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Science

Carbon Dating & The Shroud of Turin 1019

Posted by CmdrTaco from the templars-and-the-aliens-made-it dept.
BlackTyranny writes "The Shroud of Turin, carbon dated in 1978 by a team of scientists, may be far older than originally thought. Raymond N. Rogers, a retired chemist from the University of California-operated Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, part of the original team, used samples given to him in 2003 from the Cardinal of Turin's scientific advisor. Roger's contends that the carbon dating might be faulty because "the people who cut the sample didn't do a very good job of characterizing the samples," that is, taking samples from many areas of the cloth." I think the shroud 'Patch' may be made of the big foot suit. ;)
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Carbon Dating & The Shroud of Turin More

Carbon Dating & The Shroud of Turin

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  • And on the back... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @11:39AM (#11520030) Homepage
    "Made in Taiwan,
    80% Cotton,
    20% Polyester,
    Dry Clean Only."

    • Actually, that would be a sin. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, 2005 @12:02PM (#11520195)
      Leviticus 19:19

      King James Bible: Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind. Thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed. Neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.

      Good News Bible: Obey my orders. Do not crossbreed your cattle. Do not plant two kinds of seed in the same field. Do not wear clothing made from two kinds of fiber.

      • Re:Actually, that would be a sin. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Catbeller ( 118204 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @01:22PM (#11520800) Homepage
        Most of the religious justification for hating gays comes from Leviticus, but damn few people ever read the whole text. The people who wrote it were freaking nuts. It's like a read from Rev. Moon's writings -- control for its own sake. Superstition and common sense mixed together with a massive dash of fanaticism.

        • Re:Actually, that would be a sin. (Score:5, Informative)

          by jayratch ( 568850 ) <{moc.hctaryaj} {ta} {todhsals}> on Sunday January 30, 2005 @02:18PM (#11521169) Homepage Journal
          Not at all. The Hebrew codes specified in Leviticus et al specify a code of life that is extremely survival oriented, efficiency oriented, and family oriented. The end result of this is a nation that managed to thrive and grow to eventually produce movements which now dominate most of the world. Control for its own sake though it is not:
          1) The kosher laws effectively prevent food poisoning and obesity. Much of what is forbidden, under available food preparation techniques (which were also specified at a high standard of sanitation), would have been either a bacterial risk or unhealthy in general.
          2) Other laws, such as those governing clothing and housewares, prescribe a level of quality control that may have increased initial costs on many items, but probably resulted in better durability and a lower long term TCO.
          3) Sex laws served two purposes. They held the family units together and guaranteed growth of the nation (more offspring than parents) as well as preserving the purity of the group. This may not make sense biologically but it avoided the cultural confusion which we Americans are so fond of.
          4) The entirety of the code gave the Hebrews a sense of "something different" from their neighbors, as it continues to for those who follow it. Hence serving to unify the people and enhance a sense of nation, which is why they are just about the only cultural group of that period to have survived to the modern day.

          • Re:Actually, that would be a sin. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by EnronHaliburton2004 ( 815366 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @02:31PM (#11521264) Homepage Journal
            Thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed. Neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen com upon thee.

            a nation that managed to thrive and grow to eventually produce movements which now dominate most of the world.

            I'm really confused by the "mingled seed" comment.

            Civilizations which planted multiple crops on one field, used crop rotation and cross-bred plants were very successful in agriculture, and I don't see how that would be unsanitary.

            • Re:Actually, that would be a sin. (Score:5, Informative)

              by Klowner ( 145731 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @05:00PM (#11522506) Homepage
              Nothing like removing all context from a passage and making it sound like total jibberish.

              Keep in mind, that would be Old Testament, and God is speaking to Moses (the guy leading the Israelites around at the time) providing him with a rather lengthy list of stuff they shouldn't do. Such as sacraficing babies to idols (Leviticus 20:2), hot hot man love (Lev. 20:13), and of course bestiality (Lev. 20:15-16), and other things of that sort...

              Although the mixed seeds and the fiber blended clothing thing seems odd, and I doubt they had GMO seeds at the time. Most of the strict rules being enforced in those chapters comes after the Israelites had been screwing themselves over on a few occasions and defying rather simple to follow guidelines which were specified before all this stuff.

              I wouldn't consider regular crop rotation methods as "mixed seed", sure you have some voluntary growth from the previous year but that's undesired and unintentional.. Agreed, it does seem weird, it could have been intended simply to make the Israelites a visual example of being "set apart"(holy) to the other people they encountered along the way.

              Although, harddrive manufacturers need to read this one..

              (Lev. 19:35 KJV) Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure.

