It doesn’t mean that.
Neither Rucker nor you know what significance levels actually are.
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First off, that’s “fluorescence”. And again, what does that have to do with 14C? What prediction did Rucker make, specifically? The only thing similar between the neutron hypothesis and the fluorescence pattern appears to be that they show (or would be expected under the hypothesis to show, since there’s no actual data) greater intensity near the center of the shroud. But there is no expected relationship between a neutron burst and fluorescence. You’re grasping, not at straws, but at the idea of a picture of a straw.
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How do you explain the fluorescence variation correlating with Ruckers model? You are making a bald assertion here.
Please consider that sunlight UV radiation reaching the earth surface range from 0,1 to 0,5mW/cm2. Now compare this value with 14x10^6 W/cm2, which, according to Lazzaro’s experiments, is the minimal UV intensity necessary for getting linen coloration. There is at least 10 orders difference between the two!!! Given this, do you really think that exposing a piece of linen to sunlight for a prolonged period of time would be able to produce the same coloration we see on the shroud ?
There is nothing to explain. Trending vaguely upwards, or vaguely downwards, or staying vaguely the same were literally the only options. Knowing nothing about fluorescence, or radiation, or textiles, one would have had a 1/3 chance of just randomly guessing correctly. Knowing anything about materials at all, one could have reasonably conjectured that there’d be some trend one way or another for basically any observable quantity, between the centre of an aged cloth and its boundaries. So now we are at a chance of 1/2 for a correct guess knowing nothing beyond the fact that outward regions are more exposed to things beyond them than more central ones. This “correlation” is so utterly meaningless that it’s not even funny, like e.g. the fact that Popularity of the first name Thomas correlates with Gasoline pumped in France (r=0.986).
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Not according to his experiments, no. Under a sufficiently charitable reading, maybe not even quite according to the paper he reports of them in. Certainly not in all of his other writing on the subject: 30Giorni | Scientific hypotheses on the origin of the body image of the Shroud (by Paolo Di Lazzaro). Pretty much the only place he says such asinine things is through unelected representatives like yourself or Bill.
What are you referring to here!?
In the absence of heating it up, or natural aging. However when it is heated up, or allowed to age, parts exposed to UV below the threshold intensity still produces coloration.
He has not reported any results that I am aware of, at least, where he attempts to establish the relationship between intensity, temperature, and exposure time to both factors, in order to determine how low intensity can get and you still get coloration.
Simply telling me the threshold intensity required for instant coloration is completely uninformative. There are other factors in the equation.
Interestingly in the video I linked in an earlier post, Lazzaro even mentions it as a distinct possibility that the image on the shroud actually only became visible to the naked eye after some unspecified period of aging.
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But I’m asking you, Bill. You are promoting it here, remember? Again, ownership doesn’t matter.
I find it ludicrous, because I understand statistics. Do you understand why chi-square is not a meaningful test in this context? Or if you disagree, why it is meaningful?
Yes, so:
Is merely a currently untested hypothesis, not data.
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I will take this occasion to point and laugh, especially at your claim that I’m the person making a bald assertion. I will also note that you have ignored a number of my substantive and even quantitative replies. Everyone should feel free to join in the pointing and laughter.
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Whilst considerable attention has recently been paid to my previous point of the lack of statistical significance of Rucker’s claimed 3.6 year/cm linear increase in dating. I would like to draw attention to another point I made – that even if that figure was statistically significant, it would be a wild extrapolation to try to apply this figure to the whole shroud. I think this graph, of the three data points, sums it up nicely:
(Each ‘side’, front and back, of the shroud, being approximately 2.2m long.)
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Does this paper:
- Rule out causes of florescence from sources other than neutron radiation?
- Demonstrate that neutron-caused radiation will persist after 2000 years?
If not, then it leaves gaping holes in Rucker’s ‘hypothesis’.
We appear to have no evidence:
- that the shroud’s florescence is due to neutron radiation;
- that florescence due to neutron radiation would persist for 200 years; or
- that the shroud was ever exposed to neutron radiation.
So it would appear that Rucker’s ‘hypothesis’ is nothing more than wild, unsubstantiated speculation, whose basis is not in evidence, but in the fact that he really, really, really wants the carbon-dating to be wrong.
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I don’t suppose you’ve got error bars for those points?
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Yes, but they would be so small, that they’d essentially disappear on the above scale. Here they are out of Rucker’s paper:
Why is he assuming a straight line? An inverse square relationship could be more appropriate.
But yes, that extrapolation is absurd.
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If you’re assuming the existence of neutron radiation, for which there is no evidence, then any other assumption has to look less absurd by comparison.
Maybe he’s assuming that the neutron-emitting-body’s legs give enough of a hit?
Even more likely, a linear relationship would be all that he could get a computer to spit out for only three data points.
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The issue is if the measured variation of the 3 samples is more than expected given standard error expectations of carbon dating linen. Why do you think a chi-square result in itself is a problem for understanding the result vs expectation?
There is data that supports this. I do agree more data would help either confirm or reject Rucker’s hypothesis.
Is it? Very well. What is “expected given standard error expectations of carbon dating linen”, then? Let’s see some calculations. Make a case for how there is an anomaly in the data so severe, that even calling all of nuclear physics into question is a price worth paying to resolve it.
No, there is not. Rucker and yourself disliking what the evidence suggests for basically no reason whatsoever is not “data”. And so far nothing outside of personal dissatisfaction with the apparent carbon date has been presented, either in this thread, or in the papers discussed therein.
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No, it is not. The challenge for you is to explain why you think, using math, that chi-square was a meaningful test. It’s ludicrous.
Because I have an understanding of statistical tests and their practical uses. Why do you think it was the correct choice?
No, there are no data that support it. The trend is not statistically significant.
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Chi-square is a calculation of the values obtained against expected value.
It is simply a choice. What would be a better choice in your opinion?
Ok your claim is data does not exist to support a claim unless it is statistically significant.