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

Ohio Shroud Conference ^

[dascallie]

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

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

[Swordmaker]

I was vaguely under the impression that this prohibition was against *wearing* of clothes of "mixed parentage" ;-)

That is the prohibition. Just as there is a prohibition against cooking a calf in its mother's milk.

Did the rabbinical authorities hold that the prohibition was against the *weaving* of such cloth, or just the wearing of it (dead bodies aren't sinning, I guess, since they don't have much say in the matter).

The marginalia (Gemara) of the Torah (considered almost as holy as the Torah itself), concludes that just to be assured that one does not inadvertently eat meat that was cooked in its mother's milk—now extended to meat cooked in any milk—prohibits cooking meat in a pot that has also touched milk. Similarly, the Gemara prohibits weaving cloth from different sources on the same loom, thus, ensuring there is no possibility of inadvertently mixing threads or parts from different sources.

[Swordmaker]

...and in other news, Joe Nickell is fully credentialed from Harvard, Oxford, MIT, Princeton, Cornell, Stanford, and Cal Tech. With Law degrees from Michigan and a post-doc in economics from Chicago....and an IQ of 330.

You forgot the part about walking on water...

[Swordmaker]

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

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

And, alas, it is not even truly 3D but only quasi-3D.

The truly amazing thing, is that once our purported artist developed the miraculous technique, he never, ever, made anything using it again. Oh, My, the restraint it must have taken to not make and sell one to someone else...

[muawiyah]

Yes, truly amazing. Maybe the artist knew his technique was far beyond the technology of his times ~ but such restraint, almost like he had a copy of the Star Trek protocols for alien contact.

[Swordmaker]

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

Is that "best?" If so, then, yes. Best physical evidence is 10th Century. Other documentary evidence suggests that it has a provenance back to the 5th Century. Certainly, any of these are older than the oldest C14 test date of 1290AD, 13th Century... which calls into question the accuracy of the C14 dating tests.

[aruanan]

In defense of the scientists, the Vatican did not allow them to take a representative sample of the shroud.

Yes and no. If no one had the definite knowledge at the time that the portion taken included repairs that added material of a much later origin, then there was no reason to say it wasn't believed to be representative. The only truly representative sample would be one in which the entire shroud is ground up, thoroughly mixed, and a small sample taken.

[Swordmaker]

The only truly representative sample would be one in which the entire shroud is ground up, thoroughly mixed, and a small sample taken.

I disagree. That method would get inclusions of materials of unknown provenance and ages which would then be averaged into the age of the original material. The only real sample should be a part of the Shroud that includes image... then we know that what we are getting is the "real thing."

One of the issues that perplexed the original C14 samplers was how to provide blind testing with control samples of other pieces of Linen of known provenance. They decided that they really could not do so because they had a lot of difficulty in finding other linens with the distinctive 3:1 herringbone twill.

I think they were short sighted.

The solution to this problem would be to take the Shroud samples and the control samples from other cloths and merely de-constructed them under controlled conditions and send a pile of disconnected threads for each sample. This would remove the weave tell-tale and solve the blind testing problem. Using this method, none of the labs could have determined which were Shroud threads and which were control threads. Voila! Blind testing.

[Soliton]

All three of your points are factually incorrect. I thought you knew this stuff.

[Soliton]

The samples distributed to each of the labs involved in the testing were extracted from a corner of the Shroud of Turin directly adjacent to the site of a previous sampling done in 1973 to determine the nature of the Shroud textile - the Raes sample.

You really don't know this stuff do you? The 1988 sample was directly adjacent to the Raes sample, BUT IT WAS CUT IN HALF. The piece that was kept was the Riggi sample. IT was the piece that was next to Raes. The pieces c-14 tested were on the opposite side of the Riggi sample from Raes. So the piece ACTUALLY TESTED was NOT adjacent to Raes. Look at a map of the samples and you will see that I am correct. The Raes Sample was from 1972, The Riggi sample from 1988. Only materials from the STURP tape tests of 1978 were supposed to be in circulation.