              Go ahead, mod me down for doing a little research before I post.
            • By the time Leviticus was written (general scholarly acceptance is that it was set to something like its current form sometime around 550, but based on older material) the major threat to Israelite identity was intermarriage and mingling of customs with gentiles. Many of the really wacky regulations in leviticus (like not mixing flax and cotton) were ways for the Israelites to remind themselves of their call to be a people set apart to Yahweh.

              To modern ears, this whole notion of purity seems offensive, b

          • >Sex laws served two purposes. They held the family units together and guaranteed growth of the nation (more offspring than parents) as well as preserving the purity of the group.

            Have you looked at the family purity laws? What is so terrible about touching your wife while she's in labour? What's so terrible about touching her only 6 days after she's had a midcyle spot? Even if she's having her period, I think that passing the salt is probably not so bad.

            Lea

          • Whenever I want a warm, family-oriented moment I stop by that passage in Leviticus on how to do slavery up right in the eyes of the Lord. That one centainly did give "the Hebrews a sense of 'something different' from their neighbors".

            Actually, I've been extremely annoyed recently to see how many of my acquaintances have "gone biblical" and decided (probably without ever reading a bit of it in the original authors) that several hundred years of the Enlightenment were worthless.

            Now let's get out that bible
            • I stop by that passage in Leviticus on how to do slavery up right in the eyes of the Lord.

              Are you kidding ? The slavery laws were way advanced for the age. An age when slavery was as common economical practice as being an employer today.

              The ancient israelites insistence on freeing slaves every 50 years ensured that whole FAMILIES will not have to stay in slavery, and lack of freedom was so frowned on that a slave choosing to REMAIN a slave would be branded in shame. Again, this is the old world - compar

          • You know every time I hear something like this I am reminded of the psychological phenomenon of 'rationalisation' ... whereby we make excuses for things we want to believe.

            Sure there is bound to be local wisdom in these ideas, there is in every society when you look close enough. Nothing special there. But there is almost certainly ignorance, and we should remember that in hindsight one can concoct an almost infinite number of reasons to explain something independent of whether it is true. This is the reas

  • dating (Score:5, Funny)

    by dankelley ( 573611 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @11:40AM (#11520038)
    Yeah, most of my dating is faulty also. Oh, carbon, you say. Nevermind.

  • Authenticity (Score:3, Insightful)

    by milohanrahan ( 787011 ) <milo@andreaswagnerschule.fsnet.co.uk> on Sunday January 30, 2005 @11:42AM (#11520049) Homepage
    It's pretty generally accepted already by all those without blind faith that the piece of fabric known as the Turin Shroud is not what Jesus was wrapped in. Further experimentation with and investigation of it seems to me an extraordinary waste of money.

    • Re:Authenticity (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @12:20PM (#11520313) Homepage Journal
      Well, I don't see it as a waste of money, if this is important to people.

      Science is not a set of conclusions, it is a set of procedures. As such if the original tests were worth doing, then questioning the results of the original test are potentially worth doing. If the original tests are not be questioned in principle then the conclusions of those test can't be regarded as scientific, can they?

      From a purely scientific standpoint, the scientific value of retesting this artifact lies in the basis for doubting the original conclusions. Naturally, if the basis for doubting that is religious faith, then there is no scientific value in doing so. But if there are technical reasons to believe that the original procedure was incorrect, then there is certainly merit in reexamining the conclusions.

      By way of analogy, there is no scientific merit in reexaming work done to trace the antiquity of our mitochondrial DNA heritage based on an extrapolation of the world's age in the Bible. But, doing so on the basis that the original work may have overestimated the rate of mutation is a totally different kettle of loaves and fishes.

      Naturally, the fact that this process would be of great interest to Young Earthers is, or at least should be, irrelevant.
    • Further experimentation with and investigation of it seems to me an extraordinary waste of money.

      you obviously have never actually done anything related to science, history, or government.

      We had this thing that we thought something about. We ran a test, that told us we were wrong. Someone looked at our test, and said "you may have done that wrong." So, the logical thing is to *do another test.*

      That's not blind faith -- that's science.
  • ...that God made the entire universe universe, impregnated some woman on a the third planet from a very insignificant star and then let the resulting offspring get killed. I'd come to the conclusion this story wasn't true but now the Turin shroud dating is in question I have to revise my view of the entire universe again. Really, can't these archaeologists get their act together. The indecision is killing me.

    • Re:Damn! That means I have to accept the possibili (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @11:46AM (#11520075) Homepage Journal
      ...and there really isn't any proof on it having been the one that some guy 2000 years ago was in.

      relics were a big business, and still are.

      there were literally tons of wood that was supposedly from the cross that jesus was supposedly nailed to.
      • there were literally tons of wood that was supposedly from the cross that jesus was supposedly nailed to.

