Hi Tim
It what way do you think Ruckers is not following the scientific method?
Ork! Ork! Ork!
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Bill â as John H alludes to above â you are sealioning again â as the reasons why Rucker isnât following the scientific method have already been explained to you. You are engaging in âincessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debateâ, âpersistent questioningâoften about basic information, information easily found elsewhere, or unrelated or tangential pointsâ and âignoring or sidestepping any evidence the target has already presentedâ.
Ruckerâs half-witted, half-baked âhypothesisâ is âspeech intended to persuade without regard for truthâ, i.e. bullshit. That is hardly surprising, as he (like the rest of the STURP/STERA/etc crowd) is, similarly to creationists, including ID and YEC creationists, engaged in Christian Apologetics not science. They are all working from a conclusion â be that that the shroud is authentic, that a designer-not-evolution-did-âitâ or that the Earth is 6000 years old, and manipulating the evidence to make it fit that conclusion.
In science, the evidence is foundational,. In Shroud Apologetics, it is the authenticity of the shroud that is foundational.
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Theistic science in a nutshell.
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Here is my argument.
He has a hypothesis which is the aging of the Shroud and the Image were generated by neutron emissions from the body.
He has a model of predicted distribution of neutrons around the shroud based on a model developed at Alamos labs.
The limited data from the C-14 experiments are not inconsistent with the predictions of his model. His model predicts the C-14 distribution at different points on the shroud.
His model predicts that the C-14 content close to the body of the shroud is greater than what would be expected from a modern piece of linen.
A non destructive C-14 test would easily falsify his hypothesis.
He has a testable hypothesis which is the core of the scientific method.
With all due respect you are making a political argument and not one that pertains to science. Try and make a steel man argument against his hypothesis without trying to attack his intent.
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Then why is this a flat âimageâ and not an Agamemnon mask image?
This is easily testable. Smear something on your face that will stick to a cloth and wrap it around your face. Then lay the cloth on a flat surface and note the appearance.
Why the reluctance to discuss this?
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Bill your argument fails because â as has already been pointed out to you:
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Neither you nor Rucker can explain why a neutron burst is expected in this scenario â it is simply a blatant ad hoc addition to attempt to try and confect some scenario that would discredit the carbon dating.
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Neither you nor Rucker have presented any evidence that the fluorescence from a neutron burst would persist for 2000 years.
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Neither you nor Rucker have ruled out fluorescence from a source other than neutrons.
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The data is sufficiently limited â both in number of samples and distribution across the shroud â that just about any claim would be ânot inconsistentâ with it. It would probably be ânot inconsistentâ with a claim that the shroudâs corpseâs left toenail contained plutonium or something similar. This renders such claims not even remotely probative.
There is quite simply no âthereâ there to either his hypothesis or your argument.
Your âargumentâ is simply a piece of empty rhetoric, misrepresentation and misdirection.
Oh stop your hypocritical whining. The basis of science is evidence.
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. â Christopher Hitchens.
Your substance-free argument is therefore dismissed.
Ruckerâs substance-free âhypothesisâ is therefore dismissed.
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Iâve asked Paolo di Lazzaro about your idea that the image of the man on the shroud could have been produced simply by exposing a linen cloth (covered by a sort of mask) to sunlight for a certain period of time.
With his permission, Iâm happy to share his answer.
Hi Gilbert. The idea you mentioned is not new, at all. See Image formation mechanism on the Shroud of Turin: a solar reflex radiation model (the optical aspect)
Note this paper was published in 1997.
There, are several reasons why mask + solar light cannot reproduce the microscopic characteristics of the image on the Shroud. One of them is the sub micrometer depth of coloration. Visible light cannot color so a thin depth, for intrinsic and too long wavelength reasons. Ultraviolet sunlight on the Earth is limited to UV-A, whilst one needs UV-C (shorter UV wavelength) to achieve a thin coloration depth, as shown by our results.
Hope this may help.
Best wishes
Paolo
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Hmm yeah I see what he means about the UV-A vs UV-C and coloring depth (not my idea that the coloring effect was produced by visible light, though).
Nevertheless, if we assume all the specifics about both the shroud (that the color truly only reaches the first few layers of fibres for the Shroud of Turin, for example) and the coloring effects of different UV wavelengths on linen fibres that di Lazzaro mentions, are correct, that does seem to rule out the hypothesis I have suggested.
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If the shroud image doesnât penetrate the material deeply, is there any way of telling which side of the shroud the image is on? Hypotheses about intense neutron bursts or UV radiation from the body would require the image to be on the inside, but the wound locations may suggest itâs on the outside.
It doesnât really matter, since itâs an anatomically impossible anachronistic mediaeval artwork, but this may be one more spike through the feet of the believers.
The original neutron theory came from Phillips in 1989 who is a Harvard physics researcher. The most parsimonious explanation is from Rogers who Gil proposed in this post. The problem with Rogers explanation is that it does not account for the Sudrium carbon date of 700 AD.
Why do you think it would not persist?
True
True. It is consistent with the hypothesis but not confirming.
False. It is based on a testable scientific hypothesis.
There is additional testing going on to confirm the neutron hypothesis.
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That proposal is insane. Theyâre saying that almost all the nitrogen in the blood sample was changed to 14C, around 10% of the total sample? Wouldnât that be highly radioactive? What possible process would be so complete? Not even a nuclear bomb would have that effect, and it would produce other more easily observed effects too.
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⌠not here. Nor is he an explanation as to why a neutron burst is expected in this scenartio. So you bringing him up does literally nothing to address the point.
Interesting way to address the accusation that you wouldnât present evidence to support a claim you said you were proposing.
Shame the âhypothesisâ isnât consistent with anything we know about particle physics, though. Oh well. Canât have it all, I guess.
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Fanti agrees with you that the measurement differences are surprising.
It is not easy to find an explanation for this result. However, if we refer to the hypothesis
formulated by T.J. Phillips [29] who first assumed the effect of neutron radiation upon the TS
and its bloodstains which have undergone extensive analysis, it is possible to qualitatively
understand what may have altered the result as outlined above.
The hypothesis of T.J. Phillips is that neutrons would have
Thatâs not agreement. Itâs (as I said) insanity. I like that he said âqualitatively understandâ, which is a weaselly way to say that quantitatively itâs untenable. Let me suggest that a radiation flux necessary to explain the complete tranformation of the nitrogen in the sample would have had the additional observable effects I alluded to; for example it would have vaporized the shroud and probably much of Jerusalem. Since we see both the shroud and Jerusalem in a solid state, the hypothesis is falsified. Hereâs another hypothesis: that isnât blood.
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Plus, it would alter the isotopic ratios of a host of other elements as wellâŚ
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Would the elements reflected in the analysis support this? What do you propose it is instead of blood?
Ah, the sea lion responds, ignoring the main point.
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The main point is not valid in this case. You are reverting to the ultimate cause of the event. Here is Phillips response to the same objection.
(1) No physical mechanism has been proposed to explain the neutron flux, and yet our ignorance of the process does not change the possibility that it may have occurred. We do not understand the cause of the Big Bang, another unique physical event, but that does not keep us from studying its consequences. To not permit the possibility that the image on the Shroud was caused by a unique physical event, which may have had other consequences including a neutron flux, is a serious scientific bias, especially when there are historical records which support the occurrence of such an event. Besides, it is precisely this possibility which makes the Shroud interesting.