September 1995: Cardinal Saldarini issues statement declaring any Shroud samples in circulation other than those taken with official permission for the tests of 1978 as unauthorized. He remarks that 'if such material exists…the Holy See has not given its permission to anybody to keep it and do what they want with it' and he requests those concerned to give the piece back to the Holy See. This statement seems clearly to be directed at the samples taken by Professor Giovanni Riggi in April 1988, portions from which were procured in all good faith by Dr. Garza-Valdes. http://www.shroud.com/history.htm

[Soliton]

As has been pointed out by others, modern material of approximately twice the mass as the Shroud samples would have to be added to the samples to bring authentic first-century linen up to radiocarbon dates of the fourteenth-century, and this would have been just too obvious to go unnoticed by so many independent investigators. Once again, the ad hoc excuses, criticisms, and counter-arguments of the radiocarbon dating by Shroud enthusiasts were put forward to preserve appearances at any cost, a classic characteristic of pseudoscience. In real science, legitimate and reliable data that falsify one's most treasured hypotheses and beliefs are accepted, and lead one to abandon one's former beliefs. But sindonology is a pseudoscience, not real science.

http://www.freeinquiry.com/skeptic/shroud/as/schafersman.html

[Soliton]

The Rogers Article in Acta was a joke. It was destroyed. That’s why the STURP boys came out saying they had verified his results.

Rogers’ vamnillin theory of dating has beed discredited. He states that it was highly temperature sensitive. In fact ALL vanillins would disappear in SECONDS at temperatures above 200 degrees centigrade. The shroud had been exposed to temperatures high enough to melt silver! He claimed that the thermal resistance of linen (this is one part stolen from McCrone) would have meant that some vanillin would have been found somewhere on the shroud, but he claims that there was NO vanillin ANYWHERE on the shroud! How can he know this? All of the samples ever taken comprise less than one percent of the shroud’s surface area. He only had two threads and a piece of the Raes sample to work on. The threads were supposedly from the center of the samples actually tested. No such threads are known to exist AND photomicrographs of the samples show no threads missing. Gonella DID NOT have authority to release samples to Rogers as I have already posted.

[Soliton]

and in other news, Joe Nickell is fully credentialed from Harvard, Oxford, MIT, Princeton, Cornell, Stanford, and Cal Tech. With Law degrees from Michigan and a post-doc in economics from Chicago. ...and an IQ of 330.

Nickles was the author of a book. He had a team of experts supporting him.

[Soliton]

Again, the 3:1 herringbone is irrelevant as is your claim that no threads are missing.

Rogers et al complained that the c-14 tests were not truely blind because the labs could tell by the 3:1 herringbone twill which piece came from the shroud. The samples were directly examined under microscopes by Vatican appointed fabric experts. You see things in the picture that they didn't. Besides, the Vatican has the Riggi sample. Why not just test it?

[Swordmaker]

As has been pointed out by others, modern material of approximately twice the mass as the Shroud samples would have to be added to the samples to bring authentic first-century linen up to radiocarbon dates of the fourteenth-century, and this would have been just too obvious to go unnoticed by so many independent investigators. . . .

http://www.freeinquiry.com/skeptic/shroud/as/schafersman.html

Schafersman, a geologist, not a C14 physicist, is close to correct. You would have to ADD an additional approximately 180% by weight to the Shroud material as a contaminant to bring the 1st Century date to 14th Century. Using Shafersman's "twice the mass" approximately two out of three parts of the sample would have to be contaminants. In other words ~66% of the tested material would have to be NEW material to skew 1st Century into the 14th. The amount mass of the original material in the combined sample would be a mere 33% of the total tested mass.

Such large percentages of added contaminants would stick out like a sore thumb. That is why the bio-plastic theory was a non-starter and why the soot from the 1352 fire is also a non-starter. Adding enough bio-plastic or soot contamination to skew the date would be obvious and easily seen.

That is the critique of ADDING contaminants to existing material. Original Material PLUS contaminant. Easily refuted.

However, that is not the model that the Benford/Marino Renaissance era patch theory postulates.

The real cause is REPLACING original material with contaminants. Contaminant REPLACING original material. Not so easily refuted.

In the Benford/Marino theory, original material is replaced, mass for mass, with newer material—with its much higher ratio of non-fissioned C14—in the C14 test sample. Observation of contamination is much harder because the contamination is camouflaged—masquerading as original material. When the test is done, it is performed on a mixture of materials that would have dated at approximately 1st Century and also 16th Century, and the results were erroneous 13-14th Century dates... a combination of the 1st Century dates of the older material and the 16th century dates of the newer material.