        This is a popular fiction with no evidence whatsoever to back it up. As someone else mentioned, most relics of the True Cross are smaller than a splinter. The total volume of all known True Cross relics is about .004 cu. m out of an estimated volume for the entire Cross of .174 cu. m. See both Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] and The Catholic Encyclopedia [newadvent.org].

    • ...that God made the entire universe universe, impregnated some woman on a the third planet from a very insignificant star

      Please explain what makes you so sure that this is a "very insignificant star". Maybe it isn't? Maybe it is a significant planet orbiting a significant star, after all [anthropic-principle.com]?

  • patch (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rigelstar ( 243170 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @11:43AM (#11520057)
    Who decided to patch the shroud along the way?

    • Fires (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The shroud was stored in a church that caught fire, centuries ago.


      It was folded up, and one corner caught fire or got charred (moltern lead from the roof?). That explains the triangular and diamond patches that have been sewn on at a later time.

      • Informative.

        Also, I'd like to say that the fire could have altered the carbon-14 test. To add more wood to the fire, I'd remind the readers that science is fallible (soon new facts disprove earlier theories). But extremist atheist used that to say: "Ah, see! Science proves that Jesus didn't exist" or something.

        • Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @12:47PM (#11520511) Homepage

          I'd remind the readers that science is fallible.
          Of course. But you sound like you're using the fallibility of science to justify what you already believe. In other words "it MUST be the real Jesus shrowd, not that I have any evidence it is.. but eventually science will show the counter-evidence is wrong because.. well it MUST be". That's not how science works. Sure, it's possible the science is faulty.. but you don't just assume it is because the evidence doesn't back up your own, unsubstatiated beliefs. That's just patently dishonest.

          In science you take all the evidence and make a conclusion based on that with the understanding that it's not the final word on the matter. In other words, you don't get to use science only when it backs up what you want to believe, but claim faulty science when it doesn't.

          • Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Fallen Kell ( 165468 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @03:47PM (#11521884)
            Well, ok lets think about this logically. We already have several possible reasons for the inaccuracy of the carbon dating. This is just yet another look at the dating method used to show that is has flaws.

            To me, the most blatent flaw is the know fact that the shroud has/had a bacterial infestation in its long history. Enough so that any dating method used would and should clean the cloth before attempting to date it, but it was not cleaned, and might not be possible to clean before dating. This new look wants to take samples from multiple places on the shroud, which makes much more sense knowing that there is contamination that will skew any and all results to a newer creation date (as the bacterial mass would was living on the shroud after its actual creation and thus have giving a possitive time shift to the data collected which still includes this added mass to the testing mass, the shroud fibers themselves, not the shroud and bacteria that is on the shroud.

            There was a similar issue with the dead sea scrolls. But with those, a solution was found to get more accurate readings by measuring the age a one of the scrolls which had were dated and cross-referenced with other known sources to be known accurate to the particular dates/time frame, and compairing that result with the result found on the other scrolls. In those cases, there was a 200-300 year difference resolved. By compairing the resulting carbon date output range in those cases, it was found that the lowest possible number in the carbon dating was the true date. It was still within the margin of error of data in that particular case(s), but it was the extreme low end which was a 200-300 year shift from the nominal value of the range.

            In the shroud's case, there is no other documentation found with the shroud, no other similar objects which have dates associated with them, at least not until the 16th century when it passed into the hands of the church. And thus no way to use the same methods used to date the dead sea scrolls in this case. What is known, is that there is contamination. How much is up for debate simply because more tests have not been performed, and because science does not want to expose the known flaws with carbon dating. I say known as they are known to scientists and intelligent people, but not known to the general public who have been lead to believe that it is the be-all-end-all method and that the results never lie, but when in reality, the results can easily be skewed to the possitive timeframe by contamination (this is why other objects that are dated try to use material that is not exposed to the direct elements, but this is not possible in this case).

            All I am saying is that there are many known reasons for the dating to be skewed. Is it possible that the dating was skewed 1100 years or so, I do not know. It could be if the bacterial infestation was extrememly pervasive in the area from where the sample was taken.

            Personnally, I believe that it may be a fake, but the fact that we have yet to prove it one way or the other keeps my mind open. The real question should be if it is a fake, how was it made? We still have yet to answer that. There is speculation that it was painted by an artist, but if that was the case, the paint should have been absorbed by the fibers and penetrated them, when the coloring is only on the extreme edges of the fibers. Another suggestion was that it was "burned" on by a massive bronze/iron statue being heated and the cloth being draped over the statue. This too has been disprooven as the photographic negative effect would not have been created with this method (emperical tests were done to test this and the resulting works did not withstand the photographic negative test). When after almost 700 years no one has been able to show how it was made, especially with all the advances in science and technology only showing how much more there is to the shroud, I keep a open mind that it could be authentic, but a skeptical mind given the nature of the time in which it came into existance...

