Miracle of the Shroud II: The Second Coming

[zooterkin]

Carbon¹⁴ dating is the only answer needed. For the shroud to be genuine the basic laws of the universe have to be off so it requires a miracle for it to be real.

Well, since it was formed by a miracle, you've just proved it! Excellent work...

 

[Slowvehicle]

As always, with the CIQ, reality takes a beating:

http://www.christiantimes.com/artic....image.imprinted.in.shroud.of.turin/52342.htm

"Angelic" computer-manipulated images of the "young Jesus" produced by the "scientific unit" of the Rome police force by usign "forensic" software to reverse-age the "image" on the CIQ...

Christians believe that the Shroud of Turin, a linen cloth imprinted with the image of a man's face and wounded body, was the cloth used to wrap the body of Jesus during his burial. But after using carbon-14 dating tests in 1988, a group of scientists ruled that it was a medieval forgery since the cloth was dated between 1260 and 1390.

However, this finding has not diluted the beliefs of millions of Christians that the Shroud of Turin was indeed the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.

 

[David Mo]

Carbon¹⁴ dating is the only answer needed. For the shroud to be genuine the basic laws of the universe have to be off so it requires a miracle for it to be real.

You are right regarding the question of the date. I don't know other dating proceeding with such guarantees (and I have often asked this to many sindonists). You are also right in that all the speculations of the sindonsits end up in a miracle (If not in two miracles together).

Other open questions remain about the formation of the image. But this is impossible to solve if the Catholic church keeps the fabric into an hermetic urn out of reach of the independent experts. This is not the way to solve mysteries. This is the way to foster them.

 

[hugh farey]

If I were in Jabba's position, and wanted to know a bit more about the controversy surrounding the radiocarbon date, I'm afraid I would find the answers to my questions a bit feeble so far, if you don't mind my saying so.

"How do you account for the radiocarbon corner containing cotton fibres, while the rest of the Shroud does not?"

Really only David Mo came up with anything sensible.
'I don't believe Ray Rogers found any cotton' does not take into account the findings of Giulio Fanti, Thibault Heimburger or John Brown, who also found cotton.
'I don't believe the sample came from the Shroud' is a bit more sensible, although Heimburger has made a good effort to trace the provenance of these threads, and in photographs, they look very much as if from 3/1 twill, although you can't tell from a short piece of thread if it is from a herringbone pattern.
'There is cotton all over the Shroud, as reported by John Heller, twice, in his Report on the Shroud of Turin, so there was nothing surprising about finding cotton in the Raes sample, and the varying proportions found by Fanti, Heimburger and Villareal suggest random contaminaton at the time of weaving.' I think that is a much better answer, don't you?

"How do you account for Ray Rogers's finding vanillin on the Raes sample, but not on the rest of the Shroud?"

Again, 'he didn't', or 'his fibres didn't come from the Shroud' are rather weak answers. I myself suspect that the parameters of the tests that he (Raes sample) and John Heller (Rest of shroud) were different, so that Heller obtained a negative result even though lignin (which is what he was really testing for, not vanillin) is clearly present in the fibres of the Shroud, as Rogers himself points out. To say that he didn't take into account the 1532 fire is simply wrong; he devotes a paragraph to it in his 'Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the shroud of turin'.

"How do you account for the unusually wide spread in the radiocarbon dates which even the authors of the Nature paper admitted was "somewhat greater than would be expected from the errors quoted? (https://www.shroud.com/nature.htm)"

The trouble with Dinwar's answer is that it takes no account of the contemporaneous St Louis Cope, which produce much less 'unexpected' data from exactly similar circumstances. The Nature authors got round it by saying that they suspected the errors on the Shroud were actually larger than quoted, but they did not speculate on why that should have been. A curiously similar occasion arose a little later in the dating of some possible clothes of St Francis of Assisi. Samples were taken from three different cloths, and one of them dated outside the error bars of the other two, which were in close concord. Rather than say meekly that the errors were larger than quoted, the authors of that paper had no difficulty in saying that the suspect cloth was from a later date, and had never belonged to St Francis. (‘AMS Radiocarbon Dating of Medieval Textile Relics: the Frocks and the Pillow of St Francis of Assisi,’ M. Fedi et al, Science Direct, 2009.) It was precisely the unexpectedness of the result which led Riani, Atkinson et al. to produce their statistical gradient.