If you test what you think is 100% original material, and in reality 40-60% of it was replaced with newer material using a skillful art that replaces the missing original material with more modern material, you DON'T see the contaminating material because it looks exactly like the original.

When you replace the existing material with a more modern contaminant, the amount to needed to skew the date is far less. In fact, the amount then is around 50%... if 50% of the material is 16th Century, and 50% is 1st Century, then the ratios of much higher C14 in the newer material overwhelms the much smaller amount of C14 in the older material... The math works out to 1350 +/- 50 years.

Use some logic, Soliton.

Look how close the data are. Take a homogenous, pure sample that weighs 100 gms that is 1st Century. Test it. The reported date is 1st Century, give or take the degree of confidence. Now add 200 gms (200%, twice the amount of original material) of a modern contaminant, and do the test to the 300 gms of combined sample and contaminant. The percentage is 33.33% original material to 66.66% contaminant. The test reports a date of 1400AD give or take the degree of confidence. Wow. What a change. Its really close to what Shafersman's critique (and mine, I might add, and which I have told you numerous times already) of the contamination theories.

Now, let's cut away 66% of the cloth, leaving only 34 gms, and replace it with 66 gms brand new cloth and skillfully weave them together so that it is not obvious. We have left 34% original and added 66% new—it's not that different from adding contaminants to get the 33:66 ratio of before. Repeat the test. Wow. We get a reported date of 1400AD. Now cut out only 34% of the original, leaving 66 gms of older material, and replace that 34% with a patch of 34 gms new material. New ratio is 66:34 old:new. Repeat test... Oh, Wow, we get a date of 1200AD!

What is between those dates? The reported dates from the 1988 C14 tests.

[Soliton]

Now, let's cut away 66% of the cloth, leaving only 34 gms, and replace it with 66 gms brand new cloth and skillfully weave them together so that it is not obvious. We have left 34% original and added 66% new—it's not that different from adding contaminants to get the 33:66 ratio of before. Repeat the test. Wow. We get a reported date of 1400AD. Now cut out only 34% of the original, leaving 66 gms of older material, and replace that 34% with a patch of 34 gms new material. New ratio is 66:34 old:new. Repeat test... Oh, Wow, we get a date of 1200AD!

Half of the 1988 sample is still available (the Riggi sample). If this invisible patch theory is to be tested, why not test this piece to see if it is original or new? This is typical of the shroud's history. People create pseudo-scientific explainations over and over until one sticks. The Riggi sample was examined after the c-14 tests. A "bioplastic film" was allegedly found, but there was NO mention of cotton or reweaving. The Vatican, seeing the risk of having this sample in the public domain scarfed it up and hid it away. The proauthentity guys tried everything and nothing stuck. They cried fraud and contamination. B&M, two of the greatest quacks out there, came up with the invisible patch theory. Gonella and Rogers colluded to make it so. There is no actual evidence for an invisible patch at the C-14 site. Skeptics are not allowed near the samples. The Riggi sample answers everything. Why not just release it for testing to non- STURP scientists?

[Swordmaker]

The Rogers Article in Acta was a joke. It was destroyed. That’s why the STURP boys came out saying they had verified his results.

Please provide the articles published by scientists in either Thermochemica Acta or in any other peer-reviewed journals that refuted Rogers findings and "destroyed" his research and article. PLEASE.

Incidentally, neither Brown nor Villareal—scientists who, working within their fields of expertise, have replicated Rogers findings using different approaches—are or were members of STURP. So how can they be "STURP boys?" I know you think that "STURP boys" is a term of denigration... it is not.

These are men and women that I have met and talked to. I know far more about them than do you. Your ad homenem libel and slander about them is merely presented in hopes that someone will believe you. As I have stated before, you are reprehensible.

In fact ALL vanillins would disappear in SECONDS at temperatures above 200 degrees centigrade.

And you know this HOW? Where are your citations proving this? This was Raymond Rogers field of expertise.

He claimed that the thermal resistance of linen (this is one part stolen from McCrone)

BS, Soliton. The thermal resistance of Linen is a function that has been tested by many people who work with textiles. McCrone merely looked it up in a reference text. He did not do any research on such thermal resistance nor, as a microscopist, was he qualified to do such research. Ironically, as a chemical pyrologist, Raymond Rogers IS qualified to do such research. He is also qualified to do such research on Vanilan.

