Are we there yet?

Here's what I posted as a comment just a few minutes ago to shroudstory.com.

Click to enlarge

Projected price: 40,870 (sharing, ex-Jhb; subject to currency fluctuations, air travel price fluctuations. calculated at R11/$).
Includes: Flights ex-Johannesburg (incl. airport taxes), accommodation with breakfast and dinner, lunch in Holy Land & Jordan, transfers, travel insurance, travelling on air-conditioned buses, English-speaking tour director, entrance fees, border taxes.
Excludes: Tips, hotel taxes, visa, lunches, personal expenses.
..............................................................

Let's see now. Assuming that's 40,870 South African rands, and applying the given exchange rate of 11 rands per dollar, that works out at approx $3,378 for a 14 day trip, flights  from J'burg included, which is $265 per day. That does not seem excessive cost-wise for so professional looking a pilgrimage package, especially one that is led by an archbishop no less (I see he ran one last year too).

What seems excessive to this pair of eyes is the use of a "reserved viewing" of the Shroud of Turin to paying customers, indeed, flagging it up as a highlight of the tour, when the same relic/icon (take your pick) is kept securely locked away from public gaze (including that of scholars and researchers) the rest of the time.

Am I the only one to think that what we see above is scarcely any different to the things that Martin Luther railed against (selling of indulgences etc)?


Nuff said. Back to the science. My comment enlarged:

Click to enlarge

Oops. It doesn't seem to enlarge on my screen. Here's what I said:

Roll up, roll up. See the $hroud of Turin (reserved viewing). But view it simply as an icon, no extravagant claims please.

Research update: I think I know how the TS image was (or might have been) made in principle, and am working hard to convert principle to practice.

Clue: a whole-body 'death mask' can be re-cast to make a trough-like bas relief in heat-conducting bronze. Place the hollow shell-like template face-down onto linen. Half-fill with quicklime. Then add water. Wait for steam, then press down into linen. Result: a 'thermochemical impactograph'.

This info is brought to you free of charge.

Converting principle to practice is proving a bit of a bugger, if you'll pardon my French. But we're working on it...   Nothing ventured, nothing gained. At least my latest refinement of the 'scorch hypothesis', narrowing it down to a 'thermochemical scorch hypothesis' should demonstrate that science (my pet subject) is not lost for answers. You see,  it's not just about science, is it?  It's about technology too. But without a time machine, how is science supposed to fathom the precise technology that was employed?

Those who taunt science and scientists for not being able to explain the Shroud image are essentially resorting to the 'God of the gaps' argument. 

There may or may not be a God - maybe we'll never know for sure until there's a Second Coming. But we can continue to explore the claims made for the authenticity of the TS by applying the methods of science - and maybe a little imagination too. It's sussing out the technology that is the real bugger...

New addition: Sunday 6 July

A mixture of quicklime and water generates enough heat to scorch linen when in direct contact (see previous postings). The practical problem is to convert that thermochemistry into an image-imprinting mechanism. Yesterday I had the reaction mixture inside a brass container, the latter pressed down onto linen. It got so hot that I got a burn on my finger when testing its temperature, but the linen underneath was not scorched. Why not? Maybe the dry heat from the slaking reaction is not sufficient to scorch. Maybe a little moisture or liquid water is needed in the linen as well, if, say, superheated steam were needed - or maybe some alkali too from the slaking reaction, i.e. calcium hydroxide. Maybe the thermochemistry needs to be a little more nuanced than I first imagined.  There's only a little quicklime left, and it takes 4 days or more for new stuff to be delivered, so there may be a hiatus. Correction: order placed, 2x1kg, express delivery (1-2 days).

Back to that 2015 Turin Shroud exhibition: I see it's open to the public from April 19 to June 24 (see flyer above). Do would-be viewers just turn up on spec, and join a long queue? Or is it by pre-booking only? What's the meaning of  "reserved viewing" in that escorted pilgrimage J'burg ad above? Is it really "reserved", or merely an appointed time slot for pre-booked parties, with no 'privileged access'.