  • 1978? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, 2005 @11:43AM (#11520058)
    The carbon dating was done in 1988, not in 1978. The article is wrong.

    • Re:1978? (Score:3, Informative)

      by damiangerous ( 218679 )
      No, the article is correct. It states that carbon-dating was done in 1988, but that the samples used for all the different tests (including the carbon dating and the vanillin testing that is the subject of the article) were taken from the shroud in 1978.
  • First:

    A chemist who worked on testing of the Shroud of Turin says new analysis of the fiber indicates the cloth that some say was the burial linen of Jesus could be up to 3,000 years old.

    Then:

    The Shroud of Turin, the 14-foot linen revered by some as the burial cloth of Jesus, may have been woven around the time of his death. ...
    Give or take a thousand years, eh?

  • Cautionary note ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by fygment ( 444210 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @11:44AM (#11520061)
    ... Raymond N. Rogers has been a long time believer of the authenticity of the shroud. A Google on his name will show a long involvement. It is doubtful he will ever have findings that will be contrary to his own beliefs. This does not mean he is wrong nor a fraud. It would just be more believable if the findings were from an unbiased third party.

  • Face imprint gives away the fake (Score:4, Informative)

    by TheMediaWrangler ( 817300 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @11:53AM (#11520127)
    All you have to do is look at the face image on the shroud. It is a completely orthogonal image. If the shroud was wrapped in any way around a person's face, there is no way that the image could have been generated.

    Hey kids, you can try this at home. Just wet your face and lightly wrap a paper towel around it for a second and then see if you recognize yourself in the image.

  • All carbon dating can show (Score:4, Informative)

    by Zachary Kessin ( 1372 ) <zkessin@gmail.com> on Sunday January 30, 2005 @11:54AM (#11520131) Homepage Journal
    Is that the item is from about the right time period or not. In truth if you could show that it is about 2000 years old it doesn't prove much. Lots of people died back then and where wrapped in a cloth. And the Romans used crusafiction as a standard form of capital punishment. So at best you can show that it was the death shroud of someone who died 2000 years ago via a more or less standard way of executing someone.
    • Lots of people died back then and where wrapped in a cloth

      ...yet their bodies left no visible image on the cloth. This one somehow did. I'm afraid you're missing this point now.
    • Well, this kind of thing requires an interdisciplinary approach. For example, the very idea that this is the shroud of a crucified man would, in itself, make it an extraordinary artifact.

      Crucifiction was a Roman practice par excellence; it was cunningly devised to strike terror of rebellion into the populace.

      The normal practice of crucifiction was simply to hang the person up in a well travelled place and leave him there, not only until he died, but until his body began to fall apart in a very public way

  • A Lament (Score:2, Insightful)

    by milohanrahan ( 787011 )
    It's a pity that this sort of uninteresting pseudo-science keeps cropping up on /.

    I'm not a scientist, but surely there are more interesting things going in the world than this?

    • Re:A Lament (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Attaturk ( 695988 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @01:22PM (#11520795) Homepage

      It's a pity that this sort of uninteresting pseudo-science keeps cropping up on /.

      I'm not a scientist, but surely there are more interesting things going in the world than this?

      I couldn't agree more. And I'm pretty confident that Jesus would also agree wholeheartedly if he were alive today. I suspect he'd be dumbfounded as to why God's children still seem to be mesmerised by idols and symbols when they should really be focussing on all the death, torture, war and oppression in the world. We'll spend money on investigating a dirty old piece of cloth but we're not prepared to stop all the prejudices and greed-fuelled, self-interested warmongers in the world. I'm not a Christian btw (far from it in fact) - but I have zero time for anyone claiming to be a Christian that actually has no idea what Jesus Christ's own ideals were.

      Please excuse the rant but really - even Jesus himself would mod this story down.

  • Physicists vs Chemists (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 30, 2005 @11:56AM (#11520146)
    "But there was virtually no vanillin left in the shroud, leading the chemist to calculate it could be far older than the radiocarbon testing indicated".

    This is a chemical analysis along the lines of the fact that all the vanillin has disappeared, assuming it was there to start with, and that it disappears at a predictable rate (without knowing the temperature and other conditions it was stored in).

    The carbon dating on the other hand measures the ratios of isotopes of carbon. The ratio of isotopes of carbon in all living matter is known, and it produces other isotopes at a predictable rate dependent only on time after death or harvest of the matter (cotton, bone, etc). This is a nuclear process that is independent of temperature, humidity, chemical environment, etc.