No such threads are known to exist AND photomicrographs of the samples show no threads missing. Gonella DID NOT have authority to release samples to Rogers as I have already posted.

There are thousands of thread and fiber samples that were taken from every area of the Shroud during STURP's 1978 examination. They still exist. They have not been destroyed. They have been examined six-ways from Sunday. Your claim there are none is contrary to the facts as reported in numerous scientific and scholarly reports.

How could Gonella NOT have authority when he was the highest authority other than the Pope on this particular issue. He is the Custodian of the Shroud of Turin. He is the authority to which scientists submit requests for samples in his possession. You write a letter to the Custodian of the Shroud outlining your proposed study and/or experiments, and if he agrees, you sign an agreement about your research and the Custodian sends you the requested samples. Under his official duties—by the Authority of the owner of the Shroud, and not to mention, Christ's Vicar on Earth, the Pope. How hard is this to understand. You keep claiming this "lack of authority" but you have never, ever backed up your claims except from skeptical sites that also lack proof of their assertions. You have offered absolutely NO PROOF of that claim. Provide your proof. SOLITON, PUT UP OR SHUT UP.

[Soliton]

In fact ALL vanillins would disappear in SECONDS at temperatures above 200 degrees centigrade.

Have you read Rogers' article in Thermochimica Acta? He provides the formula there. Do the math.

There are thousands of thread and fiber samples that were taken from every area of the Shroud during STURP's 1978 examination. They still exist. They have not been destroyed. They have been examined six-ways from Sunday. Your claim there are none is contrary to the facts as reported in numerous scientific and scholarly reports.

Again, have you read the TA article? Rogers specifically states in it that Gonella gave him threads from the center of the c-14 test area. SEE: September 1995: Cardinal Saldarini issues statement declaring any Shroud samples in circulation other than those taken with official permission for the tests of 1978 as unauthorized. He remarks that 'if such material exists…the Holy See has not given its permission to anybody to keep it and do what they want with it' and he requests those concerned to give the piece back to the Holy See. This statement seems clearly to be directed at the samples taken by Professor Giovanni Riggi in April 1988, portions from which were procured in all good faith by Dr. Garza-Valdes. http://www.shroud.com/history.htm

Gonella did not have the authority to give anything to Rogers and there is NO evidence that these threads ever existed. Rogers and Gonella are religious frauds. BTW, there is a MAJOR flaw in Rogers' TA article revolving around his statement "A determination of the kinetics of vanillin loss suggests that the shroud is between 1300- and 3000-years old. Even allowing for errors in the measurements and assumptions about storage conditions, the cloth is unlikely to be as young as 840 years." He also states that there is NO vanillin in the shroud in the article. Can you point out why his statements are unscientific on their face?

[Swordmaker]

You really don't know this stuff do you?

You haven't the foggiest clue about what you are talking about and now you choose to insult me in a field that most on FreeRepublic would consider me an expert. Soliton, you are a dilettante.

So far you have not provided ANY proof of your claims. No citations. You merely bluster and toss out insults to people who cannot defend themselves or their reputations. You provide no proof of your claims. You merely throw out an asssertion and then ignore the rebuttals.

You are not, and never have been, interested in science of discussion. You are an Atheist defending your faith. Your purpose on this thread is to throw brickbats and dung at fellow freepers and to slur and denigrate qualified scientists by citing falsehoods.

The 1988 sample was directly adjacent to the Raes sample, BUT IT WAS CUT IN HALF. The piece that was kept was the Riggi sample. The pieces c-14 tested were on the opposite side of the Riggi sample from Raes. IT was the piece that was next to Raes. So the piece ACTUALLY TESTED was NOT adjacent to Raes. Look at a map of the samples and you will see that I am correct. The Raes Sample was from 1972, The Riggi sample from 1988.

You really DON'T comprehend what you read! Amazing. You are not correct.

The Raes sample ran almost the entire length of the C14 sample. While approximately two tenths of an inch were trimmed from the upper segment of the C14 sample, the entire sample was cut adjacent to the missing area taken by Raes in 1973. These two tenths were cut because Professor Riggi saw "contaminating red threads" in that portion of the sample and trimmed them out. Don't you think that should have raised a red flag?

I will post, again, the quotation from YOUR source, the source that printed your sample maps. This is the VERY FIRST SENTENCE, in the VERY FIRST PARAGRAPH!