Will I be attending? Nope, there seems little point in doing so if it means filing past a display case under glass, probably unable to view at close quarters.The only kind of visit that would make the trip worthwhile to this researcher is one where, in suitable protective clothing (naturally) I would be allowed to examine the linen and its image with a good hand lens under reasonable lighting with no intervening glass. Methinks that's unlikely to happen any time soon, if at all.

Today's experiment: I shall try thermochemical imprinting, with quicklime/water inside a hollow metal template, onto linen that is either (a) wetted with a little water (b) wetted with a little calcium hydroxide solution. Is the alkali  needed as well as heat for scorching in this geometry, while keeping the two in their separate compartments?

Update: Monday July 7

Fitted in between a feast of UK-based TV sport yesterday - Stage 1 of the Tour de France (well, Yorkshire actually), the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and the Wimbledon Mens' Final, I managed to fit a few of those experiments so confident of getting  a scorch imprint - and achieving - precisely zilch.

Despite the quicklime/water reaction generating sufficient heat to scorch linen in direct contact, it's not generating enough to scorch when enclosed in metal containers, separate from the linen. Why is that?

Pessimistically, I wonder if the temperature ever gets high enough to scorch indirectly.

There's a phenomenon that now (late in the day) springs to mind. One has to leave a metal template on an electric hot ring for 5 minutes or more to be sure of getting a contact scorch. When one lifts the same cooling template and scorches a second, third time etc one gets an instant vivid impression of just how much heat leaves the template at each imprinting, given the rapid loss of scorch intensity. But here's a salutary warning for the unwary. When the template fails to produce a scorch, and is then held under a tap, there's a loud sizzling sound and billows of steam. It is still very, very hot.

For some time, reading some negative comments about the scorch hypothesis, I've formed the impression that some imagine that linen is easy to scorch, so easy in fact that it can never produce a superficial image, that there must always be reverse side scorching (NOT SO!).

Wrong. It's quite hard to produce a scorch on linen: the template has to be really hot (probably at least 200 degrees C) and as I say, it quickly loses heat in each pressing, due to the overall conversion of linen carbohydrates to  yellow or brown pyrolysis products and steam - an endothermic (heat-abstracting) reaction.

I'm beginning to suspect that while my quicklime/water system can reach the required temperature, it fails to scorch linen through metal due to the heat capacity of the metal, i.e. absorbing and conducting heat not just towards but away from the target linen.

As I say, another 2kg of CaO is on order, so I shan't give up this otherwise promising line of enquiry just yet.

In fact, it may be that an alternative supply of heat could have been used in hollow cup-like templates of the sort proposed earlier, i.e. made by death mask casting techniques. Might the hollow have been filled with very hot oil, at the kind of temperature one uses to fry chips? Or if that didn't work, maybe molten tin, lead, or tin/lead alloy (solder) in a bronze casting?  All is not lost (and even if it is, there's always some face-saving patter ready and waiting in reserve).

First test of the quicklime hypothesis (Turin Shroud image) - in pictures

For background, see the posting that immediately precedes this one.

I'm restricting this post to pictures only - maybe with a caption or two. I need time to explore some more, and get thoughts together.

Oops. Underside of the polythene container is melting.

Let's try earthenware instead, and skip the temperature monitoring. Just tip quicklime onto linen and cotton, add water, and see what happens.

Do I see thermochemical scorches (no applied heat - just a chemical reaction between quicklime and water)?

Yup, scorches alright. Cotton on left. Linen on right.  Oh, and that's the knackered container from the abandoned experiment. But why are the scorches so localised? That's the question being asked in the next experiments.

Other postings in the pipeline: response to questions raised on shroudstory.com (Piero and daveB); does the TS man really have a beard and moustache?

