Danin of The Hebrew
University of Jerusalem)

----COPY BELOW----------
XVI International Botanical Congress: The Shroud of Turin Controversy
Returns


The Scientist 1999, 13(18):10

Published 13 September 1999

[snip]

In 30 A.D., a disciple of Jesus brought a cloth, presumably the
shroud,
to the king of Edessa (part of Turkey), where it supposedly
cured him of leprosy.

Turkey didn't even exist back in 30 AD. Neither is Edessa part of modern
Turkey.

Clueless author needs to get his facts right.
--
I.N. Galidakis --- http://ioannis.virtualcomposer2000.com/

Mr. Sam Wormley:

You refer to Mr. Nickell three times in your article above
(I cut it away because it was so long).

How reliable you think your reference Mr. Nickell is ?

I found following text in his Home Page :

----------COPY
BELOW---------------------------------------------------

"Joe Nickell, Ph.D. (University of Kentucky, 1987),
is Senior Research Fellow of the Committee for the
Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) -
an international scientific organization - and investigative
columnist for Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

A former professional stage magician (he was Resident
Magician at the Houdini Magical Hall of Fame for three years)
and private investigator for a world-famous detective agency,
Dr. Nickell taught technical writing for several years at the
University of Kentucky before taking the full-time position
with CSICOP at its offices at the Center for Inquiry in
Amherst, New York.

Utilizing his varied background, Nickell has become widely
known as an investigator of myths and mysteries, frauds,
forgeries, and hoaxes. He has been called "the modern
Sherlock Holmes," "the original ghost buster," and
"the real-life Scully" (from "The X-Files" ). He has
investigated scores of haunted-house cases,
including the Amityville Horror and the Mackenzie
House in Toronto, Canada.

Books

Nickell is the author (co-author or editor) of more than
twenty books, including Inquest on the Shroud of Turin (1983, 1998);
Secrets of the Supernatural (with John F. Fischer, 1988, 1991);
The Magic Detectives (1989); Pen, Ink,
and Evidence (1990, 2000, 2003); Wonder-Workers! (1991);
Ambrose Bierce Is Missing (1992); Missing Pieces
(with Robert A. Baker, 1992); Mysterious Realms (1992);
Looking for a Miracle (1993, 1998); Psychic Sleuths (1994);
Camera Clues (1994); Entities (1995); Detecting Forgery (1996);
The Outer Edge (1996); The UFO Invasion (1997);
Crime Science (1999); Real-Life X-Files:
Investigating the Paranormal (2001); The Kentucky Mint Julep (2003);
The Mystery Chronicles (2004); Secrets of the Sideshows (2005);
and Lake Monster Mysteries (with Benjamin Radford, 2006).

Media Appearances

He has appeared on numerous national TV shows, including CNBC's
"News with Brian Williams," "Dateline NBC,"
"TLC's Best Kept Secrets," "Larry King Live," "Oprah,"
"Ricki Lake," "Jerry Springer Show,"
"Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe," "Unsolved Mysteries,"
"Politically Incorrect," "20/20," A&E's "The Unexplained," "48
Hours,"
and "Exploring the Unknown," in addition to several documentaries
on the Discovery Channel, (such as "The Science of Magic,"
"America's Haunted Houses," and the "Science Mysteries" series),
History Channel, National Geographic Channel, and many others.
Nickell has been profiled in the New Yorker magazine
and on the Today show."

------------------------------COPY ABOVE-------------------------

Best Regards,

Hannu

"An opinion is like a rear end, everyone sits on his own."