To be fair, this is supposed to be happening during an earthquake, when there is plenty of energy hanging about with no particular place to go.
I am not saying the whole thing isn’t loopy - it clearly is - but I don’t think the fact that the reaction would require a large energy input is, in itself, a particularly significant strike against it.
It would require a lot of energy all concentrated at the nucleus, and you’re trying to get that by compressing or bending electron orbitals.
timbo984 calculated that it’s going to require 10s of Mev. Compare that to ionization potentials, which are 10s to 100s of eV, out to the 10th for Iron (those numbers are kJ/mole, and need to be divided by about 100 to get eV). It’d be easier to rip off all the valence electrons than to split the nucleus.
smithsb might have fallen victim to the common misconception that “AD” stands for “After Death”. In fact, it actually stands for “Anno Domini”, Latin for “in the year of the Lord”, and starts (at least nominally) with the year of Jesus’ birth (although scholarship since the time the calendar was established generally puts his birth a few years earlier than that).
Thanks, consider my ignorance fought - now about some of the others - it will take longer than we thought.
Go stick your head in a pig!
In addition to what Smeghead said, whenever you see someone coming to a conclusion which could have been motivated by other factors, take an extra-hard look at their work. In this case, they probably concluded that of course the Shroud of Turin is special before they did anything else, and then created a mechanism to support their conclusion. The fact their mechanism violates one of the laws of physics which is so basic Piaget mentions it probably means they’re not very experienced at this sort of lying.
Object permanence (which is what your link is about) is not a law of physics, it is a concept in developmental psychology, and Piaget did not merely mention it, he introduced it into scientific discourse. (To the extent that it applies to the universe, rather than to the human mind, it is a metaphysical rather than a physical notion.) So far as I can see, it has no relevance whatsoever to the issues at hand.
Are you under the impression that object permanence is the same thing as conservation of mass/energy? It isn’t. Not even close.
Did anyone else read that as “The fact their mechanism violates one of the laws of physics which is so basic Piglet mentions it”?
I didn’t even look at the link at first, since I assumed it was probably to a Winnie the Pooh YouTube video…
Are you under the impression I was being entirely serious?
Free neutrons appear after one of the next things occur:
As a technician I produced radio isotopes for more than 40 years with cyclotron-accelerators (protons mainly), measured often neutrons, gamma-rays, x-rays, calibrating all kinds of equipment.
During the cold-fusion period many years ago I heard that scientists in a lab close to my working place in the university succeeded in reproducing an experiment in which released neutrons were the prove for cold-fusion. They told they measured gamma-rays from silicon, being the result of released neutrons hitting those Si-nuclei. Bringing in a neutron-source I convinced them within 1 minute that the signals they measured were not caused by neutrons. In the next minute I convinced them they were not measuring gamma-rays either.
In case an instrument which is made to show neutron-intensity shows a value, and the source of those neutrons is questionable, it’s possible to connect an oscilloscope to the instrument to see if the electronic signal is right. A nuclear reaction, caused in a detector by a neutron in f.i. gas containing boron, gives a specific pulse. Pulses from f.i. disturbing equipment in the neighborhood can be very different, but they still can result in a high value on the display. Also measuring gamma’s can be influenced by EM-signals which got nothing to do with it.
One more thing: rock contains light atoms, specially suitable to shield neutron-radiation. So if neutrons would have been released near the tomb where the shroud was in, the intensity inside that tomb would be almost zero anyway.
The best artificial shielding-material for neutrons is polyethylene.
'f.i." means “for instance”, I’d assume?
Anyway, I’m glad you bumped this, because I recently came across a blog with a good descriptionof how piezo-nuclear fission works. See the image near the top there.
Thank you very much for bringing factual information and applied knowledge to this discussion.
Stranger
Look, even leaving aside the plausibility of the science behind the people making the claim, it’s still yet another ad-hoc hypothesis for why the given date could be wrong, with no reason given for why we should turn that “could be” into an “is”. Could, for example, soot from a fire a thousand years ago have screwed up the carbon dating? Even leaving aside the question of whether or not the hypothesis is valid, why should we care? According to the evidence we have, the cloth is less than 800 years old. If you want to invent reasons for why it’s younger, you need to not just provide a valid, hypothetical mechanism, you need to show that this mechanism applies. Seriously. Every time someone gives a reason why the Shroud of Turin could be older than carbon dating shows, our immediate response - even before examining whether or not the hypothesis makes sense - should be “okay, now where’s the evidence that this actually applies?”