Afterthought. there's a related thermochemical system that is maybe worth some consideration. It's the setting of Plaster of Paris (calcium sulphate hemihydrate, 2CaSO4.H20) when mixed with water to form the dihydrate., CaSO4.2H2O.  The reaction is admittedly not as exothermic as that between quicklime and water, and its questionable whether it would ever get hot enough to scorch simple linen (treated linen is another matter). But there's a big advantage in the context of the TS: one could create a mould from a living (or dead) person using death mask technology, the subject of a previous posting on my WordPress site, and use that to make a 3D replica with a slurry of Plaster of Paris. Might there be sufficient heat thrown off when the plaster fully sets to leave some kind of imprint or image on a sheet of linen thrown over the top?  You read it here first (probably last as well).


Update: Sunday 29 June
 It's said that one picture is worth a thousand words. On that basis, the blog posting so far should be worth 8 thousand words. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. To convey the truth where quicklime and its possible relevance (or lack thereof) to the Shroud of Turin is concerned, I would need a lot of words, maybe not 8000, but a lot. Why? Because I have (deliberately) committed the cardinal sin in science reporting by being highly selective so far in what I have chosen to report. Thus far, anyone looking at the pictures might think to themselves  "Wow, that's a lot of heat coming from that reaction between quicklime and water- so much so that plastic pots are melting, linen is being scorched. OK, so there's no image as yet, the starter experiment not being set up to produce an image, but the system clearly has great potential."

No it doesn't. It's actually of exceedingly limited potential. That I know already, not just from the highly localised nature of the scorching (reported) but from events (notably up-and-down thermometer readings) that preceded the spectacular meltdown of the plastic container.

Nope, I haven't been dishonest, just selective in the nature of my reporting, and later in the day I shall start to fill in the gaps, using up my quota of 8000 words to describe the profound limitations of the quicklime model, and why already I suspect it to be non-starter. It's to do primarily with the two physical states of water in this system (liquid or gaseous, hint hint).

I see my little punt has been flagged up on shroudstory.com. No comments as yet, which is perhaps just as well. I'll now do the decent thing and copy and paste what I've just added here.

Moral: beware selective attention to particular details, indeed selective reporting in general. Trouble is, you don't know when it's being done (but with long exposure to gee-whizz press announcements etc one can develop a nose for it. Indeed, it was that "nose" that 'attracted' this science bod into shroudology some 30 months ago. The amount of selective reporting that goes on in shroudology is nobody's business (except mine - see blog credo above).

Back again .

OK, now for some of those details that were omitted from the preliminary account, basically because I was puzzled and needed time to ponder.

The experiment began by adding water one drop at a time through a hole in the lid (just visible in my pictures). I had expected an immediate response on the thermometer, but that was not to be. There was a lag, and several more drops were needed to start a sluggish rise in temperature. The needle would rise a bit, then stop, and start to fall back. That was the signal to add more water, but there was a downside - the temperature then initially fellback a bit, and one had to wait a while for the 'new' water to react with the quicklime, as indicated finally by a new upward surge in temperature. But I then found I was having to add water not just 1 drop at a time, but an entire dropping-bottle full, simply to keep the temperature rising (but still with that annoying yo-yo effect).

Things were looking hopeful when the temperature reached some 80 degrees Celsius and higher, but that's when the bottom of the reaction vessel began to melt  (below the thermometer probe)  dropping its contents onto the garage floor (just as well I didn't try the experiment in the house).

So why was there not a smooth and continuous rise in temperature, and why were the scorches in the second quickie experiment so localised?

Here's my explanation: water is needed to start the reaction, and the heat of reaction quickly changes some or all of that water into steam. However, not only does each new addition of water 'undo' some of the previous temperature rise through the new water being cold,  but there is another effect operating due to the high latent heat of vaporisation of water. For as long as there is liquid water present, it will boil at 100 degrees C (maybe a little higher due to soluble calcium products) and prevent the temperature rising above 100 degrees C.

