It seems so obvious now (why the Man on the Turin Shroud has bony fingers and no thumbs). The image is NOT a photograph. It's an 'impactograph'.

Not for nothing is this site called 'science buzz'. I and other experimentalists get a real buzz out of research. One gets up in the morning, not knowing what each day will bring. Nothing in science is predictable, cut-and-dried. All is a glorious and uncertain state-of-flux, which no doubt irritates those with excessively tidy minds with everything neatly pigeon-holed.

Yesterday provided a perfect illustration, leading to today's triumphant post. I was being got at by someone on shroudstory.com, to explain the fingers on the Turin Shroud. When it became increasingly difficult to understand precisely what I was being asked to explain, a sudden thought entered my head - why not do a simple EXPERIMENT to cut through the semantic fog?

Here's the result, reported as an addendum to the previous post.

Yes, they are hand prints, my hands, using a highly sophisticated imprinting medium known only to a tiny, er,  handful, of science bods like myself (Nutella chocolate/hazelnut spread).

The image on the left was produced by coating the back of my hand, being careful to go in-between fingers too, then laying cotton sheet on top, then using the other hand to mould fabric to the contours, while all the time KEEPING FINGERS TOGETHER.

The image on the right was produced with reverse geometry: after coating the back of the hand, the hand was then placed back-side DOWN i.e. palm up, onto the cotton, and pressed firmly, without any rocking motion.

It's that second mode of presentation that gives the fascinating result - with an imprint that would have the observer believe that the fingers were thin and bony AND with spaces, ie.air gaps between them, which was not the case.


Close up of the press-down presentation

Now compare with the crossed hands on the Turin Shroud, the fingers of which have been the subject of so much interest (to say nothing of wild speculation),

TS hands: Durante 2002 image from Shroud Scope, with extra contrast in MS Office Picture Manager

Conclusions: 1 The fingers are NOT bony. They are exactly as one would expect if produced as a contact imprint ("impactograph") under applied pressure, modelled as in my Nutella spread experiment.

2. The thumbs are absent for a very simple reason. Place your hand down on a surface with the palm up. Is your thumb touching the surface? Answer: if it's a typical hand, then NO, except the very tip of the thumb maybe.


To think I've been researching the TS for some 30 months, but did not think of doing yesterday's simple experiment before, and only did so when coming under sniper fire.

I love research. While I occasionally brag about new ideas, new results, research teaches one humility - constantly reminding one of limitations  to say nothing of mental lacunae, blind spots etc

There was another rewarding discovery today for this science blogger. Some 28 years ago he published the very first research paper in the peer-reviewed science literature devoted specifically to "resistant starch", arguing that it should be regarded as a legitimate contribution to dietary fibre (which brought him into conflict not just with other scientists but his own paymasters at the then Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, "MAFF" for short).

Abstract:

Heat processed foods can contain appreciable amounts of resistant starch (RS) that have the ability to survive prolonged incubation with alpha-amylase and other amylolytic enzymes. The occurrence of RS has important implications for dietary fibre (DF) determination and, possibly, for human bowel physiology also. Studies using cereal and potato starches have identified three key factors that influence yields of RS after heat-processing, ie amylose content, processing temperature and water content. The highest yields of RS (20-34% of total dry weight) were obtained from amylomaize starches, either raw or processed, and from amylopectin starches (32-46% RS) after incubation with alpha -(1->6)de-branching enzyme (pullulanase) followed by heat-processing. In contrast, the lowest yields of RS (0.2-4.2%) were obtained from intact (ie non-debranched amylopectins), with or without heat-processing. Yields of RS from wheat starch were affected primarily by processing temperature, reaching levels of about 9% in a single cycle of autoclaving at 134°C with excess water and subsequent cooling (cf levels of less than 1% in uncooked wheat starch) and higher levels still (about 15%) after 5 repeated cycles of autoclaving and cooling. A similar increase in yields of RS was seen in dilute (1%) starch suspensions that were subjected to repeated cycles of heating to 100°C, followed by cooling and storage. The time of storage after gelatinisation was only important in these dilute systems: levels of RS in freshly-prepared concentrated starch gels(typically 57-67% H20) or in white bread did not alter significantly on storage.