Uh, fabric of what?
Stranger
Yes ZenBeam, with “f.i.” I meant “for instance”. I thought that was the official abbreviation in English, but my native language is Dutch, so maybe I was wrong!
Thanks, I saw the miracle-formula which might cause neutrons to appear 
By the way, I studied the image on the shroud and I’m convinced it was NOT caused by any chemical reaction or human action as most people think. Main reason: there are some very small image-lines caused by coins on the eyes of the dead person. Part of the text on those coins is readable, though only a few characters. The coins both were identified as Roman coins. Coins were used to keep the eyes of a dead person closed.
The coin at the position of the right eyelid shows the characters Y CAI, where the space between the Y and the C is visible. It’s part of the Greek text “TIBEPIOY CAICAPOC”, one of the indications for emperor Tiberius, who was the Roman emperor at that time, ruling over the occupied land of Palestine. The Roman occupier often used Latin characters instead of Greek, so in fact the C of Caesar should have been a Greek K. The identification of this coin (already in 1954) was only recognized many years later after finding a real coin with that text version. The coin is called “dilepton lituus”, 16mm in diameter, issued by the local ruler Pontius Pilate between the years 29-32AD. Also visible is the typical “lituo”, a kind of pastoral staff, later on used by officials of the Roman Catholic church. The image on the shroud shows everything in mirror-view, making this staff look like a question mark. Such small details, only visible after photographic enlargement and contrast enhancement can’t have been painted by anybody.
The image is often called a photographic negative, but it’s not. It’s not a negative nor a positive. It’s a darkening effect with 3d-properties, caused by some kind of radiation, coming vertically from the body. Natural radiation is moving always isotropic, is all directions. In such a case there’s no image. Radiation used for imaging purposes (neutrons, photons) is artificially guided through collimators (apertures) to force them in one direction through the object. Radiation going in another direction is in fact stopped. Then an image occurs on a plate behind the object. I produced radio isotopes with which cancer tumors were localized. The isotope accumulates in the tumor, giving off radiation. Nowadays a tumor is located with a 3d imaging system, called a PET-camera. But an old fashioned simple camera only can see the position of the tumor after a frame with small holes is placed between the camera and the body, stopping all photons which are not leaving the body vertically.
But of course there was no trick apparatus like that between the body and the linen shroud to achieve this. The source of the radiation could only have been the body. And the radiation must have left the body in a straight line, vertically from all sides, downwards and upwards, with just enough intensity to make a visible image.
Everybody who works with radioactivity knows that charged particles (alpha’s, protons) cause darkening in material. Isotopes which emit particles are often sealed in plastic, which becomes dark brown after some time. It looks like low-energy protons were hitting the shroud. I will not bother you with energy-calculations, because I’ve got no end-conclusion anyway.
Besides thousands of people studied the shroud for many years. Among them dozens of scientists working for NASA. NOBODY has the end-conclusion.
Yes ZenBeam, with “f.i.” I meant “for instance”. I thought that was the official abbreviation in English, but my native language is Dutch, so maybe I was wrong!
Thanks, I saw the miracle-formula which might cause neutrons to appear
By the way, I studied the image on the shroud and I’m convinced it was NOT caused by any chemical reaction or human action as most people think. Main reason: there are some very small image-lines caused by coins on the eyes of the dead person. Part of the text on those coins is readable, though only a few characters. The coins both were identified as Roman coins. Coins were used to keep the eyes of a dead person closed.
The coin at the position of the right eyelid shows the characters Y CAI, where the space between the Y and the C is visible. It’s part of the Greek text “TIBEPIOY CAICAPOC”, one of the indications for emperor Tiberius, who was the Roman emperor at that time, ruling over the occupied land of Palestine. The Roman occupier often used Latin characters instead of Greek, so in fact the C of Caesar should have been a Greek K. The identification of this coin (already in 1954) was only recognized many years later after finding a real coin with that text version. The coin is called “dilepton lituus”, 16mm in diameter, issued by the local ruler Pontius Pilate between the years 29-32AD. Also visible is the typical “lituo”, a kind of pastoral staff, later on used by officials of the Roman Catholic church. The image on the shroud shows everything in mirror-view, making this staff look like a question mark. Such small details, only visible after photographic enlargement and contrast enhancement can’t have been painted by anybody.
