Shroud - unfiltered:
?
Shroud - filtered to remove cloth artifacts:
The cloth minus the image showing the "banding" artifacting:
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Posted on 03/11/2005 8:12:13 AM PST by Swordmaker
New Analysis Confirms Second Face on Shroud of Turin and Raises Questions About Other Images
NEW YORK, March 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Skeptics and people who believe the Shroud of Turin is the genuine burial shroud of Jesus have always shared one common perception: they thought they knew what the man on the shroud looked like. Now, new computerized image analysis suggests they may be wrong.
Results of this analysis published at http://www.shroudstory.com suggest that many characteristics of the images on the shroud are optical illusions caused by random plaid patterns in the cloth. For instance, because of these patterns, the face of the man on the shroud appears gaunt and the nose abnormally long and narrow. By using image enhancement technology to reduce the effect of the variegated patterns, the shape of the face changes significantly. The face takes on a broader look and the nose becomes realistic looking.
Shroud researchers have discovered that these patterns are caused by alternating bands of darker and lighter threads in the cloth. Ancient linen was often manufactured by bleaching the thread in batches before weaving, thus producing non-uniform whiteness in the cloth.
The plaid patterns are also cloaking details. Last year, two researchers, Giulio Fanti and Roberto Maggiolo of the University of Padua in Italy, reported finding a faint second face on the backside of the cloth. They published their findings in the peer-reviewed scientific Journal of Optics (April 14, 2004). Though the facial image was confirmed scientifically, it was not easy to see. However, by filtering out the plaid background with software developed by Robert Doumax, an expert in computerized image analysis, the second face becomes visible.
"The second face was an important find because it virtually eliminates artistic methods while giving credence to a hypothesis that a natural amino/carbonyl chemical reaction formed the images," said Daniel Porter, who posted the enhanced images on the Shroud Story website.
The Shroud of Turin is a fourteen-foot-long cloth with front and back images of a man who appears to have been scourged and crucified. The shroud is stored in St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Turin, Italy.
Since the mid-1970s, the shroud has been the subject of many scientific investigations. In 1978, a team of researchers found that the images were not painted and the bloodstains were genuine. Scientists also showed that pollen and limestone dust on the cloth may be from the region around Jerusalem. However, in 1988, carbon-14 dating of a sample cut from a corner of the shroud indicated that the material originated between 1260 and 1390.
Undaunted by the carbon-14 results, scientists continued to try to explain how the images were formed. The images consist of caramel-like substances thinner than most bacteria. Historians pieced together records that suggested the shroud was the famed fourth century, or earlier, Cloth of Edessa that disappeared from Constantinople when the city was sacked in 1204. Researchers M. Sue Benford and Joseph Marino, working with several textile experts, determined that the Shroud had been expertly rewoven in the precise location from which the carbon-14 sample was taken.
"We still don't know how the images were formed," said Porter. "But we are well past thinking the shroud was painted or that it is a medieval fake-relic. Chemistry proves that. We can make a good case that it is a burial shroud of a crucifixion victim. With some historical reasoning we can infer that it might have been used by Jesus."
Earlier this year, chemist Raymond Rogers, a Los Alamos National Laboratory chemist, showed that the sample used for carbon-14 dating was indeed from discrete reweaving of the cloth. By examining remaining material from the carbon-14 sample, he proved that what was tested was chemically unlike the rest of the shroud. Rogers found splices and dyestuff used to make the reweaving discrete. He also found chemical evidence that the cloth was at least twice as old as the carbon-14 dating had suggested. He published his findings in the peer reviewed scientific journal Thermochimica Acta (Jan. 21, 2005, Volume 425 Issue 1-2). John L. Brown, a retired Georgia Institute of Technology scientist, independently confirmed many of Rogers' findings.
"Casually accepting what we think we see on the shroud is one of greatest pitfalls in shroud research," said Porter. "People see all sorts of things like teeth or skeletal features that may simply be different patterns in the thread."
Not seeing things is a problem as well. It took chemical and microscopic analysis to reveal the discrete patch that was used for carbon-14 dating. It took advanced image analysis to find the second face on the backside of the cloth.
Photographs of the enhanced images may be seen at http://www.shroudstory.com.
Contact:
Daniel R. Porter 914-793-2960
Source: Daniel R. Porter
Shroud - unfiltered:
?