    My money is on the physicists.

  • time to get over it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by aminorex ( 141494 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @11:56AM (#11520147) Homepage Journal
    the british museum's dating was patheticly incompetent, failing to account for the role of accumulating bioplastic coating on the fibers, the preservation of the shroud in oil during the late renaissance, and now, as has been demonstrated by use of other dating methods, the selection of repair materials for the dating. the only reason it was ever accepted was that it's results were pleasing to the rejectionist viewpoint.

    vanillin decay products demonstrate that the shroud is composed of materials of two distinct periods, one consistent with it's documented provenance (to the 13th century), and one consistent with its physical characteristics (1000 BC to 700AD).

    given that it is the only proposed physical artifact of a pivotal event in human history, with profound import, compentent pursuit of an accurate and factual account of its characteristics is a very worthwhile endeavour, and entirely undeserving of the deceitful mockery of the poster.

    • Get it right (Score:5, Informative)

      by KontinMonet ( 737319 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @01:16PM (#11520751) Homepage Journal
      First, the British Museum did no dating. They simply coordinated the results from three labs in the US, UK and Switzerland.

      Second, this 'bioplastic coating' was simply a hypothesis from Stephen Mattingly of the University of Texas. STURPS Joan L. Rogers took authentic Shroud fibers, which she laboriously extracted from the STURP sampling tapes by washing them free of adhesive with xylene (not a solvent for any "bioplastic polymers"), to Metuchen, NJ, for laser-microprobe Raman analysis. The analysis is extremely sensitive, but nothing was observed that would indicate a "bioplastic polymer."

      Third, even at the time, scientists in the dating lab in the UK were skeptical: P.H South, while examining threads from the sample on behalf of the Oxford University Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory found indications of cotton. To him it seemed like material intrusion. In an article entitled "Rogue Fibers Found in Shroud," published in Textile Horizons in 1988, South write of his discovery of "a fine dark yellow strand [of cotton] possibly of Egyptian origin, and quite old . . . it may have been used for repairs at some time in the past, or simply bound in when the linen fabric was woven."

      I well remember that, at the time, no one (except the odd spin doctor) thought these results conclusive and asked for more material. This was denied.

    • Take your own advice! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tau Zero ( 75868 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @02:04PM (#11521065) Journal
      the british museum's dating was patheticly incompetent
      Scientifically or religiously?
      failing to account for the role of accumulating bioplastic coating on the fibers
      Which makes the Shroud unique among all ancient textiles? (If you can't properly date the Shroud, how could you date anything else? Do you think that scientists don't test their methods for reliability before using them for any work of importance?)
      the preservation of the shroud in oil during the late renaissance
      Are you saying that cellulose cannot be purified from the material? If you cannot obtain guaranteed-original material for radiocarbon dating, you can't get it for any other analysis either. That includes the vanillin that Rogers is using for his claims... claims which are highly suspect because they make assumptions about rates of chemical reactions under the uncontrolled storage conditions.
      and now, as has been demonstrated by use of other dating methods, the selection of repair materials for the dating.
      You're not making sense here. Are you telling me that
      • The very people who maintain the Shroud as a holy artifact
      • Who by definition believe in its authenticity
      • Who have every reason to want it to be proven authentic
      • Who control access to it, and
      • Who only permitted research on it after a long and difficult negotiation with the scientists involved,
      didn't allow anyone to have the proper things to test?

      Isn't it easier just to believe that the claims of authenticity are false, and that people are clinging to it because of what they want to be true?

      Rogers looks like someone who will believe regardless of the evidence, and is thus someone whose "scientific" results are not trustworthy. The McPaper article [usatoday.com] quotes Rogers saying " the blood spots on it are real blood", when the actual material of the "blood stains" has been proven to be red ochre. [mcri.org] Am I also being asked to believe that Jesus bled red ochre?

      given that it is the only proposed physical artifact of a pivotal event in human history, with profound import, compentent pursuit of an accurate and factual account of its characteristics is a very worthwhile endeavour, and entirely undeserving of the deceitful mockery of the poster.
      Refusing to accept the reality that the "artifact" is a 14th-century creation says nothing about the dating process, and everything about your prejudices. It's not what its keepers think it is. Get over it.

  • Vanillin (Score:5, Informative)

    by BarryNorton ( 778694 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @11:56AM (#11520150)
    Summary completely misses the point of the article that the new analysis was carried out on vanillin content of the fibres rather than carbon isotopes.

  • Religious View vs. Scientific View (Score:5, Insightful)

    by reporter ( 666905 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @12:01PM (#11520178) Homepage
    For the religiously inclined, click on this link [shroudstory.com] to go to a relatively good (i.e. moderate) viewpoint on the Shroud, by an Epicopalian who thinks like John Shelby Spong (one of the very few Christians whom I respect).