So how were the scorches produced, given that temperatures approaching 200 degrees and higher are needed in conventional hot metal experiments to produce scorching? I suspect that there is a brief 'wndow of opportunity' in pockets of quicklime in and around the linen that allows scorching when the last of the liquid water has been vaporised, but there is still "water" avalailable. But the latter would be gaseous water, probably superheated steam.

The equation for the slaking of lime is conventionally written with reactants and products in their standard states at 15 degrees C (298 degrees K), with the symbols s, l and g used to indicate those states.

CaO(s)  +  H2O(l) =   Ca(OH)2 (s)

But to see scorching, I believe the relevant equation is:

CaO(s) + H2O(g)  = Ca(OH)2 (s)

(It's testable, needless to say, e.g. by placing quicklime/linen in the steam above boiling water, and expecting to see more even scorching  In fact, I've just done that experiment, enclosing some quicklime in a linen pouch and suspending it over steam from a boiling water in a saucepan. The quicklime becomes slaked, judging by inertness towards water when the pouch is later reopened. I had hoped the linen would scorch, but that was not to be. Maybe the steam carries away excess heat, preventing the temperature rising sufficiently to scorch linen.)

But there one sees the practical pitfall of the mechanism proposed - namely that one is slaking the lime with liquid water, not gaseous water, i.e. steam. So it's only spasmodically and in localized 'hotspots' that the temperature is able to get much above 100 degrees C.

That makes the system almost impossible to design and manage predictably.

New addition: 19:10 Sunday June  29

And finally (for now, at any rate) here are my belated responses to a question  raised by a  commentator on shroudstory.com in response to my first quicklime posting.  (It should probably go on the post before this one since that was the one they were responding to, but it's overlong already).

Here's the comment from daveB of Wellington, NZ, divided into points (my responses in blue):

  

daveb of wellington nz

June 21, 2014 at 5:16 am

Read your posting, saw the video, all quite clear. You’re going to have to do some experiments, and probably several reruns before you strike any gold. Obvious questions arise: 1) Image is said to be superficial, maybe resident only on impurities layer; Can such an imaging process be so superficial? Or will it penetrate the fibres (flax medullas on TS not affected by process!)

I know of no hard evidence that the image is on a man-made superficial layer, e.g. starch or saponins etc (based on citations from the Pliny!).  It all seems highly conjectural to me. The behaviour of the sticky tape samples under the microscope when fibres are pulled out (leaving those allegedly sub 200nm ghosts) is open to different interpretations, and in any case there is a big risk of artefacts when viewing whole fibres, especially when immersed in an adhesive hydrocarbon.
The PCW is reckoned to be 200nm thickness plus or minus. Why was that not considered first before invoking an impurity coating?


2) Do we know whether or not there’ll be an alkali corrosive effect on the CaO side of the linen?

Alkali is a standard treatment for cotton (mercerising). It changes the physical structure of the fibres. It also makes cotton more resistant to scorching, according to some experiments I did a while back, with less effect of linen.. Quite why that should be so I cannot say. It’s tempting to think there are differences in the PCW, but one cannot discount the possibility that modern fabrics have coatings that are more or less resistant to scorching, and that alkali acts on those. Suffice it so say that any effects one sees with quicklime have to be interpreted with caution on account of calcium hydroxide being a fairly strong alkali ( as anyone who has handled wet cement will know to their cost).


3) What would be the signature residues of CaO on the backside of the linen, any? No one’s noticed any such residue signature so far.

It’s been a while since I looked at the mineral analysis of the TS, and I’ve mislaid the references. I seem to recall that there were substantial amounts of calcium (as CaCO3?) on the TS, but stand to be corrected.


4) Process will necessary take some finite time, so perhaps a heat process would affect subject and its appearance with consequent distorted image on cloth, but no such distortion appears on TSM (no “corruption” evident).

Yes, quicklime is a desiccant, so any model that envisages a long-term process might need to explain why the TS image is not excessively  skeletal in appearance (while noting the boniness of fingers).

 5) Maybe it’s not a scorch but something else, so that you could still be on to something.