"Prove it first, then we'll discuss how to solve the mystery." Oh, dear me, no. Scientists do not work by 'proof.' This answer is word for word the same as that commonly used by authenticists when challenging some non-authenticist evidence. We've got to do better than that.

Maybe it's just as well that I'm not Jabba...

 

[John Jones]

To say that he didn't take into account the 1532 fire is simply wrong; he devotes a paragraph to it in his 'Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the shroud of turin'.

What did Rogers' paragraph say? I don't have (free) access to Thermochimca Acta. He doesn't appear to have run any controls, so I'm curious how he could have accounted for the 1532 fire.

 

[Lucian]

As always, with the CIQ, reality takes a beating:

http://www.christiantimes.com/artic....image.imprinted.in.shroud.of.turin/52342.htm

"Angelic" computer-manipulated images of the "young Jesus" produced by the "scientific unit" of the Rome police force by usign "forensic" software to reverse-age the "image" on the CIQ...

Christian Times seems to have resurrected a 10-year-old story from the New York Times.

 

[carlitos]

This is not the way to solve mysteries. This is the way to foster them.

That's a feature, not a bug. They literally "proclaim the mystery of faith" in the church services.

 

[hugh farey]

I don't have (free) access to Thermochimca Acta. He doesn't appear to have run any controls, so I'm curious how he could have accounted for the 1532 fire.

Googling "Rogers Thermochimica" is enough to bring up his paper without needing to go through any paywalls. It's at http://www.shroud.it/ROGERS-3.PDF. This is the relevant paragraph:

"The fire of 1532 could not have greatly affected the vanillin content of lignin in all parts of the shroud equally. The thermal conductivity of linen is very low, 2.1 × 10−4 cal cm−1 s−1 ◦C−1; therefore, the unscorched parts of the folded cloth could not have become very hot. The temperature gradient through the cloth in the reliquary should have been very steep, and the cloth’s center would not have heated at all in the time available. The rapid change in color from black to white at the margins of the scorches illustrates this fact. Any heating at the time of the fire would decrease the amount of vanillin in the lignin as a function of the temperature and time heated; however, different amounts of vanillin would have been lost in different areas. No samples from any location on the shroud gave the vanillin test."

Rogers's point was that there was vanillin in the Raes samples, but not anywhere else, which there should have been at least in those parts of the cloth least affected by the 1532 fire. However his statement that "No samples from any location on the shroud gave the vanillin test" is open to question. He did not, I think, test any samples from the Shroud himself, and is relying on Heller and Adler's results, which are very barely detailed as one among many negative tests they carried out. They list the phloroglucinol-HCl test as being a test for lignin (allyls), and it came out negative. In Physics and Chemistry of the Shroud of Turin, Schwalbe and Rogers wrote of this: "There is a significant difference between the Shroud and the modem-primitive samples. The latter were found to contain lignin. This result was not entirely unexpected, because independent microscopic examinations of the modern-primitive samples had revealed lignin with the phloroglucinol/hydrochloric acid test, although the same test showed none on the Shroud samples." However, in his Thermochimica Acta paper, Rogers shows a photo of some Shroud fibres with the caption: "Colored image fibers from the back of the ankle (400×) that are still embedded in the sampling tape’s adhesive. Dark lignin deposits are easily visible at the growth nodes. The deposits do not give the spot test for lignin." This suggests that lignin is present all over the Shroud, but that the Heller & Adler protocol failed to detect it, although Rogers, much later, did, perhaps with a more sensitive protocol detect it on the Raes sample threads.

It must be said that however objective Rogers might have been in 1978, by 2004 he was convinced of the authenticity of the Shroud, and although he did not think much of the Benford and Marino hypothesis to start with, he must at least have wished that it could be correct, and was delighted at any confirmatory evidence he could find.

 

[Dinwar]

The trouble with Dinwar's answer is that it takes no account of the contemporaneous St Louis Cope, which produce much less 'unexpected' data from exactly similar circumstances. The Nature authors got round it by saying that they suspected the errors on the Shroud were actually larger than quoted, but they did not speculate on why that should have been. A curiously similar occasion arose a little later in the dating of some possible clothes of St Francis of Assisi. Samples were taken from three different cloths, and one of them dated outside the error bars of the other two, which were in close concord. Rather than say meekly that the errors were larger than quoted, the authors of that paper had no difficulty in saying that the suspect cloth was from a later date, and had never belonged to St Francis. (‘AMS Radiocarbon Dating of Medieval Textile Relics: the Frocks and the Pillow of St Francis of Assisi,’ M. Fedi et al, Science Direct, 2009.) It was precisely the unexpectedness of the result which led Riani, Atkinson et al. to produce their statistical gradient.

