Shroud of Turin is a fake created by famous master Giotto, claims Italian art expert
The Shroud of Turin was made by medieval artist Giotto, it was claimed yesterday.
The 14ft length of fabric, said to be the burial cloth of Christ, bears a faint image of a man and appears to be stained by blood.
However carbon-dating tests have suggested it was produced between 1260 and 1390.
Now Italian art expert Luciano Buso has suggested that the original cloth deteriorated and Giotto was asked to make a copy.
After months of careful examination of photographs of the Shroud - the relic is kept locked away and not available to be viewed unless on special occasions - Luciano Buso has come up with an idea worthy of a Da Vinci Code thriller.
He says that several veiled appearances of the number 15, hidden in the fabric by the artist, indicate Giotto created the Shroud in 1315 - and that it is a copy of the original which had been damaged and was then lost over the centuries.
Giotto was perhaps the best known artist of his time and was made famous for his decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, the fresco that depicts the life of the Virgin Mary and Christ.
Mr Buso insists that 700 years ago it was common practice for artists to insert partial dates into their works so as to guarantee their authenticity and it was known only to a handful of people so as to avoid forgeries.
His claims, which form part of a new book he has written, would coincide with 1980's carbon dating - which has been dismissed by the Church - and which puts the Shroud's origins in the early 14th century.
Buso, who is based in Treviso, northern Italy, said: 'I have examined extremely clear photos of the Shroud and spotted a number of occurrences of the number 15, in the face, the hands, and in one case even shaped to look like a long cross.
'He wasn't trying to fake anything, which is clear from the fact that he signed it ''Giotto 15'', to authenticate it as his own work from 1315. This was not a fake he was asked to make a copy of the original one.
'This original one was probably so deteriorated the Church asked one of the greatest artists at the time, Giotto, to make a copy and then the original was lost. What we have now is a copy of that one.
'For obvious reasons it was not widely publicised that it was a copy as that would have had repercussions for the Church - who I understand have been dismissive of my theory but I am confident that I am correct.'
No-one at Turin Cathedral where the Shroud is kept was available for comment but Professor Bruno Barberis, director of the Shroud Museum, said: 'I think the theory is ridiculous.
'His claim that Giotto made the Shroud are not very convincing to me and as far as we are concerned it was not made by an artistic method. Many people claim to have seen Greek and Hebrew writing in the Shroud but it's never been proven.
'We believe that the image on the Shroud was made by the body of a man who was tortured and then crucified - however there are still many tests that need to be carried out to prove one way or another what it's origins are.'
Last year Pope Benedict spent several minutes kneeling in front of the linen cloth, after it went on display for only the fifth time in 100 years and he was one of two million people who saw it during a six week viewing.
The Shroud has captivated the imagination of historians, church elders, sceptics and Catholics for more than 500 years.
Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was obsessed by it and wanted to steal it so he could use it in a black magic ceremony, a monk revealed for the first time last year.
The 14ft-long Shroud bears the faint image of the front and back of a tall, long-haired, bearded man and appears to be stained by blood from wounds in his feet, wrists and side.
Originally the Vatican had intended for the Shroud's next display to be 2025 but in 2009 Pope Benedict announced it would be brought forward 15 years.
Experts at the Duomo in Turin where the Shroud is kept say many tests are needed to establish its origin
Experts at the Duomo in Turin where the Shroud is kept say many tests are needed to establish its origin
For centuries debate has raged whether the image is that of Christ or an expert forgery from the Middle Ages but what is certain is that experts have never really been able to explain how the image was made.
Carbon-dating tests were conducted on the cloth in 1988 and suggested it was from between 1260 and 1390, other scientists have since claimed that contamination over the ages, from water damage and fire, were not taken sufficiently into account and could have distorted the results.
As a result of controversy and the fact that dating techniques have improved significantly since the 1988 tests were done, there have been numerous calls for further testing but the Vatican has always refused.
The Shroud was given to the Turin archbishop in 1578 by the Duke of Savoy and has been kept in the Cathedral ever since. - dailymail
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Argentina: The 1963 Trancas CE-2 / CE-3 Revisited
Scott Corrales - Inexplicata-The Journal of Hispanic Ufology
Source: Contexto (San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina)
www.contexto.com.ar
Date: Thursday, June 2 2001
The best known episode of an alleged UFO landing and occupant manifestation in Argentina took place in Trancas, Tucumán, 48 years ago.