A “scorch” to me is simply a discoloration due to chemical modification of linen components, primarily carbohydrates, but not excluding lignin. It may be the result of thermal processes that require no added substances, but the latter are possible, provided they leave nothing substantial behind that would conflict with the STURP finding (claim?) that there are no pigments etc that would suggest the TS was some kind of painting.

Even if one envisaged an “invisible ink” effect, produced with say lemon juice, leaving minimal residue that escape normal chemical tests for unusual chromophores, etc., then heat is still needed to produce the scorched look (which incidentally can be seen with lemon juice alone, needing nothing else present).  So in a sense it’s still a “scorch” albeit not a pure thermal effect with or without  chemically assistance.

 6) It might not be quicklime, but it could still be alkali from body products or even Max’s red-heifer ash.

Yes, he used to refer to limestone and red heifer ash as sources of alkali. That’s not true re limestone. While limestone (calcium carbonate, CaCO3) is capable of neutralising acids, it has scarcely any effect on the pH  of pure (CO2-free) water, and does not fit the definition of alkali as a soluble base, since bases are defined as reacting with acid to make a salt and water only (carbonates make CO2 as well). Animal ash? Yes, it may be an alkali, though that’s as likely as not to be due to accompanying wood ash – a good source of potash , i.e. potassium carbonate, that accompanies the animal bones. Contrast with calcium hydroxide from the slaking of quicklime, which as we’re agreed,  has powerful alkali properties that fit all the chemical definitions relating to base character,  solubility and ability to produce a big increase in pH (typically above 11 or 12).


 7) You’re looking for lots of heat, but if only impurities layer is affected, maybe you don’t need the same heat as is necessary to scorch linen (image is said to be resident only on crowns of fibres).

Yes, it’s a lot harder to explain selective scorching of the fibre crowns in  chemical or even thermochemical systems, although Rogers as we know attempted to do so with his arguments based on capillary action. Indeed, it is the predominant (though not exclusive) location on the crowns that makes pure thermal scorching by contact with an applied template the most realistic model in my view.

I recall someone’s ribald comment a year or two back, that you’ll end up proving the Resurrection! You still have to end up with an image that looks like crucified Jesus, complete with crucifixion marks, scourge marks, bleeding head, and lanced chest wound. Don’t think they did that sort of thing in medieval times, more into hanging, drawing and quartering! Look forward to seeing pictures of your chicken legs! Hope the family cat survives!

Yes, but you don’t know that the image we see today was formed all in one single event. Indeed, if you look at the Lier copy, it has L-shaped poker holes and nominal blood stains (yes, I’m aware of the cop-out argument based on contemporaneous viewers' sensibilities etc, but it’s evidence for authenticity we are seeking, not explanations for why that evidence is all too often less than convincing).

Hanging, drawing, quartering certainly. But aren’t you forgetting something else (burning at the stake). Where’s the evidence, say, on the Lirey badge that the figure depicted was (a) Jesus (b) crucified. I see little if any. Who’s to say it was not (a) Jacques de Molay  (b) burned at the stake – slowly?  Posture, non Christ-like appearance and some other details would seem to favour the second of those hypotheses.
Yes, I am doing something  like a chicken leg experiment (with a pork sausage – all I  had to hand, and now on its, er, third day). Disappointing result. No scorching – insufficient water presumably.

Might the Shroud image have been produced as a thermochemical scorch on linen? Quicklime?

World's worst schematic diagram - a 5 minute job in Windows Paint. It's a cartoon to provide an instant idea of what's being proposed as a possible image-imprinting mechanism to explain the Shroud of Turin. The corpse (pink) lies on an up-and-over  linen sheet (yellow) such that upper and lower surfaces of body only (not sides) are in contact with linen, There is quicklime (grey) surrounding the shroud and contents. The red line shows where heat is generated through contact between migrating moisture from the corpse where it meets the quicklime on the OUTER surface of the shroud, creating, with time, a thermochemical imprint ("scorch").