There was one interview with the Independent's science correspondent (John Emsley) on his home ground at Kings College London, way back in 86.  But resistant starch never really attracted the attention of the UK media, until that is TODAY.  Hooray. Yes, there's a front page article in the Daily Mail that not only mentions resistant  starch, but advises people to select foods high in RS (green bananas etc). Steady on chaps.

In fact the write-up,  indeed quoted words from the Liverpool expert, are not quite right as regards detail. One can't describe resistant starch (RS) as "soluble dietary fibre", since it's a form of insoluble re-crystallized starch (it's reckoned to be linear short chain double helical starch fragments).  But it does behave like soluble DF, inasmuch as it is easily fermented in the lower bowel, and much importance attaches to the fact that is becomes degraded partly to the 4-carbon butyric acid that, unusually,  is a metabolic fuel for the epithelial cells lining the bowel, a splendid example of symbiosis, possibly, probably associated with protection against bowel cancer.

Incidentally, the successors to MAFF recently agreed that resistant starch IS dietary fibre, and has stated that during a transition period when people are still using analytical methods for dietary fibre that fail to measure resistant starch, they must incorporate a "fudge factor" that estimates the resistant starch as part of total DF for labelling purposes. But why has it taken 30 years for that to happen. despite the EURESTA (European Resistant Starch) inter-laboratory collaborative studies and other work that showed years ago that RS behaves as DF. It's because people get wedded to ideas and can't let them go, even when confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. That I'm afraid is the downside to science, and why I for one would never encourage any school leaver to make a career in specialist scientific research, at least in the UK with its media and even public antipathy to science and scientists (don't get me started).

Late addition: Tuesday 23:00

Have just spotted this quote from Professor Giulio Fanti that he made in the course of an interview with shroudstory.com regular "Louis", or to give the latter his full name (supplied on that posting): Louis C. de Figueiredo

"Radiation has been proposed as the source of the body image because we know that the image also resides where body-cloth contact is not possible, for example in the zone between the nose and the cheek or between the hands and the belly, therefore I agree with it."

The question of contact v non-contact areas between cloth and 'body' is one that readers of my  blog will know has occupied me greatly in the course of the last few postings. It's crucial to my belief that the TS image is best described as an impactograph, or more simply, a pressure imprint, the imprinting medium and/or energy source being a matter for conjecture. So here we have one of shroudology's most celebrated authenticity-exponents attempting to dismiss contact imprinting in  a sentence or two, referring to just two specific sites on the TS frontal image.

Do these words stand up to close scrutiny?

I say no, and for the following reasons:

First point: quote: "body-cloth contact not possible in the zone between the nose and the cheek" ? Does that refer to a cloth that is loosely draped over the face such that there is ‘tenting’ from the bridge of the nose to the cheek bone, creating an air gap? 

 But who says that cloth is loosely draped?  Given the radiocarbon dating one has to at least acknowledge the possibility that the image WAS made by human hands.  Whatever the nature of the imprinting process, it would have lacked for detail if the material had carelessly been allowed to tent  (i.e. shortcut) between prominences. So a conscious effort would have been made to ensure there was moulding of fabric around important contours. 

Now there are two ways that could be achieved in the case of the frontal body, face included. One is to press the subject down into linen, with some kind of soft underlay, such that fabric conforms to relief better than would be the case if simply draped over the top. The second, leaving nothing to chance, is to place linen on top of subject and then use fingers to manually press and mould the fabric around all the important contours. 

Here's a series of progressive enlargements of the nose are, starting with the high resolution Face Only option in Shroud Scope, with additional contrast (-7,100,0 Brightness/Contrast/Midtone value  in MS Office Picture Manager):

 Here, for the sake of completeness, is the first in the series after light/dark inversion in ImageJ:

 I'd have added a 3D photo-edit  from ImageJ, but there was scarcely any useful or photogenic enhancement of the above picture. Indeed the end-result seemed to be artefactual distortion more than anything else.

