Could you explain what, according to you, is nonsensical with Lazzaro’s study?
Sure. I was actually waiting exactly for this prompt. Tim gave in to the temptation to explain ahead of that, but just in case you missed it once, here it is, ripe for the missing a second time:
I did not say Di Lazzaro’s study was nonsensical. I said your claim that
the total UV radiation power required to color a surface corresponding to a human body could not be delivered even by the most powerful UV laser built at the time he performed his experiments
is nonsense. Then you referenced the passage from Di Lazzaro’s study, which says that
the total UV radiation power required to color a linen surface corresponding to a human body … is impressive, and cannot be delivered by any UV laser built to date
and I called that nonsensical, too. I said it was nonsensical, because it makes no sense. The reason I said this is because it is entirely irrelevant how much power any light source ultimately emits. As long as the wavelength is short enough to produce the reaction in question, just how much the fabric ends up discoloured for it, is a function of how many such reactions occur. More photons of a sufficient energy each means more such reactions, and once one happens, it does not go back.
So the discolouration accumulates over time and, most crucially, is therefore a function of the energy delivered, not of how much of it is delivered over any particular period of time (i.e. power). The sheer idea that to produce an image of one size or intensity or another should require a specific minimal power output is completely nonsensical.
By that logic, sun bleeching, no matter how long the paint in question is exposed to it for, should be impossible. Photographs older than the invention of the flashes for the procedure, let alone ones made with pinhole cameras, should also be impossible. Saying things like that should be embarassing even for a lay person, let alone an engineer who gets to play with lasers unsupervised.
I’m happy to grant for the sake of argument the claim that we have not built 10¹¹ W lasers[1], but the idea that a certain rate of energy delivery is “required” to produce the image in the first place, no matter the exposure time, is utter gibberish.
And that’s quite a generous granting, by the way, considering chirped pulse amplification was developed back in the 80’s and achieves intensities well within the 10¹¹ W/cm² range – diffuse it again over the entire shroud surface and there you have the power that allegedly was beyond our grasp still, some three decades down the line. ↩︎
1 Like
Last year, a life size model based on the figure depicted on the “shroud” was exhibited. Hard as it may be to believe, this was apparently not intended as a joke:
Looks to me like he is doing (Pontius) Pilates. (Sorry.)
1 Like
From current scientific understanding this maybe true. At this point do you think we know all possible mechanisms to get proton and neutron emissions from a dead body? The mechanism that caused this may not be known but that does not stop the evidence from pointing to neutron and proton emissions happening.
I am not claiming this is what happened. I am claiming that this hypothesis fits the data better better than other hypothesis. It should not be rejected at this point.
By that reasoning, it is also possible that the “shroud” was created last Thursday, along with all documents mentioning its existence prior to that and everyone’s memory of having heard about the shroud years ago.
This hypothesis fits the data at least as well as the one you are defending.
5 Likes
How does this hypothesis support McCrones claims 
Duh, obviously the “shroud” would have been created with whatever physical attributes led to McCrone’s findings.
That’s the particular strength of this hypothesis. It can simultaneously account for every single claim made regarding the “shroud”, even the ones that contradict each other.
5 Likes
Why would you think it was intended as joke?
Playing devil’s advocate, I suppose we should consider the effect of rigor mortis. But rigor mortis sets in over a few hours and the rigidity fades, typically, within 24-48 hours (depending on ambient temperature). Also a cadaver will stiffen in the posture it has as rigor mortis sets in, so it would need the body to have been manipulated into the required posture, then wrapped, before rigor fades.
Anyway, the huge inconsistency of a photographic image allegedly coming from direct contact (as the video you posted shows) is a bigger issue. The “mask of Agamemnon” effect.
I look forward to Bill having a go at these simple tests or explaining that they are not relevant.
Because it’s funny.
1 Like
Yes.
No, that cannot be the case. There’s plenty of mysteries yet to be solved in the realm of nuclear physics, but where neutrons and protons can and cannot come from at the sort of energy scales one would typically find between the coldness of intergalactic voids and the cores of burning suns just isn’t one of them. This stuff is understood well enough to be taught to undergraduates, we are not talking about unexplored frontiers. If you want to say that dead bodies emit neutron or proton radiation in a way as yet unknown to physics, you’ll need to make a case that dead bodies are to at least some extent comprised of something other than the same baryonic matter making up the rest of the visible universe.
There is no physical evidence suggesting neutrons or protons enough to skew a carbon date by over twelve centuries can be or are emitted by dead bodies over a weekend or so. The closest thing you have is your own commitment to the carbon date being incorrect. Personal incredulity is not a form of physical evidence.
And you are incorrect in claiming this. “The data” does not begin or end where ever is most convenient to your intellectual or religious commitments. Well-established models of physics are part of the data any candidate hypothesis would need to be consistent with, whether that accomodation is ever made explicit or not. The only “data” this hypothesis is consistent with is the carbon date being what it is, and the claim that the carbon date does not reflect the object’s actual age. But, again, personal beliefs, no matter how strongly held, are not data, and certainly not enough to overthrow basically the entirety of nuclear physics.
5 Likes
At this point? Try 1938 with the Meitner and Frisch Liquid Drop nuclear model, or 1945 at Trinity.
Bodies are composed of well understood elements, so yes, we have a pretty good idea of why they are not commonly used for nuclear fuel.
3 Likes
Hi Ron
How much do you think we understand all the possible cause and effects of atoms at this point? Pretty well? Compared to the Creator of atoms?
Since you believe the resurrection is real, what do think caused a dead body to return to life? Is it possible that that unknown mechanism caused emission of neutrons and protons?
I agree with you if there were no such thing as magical miracles. But the clear divine evidence points to the hypothesis of deuterium fission, and we know a human body has lots of deuterium.
1 Like
That is an interesting point you allude to there. While I and most others in this discussion seem to find your line of reasoning to be absurd in the extreme, I will concede that it is not all that different from when supposedly sophisticated theologians and other scholars argue that an actual resurrection is a plausible explanation for the belief in a resurrection, because on such questions scientific knowledge suddenly no longer applies
I pretty much agree. It depends on the rules of science if science is silent on the conclusion or not. It does not restrict, however, science with its current methods from being part of the inquiry.
We cannot discount however that science, based on the current rules and methods, may at some point understand how to bring a dead body back to life.
That is to say, you disagree. I don’t believe there is any question on which the scientific method is required to be “silent.”
The rule is methodological naturalilsm.
The methodological bankruptcy of “what about magic though” is not a quirk of science. It is not a matter of attitude, nor opinion, nor intellectual commitments of some other sort, that completely disregarding all evidence and making up what ever one wills without rhyme or reason is grossly ineffective. Science is not ideologically prohibited from doing it, and it’s not “bad science” or “unscientific” to do it. It just straight up doesn’t work. That’s it. And there is no particular question that is off-limits because of it. If the question itself is intelligible, then we can explore it. That unreasonable replies to them do not work is not a limitation of reason, nor, indeed, at all a problem. Unless, of course, unreasonable is the only kind of answer one happens to be seeking…
1 Like
Yes, people often say that. In my opinion, that is simply a ploy to put some cherished belief beyond critical scrutiny.
4 Likes