"The samples distributed to each of the labs involved in the testing were extracted from a corner of the Shroud of Turin directly adjacent to the site of a previous sampling done in 1973 to determine the nature of the Shroud textile - the Raes sample.

Can you READ the part I have put into bold? The part that explains exactly where the C14 sample was cut is directly adjacent (having a common vertex and a common side - Geometry) to the Raes Sample, cut in 1973, not 1972.

In addition, the 1988 C14 master sample was cut into more half. It was cut into FIVE PIECES as well as the 0.2" side piece that was trimmed off (and also retained!). The Arizona C14 Lab received TWO pieces. One from the end away from the selvage and another from right next to the selvage. All of the pieces were adjacent to the 1973 Raes sample area.

The following image is also from YOUR sample map source (in this graphic, the Raes sample would have been above the area depicted):

Note the inset comment: "An additional segment with a mass of ~14.1mg was provided to the Arizona lab from the 154.9mg Shroud segment." That segment, a sub-sample, taken from the 154.9mg master sample left a 140.8mg segment of the original master sample UNDISTRIBUTED! It is possession of the Custodian of the Shroud of Turin. That 140.8mg segment still exists and was retained as a control sample and it is from this piece that Raymond Rogers received a few warp and woof threads ON REQUEST from the Custodian of the Shroud.

I have never seen this segment ever referred to as the "Riggi sample." It is has been merely referred to as a sub-sample of the original master sample taken for the 1988 C14 tests. In addition, you first referred to the "Ricci sample" in your Reply Post 57. Msgn. Giulio Ricci, the Vatican Archivist (not Professor Giovanni Riggi Numana—the man who cut the 1988 C14 sample from the Shroud), did indeed pluck some threads from the Shroud. Now you confabulate the retained portion of the C14 sample as something you imply is a distinct, separate sample called the "Riggi sample." It is not. It is merely part of the 1988 C14 sample cutting.

Only materials from the STURP tape tests of 1978 were supposed to be in circulation.

Not true. Where did you get that piece of misinformation? The Raes Samples, the blood stained threads taken for the Italian study, plus sticky tape samples taken by Max Frei before the STURP examination, and additional samples taken during the 2002 "restoration" of the Shroud are currently in circulation. In addition, other samples held by the Shroud's custodian can be requested for study.

You apparently have no knowledge about the samples. I have described the samples, their positioning, and location to you before. You are merely repeating back to me things I have posted to you before and changing small things that you think you know as if they make some kind of difference.

[Swordmaker]

Rogers et al complained that the c-14 tests were not truely blind because the labs could tell by the 3:1 herringbone twill which piece came from the shroud. The samples were directly examined under microscopes by Vatican appointed fabric experts. You see things in the picture that they didn't. Besides, the Vatican has the Riggi sample. Why not just test it?

Rogers reiterated concerns about the protocols that were also stated by the scientists who did the tests. There was quite a search, conducted by Michael Tite of Oxford, trying to find matching weave and thread cloth to use as a control.

The simple solution would have been to merely pluck the samples and controls apart into threads, completely lacking weave. I don't know why they didn't think of it.

Yes, I and others see things they missed because they weren't looking for anomalies. They were looking for contaminants that were NOT part of the Shroud. They did not look at the threads of the sample itself. They were looking between the threads for things that didn't belong... not at the things they assumed belonged.

I agree that testing your so-called "Riggi Sample" is in order... and that is what Raymond Rogers did. He requested sample threads from the retained portion of the C14 test sample. He also examined threads from the Raes sample. His results falsified the data based on proving that the sample was not homogenous with the main body of the Shroud. Brown also requested threads from the control sample from the Shroud's custodian and confirmed Rogers findings using other techniques. Villareal has done similarly and also confirmed Rogers findings using yet different techniques.

[Soliton]

Not true. Where did you get that piece of misinformation? The Raes Samples, the blood stained threads taken for the Italian study, plus sticky tape samples taken by Max Frei before the STURP examination,

If you read Ian Wilson's book, you would know that King Umberto agreed to the sampling PROVIDED THAT ALL SAMPLES WERE RETURNED TO THE RELIQUARY WHEN THE 1972 analysis was completed.

As to your alleged expertise on the subject, you are an apologist for the proathenticity group. You believe whatever they say without question or objectivity.