Did dragons exist? I mean real dragons, those huge flying fire-breathing monsters we read of in History and Fable, not the lumbering Komodo of Indonesia. Some years ago, an enchanting book by Peter Dickinson1 explored the possibility pseudo-scientifically, beginning with the aerodynamic problem of how such a huge animal could fly.
His solution was that dragons were like biological Zeppelins, mostly consisting of huge bladders full of hydrogen, from which premise a succession of increasingly extraordinary conclusions appear to derive quite naturally, until the willingly compliant reader is inclined to think that there is so much supportive evidence that the premise is probably true.
a) Dragons generated hydrogen biologically by eating limestone, which reacted with stomach acids.
That’s why they live in limestone areas – where there are lots of caves.
b) Excess hydrogen could be belched out and, biologically, ignited to produce blasts of flame.
If they didn’t ignite it, they would risk suffocating in their own exhaled breath as it accumulated in the ceilings of their caverns. Naturally this could also evolve into a defence mechanism to deter predators and competitors.
c) Their highly acidic metabolism, including dribbles and excreta, would react with the floor of their caves to produce a most unhygienic environment, so they collected less reactive, silicon-based, rocks and pebbles to produce an unreactive nest-platform on which to lie. Dragons living near human habitation could be partially tamed, or at least deterred, by the villagers providing supplies of such minerals, perhaps collected from some distance. Tales of offering dragons “sacrifices” of jewels and precious metals (also very unreactive) derive from this habit.
d) Gold and jewels being generally associated with the wealthy, it was naturally royalty who were responsible for providing this, and inevitably, some became collateral damage. This gave rise to the legends of “princesses” being offered to the dragons to keep them pacific.
e) To keep the dragons off, while the treasure was being delivered, the “princesses” were accompanied by “knights” wearing steel armour. Unfortunately, should a fight actually ensue, the knight’s weapons and armour not only dissolved in the slimy drooling of the dragon but, if the knight were eaten, provided a particularly rich source of the hydrogen which enabled it to fly. Being unfamiliar, it might be uncontrolled, lifting the dragon away from the treasure it had come to collect, until it was “burnt off” in a huge blast of flame which might set fire to the nearby village.
f) Finally, a dead dragon literally dissolved in its own intestinal juices, which explains why there are no palaeontological remains.
Thus the “reptilian Zeppelin” hypothesis neatly accounts for all the properties of dragons described in Myths and Fairy Tales, so scientifically reasonably that it really seems difficult to refute.
[Although the more chemically and zoologically educated of my readers will spot a few flaws in this scenario. Chemically, producing hydrogen from limestone is far from easy – the usual product is carbon dioxide – and then zoologically generating enough heat to ignite it would also be a challenge. Perhaps phosphorus could be involved. As a last resort, the explanation could be hidden behind quantum fluctuations and processes currently unknown to science.]
I was reminded of ‘The Flight of Dragons’ by a paper recently published at academia.edu by Bob Rucker.2 For many years now he has espoused a “radiation burst” hypothesis to account for various aspects of the Shroud, and this paper, presented at a conference on Christian apologetics in March 2022, is a summary of his current thinking. The “radiation burst hypothesis,” he maintains, can account for:
1. The incorrect late medieval radiocarbon date of the Shroud.
2. The incorrect earlier medieval radiocarbon date of the Sudarium.
3. The chronological gradient across the whole strip of Shroud cut for radiocarbon dating.
4. The formation of the images (ventral and dorsal).
5. The transfer of dried blood from the body to the Shroud.
To explain all this, he claims in Section 1, “the radiation burst hypothesis proposes that an extremely brief, extremely intense burst of vertically collimated radiation was emitted from within the body as it was wrapped in the Shroud.” This sounds good, but it is not exactly what in fact he goes on to describe. The radiation burst hypothesis requires several bursts of different kinds of radiation, not all of which are vertically collimated, and only one kind is discussed in the paper.
The first kind mentioned is neutrons, which are assumed to have been “emitted uniformly” from “in the body,” but one of the reasons for this assumption is that the image is best explained by “probably charged particles such as protons and electrons.” Both kinds could be produced “if certain nuclei were to fission.” Rucker calculates that if 2 x 1018 neutrons had been emitted from the body, they would have caused the radiocarbon content of both the Shroud and the nearby Sudarium to have increased to just the proportions required to make them appear medieval, the Shroud more recent, being closer to the body and therefore more affected by the radiation, than the Sudarium. He speculates that these neutrons could have come from the fission of deuterium, “which requires the least energy input to fission.” Since this explanation elegantly explains all the ‘incorrect’ radiocarbon dates, and is easily tested by dating almost any other part of the Shroud or the limestone of the Holy Sepulchre, Rucker is satisfied that it “provides scientifically based circumstantial evidence for Jesus’ resurrection.”