    For those (like myself) who are secular, I wish to point out the single greatest problem in the religious view of the Shroud. The clerics simply assume that the shroud belongs to Jesus (assuming that he existed at all) and then direct their scientists to prove that the shroud belonged to Jesus. This type of reasoning is "Assume the conclusion to be true. Then prove the conclusion." I thought that scientific inquiry is "We don't know what to expect. Let's probe and collect the scientifically provable facts. Then, we draw a conclusion from the facts."

    • I thought that scientific inquiry is "We don't know what to expect. Let's probe and collect the scientifically provable facts. Then, we draw a conclusion from the facts."

      Nope.

      Scientific inquiry is "this is what we think. Test it and see if we're wrong or not."

      If every inquiry had to start from scratch, we wouldn't be anywhere.

      Oh, and re: Jesus -- there is at least one piece of non-christian evidence that the man did in fact exist. You can argue that is life was exaggerated, but arguing that the man d
  • I think it is the people who look after the Shroud ( some Church or other ) who decide whether or not people can take samples from the shroud and I think it's also their call which pieces of the shroud are taken.

    I think they are very reluctant to cut bits off the shroud so it's unlikley they will allow any other bits which may be original and not patched on later to be carbon dated.

    I think a fair summary of what has happened so far it this

    - Scientists allowed to take sample for carbon dating and shroud o

    • Re:Damn Priests (Score:5, Informative)

      by Inti ( 99884 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @01:40PM (#11520911) Homepage
      Actually, the Catholic church does not hold the shroud to be authentic, and church officials have made no comment on the new anaysis reported in this article. This new analysis was not performed by "the church", but rather by an independent researcher.

  • The real mystery of the Shroud of Turin... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rednip ( 186217 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @12:01PM (#11520192) Journal
    Is how the image was produced in the first place. As best as I know, it's unique to (at least) medievil tech. Does anyone out there have a good scientific explaination for it? Perhaps it could be a History Channel show, "God Tech".

  • For sake of argument (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Lets just say for the sake of argument that the shroud is the cloth that jesus was wrapped in when he was buried. What exactly does that prove, anyway?

    Maybe if intact DNA could be found on the cloth, they could clone it, and get the resulting guy to reason with christians.

  • Hm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by HackNack ( 853020 ) <jas@nOspAm.emilswenson.com> on Sunday January 30, 2005 @12:05PM (#11520212) Homepage
    Scientific method:

    1. Characterization
    2. Hypothesis (a theoretical, hypothetical explanation)
    3. Prediction (logical deduction from the hypothesis)
    4. Experiment (test of all of the above)
    5. Conclusion (an objective conclusion based on #4)

    Dr. Raymond Rogers's Method

    1. Conclusion (It was Jesus's burial shroud)
    2. Characterization (What's that?)
    3. Hypothesis (Huh?)
    4. Prediction (We all know it was Jesus's)
    5. Experiment (Hmmm, let's pick a method that will ballpark the age better. 100,000 BC to 2005 CE GOOD! Hey, it's all good.)
  • Faith and science are two totally different and incompatible methods of acquiring knowledge. Disproving faith with science isn't going to change minds it's just going to make a whole bunch of people even less likely to have faith in the scientific method.
    • why? just because someone uses it to show that there is or is not evidence that faith in something super natural has merit does not hurt the scientific method. I mean, it either discovers that there is a god or there is not a god or we do not know.... how are any of those outcomes harmful to the scientific method?

      I think you are just an idiot.

    • Re:Bad for Science (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @12:25PM (#11520343) Homepage

      Faith and science are two totally different and incompatible methods of acquiring knowledge.
      Faith is not a method of aquiring knowledge, it's a method of retaining a belief.

  • Turin.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by mechsoph ( 716782 )
    Anybody else read that as the "Shroud of Turing"?

  • Ah yes... when it's global warming (Score:3, Insightful)

    by the_skywise ( 189793 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @12:18PM (#11520293)
    The scientific evidence is "overwhelmingly" true and we should not deny the "scientific" evidence. When the scientific evidence shows the carbon dating was potentially done on a patch of the shroud of turin, it's because it was made from the "bigfoot" suit (happy face).

    But then it just goes to show you that there's more to religious beliefs than religion...
  • Whether or not this is the shroud that wrapped jesus in the tomb, there's still a sufficiently large body of historical evidence that a man called jesus was alive at the time. Validating or invalidating the claim that this is the cloth he was wrapped in has little or no impact upon proving or disproving the existence of jesus.