What do these pictures tell us, if anything, about the extent of tenting between bridge of nose and cheek?

ed: I'll need some time to think about that - expect to see some extra words added here later today (message timed at 06:38 Wed 16 July) 

07:11  Back again.  Frankly  I fail to see why Fanti has drawn particular attention to the imaging of the nose and its immediate surrounds. I think the nose looks somewhat wider, dare one say impacted, than might a real nose in a real photograph, but that has to be conjecture, not having seen the subject in life,  or death for that matter. Looking at the series of enlargements, the only sound conclusion would be that the imaging of the nose results in a fairly homogenous distribution of pixels that incorporates little information content as to the 3D nature of the original subject, and indeed the 2D image responded poorly to ImageJ in its 3D mode. 

My overall conclusion: the nose tells one nothing about the likely mechanism of imaging - whether imprinted by direct contact or by that 'mysterious' unspecified radiation. If Professor Fanti thinks it does, then he should explain his thinking in greater detail, since it's not in my view self-evident despite having  accumulated hours, nay days or even weeks of poring over  and scrutinizing closely Shroud Scope images.

Second point: image “also resides between hands and belly”? 

Really? The predominant impression one gets from looking at positive images is surely the low image intensity in and around the crossed hands, suggesting in this instance that tenting did occur (or was tolerated), whether the linen was underneath or on top of the subject.

I've shown Shroud Scope images previously, with captions that draw the viewer's attention to pale zones in the lower abdominal area around the crossed hands.

So at to leave no doubt in the viewer's mind. I've just this minute entered the same graphic into MS Office Picture Manager, first setting the brightness/contrast/midtone value to my preferred standard values (-7,100,15), and then, keeping the first two numbers constant, steadily decreasing the midtone intensity, a device for delineating zones of exceptionally high image intensity.

Here's the sequence:

 

-7,100,15

-7,100,0

-7,100,-19

 

-7,100,-42

-7,100,-61

There seems little doubt that there is indeed a pale, poorly imaged zone around those crossed hands. The belly region contiguous to those crossed hands is not, repeat NOT well imaged as claimed by Giulio Fanti. The fact it is not well imaged is precisely what is expected of a contact model , with the minor qualifying assumption that unlike the nasal region earlier, no deliberate attempt was made on this occasion to image around the crossed hands, as might have been possible in the Linen-On-Top procedure.It's a large area, and any attempt at moulding on and around those crossed hands risked rucking the fabric, producing unsightly creases.

Does the Man on the Turin Shroud really have a beard and moustache? (Or is the image an 'impactogram'?)

Once again, I opt to start a posting with pictures and the odd caption or two only.  Hopefully, they tell their own story. The verbal spadework can wait till later.

Link

Remind you of anything?

Is the title of my posting justified? Might the image on the TS be some kind of 'impactogram' or maybe an 'impactograph'? (Sorry, I'm still struggling to find the difference between a -gram and a -graph).

Are the beard and moustache merely artefacts of 'impactography'?

More later (like some attention to those 'moobs' too - hat tip to Angel on shroudstory.com).

(some say it's phytoestrogens in the hops in beer wotduzit)

So what prompted this particular line of enquiry? Well, the idea has been slowly germinating for months, nay years, with previous references  to the TS face having a "pressed against glass" look about it, when one looks at the regions of highest image intensity (brow ridge, nose, upper lip, chin, chest etc).

Look to at the "beard" and "moustache" in that Enrie negative above, and compare with that of head hair. Why is the facial hair so much brighter in that image, i.e. so much darker in the corresponding positive photographs?

And why does that 'moustache' (arguably) look so un-moustache-like in close up?

Come to think of it, why is it not possible to differentiate between hair and skin on the TS image? Why is there no 'strandedness' to the hair?

Bob Geldof

Spot the strandedness that differentiates hair from skin in a conventional photograph

There's nothing that differentiates hair from skin in the TS image

Answer: the TS image is not a photograph, not even a proto-photograph (no detectable pigments, other than dehydrated ("scorched") linen carbohydrates).But if not a photograph, then what is it?

Is there evidence elsewhere of the TS image manifesting signs of an impaction factor in its imprinting mechanism?

