Lost Dumas novel going on sale in June

Intriguing, Bob. Frankly, I had no idea Dumas was the grandson of Haitian slaves. I'm afraid that I must do some research to refresh my memory on all of the background. Serendipitous Schopp.

Call me dubious but I'm surprised it was found among spools of microfiche.

As, I, Bob. Many things are coming to light, it seems. Some archaeologist/anthropologist has announced that he has proof that The Shroud of Turin is a fake, and how it was done.

I need to alert D'Artagnan about this thread.

I don't think it's a fake but it's confusing as more information is added to the mix.

PRESS RELEASE - Friday, March 11, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE





New Analysis Confirms Second Face on Shroud of Turin and Raises Questions About Other Images

NEW YORK, March 11, 2005 -- Skeptics and people who believe the Shroud of Turin is the genuine burial shroud of Jesus have always shared one common perception: they thought they knew what the man on the shroud looked like. Now, new computerized image analysis suggests they may be wrong.

Results of this analysis suggest that many characteristics of the images on the shroud are optical illusions caused by random plaid patterns in the cloth. For instance, because of these patterns, the face of the man on the shroud appears gaunt and the nose abnormally long and narrow. By using image enhancement technology to reduce the effect of the variegated patterns, the shape of the face changes significantly. The face takes on a broader look and the nose becomes realistic looking.

Shroud researchers have discovered that these patterns are caused by alternating bands of darker and lighter threads in the cloth. Ancient linen was often manufactured by bleaching the thread in batches before weaving, thus producing nonuniform whiteness in the cloth.

The Second Face

The plaid patterns are also cloaking details. Last year, two researchers, Giulio Fanti and Roberto Maggiolo of the University of Padua in Italy, reported finding a faint second face on the backside of the cloth. They published their findings in the peer reviewed scientific Journal of Optics (April 14, 2004). Though the facial image was confirmed scientifically, it was not easy to see. However, by filtering out the plaid background with software developed by Robert Doumax, an expert in computerized image analysis, the second face becomes visible.

The second face was an important find because it virtually eliminates artistic methods while giving credence to a hypothesis that a natural amino/carbonyl chemical reaction formed the images. (See: Why No One Can Fully Explain the Pictures on the Shroud of Turin )

The Shroud of Turin is a fourteen-foot long cloth with front and back images of a man who appears to have been scourged and crucified. The shroud is stored in St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Turin, Italy.

Since the mid-1970s, the shroud has been the subject of many scientific investigations. In 1978 a team of researchers found that the images were not painted and the bloodstains were genuine. Scientists also showed that pollen and limestone dust on the cloth may be from the region around Jerusalem. However, in 1988, carbon 14 dating of a sample cut from a corner of the shroud indicated that the material originated between 1260 and 1390.

Undaunted by the carbon 14 results, scientists continued to try to explain how the images were formed. The images consist of caramel-like substances thinner than most bacteria. Historians pieced together records that suggested the shroud was the famed fourth century, or earlier, Cloth of Edessa that disappeared from Constantinople when the city was sacked in 1204. Researchers M. Sue Benford and Joseph Marino, working with several textile experts, determined that the Shroud had been expertly rewoven in the precise location from which the carbon 14 sample was taken.

We still don't know how the images were formed. But we are well past thinking the shroud was painted or that it is a medieval fake-relic. Chemistry proves that. We can make a good case that it is a burial shroud of a crucifixion victim. With some historical reasoning we can infer that it might have been used by Jesus.

Earlier this year, chemist Raymond Rogers, a Los Alamos National Laboratory chemist, showed that the sample used for carbon 14 dating was indeed from discrete reweaving of the cloth. By examining remaining material from the carbon 14 sample, he proved that what was tested was chemically unlike the rest of the shroud. Rogers found splices and dyestuff used to make the reweaving discrete. He also found chemical evidence that the cloth was at least twice as old as the carbon 14 dating had suggested. He published his findings in the peer reviewed scientific journal Thermochimica Acta (Jan 21, 2005, Volume 425 Issue 1-2). John L. Brown, a retired Georgia Institute of Technology scientist, independently confirmed many of Rogers' findings.

Casually accepting what we think we see on the shroud is one of the greatest pitfalls in shroud research. People see all sorts of things like teeth or skeletal features that may simply be different patterns in the thread.

Not seeing things is a problem as well. It took chemical and microscopic analysis to reveal the discrete patch that was used for carbon 14 dating. It took advanced image analysis to find the second face on the backside of the cloth.

http://www.shroudstory.com/enhanced.htm

also:

ANALYSIS OF THE CARBON 14 DATING: WHAT IS RIGHT AND WRONG

Breaking News

A January 20, 2005 article in the scholarly, peer-reviewed scientific journal Thermochimica Acta (Volume 425, pages 189-194, by Raymond N. Rogers, Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of California) makes it perfectly clear: the carbon 14 dating sample cut from the Shroud in 1988 was not valid. In fact, the Shroud is much older than the carbon 14 tests suggested.

No matter what any one of us may believe about the Shroud's authenticity, we can no longer say that carbon 14 dating proves medieval origins; for the tests in 1988 were botched. For those who after 1988 continued to believe that the Shroud was the genuine burial cloth of Jesus, a winter of ridicule and doubts has ended. For all who use carbon 14 dating to study all manner of ancient objects, a period of careful reassessment is just beginning.