  • USA Today: Not fit for the bottom of a birdcage. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by uncoveror ( 570620 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @12:26PM (#11520350) Homepage
    An article about the Shroud of Turin is in the Science/Space section of USA Today. Even with carbon dating a Shroud believer wants to cast doubt upon, it belongs in the religion section, or something to that effect. USA today is McNewspaper. It is not fit for the bottom of a birdcage.

  • Religious "Proof" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MajorBlunder ( 114448 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @12:35PM (#11520421)
    First, let me say that I am a Christian, and I hold my faith to be a guiding and supporting influence in my life. As to the authenticity of Shroud of Turin, I personaly have doubts about its authenticity, but I refuse to pass final judgment on the matter as I doubt we will ever have all the facts. In the final analysis however no proof, scientific or other wise will matter.

    "For those who do not believe no proof is sufficient. For those who do believe no proof is necessary." -- Unknown source

    • Re:Religious "Proof" (Score:3, Informative)

      by de Selby ( 167520 )
      "As to the authenticity of Shroud of Turin, I personaly have doubts about its authenticity, but I refuse to pass final judgment on the matter as I doubt we will ever have all the facts."

      A good attitude. These are some of the facts I've picked up:

      * A forger confessed to the Church for having created it.
      * The history of the shroud is not known before the mid-1300s.
      * The weave is not like that of Jesus' time.
      * It's the wrong size and shape according to the Bible. It should be be strips, not one large piece.
      *

  • Leonardo Da Vinci Created the Shroud (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Samuel_Colorado ( 854712 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @01:02PM (#11520635)

    The National Geographic channel last night aired an hour-long investigation into the mystery of the shroud of turin. NG was made the argument that Leonardo Da Vinci created the shroud. Anyone who's interested should check it out.

    NG claimed that Da Vinci had family ties to the church that housed the shroud, thus creating a link between how the shroud could have been obtained by the church.

    NG made other intereresting links and arguments.

    I found it particuarly amusing that the image on the shroud is extremely similar to Da Vinci's own self portrait. It seems well within Leonardo's personality to pull such a prank that has lasted for centuries.

    As for the actual age of the shroud, as long as it was *before* Leonardo's time, he could have obtained the material. If his goal was to trick the people of his time with the shroud he probably would have sought an older-looking one anyway.

    From nationalgeographic.com [nationalgeographic.com]: Behind the Mysteries Week: "Da Vinci and the Mystery of the Shroud" at 8P et/pt Jesus's image, believers say, was burned into the Shroud of Turin by the intense heat of resurrection. But is it genuine? Or was it created by someone with extraordinary skills, like the great Leonardo Da Vinci?

  • Nature Magazine Comments on Carbon 14 1/28/05 (Score:3, Informative)

    by drporter ( 854709 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @02:07PM (#11521089)
    This is a good editorial comment on Rogers' debunking of the carbon 14 dating, by Philip Ball in Nature Magazine [nature.com] .

    Nature, of course, was the prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal that carried the story of the 1988 carbon 14 dating.

    This article addresses most of the comments that have been posted in this thread.

    Dan

  • Geometry doesn't work out (Score:3, Insightful)

    by starsong ( 624646 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @03:00PM (#11521438)
    The simplest argument I've ever heard against the shroud being real (i.e. an actual burial cloth) is the image of Jesus supposedly imprinted on it. The face/body have roughly the same dimensions as a normal human face, except for some blurring. However, this is NOT what you would expect on a piece of cloth wrapped around someone! If the "imprint" came from an actual body then when the shroud was removed the image, in particular the face, should be severely stretched horizontally. It should definitely NOT look like a photograph or a painting. This is because the cloth has to wrap around the face and actually cover the whole thing.

    Take a soda bottle and a piece of paper. Cover the front half of the bottle (i.e. a 180-degree slice cylindrically). This represents the face. Mark the edges with pencil. Now hold up the paper and compare the "wrapped" length of the image (between the pencil marks) with the "visible" image (how wide the bottle looks when viewed straight-on). Photographs, paintings, and the image on the shroud have the "straight-on" dimensions. Regardless of how old the cloth is, the image is way too narrow. It's fake.

  • Viewpoint from a Science-obsessed Christian (Score:3, Insightful)

    by benbry ( 854786 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @06:25PM (#11523177)
    First to makes things clear: I am a Christian, and personally have many doubts about the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. I'm really nervous when many extreme Christians, or fanatics for that matter will try to use the Shroud of Turin as proof for anything. We Christians absolutely DON'T need this artifact to be of any proof of our faith. If it turns out to be consistant with the time-frame that my personal savior was killed on the cross, then that that's great, hopefully there would be more believers, but if it isn't...so what? It is just an artifact. This message board has placed too many emphasis on the relation between the Shroud of Turin and Christianity as a religious whole. I really hope everyone, nonbelievers and believers can sever this relationship.