The trouble is that away from the face and head, one lacks the angular prominences, and has to make do with flatter relief. Never mind, let's make the best of what's available, but choose those flatter reliefs that are the elevated planes when someone is recumbent, and in some kind of contact with linen.

That brings us on to the chest region, which is also well imprinted (possibly too well for a fella according to 'Angel' cited earlier.

New addition: July 3

Here's a twin image I wish to discuss today, still within the context of photographs versus  'impactographs'.

The picture on the right is a Durante 2002 "positive" from Shroud Scope.The one on the left is the much earlier (1931) Enrie black/white negative, but I've edited it to make it roughly comparable with the Durante image, first by reversing it, left/right, and then "inverting" the tones in ImageJ.

There's a striking difference between the two, notably the prominence of the chest region. In the Enrie image, the chest seems as dark as, say, the cheeks. In the Durante image the chest seems generally lighter than the cheeks.Correction: it's the lower chest that shows the difference.There are some curious anomalies re the upper chest that will just be noted for now.

When Angel and maybe others refer to 'feminization' it's presumably the Enrie picture that is being viewed, Would she have said the same about the Durante? Personally I doubt it.

So what created the illusion of feminization?  I believe it's a byproduct of the TS image being an 'impactograph', not a photograph. Moreover the abrupt transition from chest to abdomen re imprint density is where adjustment of contrast has greatest potential to over-emphasize, and that is what we see in the Enrie picture - an overemphasis, created by excessive contrast.

Why reiterate the distinction between the two types of  -graph in the context of the chest region?  Because there are no obvious reasons for expecting a large difference in image intensity in a photograph that shows chest and upper (solar plexus) abdomen in the same field of view. Why are we seeing it - especially in the contrasty Enrie pictures? Because the elevated, rigid chest region, whether of a real person or an effigy thereof impacts more on linen, suitably supported, than does the contiguous softer, lower lying area.

One other thing: if the TS image were a photograph, then who's to say the extra density is not chest hair? As noted elsewhere, it's strange kind of photograph that fails to differentiate between skin and hair.  If the TS were a photograph, it's strange kind of photograph!  So far from being semi-feminized, others might claim with equal justification from that "strange kind of photograph" that the TS man was supercharged with masculinization hormones.

I reject both those views re feminization via masculinization: the TS image is NOT a photograph, and should not be read as such. The pattern of image density in the chest region is nothing to do with either moobs or chest hair. It's everything to do with an unyielding structure called the upper rib cage, and its impact qualities when pressed against linen.

The next region to consider is the groin with those crossed hands. I believe it's providing strong clues as to the mechanism of imaging, and no, it's not dependent on any kind of radiation. Clue: look at the region where one hand overlaps the other (highlighted with yellow circles).

Enrie (left) Durante (right)

Note the absence of image in a band where one hand crosses the other.The most obvious explanation is a tenting of linen across the small height difference (approx 2cm)  between the back of the upper and lower hand. Tenting is to be expected in any 'impactograph'. It's not at all obvious to me how the effect can arise other other than by impaction and tenting.

Note too the paucity of body image around the crossed hands (lower abdomen, thighs), in the general areas indicated by white rectangles. This too can be most readily interpreted as a tenting phenomenon.

Most of the image intensity resides on the backs of the arms and hands, which are the first parts of a corpse (or effigy) that would impact upon a sheet of linen, regardless of the imprinting mechanism at the molecular level.

Back again: Friday July 4 (yes, my blog postings are living things, not set-in-aspic: reminder, for them as need it. Blog = web log). Others are free to use my content - but I do not exist purely to service their voracious appetite for something new to report each day.
Speaking of aspic:

Puts one in mind of another's "riposte by pdf", right down to the frozen in time and space hard boiled egg.

I was the subject for gentle reproof yesterday for my repeated insistence that the TS image is not a photograph. That's long been recognized, I was told. Yes, maybe, but that has not stopped folk continuing to interpret the image as though it were a conventional photograph. That's much is clear on the other site in the tedious replay (yet again) of the allegedly poker-hole punctuated alleged Shroud in the Hungarian Pray Manuscript.  The waters there have been further muddied by bringing another artefact into the dispute - the Manopello image. One throwaway comment caught my eye, namely that while the eyes are open on that image, they are "closed on the TS".

