From: Fr_Joseph@priory.org Subject: The Shroud & Spontaneous Human Combustion Date: Mon, 08 Dec 1997 14:11:05 -0600 Message-ID: <881611420.1354825731@dejanews.com> Newsgroups: alt.turin-shroud,alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic,soc.history.medieval Organization: Deja News Posting Service X-Article-Creation-Date: Mon Dec 08 20:03:44 1997 GMT X-Authenticated-Sender: Fr_Joseph@priory.org X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/2.01 (Macintosh; I; 68K) X-Originating-IP-Addr: 207.230.39.168 () Lines: 489 Path: ccw.ch!aetna.dolphins.ch!news.planetc.com!newsfeed.usit.net!news-xfer.siscom.net!streamer1.cleveland.iagnet.net!news2.chicago.iagnet.net!iagnet.net!4.1.16.34!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-pull.sprintlink.net!news-in-east.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!204.238.120.130!jump.net!grunt.dejanews.com!not-for-mail The Link Between the Shroud and Spontaneous Human Combustion by M. Sue Benford What is Spontaneous Human Combustion? Simply defined, Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC) is the ignition and burning of a mass independently of contact to any burning body. In other words, human beings suddenly burst into flames for no discernible reason. Cases of SHC have many features which distinguish them from other fire victims. 1. The burning is never spontaneous in routine fires. There is always an ignition source present in the room nearby the victim. 2. In SHC, the body is normally more severely burned than one that has been trapped in a normal fire. The burns are not distributed evenly over the body, the extremities are usually untouched by fire, whereas the torso usually suffers severe burning. In many cases, the torso is completely destroyed, the bones being reduced completely to ash. 3. In SHC, the combustion is localized to the body. Almost no fire damage is done to other objects in the vicinity of the body. Often the victims clothes are left untouched by the fire. 4. In SHC, all cases occur inside. The victim was always alone for a long period of time. It is always fatal. Witnesses who were nearby never heard any sounds, such as cries of pain or calls for assistance. 5. In SHC the rate of total body burning is much faster than in the hottest burning crematoriums. 6. Most importantly, there has never been a documented case of spontaneous combustion in animals, only in human beings. Why is SHC such a mysterious phenomenon? Under normal circumstances, human bodies do not burn very well. The body is over 70% water. Getting a body to burn independently is a very difficult thing to do. Human bodies can be made to burn completely under certain circumstances. When bodies are cremated they are reduced to ash. However, the temperatures that are used to do this are much higher than those found in a normal house fire. If such conditions were reached then the whole body would be destroyed, not just the head and torso. More critically, there would be little chance of the victim's clothing or nearby objects not being burnt. Even in routine fires when whole buildings have been destroyed, there are always some skeletal remains of those caught inside. One such case that was explored in great detail by multiple police and scientific authorities was the SHC of a St. Petersburg woman, Mary Reeser, in 1951. Laboratory findings showed that Mrs. Reeser's estimated weight of 175 lbs. had been reduced to a total of less than 10 lbs. including an unburned foot and her head which had mysteriously shrunk to the size of an orange. The final report concluded that no known chemical agents or other accelerants had been involved in starting the fire. An important finding in the Reeser case was the shrunken skull. The researcher's commented in the official report, ". . .the head is not left complete in ordinary burning cases. Certainly it does NOT shrivel or symmetrically reduce to a smaller size. In presence of heat sufficient to destroy soft tissues, the skull would literally explode in many pieces. I. ... ...have never known any exception to this rule." One of the experts investigating the incident had demonstrated conclusively that it takes extraordinary heat to consume a body, and that only at over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit would bone become volatile enough to lose its shape and leave only ashes. In addition, he stated, "these are very great heats that would sear, char, scorch or otherwise mar or effect anything and everything within a considerable radius." Although several theories have been posited to explain the etiology behind SHC none have been experimentally proven. More importantly, none explain the greatest and often overlooked unexplainable aspect of all: why doesn't this same phenomenon occur in animals? After all, there are more domesticated animals than people in the world. Christ's "disappearance" Up until now there have been few, if any, scientific theories describing the possible mechanism for how Christ's supposed physical disappearance after death actually took place. This is, in part, due to the skepticism of many scientists and the blanketed faith of most theologians. The former do not believe it occurred, or can be proven scientifically, and the latter do not particularly