But the trouble with real science is that it is all part of a coherent whole. Given that the phrase “vertically collimated” occurs four times in connection with the “radiation burst,” it seems strange that Bob does not mention that his neutron radiation is not collimated at all, but must be emitted in all directions in order to affect material not directly above or below the body. He does not mention that the decay of deuterium does not usually involve the disintegration of the hydrogen atoms into separate protons and electrons, which he supposes caused the image. He does not mention that in order to achieve collimation of the protons and electrons, the body would have to be in an electric field, in which case, being of opposite charge, the protons would go one way and the electrons the other. And, although he references them, he does not consider the experiments by Art Lind,3 in which linen was irradiated by protons in order to produce Shroud like discolouration. Lind’s paper concludes “If the image on the shroud was created by protons, […] the average proton beam density was […] was most likely equal to 6.9 x 1011 protons/cm2.” Taking a minimum area of each image as 4000cm, that means about 3 x 1015 protons were needed to form each image, hundreds of times fewer than the number of neutrons required by Bob Rucker to distort the radiocarbon date.
The point is that the neutron absorption part of the radiation burst hypothesis cannot be considered in scientific isolation. A human body contains (to within an order of magnitude) about 5 x 1027 hydrogen atoms, containing one proton, about 5 x 1023 deuterium atoms, containing one proton and one neutron, and (very variable) about 5 x 1010 tritium atoms, containing one proton and two neutrons. ‘Following the science where it leads’ (a common trope among sindonological scientists) we may propose that a tiny proportion of the body’s deuterium decomposes completely, into a proton, a neutron and an electron, while about a thousand times more simply loses its neutron and becomes ordinary hydrogen. However, Rucker surely knows that a more common way in which a neutron is emitted from heavy hydrogen is via a deuterium-tritium reaction, producing helium and a spare neutron, and no spare protons.
And surely another part of the hypothesis, especially as the “vertical collimation” is specifically mentioned so many times, must be some attempt to account for the protons being able to go up and down, but not sideways. Some years ago there was a brief investigation into the piezo-electric possibilities of an earthquake (see de Liso, Carpinteri and Fanti),4 but it does not seem to have come to anything, although at least it was an attempt.
Then, from a metaphysical point of view, a “burst of light” hypothesis is catechetically attractive to accompany (if not to explain) the Resurrection, so Paulo di Lazzaro’s ultraviolet experiments,5 and to a lesser extent Christophe Donnet’s infrared experiments,6 have been indiscriminately shoved into the authenticist wheelbarrow of sciency-sounding radiation evidences, without any realisation, in most cases, that these are a) not bursts of light at all, b) incompatible with each other, and c) incompatible with any elements of the “radiation burst” hypothesis described above.
Of course, Rucker freely admits that aspects of his hypothesis “appear to require a unique process or mechanism that is outside or beyond our current understanding of physics,” but I’m afraid that for me, even the aspects within our current understanding don’t ring true. The elaborate fine-tuning of exactly how many neutrons were emitted in order to produce a date that matched the date of the first appearance of the Shroud in history seems deliberately vexatious, not a sign of triumph over death.
