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The non-Communicative Dr.Kouznetsov - A Stop Press

From Dr. John Jackson, professor of physics and co-founder of STURP

I feel it is my obligation to correct the record regarding Dr. Dmitri Kouznetsov's letter, as published in the last issue of the BSTS Newsletter [see no.42, pp.32-5] That letter contained several of my calculations that a normal reader would probably interpret as being of Kouznetsov's authorship. In fact, these were originally formulated by me as part of a review process for the Arizona paper, authored by Jull, Donahue, and Damon and were interwoven into the Kouznetsov BSTS letter verbatim without my knowledge or consent. As I have not been able to receive a response by Kouznetsov for the past four months regarding this issue, I regret having to bring this matter to the editor and readership of BSTS myself.

What concerns me the most, however, is that the calculation on page 34 is incorrect. It was based on the understanding from the paper I was given to review that the CO2 volume in the Arizona experiment was referred to 0.06 atmospheres (BSTS mistakenly printed 0.006) instead of 1.0 (standard) atmospheres. In response to this misunderstanding, Jull et. al. said they would alter their text to make clear the distinction which I subsequently acknowledged and accepted. The replacement of 0.06 atmospheres by 1.0 atmospheres in the ideal gas law at the top of page 34 filters down through the given calculations on page 34 to change 0.0077 to 0.1272. This gives a maximum expected change of about 19 times that of the reported precision error of 0.0067 of the Arizona experiment. Because this obviously no longer provided an internal inconsistency in their experiment, I withdrew my objection. Regrettably, my interim calculation found its way into publication via the Kouznetsov letter.

My calculation on page 33, however, remains valid because it is possible to interpret the Arizona experiment as a very late time limit of the Russian data and, hence, there is no necessary inconsistency between the two experiments as claimed by the Arizona team. It is conceivable that pathways for mass-dependent carbon transfer between the air and linen are opened at elevated temperatures. It is also conceivable that the Russian data is revealing the nonequilibrium and transient aspects of this transfer, while the Arizona experiment gives the equilibrium, late-time condition.

My present position with respect to the Russian fire modeling experiments is that, while they are interesting, they definitely need to be confirmed independently and must be understood theoretically at the molecular level before anyone (including the Russian team) can claim to have found a major discrepancy in the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud. Because we have been unable to contact the Russian team over the past several months, we have initiated our own studies of the radiocarbon date and other Shroud issues at the Turin Shroud Center of Colorado. If the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Christ, then any demonstration of the invalidity of the radiocarbon date certainly requires proper and correct methodologies.

John P. Jackson, Ph.D. P.O.Box 25326, Colorado Springs, CO 80918, USA


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