care to prove it. Thus, little thought has been given to forming a scientific hypothesis of how Jesus' body might have disappeared leaving, perhaps, only a faint negative image on a linen death Shroud. One possible explanation In one of my previous papers, I theorized that human beings are actually two separate yet linked "bodies." One is the physical body and the other is the spiritual twin. Both of these bodies are contained within the electromagnetic field or "soul" which surrounds the physical body and forms what Nobel Prize winner Dr. Hannes Alfven calls "ambiplasma" or the mixture and coexistence of matter and antimatter in an electromagnetic field. In my theory, I summarized that the spiritual body was comprised of antimatter and that it, typically, remained stable with the matter particles within the soul. This hypothesis is quite possible when considering Dr. Alfven's theoretical model. I also hypothesized that Jesus' bodily disappearance was caused by the deterioration of the stabilizing field at the time of his death which enabled the reaction of the antimatter and matter particles causing an annihilation of his physical body. Such an annihilation would produce gamma rays, neutrino radiation, and radio waves. Part of the problem with my theory was that the original scientific equations demonstrated that, in order to annihilate an entire human body, there would have to be a large explosion that would wipe out the entire city of Jerusalem. Certainly an antimatter-matter reaction of this magnitude would have been heard, seen, or felt by local residents. Further linking my theory to SHC raised other questions as well. For instance, if Jesus' disappearance was a type of SHC then why weren't any ashes reportedly left, why did the more modern SHC victims not completely disappear like Jesus, and why did it take Jesus' body days to disappear after death and modern SHC victims only minutes or hours? And finally, if Jesus was the most spiritual being who ever lived it would equate that he had the most antimatter in his soul thus the result would be a more rapid and violent annihilation. Or would it? Answering the Questions It did not seem possible to construct a scenario in which Jesus' body could be completely annihilated without so much as destroying the linen Shroud which covered him. That is until one considers what actually happens in the border regions between matter and antimatter. To understand this, let's first look at a common place representation of the event. "The following demonstration can be performed in an ordinary kitchen. Heat a metal plate and put a drop of water on it. . .At a temperature slightly above 100 degrees C, the drop of water will evaporate almost immediately, making a loud hissing noise as it does so. When the temperature is raised a bit more, the drop vanishes in explosive fashion in the fraction of a second. But a temperature of several hundred degrees, enough to make the plate glow red, causes another phenomenon. The drop does not boil off immediately. It can be made to stay quietly in place for more than five minutes, though it will oscillate to and fro. Then it gradually gets smaller until it disappears entirely. But if the plate's temperature is suddenly lowered while the drop is still there, an explosion occurs and the drop vanishes. The phenomenon is named after a German physician, Dr. Leidenfrost, who studied it in the 19th century. What happens is that, as the drop evaporates, a layer of steam is formed between the drop and the hot plate. This layer tends to insulate the drop from the plate, so that the latter's heat is conveyed to the drop more slowly. If one wishes the drop to evaporate slowly, then a sufficiently thick insulating layer of steam requires exceedingly high plate temperature. At a plate temperature only slightly above 100 degrees C, the steam layer is too thin to insulate the drop, and the drop goes off in a puff of vapor. Let us now repeat the experiment, this time replacing the drop with a bit of antimatter. . .The first contact between matter and antimatter will result in annihilation, but the attendant generation of energy will create a force that separates the two. In the Leidenfrost phenomenon, as we noted, a layer of steam is formed between the drop and the plate. In our more ambitious experiment, a layer is similarly formed to separate the matter and antimatter. Reasoning by analogy, we may expect this to bring about an annihilation that is relatively slow and small in scale. It need not be more intensive than to ensure the formation and maintenance of an adequate insulating layer." (Worlds-Antiworlds by Nobel prize winner Dr. Hannes Alfven). By accepting and understanding the hypothetical analogy provided by the Leidenfrost phenomenon many unexplainables linking Christ's bodily disappearance with SHC can be explained. Of primary importance is why the complete annihilation of Jesus' body in an antimatter-matter reaction did not destroy all of Jerusalem. The extraordinary amount of Spirit (antimatter) within Jesus' soul (surrounding electromagnetic field) caused a sufficiently high temperature to produce a "steam layer" separating the two types of bodies. This allowed a rather slow (over several days) and small scale process