9. How is it possible to get image only on the topmost surface of the cloth of the Turin Shroud?
- Can some simple, natural process explain a doubly-superficial image?
- How fast does a human body begin to decompose, and what are the products?
- How do you know that the flax fibers were not involved in image formation?
- Are there any other ways than radiocarbon to date the Shroud of Turin?
- What could be observed about image properties by looking at the damage from the fire of 1532?
- What options for future scientific study of the Shroud's history and image were lost as a result of the "restoration" of 2002?
- What are the optical and physical properties of flax fibers (linen)?
- What Shroud image properties have been observed objectively by scientific methods?
- Can the presence of a "bioplastic polymer" coating anywhere on the Turin Shroud be confirmed? Could it affect the radiocarbon age determination?
- Could a "bioplastic polymer" affect the radiocarbon age of the Shroud of Turin?
- How do you know that the image on the Shroud of Turin was not painted?
- How do you know that there is real blood on the Shroud?
- How do you know that the image was not produced by radiation?
- 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?
- How do you know that the radiocarbon sample was not valid for dating the Shroud of Turin?
- How do you know that the fire of AD 1532 did not start a long-term autocatalytic decomposition of the Turin Shroud?
- Why are there bands of different colored linen throughout the Shroud, and what do they prove about image formation mechanisms?
- How fast does cellulose (linen) decompose (produce a color) compared with the impurities found on the Shroud of Turin?
Answer to # 9:
Because
the cellulose was not involved in image formation, the color must have formed in
impurities on the surfaces of the image fibers. Independent observations have
proved that all of the image color resides
in a very thin layer on the outside surfaces of colored fibers.
Evaporation concentration can explain the superficial nature of the image and the identical properties of the front and back images. It can also explain the "doubly-superficial" image, i.e., the presence of a superficial image on the back surface of the cloth as reported by Ghiberti and Fanti and Maggiolo.
When a solution evaporates at the surface of a porous solid, dissolved solutes are concentrated at the evaporating surface. The principle is illustrated in the photomicrograph with blue dye. A piece of linen was saturated with a dilute solution of blue dye, and the cloth was dried while laying on a sheet of Teflon. All evaporation occurred at the top surface, and the dye concentrated on that surface. It is obvious that most of the dye deposited on the highest parts of the weave and the upward-pointing fibers of the nap. A sheet of cloth that contained sugars and starches would deposit those impurities at the very topmost part of the weave after washing and drying.
© 2004 Daniel R. Porter, Bronxville, New York