The event was among the most important in the history of unidentified flying objects. It is an episode that has been considered as “an unassailable case and irrefutable proof” within the voluminous and strange pages of ufology. It has also been considered one of the most exceptional events of the history of the UFO problem due to the abundance and quality of the eyewitnesses, the prolonged viewing of the event, and the discovery of physical residue in the area, constituting “the most powerful evidence” in favor of the unusual phenomenon. Since then, the Trancas Case became a “super-classic case of global ufology”, according to the Mexican website www.perspectivas.com.mx.
On Monday, October 31, 1963, two young women – Argentina, 28 and Jolié, 21 – along with their small children Victoria, Nancy and Guillermo, came in from Rosario, where they lived, to San Miguel de Tucumán, traveling from there to the “Santa Teresa” ranch in Villa de Trancas, where they would meet with parents – Antonio, 72, and Teresa, 63 – and their other sister, Yolanda, 30.
A reason for this visit was that their husbands, both Army officers, had to take part in military maneuvers scheduled for that time period, and would be leaving from Tucumán to Salta the following morning, going by Trancas.
They had an early dinner and exhausted by the trip, everyone went to sleep in their respective rooms. At around 21:00 hours, Dora Guzmán, 15, a domestic worker living in the back of the house, appeared repeatedly, stating that she could see lights on the railroad embankment, located 200 meters in front of the ranch.
The parents were asleep, Argentina was reading and Jolié paid the matter no importance, since she had to feed four-month-old Guillermo. Yolanda, meanwhile, thought it might be a passenger bus.
Finally, Dora prevailed upon the sisters to check out the “strange lights” she was seeing. It was a set of five lights, a hundred meters distant from each other or less, three in front and three slightly farther behind to the north (northeast). They blinked on and off with a certain intermittent quality, shedding beams of light in various directions, even lighting up the farm (the farmhouse and the henhouse).
They had no discernible shape, looking like sources of light. The frightened women suspected that it could be a railroad accident (it was common for trains to run into cattle) or it could be a team of workers repairing the tracks, as they could see some human silhouettes moving around the sources of light some 500 meters or more to the north.
The fear level increased when Yolanda noted the possibility that they might be guerrillas engaged in an act of sabotage (by pulling up the tracks or planting bombs), bearing in mind the rural guerilla warfare of Taco Ralo in southern Tucumán in late 1962. Moreover, the women’s’ husbands were scheduled to pass over those tracks in a matter of hours aboard a military train, and they were alone with their sick father and unprotected minor children.
Searching for another explanation, one of the sisters remembered reading that flying saucers had been seen in various parts of the world, and particularly the case involving truck driver [Eugenio] Douglas (who had seen a device with several entities only days earlier, in Monte Maíz, and had been burned by a thin beam of light). She suggested the possibility that such vehicles could be involved.
They decided to go out to get a better look. Seeing a dim greenish light, they thought it might be a pickup truck driven by one of the farmhands and went to the gate.
They suddenly found themselves bathed in a light emanating from a source eight meters distant. In an instant, they noticed that there was a vehicle measuring some 8 x 3 meters, with a turret and large rivets on its surface. They were so shocked that Yolanda lost her footing, tripped and in seconds they were inside the home once more.
The 15-year-old servant girl came in, screaming that she had been burned, but Argentina and Yolanda ascertained that she was merely frightened. At this point the entire household was awake. The father, in the grip of a nervous condition, tried to go out, but was held back by his daughters.
The doors were bolted shut. The family looked out at the phenomenon through half-shuttered windows. One of the young women believed that the beams of light were piercing the walls, but another insisted that they were only coming through the cracks. The same one believed that the beams were extending and retracting at will, but it turned out that they only did so at floor level on certain occasions.
The situation was desperate. The mother prayed, the servant wept, the sisters screamed and ran from one room to another, following the alternatives. The witnesses noted that the atmosphere within the house became heavy and overly warm. The nearest object (“F”) made a noise similar to machinery in operation, but they could only see a thick and growing mist surrounding it, as well as some lights that gave the appearance of six windows. They were unable to tell if the object was suspended over the ground or resting upon it (the allegedly flattened vegetables were subsequently found there).
Forty minutes elapsed until object “F” – the one that appeared to direct the activities – moved eastward and the others did the same, vanishing toward the Sierras de Medinas, some 20-25 kilometers distant.
[The sisters] later ran to the neighboring homes to inform them about what had happened, but few neighbors saw anything. Francisco Tropiano, a bordering neighbor, managed to see the eastern end of the site, facing his own farm, brightly lit after 22:00 hours.