whereby the physical body shrunk or evaporated with minimal fanfare. The subsequent radiation given off in this rather subtle reaction left the markings of the body and other nearby objects, on an otherwise unscathed Shroud. In lesser spiritual beings, like perhaps the modern day SHC victims, the temperatures are not nearly as high, thus, like the sizzling drops of water on the hot plate, they burn up rapidly in a more violent reaction leaving parts of the body (matter) and ashes when the spirit has combusted to its full capacity. This phenomenon can explain the shrunken skull of Mrs. Reeser caused by the same reaction that slowly shrinks the water drop. However, when the temperature suddenly dropped for lack of any more antimatter in the soul, Mrs. Reeser's body rapidly sizzled into a pile of ashes. Linking SHC to Christ's disappearance also explains why animals are not affected by the spontaneous burning phenomenon: their souls do not contain the divine spirit (antimatter) as was posited in my previous paper. Thus, it would be impossible to observe an identical reaction among animals of any species except humans. Conclusion Several experiments are being planned that will test the fluctuations in the surrounding electromagnetic field around both humans and animals while living, dying, and after death. Since it is a well known fact that electron and positron annihilation produces high energy X-rays, neutrino radiation and gamma rays, we intend to search for these in the dying process. Both gamma ray detection devices and sensitive photon detection devices will be used to observe the transition that occurs as living organisms progress from life to death. It is our hope to capture aspects of this theory using rigorous scientific methods. -------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====----------------------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet ###### From: "Todd A. Farmerie" Newsgroups: alt.turin-shroud,alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic,soc.history.medieval Subject: Re: The Shroud & Spontaneous Human Combustion Followup-To: alt.turin-shroud,alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic Date: Tue, 09 Dec 1997 14:05:10 -0500 Organization: Case Western Reserve University Lines: 13 Message-ID: <348D9666.24B7@po.cwru.edu> References: <881611420.1354825731@dejanews.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: phrm22314.path.cwru.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I) Path: ccw.ch!aetna.dolphins.ch!news.planetc.com!leto.ou.edu!news.nodak.edu!netnews3.nwnet.net!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!newsfeed.direct.ca!streamer1.cleveland.iagnet.net!iagnet.net!usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu!not-for-mail [Followups out of s.h.med] Before soc.hist.med gets cross-posted into every shroud thread, there is something that needs clarified. If the shroud of Turin is anything but a Medieval forgery/sacred artwork, then discussions of it are likely to be off topic for soc.history.medieval (the only possible thread I can think of for an authentic shroud is one based on the penchant at the time for collecting relics). Any discussions of what happenned to the body of Jesus, or of the nature of the human soul, or of spontaneous human combustion are off-topic. ###### From: elliott@PROBLEM_WITH_YOUR_MAIL_GATEWAY_FILE.nyu.edu (frank w elliott jr) Newsgroups: alt.turin-shroud,alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic,soc.history.medieval Subject: Re: The Shroud & Spontaneous Human Combustion Followup-To: alt.turin-shroud,alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic,soc.history.medieval Date: 12 Dec 1997 00:50:21 GMT Organization: New York University Lines: 6 Message-ID: <66q1od$6cl$1@news.nyu.edu> References: <881611420.1354825731@dejanews.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: airfoil.cims.nyu.edu X-Trace: news.nyu.edu 881887821 6549 (None) 128.122.27.233 X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.nyu.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950824BETA PL0] Path: ccw.ch!aetna.dolphins.ch!news.planetc.com!leto.ou.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-sea-19.sprintlink.net!news-in-west.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!128.122.253.92!cmcl2.nyu.edu!news.nyu.edu!not-for-mail Fr_Joseph@priory.org wrote: [snip] Wingnut. --Frank ###### Path: ccw.ch!usenet From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.turin-shroud,alt.religion.christian.roman-catholic,soc.history.medieval Subject: Re: The Shroud & Spontaneous Human Combustion Date: 13 Dec 1997 01:25:51 +0100 Lines: 156 Message-ID: References: <881611420.1354825731@dejanews.com> X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Path: ccw.ch!usenet > Fr_Joseph@priory.org The Link Between the Shroud and Spontaneous Human Combustion by M. Sue Benford What an interesting post. Particulatily from an Father (Fr). Reminds me of the medieval scolastic discussions about the angels dancing on the pin head. If that was humor (which I don't think): hilarious, ROTFL! If that was serious (which I fear): get a life! If that was an invitation for critics: read the rest below. > What is Spontaneous Human Combustion? The burns are not distributed evenly over the body, the extremities are usually untouched by fire, whereas the torso usually suffers claims that there also exist extremity starting forms of SHC. Some of these were survived by the victim by smothering them. > The victim was always alone for a long period of time. Above cites a police report of a case in a disco, in full public. > It is always fatal. The extremities cases above mostly survived. > The body is over 70% water. Getting a body to burn independently is a very difficult thing to do. Independently: impossible. Energy from burning energy rich substances in the body is insufficient to evaporate body water (which will not burn, extinguishes fire). That is why cremation takes lots of wood/coal/oil. > Mary Reeser, ... 