Frankly, I find it easier to believe in dragons…
1. Dickinson, Peter, The Flight of Dragons, The Overlook Press, April 1 (All Fools Day), 1998
2. Rucker, Robert, ‘Solving the Carbon Dating Problem for the Shroud of Turin,’ at 0201.nccdn.net/1_2/000/000/0fe/927/solving-the-carbon-dating-problem-for-the-shroud-of-turin.pdf
3. Lind, Arthur, ‘Image Formation by Protons,’ whose internet reference is too long to be sensibly included here
4. De Liso, Giovanna, ‘Shroud-like Experimental Image Formation During Seismic Activity,’ at acheiropoietos.info/proceedings/DeLisoWeb.pdf
Carpinteri, Alberto, ‘Is the Shroud of Turin in Relation to the Old Jerusalem Historical Earthquake?, at arxiv.org/abs/1504.03276
Fanti, Giulio, ‘Body Image Formation Hypotheses based on Corona Discharge: Discussion,’ at shroud.com/pdfs/ohiofanti1.pdf
5. Di Lazzaro, Paolo, ‘Shroud-like Coloration of Linen by Ultraviolet Radiation,’ at shroud.com/pdfs/duemaggioDiLazzaroENG.pdf
6. Donnet, Christophe, et al., ‘2D Reproduction of the Face on the Turin Shroud by Infrared femtosecond Pulse Laser Processing,’ Applied Optics Vol. 58, 2019
Hi Seth,
Good to hear from you again. The two paragraphs you quote appear to come from a three-part article in a magazine called The Glyph, by Jack Kilmon. Is that right? The whole article is based on a number of dogmatic “facts,” very few of which appear to be so, but some of which are given references, few of which support the facts they are adduced to support.
However, twelve paragraphs about a forgery, two of which you quote, are unsupported by any references, and do not refer back to elsewhere in the article.
Still, let’s have a look at them. “Perfect forensic agreement to blood flow from the wrists at 65° from vertical.” 65° from vertical is 25° from horizontal, which is fairly flat. Blood flowing from a wound would flow straight off. No blood would flow down the arms.
So, I take a picture of the arm and draw two lines, one along the arm, and one along one of the wrist blood flows. There are two reasonably clear possibilities, at slightly different angles, but not enough to matter. The angle between the arm and the blood-flow is about 45°, not 65°. Let us suppose that the the 65° is a typo, and that Kilmon meant 45°. Blood could, then, if it emerged from a wound in a wrist at that angle, flow along the path from the wrist shown on the Shroud. But it would not flow down the arm. However, there is a problem even with that. As any A&E doctor will tell you, a wound plugged by an embedded object does not bleed. It only bleeds after the embedded object is removed. However, if the victim dies, and the arm is still raised at 45°, then all the blood in the arm will flow back down inside the blood vessels towards the feet. Even after the embedded object is removed, no blood will emerge from the wound. If the body is turned in such a way that the blood can flow back along the blood vessels of the arm, it could then emerge from the wound even after death, but for that to happen the arm must be hanging downwards, and the blood would flow along the fingers, not towards the elbow or even sideways off the wrist. Far from being in perfect forensic agreement with a crucifixion, the blood flows are in perfect forensic agreement with a forger not really knowing how blood actually behaves.
Next. “Unplaited pony-tail, sidelocks and a beard style consistent with a Jewish male of the 1st century.” This is truly ludicrous. There are almost no descriptions or illustrations that can tell us anything about “a Jewish male of the 1st century.” The nearest we could get would be the paintings on the synagogue wall of Dura Europos, or the funeral paintings from Fayum. These suggest short, curly hair and a trimmed beard, if not clean shaven. No pony tail, and no sidelocks.
Be wary of people who claim that “being consistent” with something is equivalent to supporting evidence. It isn’t, unless it can be shown that the evidence is inconsistent with evidence to the contrary. For example, that the Shroud is made of linen is consistent with it being a Jewish burial cloth, but it is also consistent with it being a medieval liturgical altar cloth. That the Shroud is long and thin is consistent with its being an altar cloth, but inconsistent with it being a shroud. But the worst kind of consistency is consistency with ignorance. Because we know hardly anything about 1st century hairstyles, the Shroud could be said to be consistent with our ignorance. Because we know hardly anything about 1st century crucifixion styles, the Shroud could be said to be consistent with our ignorance. The less we know about something, the more wild guesses can be thought to be ‘consistent’ with it – but that’s sloppy thinking, logically fallacious, and typical of much sindonology!
I am sorry if this may be irrelevant but I found a “radiocarbonists paradigm” that i would like to question about. Although I’ve heard most of the claims on there the ones that are new to me are
“3.[We must assume] The forger duplicated blood flow patterns in perfect forensic agreement to blood flow
from the wrists at 65 degrees from vertical to suggest the exact crucifixion position of the arms.”
I am not sure how true this statment is or how I am to respond to it(?)
And
“12. [We must assume] The forger was clever enough to depict an adult with an unplaited pony-tail, sidelocks
and a beard style consistent with a Jewish male of the 1st century.”
I fail to see a pony tail or sidelocks(as opposed to hair) but I’m not sure how true the claim that the shroud beard is consistant with a 1st century Jewish male