Eyes closed on the TS? Really? On what grounds can one state that with such certainty, given that the TS is not a photograph, and we know nothing for certain about how the image was generated, being at best able to conjecture?

Later this morning, this living creature of a blog posting will start adding Enrie and Durante images taken from Shroud Scope (thanks once again Mario L.) with and without the tweaking described above to make the two easier to compare, and then pose  the supplementary question "Does the image of the TS man really have eyes, and if so, could we ever know for certain from an 'impactograph' whether or not they are open or closed?"

'As is' images, 1931 Enrie pre-digital (left), 2002 Durante post-digital (right)

As above, as seen after applying that amazing inversion of tones first reported by Secondo Pia.

Well, does the man on the TS really have eyes, specifically closed eyes? Might that supposition be based on interpreting the above 4 graphics as if conventional photographic images (complicated by the fact that the TS image has been the subject of subsequent 20th/21st century photography)?

For what it's worth, here's my tuppenceworth. Folk viewing the above images interpret them as photographs, and the pattern-finding neural circuitry of the visual cortex mentally does the following:

It reads the upper arcs of the brow ridge as if they were eyebrows (shown yellow above). More importantly, they read the lower arcs (shown in white) as if the were the junction between upper and lower eyelids with the eyes closed.

Now look again at the non-edited photographs. What is shown as yellow and white above is merely image intensity on what arguably is an 'impactograph'. They are the imprints left by a coming together, possibly with some applied force, of linen and bony eye socket.

The graphics tell us little about what is in-between, except for some 'body image' that is there certainly, but representing what? If soft tissue,it might be a closed eye, but why not an open eye? And that's leaving aside the possibility that what was imaged was not a real corpse (whether Jesus, or a Garlaschelli-style volunteer, or Knight/Lomas torture scenario involving Jacques de Molay) but a bronze effigy, one in which eyes were open or closed.

Does further magnification, with or without tweaking brightness or contrast, assist in resolving the uncertainty?

Here's an HD image (weave clearly visible) that appeared some time ago on David Rolfe's 'Shroud Enigma' site

And here's the same after tone-reversal.  Ignoring the weave irregularity on the left above, do you see evidence of a closed eye? No, I don't either.

Finally. let's return to Shroud Scope, and select the HD  'face only' option, which I've tended to overlook or neglect in the past.

As-is image

Enhance contrast

So where's that meeting of eyelids, the indication of closed eyes? Maybe seen only on tone reversal?

Yup, that would seem to be the explanation. A pale zone in the as-is image at the bottom end of the eye socket that becomes promoted to "image" on tone inversion is then being read as a junction of eyelids.

Shall I say it one more time: the TS image is NOT a ...  oh, I give up.

OK, this blog posting is finally complete. Apologies for its length (but there's been lots of pictures to look at).

My next posting may take a look at the dorsal view of the Man on the TS, seeking evidence for and against impaction-imaging, and maybe suggest how the two sides came to be imaged onto the same length of fabric. Simultaneously, as in a pro-authenticity scenario?  Or separated in time (as becomes possible in a  medieval fabication narrative).

But first things first: at the risk of being accused of "jumping from one thing to another" (what we Brits call an agile mind) I must get back to the garage and the quicklime. There's some revised thinking to be tested, like creating a thermochemical hotbed first with quicklime with judicious additions of water, to see whether one create model 'impactograms' (or should that be 'impactographs" or even 'thermo-impactographs'?). What some folk seem not to realize is that a scientific/technological model can comprise numerous different facets that can be assembled or interact in different ways. It's not simply a matter of getting the science right. One has to get the hands-on technology right too, albeit at a risk of burning one's fingers - literally or metaphorically.

Update: Friday 11 July

I see there's a renewed claim on shroudstory.com for the TS man having teeth.

Here's the top-resolution picture (Face Only Vertical) with (my) added contrast from Shroud Scope at top magnification, before and after inversion in ImageJ.

Before inversion

After inversion

Do you see teeth?  I do not.

Here's a link to the full pdf file claiming presence of teeth.