"Prove it first, then we'll discuss how to solve the mystery." Oh, dear me, no. Scientists do not work by 'proof.' This answer is word for word the same as that commonly used by authenticists when challenging some non-authenticist evidence. We've got to do better than that.

Maybe it's just as well that I'm not Jabba...

I am ignoring nothing. There is so little conversion of C14 to N14 at this age that I believe we should reasonably expect to find a wide range of dates (note that he range is completely insufficient to justify concluding it is a Roman artifact). The trouble with your question is that it addresses the numbers but not the system. ON AVERAGE one C14 atom will convert to an N14 atom every X years. Trouble is, this is population dynamics, and therefore you get weird effects at the tails. Sometimes you will find dates higher than average, sometimes lower; that is the reason for multiple tests in the first place. There is a sweet spot in radiometric dating, between one and three half-lives, where these effects are minimized. But by the nature of the system you cannot ignore these effects on something so much younger than a single half-life (less than 10% of one).

As for the "scientists don't discuss proof" bilge, you either never talk to scientists, or have only worked with a very distorted sample of them. Scientists I work with (bios, archaeos, paleos, and others, routinely) do not have this mythical allergy. They all freely use the term. The reason is simple: you are using mathematical jargon, and this isn't math. You are therefore by definition wrong.

Secondly, you have missed the whole bloody point of that statement in your zeal to find an excuse to dismiss it. The simple fact is that your question begs e question. We do not know that there is anything to explain, and reef ore it is grossly and negligently premature to demand we explain it. Harsh term? Sure. For good reason. Anyone familiar with science history will know of innumerable examples of someone trying to explain something that does not, in fact, exist--and such attempts hold science back, for time periods ranging from years to GENERATIONS. This is no trivial issue; it is supposed to be foundational to the very concept of science, and failing to abide by this rule undercuts the entire enterprise. I have read numerous papers that basically amount to new ways to prove whether there is something worth discussing at all.

A fully adequate response to someone in science is "Pdemonstrate that there is something to discuss, and only then will I discuss it." If you think this is inadequate, that is your problem, and what you are doing isn't science.

 

[Slowvehicle]

<snip for focus>
Rogers's point was that there was vanillin in the Raes samples, but not anywhere else, which there should have been at least in those parts of the cloth least affected by the 1532 fire. However his statement that "No samples from any location on the shroud gave the vanillin test" is open to question. He did not, I think, test any samples from the Shroud himself, and is relying on Heller and Adler's results, which are very barely detailed as one among many negative tests they carried out.<snip for focus>

...If, and only if, the "Raes samples" could be demonstrated to have come from the CIQ itself; a provenance that has been asserted but has not, in fact, been done.

Nor has the "vanillin test" found wide acceptance and common use.

 

[David Mo]

The trouble with Dinwar's answer is that it takes no account of the contemporaneous St Louis Cope, which produce much less 'unexpected' data from exactly similar circumstances. The Nature authors got round it by saying that they suspected the errors on the Shroud were actually larger than quoted, but they did not speculate on why that should have been. A curiously similar occasion arose a little later in the dating of some possible clothes of St Francis of Assisi. Samples were taken from three different cloths, and one of them dated outside the error bars of the other two, which were in close concord. Rather than say meekly that the errors were larger than quoted, the authors of that paper had no difficulty in saying that the suspect cloth was from a later date, and had never belonged to St Francis. (‘AMS Radiocarbon Dating of Medieval Textile Relics: the Frocks and the Pillow of St Francis of Assisi,’ M. Fedi et al, Science Direct, 2009.) It was precisely the unexpectedness of the result which led Riani, Atkinson et al. to produce their statistical gradient.

Hugh:
In a debate elsewhere I formulated some objection to you that remained unanswered. (The “fast” format, I suppose). I would like to know your opinion, because I have read a lot on the “problem” with the 1988 radiocarbon dating but I don’t arrive to get a correct idea of it.