While I believe the Shroud image to be a contact scorch on linen, due to chemical dehydration and yellowing of linen carbohydrates, I still try to keep an open mind as to the source of heat.

Given that a dead body does not produce sufficient heat to scorch linen (for which a temperature of 200 degrees Celsius or more is required) then the thinking so far has been that an effigy of a real person, e.g. a bronze statue, was deployed. However, I'm as conscious as the next man of the practical difficulties of imprinting successfully off a life-size effigy. Mistakes would be costly, given the price of quality linen,

So this morning, I got to wondering about alternatives to metal templates that have been heated, say, over coals. Might an exothermic reaction using a chemical have been used instead - but a common one available in medieval times?

I got to thinking about quicklime, chemical name calcium oxide (CaO)  and googling quickly led to this fascinating WordPress site:

 

 Having a Wordpress ID, indeed blogsite,  I quickly bashed off this comment (too quickly, sorry about the typos) which now awaits moderation, that being the cautious way that WordPress deals with newbie commentators.

Link to comments thread.

"The best know property of quicklime is not so much its reversion to limestone (by reaction with CO2) so much as its reaction with water (the so-called slaking of lime). That creates a great deal of heat in a short space of time. The classic lab demonstration is to drip a little water onto a biggish chunk of quicklime. It quickly soaks in, there's often a deceptive lag before anything happens, then then the lump suddenly starts to swell, to develop fissures, cracks open and disintegrates releasing torrents of steam. Spectacular

Calcium oxide + water  = calcium hydroxide + heat

Maybe the theory was a body placed in quicklime would cook and disintegrate, but conditions would have to be just right for that to happen, and it's maybe not surprising that one ends up with a preserved body, especially as calcium hydroxide (slaked lime) is highly alkaline with antiseptic properties.

I got to thinking about slaked lime and bodies this morning, through being interested in the Shroud of Turin. Thus far I've been inclined to think the image is of medieval origin, consistent with the radiocarbon dating (1260-1390) and maybe produced by 'branding' linen from a heated bronze statue or similar. Might there be a chemical component too, one that produces heat in contact with water, or even a moist corpse? Suppose a body of a fallen crusader knight have been wrapped in linen and then encased in quicklime to preserve it on its journey back from the Holy Land? Might that have left an image on the linen that is what we now call the Turin Shroud, or maybe implanted the idea of how an image might be produced to order by thermochemical action?"

I'll see if  I can find a YouTube clip of quicklime being slaked.

No sooner said than done...   (Poor choice of title methinks - it's calcium oxide that is the chief interest, not the precursor calcium carbonate).

Addendum: for those interested in the entire limestone/quicklime/slaked lime/limestone cycle, here's the full works.

1. Take natural chalk or limestone (calcium carbonate). Kiln-roast to decompose, driving off CO2 gas to leave residue of quicklime (calcium oxide)

      Calcium carbonate  + strong heat   = calcium oxide + carbon dioxide gas

2. Slake the quicklime with water to get slaked lime (calcium hydroxide):

       Calcium oxide +  water  =  calcium hydroxide (highly exothermic reaction)

3. Slow reaction (months, years even)  between slaked lime and CO2 of air to revert back to calcium carbonate:

      Calcium hydroxide +  CO2  =  calcium carbonate +  water

 

Lime kiln, La Rochelle, France, reckoned to be 2nd - 6th century. Much is now missing, like the top part, usually hemispherical,  that served as a hopper for the limestone.

Link

Update 10:50am, 20 June 

Hey, look what's just turned up. A 13th century French recipe (originally) for cooking without fire, using the heat from slaking of quicklime with water. (The same reaction is still being used today in camping kits).

Click on image to enlarge. It's the last paragraph that is especially interesting ("to cook meat without fire"). The medieval French and no doubt others knew all about the extraordinary properties of quicklime  and uses to which it could be put - notably an easily portable source of  instant heat, needing only the addition of a little water - the stuff that extinguishes conventional fires.