175lbs. had been reduced to a total of less than 10 That is volumina 1/17, linear 1/3rd-root(13) = ca 1/2.5 Australian Aboriginees in the 19th century shrunk the heads of decapitated enemies to linear 1/4. No funny effects involved. have seen such in the Oxford University natural history hall (that was 10 years ago, don't ask further questions). > none explain the greatest and often overlooked unexplainable aspect of all: why doesn't this same phenomenon occur in animals? After all, there are more domesticated animals than people in the world. The telekinesis theory (heat is vibration of atoms) claims that it needs a human brain (size, complexity) to produce telekinesis. The effect is related to poltergeist (both subconcious triggering of telekinesis) according to that theory. > Christ's "disappearance" Thieves?:-) Hidden for safety and not found? > human beings are actually two separate yet linked "bodies." One is the physical body and the other is the spiritual twin. Standard dualist philosophy. > spiritual body ... within the electromagnetic field or "soul" Aeh? I thought soul and spiritual body were the same thing, or at least that the soul was the state of the spiritual body. > coexistence of matter and antimatter in an electromagnetic field. *** BANG !!! ***. Or did physics (m + a-m = 2 photons + energy) take a holliday? > typically, remained stable with the matter particles within the soul. Stable anti-matter requires a STRONG magnetic field (anyone remember SSC size and cost) to keep it away from matter, else BANG! > Jesus' bodily disappearance was caused by the deterioration of the stabilizing field at the time of his death which enabled the reaction of the antimatter and matter particles causing an annihilation You bet it, that would be a good nuclear bomb. > annihilate an entire human body, there would have to be a large explosion that would wipe out the entire city of Jerusalem. Sure, like Hiroshima. > if Jesus was the most spiritual being who ever lived it would equate that he had the most antimatter in his soul thus the result would be a more rapid and violent annihilation. Absolutely. Measure the radioactivity in Jerusalem. Thats why they are all mad there:-) > Leidenfrost Just that a water drop is separated form the entire heat source (plate = flat) by the steam. Anti-matter would be thrown at other matter, annihilate there instead. No pseudo-Leidenfrost effect. Just BANG. > by Nobel prize winner Dr. Hannes Alfven Once a Nobel does not guarantie allways talking sense. > The extraordinary amount of Spirit (antimatter) within Jesus' soul (surrounding electromagnetic field) caused a sufficiently high temperature to produce a "steam layer" separating the two types of bodies. This allowed a rather slow (over several days) and Nope. See above, the BANG bit. > This phenomenon can explain the shrunken skull of Mrs. Reeser caused by the same reaction that slowly shrinks the water drop. However, when the temperature suddenly dropped for lack of any more antimatter in the soul, Mrs. Reeser's body rapidly sizzled into a pile of ashes. A drop is eroded from outside to inside, not shrunk. So also no. More likely some Aborigine shrunkhead type effect. My conclusion of your post: total crackpottry. I was going to give my annual crackpot-of-the-year-award to the "Tomb of God" guys, but you have just speeded by them, taken it, and left them in the dust. Great entertainment value, honnestly. After also reading the "C14 test fake" post: Take some time and answer for yourself following questions: Why do people waist their time with this Turin thing? Do your beliefs in the message of Jesu depend in this stupidity being true? Do you recognise, that this is idolatry (a heresy, so far I know)? Do you realise, that in the middle ages (I read this on soc.history.medieval) this would have made a fire; underneath the stake you were tied to? Real christianity (doing good and life beyond death) do not hinge on this rubbish. Above nonsens is not representative of christians. BTW: This line is for the s.h.m readers who critisized the psychological effects of christianity a few days ago. Neil Franklin, believer in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, not member of any church organisation (they suck and are not authentic). ... And yes this post was fun to make. -- Neil.Franklin@ccw.ch, http://www.ccw.ch/Neil.Franklin/ for Geek Code, Papernet, Voicenet, PGP public key see http: Any computer, that is running optimally, is outdated; including my Cx486