8. How fast does cellulose (linen) decompose (produce a color) compared with the impurities found on the Shroud of Turin?

9. How is it possible to get image only on the topmost surface of the cloth of the Turin Shroud?
10. Can some simple, natural process explain a doubly-superficial image?
11. How fast does a human body begin to decompose, and what are the products?
12. How do you know that the flax fibers were not involved in image formation?
13. Are there any other ways than radiocarbon to date the Shroud of Turin?
14. What could be observed about image properties by looking at the damage from the fire of 1532?
15. What options for future scientific study of the Shroud's history and image were lost as a result of the "restoration" of 2002?
16. What are the optical and physical properties of flax fibers (linen)?
17. What Shroud image properties have been observed objectively by scientific methods?
18. Can the presence of a "bioplastic polymer" coating anywhere on the Turin Shroud be confirmed? Could it affect the radiocarbon age determination?
19. Could a "bioplastic polymer" affect the radiocarbon age of the Shroud of Turin?

1. How do you know that the image on the Shroud of Turin was not painted?
2. How do you know that there is real blood on the Shroud?
3. How do you know that the image was not produced by radiation?
4. How do you know that the image was not a scorch? How do you know that most of the Shroud had not been heated enough to start decomposition?
5. How do you know that the radiocarbon sample was not valid for dating the Shroud of Turin?
6. How do you know that the fire of AD 1532 did not start a long-term autocatalytic decomposition of the Turin Shroud?
7. Why are there bands of different colored linen throughout the Shroud, and what do they prove about image formation mechanisms?

 

Answer to # 8:

J. L. Banyasz, S. Li, J. Lyons-Hart, and K. H. Shafer [Fuel 80 (2001) 1757-1763] studied real-time evolution of formaldehyde, hydroxyacetaldehyde, CO, and CO2 from pure microcrystalline cellulose by EGA/FTIR (effluent gas analysis and Fourier transform infrared spectrometry). They detected 10 compounds simultaneously in the gas phase by FTIR. The cellulose decomposition is very complex. The quantity of formaldehyde produced is a function of heating rate, so decomposition mechanisms change depending on how fast you heat the cellulose. That is important in considering image-formation mechanisms and long-term stability vis-à-vis scorching processes.

According to A. G. W. Bradbury, Y. Sakai, and F. Shafizadch, [J. Appl. Polym. Sci. (1979) 23, pp. 3271-3280], the induction process in cellulose can be neglected above 300^ºC. They observed two major decomposition mechanisms with the following constants:

E₁ = 47.3 kcal/mole                   Z₁ = 3.2 X 1014 _s-1

E2 = 36.6 kcal/mole                   Z2 = 1.3 X 1010 _s-1

They assumed that 65% of the products in the char-forming chain of reactions went to gas.

Glucose decomposes by a multi-step process. As with all of the other saccharides, the first is a dehydration/condensation reaction. The condensation processes yield carbon-carbon double bonds, which ultimately lead to color formation. Bruce Waymack of Philip Morris measured the kinetics of the first reaction as E = 23.9 kcal/mole and Z = 1.26 X 10⁷ s^-1. The low-molecular-weight polysaccharides are much less stable than cellulose.

I measured the kinetics of vanillin elimination from lignin as E = 23.6 kcal/mol and Z = 3.7 X 10¹¹ s^-1. It is much less stable than crystalline cellulose.

Results of kinetics studies support a low­temperature image-formation process. The temperature was not high enough to change cellulose within the time available for image formation, and no char was produced.

 

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Shroud Story  

© 2004 Daniel R. Porter, Bronxville, New York