The image is often called a photographic negative, but it’s not. It’s not a negative nor a positive. It’s a darkening effect with 3d-properties, caused by some kind of radiation, coming vertically from the body. Natural radiation is moving always isotropic, is all directions. In such a case there’s no image. Radiation used for imaging purposes (neutrons, photons) is artificially guided through collimators (apertures) to force them in one direction through the object. Radiation going in another direction is in fact stopped. Then an image occurs on a plate behind the object. I produced radio isotopes with which cancer tumors were localized. The isotope accumulates in the tumor, giving off radiation. Nowadays a tumor is located with a 3d imaging system, called a PET-camera. But an old fashioned simple camera only can see the position of the tumor after a frame with small holes is placed between the camera and the body, stopping all photons which are not leaving the body vertically.
But of course there was no trick apparatus like that between the body and the linen shroud to achieve this. The source of the radiation could only have been the body. And the radiation must have left the body in a straight line, vertically from all sides, downwards and upwards, with just enough intensity to make a visible image.
Everybody who works with radioactivity knows that charged particles (alpha’s, protons) cause darkening in material. Isotopes which emit particles are often sealed in plastic, which becomes dark brown after some time. It looks like low-energy protons were hitting the shroud. I will not bother you with energy-calculations, because I’ve got no end-conclusion anyway.
Besides thousands of people studied the shroud for many years. Among them dozens of scientists working for NASA. NOBODY has the end-conclusion.
Today I registered, which was confirmed – typed message and clicked on submit – was refused with message I was not logged in, though I was – logged out/in and submitted again – then I noticed my message was published double – clicked on edit-button but couldn’t find any delete-button – so erased the text of the 2nd message and clicked save – that was refused because the left message was too short – 5 minutes went by and my quest for the delete button was interrupted – regards from a newcomer of a old generation
Welcome to the Dope. And congratulations! You’re not a real Doper until your first double post. (Actually, the board is a lot better about allowing double posts than it was many years ago.)
Because you didn’t provide citation, I looked into it myself; first result for “shroud of turin roman coins” provided me this:
https://www.shroud.com/lombatti.htm
Which is not exactly convincing. It seems looking at what I can find that the symbols are not definitively present any more than part of a prayer to Allah is present on Obama’s wedding ring - you can kinda squint and see it, but if you’re not looking for it, it’s not there. Plus, you know, it runs totally contrary to the dates given by carbon dating, there was no Jewish tradition involving coins over the eyes at any point in history, and it’s not impossible for the artist to have had a coin present even if it does check out.
And it couldn’t be anything else? You jump very quickly to “this had to have been directed radiation from within the body therefore supernatural”.
Well, here’s what we know for certain about the shroud:
That’s what we know for sure. Anything else we should add to the list?
For the resident idiot, could someone please explain what is “Piezonulclear fission reaction” and how it differs from regular run of the mill nuclear fission?
You’ve probably heard the term piezoelectric. Some materials, when you apply pressure to them, develop a separation of electric charge. This is often used to light gas grills or stove burners. You push a button and the charge separation is run through wires to where it can make a spark, igniting the gas.
The “theory” is that, in an analogous fashion, if you squeeze granite hard enough, that stress get transferred somehow to Iron nuclei in the granite, causing them to split into two lighter elements and also give off a neutron or two. As timbo984 pointed out, the two lighter elements have more energy than the Iron atom they came from. A lot more energy. So much more energy that there’s really no way for it to happen from stress on the overall atom.
That’s the primary difference form regular fission: in regular fission you get lot’s of energy out, since the elements created from fissioning, say, Plutonium, have a lot less energy than the Plutonium atom itself. That fission can happen spontaneously, or because a neutron from some other fission hits the nuclei, inciting it to fission sooner. In piezonuclear fission, you need to add a lot of energy to get the fission, and there’s no good way to do that.
I think, based on that, that I now agree with Cheesesteak that “It would really need a lot more scientific justification to be allowed a comparison to cold fusion.”