Shroud - filtered to remove cloth artifacts:
The cloth minus the image showing the "banding" artifacting:
If you want on or off the Shroud Ping list, Freepmail me.
I wonder why the medieval forger wanted to obscure the second facial image using the fabric's weave until the image could be discovered centuries later using digital image-filtering software?
LOL, very funny.
LOL!
LOL!
Thanks for the ping!
Earlier this year, chemist Raymond Rogers, a Los Alamos National Laboratory chemist, showed that the sample used for carbon-14 dating was indeed from discrete reweaving of the cloth. By examining remaining material from the carbon-14 sample, he proved that what was tested was chemically unlike the rest of the shroud. Rogers found splices and dyestuff used to make the reweaving discrete.Wow! It's not hard to see the hand of God in this.
The difference between the first two images is amazing.
Ping.
Yes, if I did not know better.....I would say that he used the first image as a guide to create the second that would later be discovered by a computer program. Sooner or later.........:-)
Moving right on..........
Christ Pantocrator
Cefalu, Sicily
"Now with modern image analysis we can clearly see that the pictures of Jesus in numerous works of art are most probably sourced from a single image; the Shroud of Turin."
ShroudStory
Catholic Ping - Come home for Easter and experience God’s merciful love. Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list
Sorry, Wilson's technique does not duplicate the Shroud and it is certainly not identical. It is a good attempt but it is only superficially similar to the Shroud's image.
Wilson's technique is based on an artist painting a perfect, semi-transparently gradiated picture on glass which then shadows the linen below while the sun bleaches the unshadowed linen. He assumes the image on the shroud is a light photograph... it is not. It is a countour or terrain map of the shroud's distance from the body... and attempts to duplicate a photographic effect.
If it were mere bleaching, the image on the shroud would have long ago been bleached to obscurity by the sun bleaching the image portion of the shroud to match the non-image portion over years' of exposure.
In addition, one of the first things learned about the image was that it existed only on the top most fibers and that it is not contiguous as would be any bleaching. Sun bleaching reaches inside the weave and extends to areas the image does not on the real shroud. We know what the image is composed of... and it is not bleached linen. It is a chemical Maillard reaction with starch fractions coating the surface of the fiber. Microscopic examination of the fibers of Wilson's image will show that they do not compare to Shroud fibers.
Wilson's technique also does not address the existance of the faint, but unmistakable, second face image on the BACK of the shroud, which registered exactly with the frontal image, and which could not have been accomplished by sun bleaching the front.
The Shroud is not made by sun bleaching, nor does Wilson's technique cover all of the details found in the Shroud. It is just another failed attempt to duplicate it.
Thanks for posting this.
Thanks for the update. The layers of doubt keep getting pealed away.
No, it is you that is confused... IF the shroud image is unbleached linen because it was protected from exposure to the sun, then the image would be contiguous throughout as unbleached linen... it is NOT. Your point and Wilson's contention is that it is the non-image portion of the shroud that was changed to LEAVE the image behind in UN-CHANGED linen... which would therefore be contiguous. The image on the Shroud is where the change occurred... not on the un-imaged areas.
The other point to be made is that this article is talking about the linen threads, before being woven into a cloth, being sun bleached as hanks, rather than the cloth being sun bleached as a whole after weaving. The patterning is an artifact of using hanks that were differently bleached in different areas of weaving...
In addition, Math, we know from the Shroud's history that it was often exposed to the sun, sometimes for days on end, as pilgrims came to see it. If the image were as you and Wilson contend mere bleaching, such exposure would have obliterated the image.
Under the extremely thin (100th the thickness of a human hair) image layer in the image areas, the linen of the shroud is essentially identical image area to non-image areas with no color differentiation other than what is inherently there. In other words, if you take an image thread and a non-image thread and remove the image layer, the threads are identical... which completely negates the "bleaching" theory. As you pointed out, if the linen is left in the sun long enough, it bleaches "all the way through to the back" and that would include inside the threads and fibers.
A textile analysis of Wilson's shrouds has not been made yet. Your assertion that it's different is certainly speculation. Obviously, it will be necessary to examine the fibers, taking into account the effects of time experienced by the original shroud.
No, it has not. But it is unnecessary. Wilson claims it is bleaching... but a Maillard Reaction is not caused by bleaching... it requires other chemicals. Since the shroud image is not made of non-bleached linen, there is no need to examine Wilson's bleached linin copies.
I appreciate your study of the Shroud and your posts.
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