Further thoughts - 11:40am

OK, so it's blue sky thinking at this stage. Suppose the geometry were as follows  (top down): corpse, linen sheet, bed of quicklime.

Now where's the MAIN image likely to be formed when moisture from the drying corpse meets quicklime? Answer: not on the conventional interface between body and linen, but on the OPPOSITE side. In other words, moisture would need to migrate through the thickness of the linen first, and only when it meets the quicklime would heat be generated to create a thermal imprint via chemical dehydration of the linen. Might this mechanism go some way towards explaining the curious superficiality (to say nothing of fuzzy character!) of the TS image?

 What's being conjured up here is a scenario that might be described as 'reverse-side imaging'.

Might it even help to explain (don't ask me how) the "second face", that being where the body IS in direct contact with the linen?

More thoughts: 13:00

OK, so we know from the YouTube clip that the reaction between quicklime and water generates sufficient heat not just to bring water to the boil, but to convert it instantly to steam. That suggests a temperature considerable in excess of 100 degrees C, which is needed, of course, to produce scorching of linen. But how much greater?

The wiki entry on calcium oxide provides some clues (my bold/italics)


"Quicklime is also thought to have been a component of Greek fire. Upon contact with water, quicklime would increase its temperature above 150 °C and ignite the fuel (ref)..

Because of vigorous reaction of quicklime with water, quicklime causes severe irritation when inhaled or placed in contact with moist skin or eyes. Inhalation may cause coughing, sneezing, labored breathing. It may then evolve into burns with perforation of the nasal septum, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting. Although quicklime is not considered a fire hazard, its reaction with water can release enough heat to ignite combustible materials."

Me again:  the temperatures quoted are maybe lower than those required for rapid scorching from a heated metal template,  but  in the scenario imagined here, it is a slower process that gradually produces a visible yellowing of linen and final image production. What's more, the production of the alkaline calcium hydroxide would almost certainly allow chemical dehydration and yellowing to occur at lower temperatures, due to base catalysis by hydroxide (OH-) ions..

And finally, to bring this shroudological derring- do to a close, none too soon some might feel, one has to ask the crucial question: is the idea testable?

Why yes. The first thing to do is buy in some quicklime, which I see is available though Amazon.

One then gets a jar with a well-fitting lid. One places a bed of quicklime on the bottom. One then adds a layer of linen, and then adds something that is organic of high moisture content, to model a human corpse, preferable with intact skin. It could be a chicken leg or wing, say. One then covers with a second layer of linen, and adds more quicklime on top. One then screws the lid on firmly, to exclude moist air and CO2 (which would  inactivate the quicklime)  and then leaves the jar. For how long? No idea. It might be days, or it might be weeks. Ideally one ought to set it up in such a way that the progress of any imaging can be monitored without having to open the jar or disturb the contents. A thermometer inside might also be a wise precaution.

Postscript: This posting was quickly spotted by shroudstory.com while still in gestation (yes, I generally take a working day to assemble a posting by instalments in 'real time', it being my preferred MO), and appeared under the title:  "Maybe a new image hypothesis"

 Sadly, the discussion there was side-tracked (yet again) by someone proselytising his own "limestone" scenario, one I don't pretend to understand, given his long-expressed belief, predating current references to ammonia as well,  that limestone is an alkali.  Things went rapidly into the mire, given (one suspects) that a lot of folk do not know (or care) that limestone and quicklime are two entirely different substances. Limestone is natural, and a major surface rock. Quicklime is man-made (yes, from limestone) and is a vicious chemical that burns skin and eyes, due to its avidity for water, and the heat that is generated when it reacts with that water, forming calcium hydroxide, a strong alkali. It is also increasingly apparent that folk on that site plunge into comment and indeed criticism without bothering to check with the originating site (this one!). At least two commentators appear to imagine that the corpse is in direct contact with the limestone, and would become attacked and decomposed. They have had to be disabused of that idea. The corpse is wrapped in linen, and the shroud and its contents placed on or in a bed of quicklime. The putative scorch imprint is formed when moisture from the corpse migrates across the thickness of the linen, and on meeting quicklime on the outside, reacts instantly with the calcium oxide to generate local heat and alkali. It is the combination of the heat and alkali that produces the thermal imprint on the OUTSIDE of the shroud, leaving the body inside largely unaffected (while slowly drying out, and perhaps mummifying). 