There are, in understanding what went wrong, important lessons that will ripple through archeology, anthropology, forensics and science lecture halls whenever and wherever carbon 14 dating is discussed. Students will ask why a single sample from a suspect corner was used. They will wonder why protestations from experts in the Shroud's chemistry were ignored. The will ask why documented data was not considered. They will talk about the clues of material intrusion that were simply ignored.

Material intrusion is well known in the application of carbon 14 dating. A classic example is to be found in the dating of peat bogs. Very old bogs often contain miniscule roots from newer plants that grew in the peat. The roots of these plants, sometimes having decomposed, are nearly indistinguishable from the older peat. What ends up being tested is a mixture of old and new material which produces an average, meaningless carbon 14 age. No one seemed to consider, in 1988, that material intrusion might be a serious problem with the Shroud of Turin carbon 14 dating even though clues were there.

The 1988 carbon 14 dating failure will not be ignored; for how does one ignore such a famous example. It should not be ignored because of the lessons to be learned. It cannot be ignored so long students raise hands and Google-check lecture notes. It should not be ignored when journalists and authors write about carbon 14 dating. There are textbooks, encyclopedias and many websites to be updated.

This is not a condemnation of carbon 14 dating. It is an extraordinary technology that with uncanny precision can count the approximately one in a trillion carbon 14 isotopes that exist compared to the more common carbon 12 and carbon 13 isotopes; isotopes that exist in all living material and material that once was living. In the case of the Shroud it was the fibers of flax plants from which linen thread is made. When a plant or animal dies it no longer absorbs carbon. And so begins a process that can be measured. Because carbon 14 is radioactive, it decays. And because scientists know the rate of decay, measured in half-lifes, they can calculate how old something is. The current state of the technology is useful for dating things younger than 50,000 years. For material that is only a few thousand years old, carbon 14 dating is very accurate and very reliable.

Because of the carbon 14 dating, the Shroud of Turin, a religious object important to Christians of many traditions (Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant and Evangelical; conservative and liberal alike) has been cast into the spotlight of secular science. It is not because the Shroud is famous, although it is. It is because the 1988 carbon 14 dating was made famous. And because it was made famous, and because it will now be discussed, the related science of the Shroud will also get attention:

*

the peculiar nano-scale carbohydrate film that coats some of the fibers, a coating that holds within its chemical makeup the conjugated complex carbon bonds of the images;
*

the forensics of the blood that, because it is ancient, should be black but is red for good chemical reasons;
*

the ancillary age-related data about the depletion of vanillin from the lignin of the flax (cellulose) fibers, the depletion that indicates that the Shroud is much older than the carbon 14 assigned date range of 1260 to 1390.


Average Storage Temperature Equating to Constant in Celsius Average Storage Temperature Equating to Constant in Fahrenheit Age Indicated by a conservative 95% loss of Vanillin
25 °C 77 °F 1319 Years
23 °C 73 °F 1845 Years
20 °C 68 °F 3095 Years
From the article in Thermochimica Acta: "A linen produced in A.D. 1260 would have retained about 37% of its vanillin in 1978. The Raes threads, the Holland cloth [shroud's backing cloth], and all other medieval linens gave the test for vanillin wherever lignin could be observed on growth nodes. The disappearance of all traces of vanillin from the lignin in the shroud indicates a much older age than the radiocarbon laboratories reported."

http://www.shroudstory.com/breaking02.htm

Bob, the latest Shroud of Turin experiment was by a scientist who drew a picture similar to the one on the original. He then put it on a piece of cloth, also similar to the one shown in the original, and left it in the sun to dry for around ten days. What he saw after this, was a facsimile of the face that was seen and created by the sun at different times during the process. I wish I had a link to give you, but unfortunately I do not. My use of the word, "fake", was a poor choice.

Here is another interesting find:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1548&ncid=1548&e=7&u=/afp/20050321/lf_afp/afplifestylejapanmusicbach

I invited D'Artagnan to review this thread, and he says that he will give it a look see.

Ancient history and the exploration of it was once a passion for me. If I duplicated any of your posted information, chalk it up to too many moments in the sun. <smile>

long, deep sigh. I'll cut and paste the info later, as for some reason, Yahoo never allows me to post a link.

Basically the article had to do with a lost composition by Bach that was discovered in Japan.

Here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_3596000/3596027.stm

Now I must make a leap of faith to the radio thread.

A forgotten novel by Alexandre Dumas, which he left nearly completed when he died in 1870, has been discovered by a scholar in the archives of the National Library of France and will be published in June, Le Figaro reports. The book, "Le Chevalier de St.-Hermine" (The Knight of St.-Hermine), set at the peak of the Napoleonic era, was serialized in a newspaper in 1869 but never published as a book. The scholar Claude Schopp, a Dumas specialist, discovered the serialized work on newspaper microfiche at the library. It completes the trilogy begun with "Les Compagnons de Jéhu" (The Companions of Jehu) and "Les Blancs et Les Bleus" (The Whites and the Blues). Schopp has worked in secrecy since his discovery in 1988 to edit the book and reconstruct the damaged clippings, and to write a brief conclusion.
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