In my own words, the problem arises because Oxford’s rate is not congruent with the measurements of the other labs in the Turin sample. (Only one Oxford's measurement matches Zurich: O1.2 and Z1.1, in the table 1 of Nature). Oxford’s measurements are congruent with the other labs in the Thebes, Nubia and Provence samples. So, there is something different in the measurements of Turin sample that cannot likely to be attributed to chance. This dissimilarity can be attributed to some unknown property of the Oxford Turin sample or some unknown flaw in the method applied only on this sample. I call the former an “objective” cause and the latter a “methodological” cause.

Sindonists and you select only or preferably an objective cause: the lack of homogeneity of the fabric.

But the sindonist point of view is incongruent with the global results. In effect, Tucson's and Zurich’s results being mutually congruent, any objective cause would only affect to the Oxford sample. This is incompatible with any “Absolutely Invisible Mending” (AIM), because if an AIM existed it would concern all the samples together. A slight variation in the fabric of Oxford’s sample never would produce a high deviation in the global dating. (I take the example of the AIM as the most relevant example of lack of homogeneity of the fabric).

In my opinion, all we can say is that an unknown anomaly took place during the test of Oxford. More knowledge about other radiocarbon tests and anomalies in the epoch would be needed to make any substantive hypothesis about it. But both the AIM as other major objective causes can be discarded by the empirical evidence we have and by the analysis of the 1988 radiocarbon dating.

And my question remain: Were these kind of anomalies exceptional in the 80's?

PS: Nature article here: https://www.shroud.com/nature.htm

 

[catsmate]

...If, and only if, the "Raes samples" could be demonstrated to have come from the CIQ itself; a provenance that has been asserted but has not, in fact, been done.

As we discussed in v1.0 their origin is dubious at best and utterly false at worst.
Nor have any shroudies accounted for any contamination of them.

Nor has the "vanillin test" found wide acceptance and common use.

Indeed. Every real scientists who's looked at it has considered it utter nonsense.

 

[hugh farey]

I am ignoring nothing.

You did not account for the fact that the St Louis cope samples did not show the same discrepancy in dating, even though they are more or less contemporaneous with the Shroud. Your explanation in this answer goes some way to rectifying this, for which thank you. The explanation was apparently unknown to the British Museum statisticians in 1988.

As for the "scientists don't discuss proof" bilge.

This is a misquotation, as you well know. It is a tactic frequently used by some authenticists - first invent what someone you think you disagree with says, and then disagree with that. Of course scientists use 'proof' as a reasonable shorthand, but your challenge "Prove [that the radiocarbon corner contains cotton] first, then we'll discuss how to solve the mystery" is a very weak argument. If you mean 'demonstrate a reasonable probability that the radiocarbon corner contains cotton' then I have explained why I think this has been done. 'Proof' is a mathematical term (or coupled with 'beyond reasonable doubt' a judicial term), not a scientific one.

You are using mathematical jargon, and this isn't math. You are therefore by definition wrong.

Therefore by definition? What does this mean? It is not a logical argument at all.

We do not know that there is anything to explain, and [therefore?] it is grossly and negligently premature to demand we explain it. Harsh term? Sure. For good reason. Anyone familiar with science history will know of innumerable examples of someone trying to explain something that does not, in fact, exist - and such attempts hold science back, for time periods ranging from years to GENERATIONS.

I agree with this. If you really don't think the radiocarbon corner contains cotton, then indeed, you only need to explain why (that you do not believe Rogers's samples were from the Shroud) for the debate to cease. I think they probably were from the Shroud, and that there is something to account for, in the way I have done.

A fully adequate response to someone in science is "Demonstrate that there is something to discuss, and only then will I discuss it." If you think this is inadequate, that is your problem, and what you are doing isn't science.

No, I don't think that is inadequate at all. I like the way you have adjusted "prove" to "demonstrate." I think there is something to discuss, and have explained why. If you don't, then you are correct that there is no point in engaging in a discussion about it.