No one slept that night in the Moreno household. In the morning, Jolié went to the train station to send a telegram to her brother Antonio, who lived in San Miguel de Tucumán at the time of the incident. By the time he received the message – due to the procedure – many other people had heard about it. Even journalists, who did not delay in appearing. Police intervention was subsequently requested. Minutes were drawn up, and the site was placed under custody for a few days without further developments. The Chemical Engineering Institute at the University of Tucumán was asked to analyze the dusty white residue found at the site where the lights had been seen. It turned out to be calcium carbonate with potassium carbonate impurities.
The La Gaceta newspaper provided ample coverage on the event, and continued to report on it for many days later.
Journalist Arturo Alvarez Sosas remembers: “Along with then news director Ventura Murga and photographer Ernesto González, we went to Trancas to chronicle the experiences of the Moreno family. At the time we didn’t know that the phenomenon would unleash such an accumulation of stories and that the movies would finally make all nations of Earth aware of a “close encounter of the third kind” as described by Dr. J. Allen Hynek.”
Jolié Moreno also notes: “My mother was desperate and my sisters were running around. My son was asleep in his little bed, perspiring in such a way that...outside were those lights, lighting everything up, moving intelligently and those figures...it was like Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which was authorized base on the information that existed on this case. I authorized it.”
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Massive UFO over Mecca, Saudi Arabia....or light reflection?
MUFON CMS - 5/21/2011: Wow! I may have taken unknowingly a photo of what appears to be a massive UFO hovering over Mecca. There are so many lights in the mosque at night that an object regardless of how big may pass unnoticed over the massive building. It appeared in two of the pictures I took. It is a little further in one but had moved closer in the other. I took this photo with my Nokia N95 in the evening of May 21, 2011. I was in Mecca for an �umrah pilgrimage with my brother and his family. We posed and took photos before leaving the premises. I didnt notice the strange disc until 11 days later (June 2) while I was dragging the photos into a folder.
I am not ruling out the possibility that it could be reflected light but how a reflection fuses into a disc with different colors and produce other lights 5 of which are distinctly bright. Other lights are dim and bluish scattered around the disc. Two days later when I took another look at the photos; I was shocked beyond my ordinary wit when I realized that the photo was a reflected mirror image of the brightly lighted grand mosque of Mecca just below that thing. Compare the photo of the grand mosque at night and that thing in the sky. It is a miniature image of the mosque below. What is this�?
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How a waxy monkey frog could help treat cancer and arthritis
A little-known frog from South America could hold the key to lifesaving treatments for up to 70 devastating medical conditions, Northern Ireland researchers have found.
Scientists from Queen's University in Belfast have discovered the poetically-named Waxy Monkey Frog could be used in the fight against cancer.
They also found that the Giant Fire-bellied Toad, native to China and Vietnam, has the potential to treat an array of diseases including diabetes and stroke.
It will bring hope to the 8,500 people in Northern Ireland diagnosed with cancer each year and more than 3,500 people here who are told each year they have diabetes.
The Queen's boffins stumbled upon the amazing breakthrough - which could revolutionise the treatment of billions of patients around the globe - purely by accident.
The man who headed up the research, Professor Chris Shaw, said: "The aim of our work at Queen's is to unlock the potential of the natural world - in this case the secretions found on frog and toad skins - to alleviate human suffering.
"We are absolutely convinced that the natural world holds the solutions to many of our problems.
"We just need to pose the right questions to find them." He added: "It would be a great shame to have something in nature that is potentially the wonder drug to treat cancer and not aim to do everything in our power to make it work."
The team at Queen's was testing a range of proteins taken from secretions from frogs and toads when they made the exciting discovery.
They realised proteins in the secretions, which the frogs and toads use as protection from predators, can control the growth of blood vessels - a process known as angiogenesis.
Professor Shaw explained: "The proteins that we have discovered have the ability to either stimulate or inhibit the growth of blood vessels.
"By switching off angiogenesis and inhibiting blood vessel growth, a protein from the waxy monkey frog has the potential to kill cancer tumours.
"Most cancer tumours can only grow to a certain size before they need blood vessels to grow into the tumour to supply it with vital oxygen and nutrients.
"Stopping the blood vessels from growing will make the tumour less likely to spread and may eventually kill it.
"This has the potential to transform cancer from a terminal illness into a chronic condition."
Professor Shaw said in future surgeons could remove tumours from a patient and the protein from the frog could be used to stop any remaining cancer cells from growing further.
"It wouldn't cure the cancer but it would stop it from developing any further and allow the person to live a normal life," he said.
Prof Shaw said: "On the other hand, a protein from the Giant Fire-bellied Toad has been found to switch on angiogenesis and stimulate blood vessel growth.
"This has the potential to treat conditions that require blood vessels to repair quickly, such as wound healing, organ transplants, diabetic ulcers and damage caused by strokes or heart conditions." - belfasttelegraph