Tongue-in-cheek finale

Speaking of which (shroudstory.com) today's posting has the title:  Discussion about the Pray Codex and its relation to the Shroud of Turin is over".

(A Guest Posting by "OK", a Polish Shroud scholar).

Am I the only one to be overawed by the sophisticated nature of the probability calculations that led to OK's conclusion, namely that it is the Shroud of Turin that is being displayed in the late 12th century (1192-1195)  Pray Codex (outside the range of the Shroud's radiocarbon dating, 1260-1390)?

Taking a leaf from OK's book (of probability and statistics) I've just made two amazing discoveries.

First I shuffled a pack of cards, then dealt them from the top of the pack onto a table. The resulting order in which the cards emerged had an amazingly small probability, one that was 1 in 52 factorial (52!), i.e. 1 in 52x 51x 50x 49 ...  x4x 3x 2 x1.  See link for the infinitesimal answer from a calculator. Isn't that just incredible, though I have to admit I thought that probabilities were supposed to be computed BEFORE one did one's trial, not after.  ;-)

I've also been experimenting with his "points of correspondence" criteria for determining whether two items are related or unrelated in space and time, and have made yet another amazing discovery.

Look closely at the two pictures. (Naturally, I chose the one of Queen Victoria that had a Mona Lisa-like enigmatic smile, the way that textile restorer Mechthild Flury-Lemberg and historian Ian Wilson chose the Pray Codex with its "L-shaped poker hole". (Selection bias gets one ahead of the game when wishing to make claims for real as distinct from spurious cause-and-effect relationships). Notice anything else about the pictures? NEITHER OF THE TWO LADIES HAS A FULL SET OF DIGITS (either a thumb or finger is missing).  And as everyone knows there are no thumbs on either the Shroud image or the Pray Codex which simply HAS TO BE TELLING US SOMETHING, and COULD NOT POSSIBLY BE ACCIDENTAL.

Yup, there's no doubt about it. Queen Victoria could not have been born in 1819 as historians would have us believe. She must have been around much earlier to have served as Da Vinci's model for the Mona Lisa, painted 1505-1507.

See my critique from two years ago  and that of others of the claims made for the Pray Codex, with links to a particularly long and trying discussion on shroudstory.com .(It was clearly a waste of time, given the way that folk return time and again to their entrenched positions, failing to acknowledge the points that one has researched, e.g. that what is being interpreted as a shroud with a herring bone weave and "poker holes"is in fact a sarcophagus lid with a stepped pattern).

Update 13:51

OK has come back to someone with this comment:

O.K. commented on Discussion about the Pray Codex and it’s relation to the Shroud is over?.

in response to Thomas:

Other similarities that could be mentioned include a seemingly high set chest and long arms

Perhaps, but I only included those that the sceptics cannot dispute in any way.

 Note to OK and others: please don't refer to me as a Codex "sceptic". Someone (apparently the textile restorer Mechthild Flury Lemberg)  spotted a manuscript illustration with a sarcophagus lid bearing a complex pattern of stepped pyramids and holes, and  decided it depicted the Shroud of Turin with herringbone weave and L-shaped holes. She, Ian Wilson etc are entitled to believe what they wish. Personally I find their entire case too ludicrous for words, so please don't describe me as a sceptic. I'm a scoffer. Those people should read up on the phenomenon known as "selection bias". It's exceedingly common when scientists (or would-be scientists) venture out into the real multi-variate world, and imagine that phoney statistics, with a sample size of 1, constitute a scientific survey.