 

[hugh farey]

David Mo, starting with the Nature paper's comment: "The spread of the measurements for sample 1 is somewhat greater than would be expected from the errors quoted" and their statisticians subsequent calculation that there was only a 1 in 20 probability "of obtaining, by chance, a scatter among the three dates as high as that observed", a number of possible explanations in possible. One possibility is that the 1 in 20 chance actually came up in this case. Another is that there was a problem with the Oxford laboratory, and yet another that the errors quoted were too small. This last was the solution used by the Nature paper authors. Riani and Atkinson used all 12 separate measurements to determine their chronological gradient, which I find compelling.

In my opinion, all we can say is that an unknown anomaly took place during the test of Oxford.

That's one of many possible explanations, but not established.

 

[John Jones]

David Mo, starting with the Nature paper's comment: "The spread of the measurements for sample 1 is somewhat greater than would be expected from the errors quoted" and their statisticians subsequent calculation that there was only a 1 in 20 probability "of obtaining, by chance, a scatter among the three dates as high as that observed", a number of possible explanations in possible. One possibility is that the 1 in 20 chance actually came up in this case. Another is that there was a problem with the Oxford laboratory, and yet another that the errors quoted were too small. This last was the solution used by the Nature paper authors. Riani and Atkinson used all 12 separate measurements to determine their chronological gradient, which I find compelling.


That's one of many possible explanations, but not established.

Let's hear your possible, but not established explanations.

 

[hugh farey]

Let's hear your possible, but not established explanations.

Explanations for: "The spread of the measurements for sample 1 is somewhat greater than would be expected from the errors quoted."

1) "The errors quoted" were too small, for unknown reasons, in the case of the Shroud samples. (Nature)

2) A 1 in 20 probability does, occasionally, occur.

3) Medieval radiocarbon measurements are more subject to variation than was understood in 1988. (Dinwar)

4) The Oxford laboratory produced incorrect measurements. (David Mo)

5) There is a chronological gradient across the radiocarbon sample (Riani et al.)

6) The samples came from different pieces of material (Rogers)

There may be others.

 

[David Mo]

David Mo, starting with the Nature paper's comment: "The spread of the measurements for sample 1 is somewhat greater than would be expected from the errors quoted" and their statisticians subsequent calculation that there was only a 1 in 20 probability "of obtaining, by chance, a scatter among the three dates as high as that observed", a number of possible explanations in possible. One possibility is that the 1 in 20 chance actually came up in this case. Another is that there was a problem with the Oxford laboratory, and yet another that the errors quoted were too small. This last was the solution used by the Nature paper authors. Riani and Atkinson used all 12 separate measurements to determine their chronological gradient, which I find compelling.


That's one of many possible explanations, but not established.

My comment was not a proposal of a hypothesis (4?), but a declaration of ignorance and an objection to a particular hypothesis : Absolute Invisible Mending (AIM). This is not an answer to my objection.

You have given support to a "light" version of the theory of AIM somewhere else. That is to say, the fabric was not homogeneous, but the difference of measurements don't justify a mistake of 1300 years. I think I have done a critic to every AIM theory, yours included. I'm still waiting your answer.

PS: The hypothesis 5 is not a hypothesis. This is a fact that the radiocarbon dating in 80's was not very accurate. Rinaldi says that the results of the dating of the Shroud was unexpectedly congruent. Gian Marco Rinaldi, "La statistica della datazione della Sindone" http://sindone.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/2/0/1220953/nature_statistica.pdf

 

[hugh farey]

You have given support to a "light" version of the theory of AIM somewhere else. That is to say, the fabric was not homogeneous, but the difference of measurements don't justify a mistake of 1300 years. I think I have done a critic to every AIM theory, yours included. I'm still waiting your answer.

I'm not sure I would dignify my ideas accounting for the Riani chronological gradient with the word theory. First, I think Riani provided sufficient evidence for a gradient for the question, 'why is it there?' to be investigated, or at least guessed at. Secondly, I do not believe there is sufficient evidence for any deep seated re-working of the cloth. So, I'm hypothesising a surface contamination. Riani shows that the closer the sample was to the actual corner, the older the Shroud appears. So either a 'young' contamination has occurred within the cloth area, but not at the corner itself, which seems to me unlikely, or the contamination was denser at the corner, which seems more probable. So the contamination had the effect of making the cloth appear older, not younger, than it really is. I'm hypothesising some sort of mineral oil based contaminant, which I believe can be difficult to remove, and which, having zero C14, would have the effect of making the date older. Such a contaminant could perhaps be part of a colouring medium, which was smeared on the Holland cloth to make it match the rest of the Shroud a little better, and which was smeared over the edges of the Shroud in the process. There is precious little evidence for this, except that when the Raes and radiocarbon samples were cut away, the Holland cloth which had been underneath them is much brighter.