  • Other Problems For Carbon Dating (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DarkKnightRadick ( 268025 ) <the_spoon.geo@yahoo.com> on Sunday January 30, 2005 @09:07PM (#11524473) Homepage Journal
    I've actually watched several shows on the Shroud both on the History channel and the Discovery and Science channels, and all three sources (two of which are run by the same parent company) both claim that carbon dating is going to be inaccurate no matter what because of layers of caked on pollen and other microscopic life from over the centuries. All other evidence aside, I'd like to see an accurate dating of the Shroud (I'm a science buff and ardent Catholic-converted-to-Pagan) just to see the Pope choke as he tries to explain this "mystery".

  • the shroud (Score:3, Interesting)

    by coaxial ( 28297 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @09:57PM (#11524825) Homepage
    The shroud isn't authentic. It's physically impossible for a 3d object to have made the entire image. The face, back and front all have slightly different dimensions, meaning they were created at three seperate times. I don't necessarily believe it, but an intersting theory that explains this is that the shroud is actually a primitive photograph. Camera obscuras and light sensitive chemicals were known at the time of the shrouds creation in medieval times. It is conceivable, however unlikely, that someone could have put all the pieces together to create the shroud through photographic techniques.

    This theoretical photographer could then have used his camera obscura to creat the front and back seperately. A thrid image would be needed for the face since lenses at the time did not have the focal range needed to show enough detail at the range needed to show the entire body. The photographer couldn't simply leave the face blurry, because that's where everyone looks.

  • Errors, Accuracy, and the Shroud (Score:5, Informative)

    by PoolDoc ( 840011 ) on Sunday January 30, 2005 @11:08PM (#11525236)
    Few of the possible ways to mistate, misrepresent, or mischaracterize the history of research on the Shroud have been overlooked here. One would have hoped, regardless of the attitudes held by various posters toward Catholic relics generally, or the Shroud particularly, that they would have had a greater regard for truth and accuracy then has here been displayed.

    Lest there be any misunderstanding: I'm not Catholic, and have never venerated a relic of any sort, whether Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu or even a SETI moonrock!

    1. "The clerics simply assume that the shroud belongs to Jesus (assuming that he existed at all) and then direct their scientists to prove that the shroud belonged to Jesus."

    While there may well be a case where this occurred, the Catholic church does not now, nor has it ever in the past, recognized or authenticated the Shroud as an official relic. It's been the subject of some intense disputes with in the RC church, to the point that Pope Clement VII ordered that in the case of all future exhibitions, a priest present should "declare in a loud voice that it was not the real shroud of Christ." In fact, the theory that Shroud was only a painting -- whether forgery or 'representation' -- was advanced WITHIN the Catholic church over 600 years ago!

    As an apparent result of these and other dispures, the Shroud seems to have been treated more as an embarrassment, than a relic the church wished to display or advertise.

    See the Catholic Encyclopedia (1912) article for details: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13762a.htm

    2. "It is doubtful he (Rogers) will ever have findings that will be contrary to his own beliefs."

    Raymond Rogers, who authored the study, published in "Thermochimica Acta", that has generated all the hubbabaloo does NOT now claim that he, or anyone else has proved that the Shroud of Turin is the Shroud of Christ. To the contrary, he's been quoted as saying that "It's a shroud from the right time, but you're never going to find out (through science) if it was used on a person named Jesus".
    http://tinyurl.com/68jfl (www.smh.com.au)

    ABSTRACT OF THE ROGERS ARTICLE:
    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 surprise in view of the technology used to produce the cloth, its chemical composition, and the lack of vanillin in its lignin. The results prompted questions about the validity of the sample.

    Preliminary estimates of the kinetics constants for the loss of vanillin 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 thus not valid for determining the true age of the shroud.
    "Thermochimica Acta", Volume 425, Issues 1-2
    http://tinyurl.com/4vy6r (www.sciencedirect.com)

    3.Results of comprehensive STURP study of the Shroud, the consortium of scientists who physically examined the Shroud in 1978, was NOT sponsored or encouraged by the Catholic church, did NOT include many Catholics, and did NOT conclude that the Shroud of Turin was the Shroud of Christ. Raymond Rogers, who was a member of that team, was quoted at that time, when asked that question at a public press conference, as saying, "We do not have test for Jesus Christ. So, we can't hypothesize or test for that question."

    "Report on the Shroud of Turin", Heller, 1983
    used copies from Amazon - http://tinyurl.com/46fln

    4. "So at best you can show that it was the death shroud of someone who died 2000 years ago via a mo

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