All six hypotheses are most certainly hypotheses. They are possible explanations for an observation. Tampering by aliens is a seventh. They are not all correct.

The results of the carbon dating are indeed sufficiently congruent to establish a medieval date. All I was trying to account for was that "The spread of the measurements for sample 1 is somewhat greater than would be expected from the errors quoted."

 

[David Mo]

I'm hypothesising some sort of mineral oil based contaminant, which I believe can be difficult to remove, and which, having zero C14, would have the effect of making the date older. Such a contaminant could perhaps be part of a colouring medium, which was smeared on the Holland cloth to make it match the rest of the Shroud a little better, and which was smeared over the edges of the Shroud in the process. There is precious little evidence for this, except that when the Raes and radiocarbon samples were cut away, the Holland cloth which had been underneath them is much brighter.

This is a variant of the “mysterious radiation” theory or the “leobacillus rubrus”. Too imaginative.

I have with Riani et al. the same problem as with other “sophisticated” sindonists analysis. They are unintelligible to the inexperienced and they end in some spectacular conclusions. When analysed by experts, the conclusions are not usually so “spectaculars”.

I don’t understand how a statistical analysis that begins with a speculative hypothesis about the true nature of the object analysed, that is to say, the distribution of the fragments of the fabric, can emphatically conclude that the radiocarbon dating of 1988 doesn’t prove that the fabric is medieval. In my unexperienced opinion, this cannot be stated without the analysis of the standards of accuracy of the technic that we are investigating.

It is a mystery to me how Riani et al. conclude that the “contamination” of the Shroud can be greater than 1300 years. Remember: the aim of the dating was to determine if the Shroud is authentic.

 

[hugh farey]

I don’t understand how a statistical analysis that begins with a speculative hypothesis about the true nature of the object analysed, that is to say, the distribution of the fragments of the fabric, can emphatically conclude that the radiocarbon dating of 1988 doesn’t prove that the fabric is medieval. ... It is a mystery to me how Riani et al. conclude that the “contamination” of the Shroud can be greater than 1300 years. Remember: the aim of the dating was to determine if the Shroud is authentic.

David, you either haven't read or haven't understood Riani's paper. Almost nothing of the above quote is accurate.

"... begins with a speculative hypothesis about the true nature of the object ..." No it didn't. It began with a statistical exercise based on the 12 dates obtained by the three labs.

"... the distribution of the fragments of the fabric ..." No. The distribution of the radiocarbon dates. Riani made no comment about whether the fabric was integral or not.

"... emphatically conclude ..." No. Their actual conclusion was "Our results indicate that, for whatever reasons, the structure of the TS is more complicated than that of the three fabrics with which it was compared." That is not an emphatic conclusion, but a cautiously worded attempt to avoid explaining how the gradient calculated was caused.

"... doesn’t prove that the fabric is medieval ..." The authors do not suggest or even imply that anywhere in their paper.

" ... It is a mystery to me how Riani et al. conclude that the “contamination” of the Shroud can be greater than 1300 years ... " It would be a mystery to me, too, if they had concluded any such thing. But they don't. They make no comment at all about the date of the shroud. I don't know how you could possibly have understood that they had. The word 'contamination' or any similar word does not occur in their paper. The word 'patch' does, though, in this sentence: "There is also no evidence of any patching in this part of the TS which might cause a jump in dating."

"... Remember: the aim of the dating was to determine if the Shroud is authentic ..." Nonsense. The aim of the dating was to discover the date of manufacture. If it had proved ancient, then some discussion about authenticity would no doubt have ensued.

You cannot base a criticism of my hypotheses on such a complete misunderstanding of what I was trying to explain. Nor does an arbitrary dismissal of any theory as "too imaginative" rest on reason. Neither the radiation hypothesis nor the bioplastic film hypothesis were particularly imaginative. They were presented as possibilities, open to investigation, investigated, and found wanting, but that does not make them over-imaginative. Imagination is at the heart of scientific progression and long may it continue, as long as the ideas put forward are open to rational investigation. I draw the line at aliens...