Negative view of front and back side of the Turin Shroud.
Copyright: 1978 Barrie M. Schwortz Collection, STERA, Inc.
The image of the body on the
Shroud is not explicable / Study by the National Agency for Energy and
Sustainable Economic
New analysis dates the Turin Shroud
to the first century / Grenzwissenschaft aktuell [Cutting edge of
science] 00, 2013-03-28.
The Body of the Turin Shroud Man
The Turin Shroud Part 1, Discourse 87
Negative view of front and back side of the Turin Shroud.
Copyright: 1978 Barrie M. Schwortz Collection, STERA, Inc.
Frascati / Italy – Enea, the National Agency for New
Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, has published a
report on five years of experiments conducted in the ENEA center of Frascati on
the "shroud-like coloring of linen fabrics by far ultraviolet radiation".
"Simply put: we tried to understand how the Shroud of Turin was imprinted by
an image so special that it constitutes its charm, and poses a great and very
radical challenge, "to identify the physical and chemical processes capable
of generating a color similar to that of the image on the Shroud."
In the following article will see how this research developed (the complete
version can be found at this link: opac.bologna.enea.it/RT/2011/2011_14_ENEA.pdf
). Scientists (Di Lazzaro, Murra, Santoni, Nichelatti and Baldacchini) start
from the last (and only) comprehensive interdisciplinary exam of the sheet,
completed in 1978 by a team of American scientists from Sturp (Shroud of Turin
Research Project). A starting point which all too often those who write about
and dissect the Shroud prefer not to take into account, in spite what is
evidenced by available information verified by an accurate control on "peer
reviewed" journals, that is, approved by other scientists in objective and
independent ways. The Enea report, with a lot of fair play and almost "en
passant", very clearly refutes the hypothesis that the Shroud of Turin
might be the work of a medieval forger. The hypothesis was supported ‒
against many weighted arguments ‒ by the results of the disputable and
probably biased – C14 measurements; a test whose credibility has been rendered
very fragile not only by objective difficulties (the possibility
that the fabric is contaminated is very high, especially since its historical
journey is only partially known), but also from proven factual errors of
calculation and the inability to obtain "raw data" from the laboratories for
the necessary controls. In spite of repeated requests. An omission which in
itself can throw a heavy shadow over the scientific accuracy of the episode.
The report notes: "The double image (front and back) of a scourged and
crucified man, barely visible on the linen cloth of the Shroud of Turin has many
physical and chemical characteristics that are so particular that the staining
which is identical in all its facets, would be impossible to obtain today in a
laboratory, as discussed in numerous articles listed in the references. This
inability to repeat (and therefore falsify) the image on the Shroud makes it
impossible to formulate a reliable hypothesis on how the impression was made.
In fact, today Science is still not able to explain how the body image was
formed on the Shroud. As a partial justification, Scientists complain that it is
impossible to take direct measurements on the Shroud cloth. In fact, the latest
in situ experimental analysis of the physical and chemical properties of the
body image of the Shroud was carried out in 1978 by a group of 31
scientists under the aegis of the Shroud of Turin Research Project, Inc. (STURP).
The scientists used modern equipment for the time, made available
by several manufacturers for a market value of two and a half million dollars,
and took a number of non-destructive infrared spectroscopy
measurements, visible and ultraviolet, X-ray fluorescence, thermograph,
pyrolysis, mass spectrometry, micro-Raman analysis, transmission photograph,
microscopy, removal of fibrils and micro-chemical tests". The analysis carried
out on the Shroud did not find significant amounts of pigments (dyes, paints)
nor traces of designs. Based on the results of dozens of measurements, the STURP
researchers concluded that the body image is not painted nor printed, nor
obtained by heating. Furthermore, the color of the image resides on the outer
surface of the fibrils that make up the threads of the cloth, and recent
measurements of fragments of the Shroud show that the thickness of staining is
extremely thin, around 200 nm = 200 billionths of a meter, or one fifth of a
thousandth of a millimeter, which corresponds to the thickness of the primary
cell wall of the so-called single linen fiber. We recall that a single linen
thread is made up of about 200 fibrils.
Other important information derived from the results of the STURP measurements
are as follows: The blood is human, and there is no image beneath the
bloodstains; the gradient color contains three-dimensional information of the
body; colored fibers (image) are more fragile than undyed fibers; surface
staining of the fibrils of the image derive from an unknown process that caused
oxidation, dehydration and conjugation in the structure of the cellulose of the
linen". In other words, the color is a result of an accelerated linen aging
process".
As already mentioned, until now all attempts to reproduce an image on linen with
the same characteristics have failed. Some researchers have obtained images with
a similar appearance to the image of the Shroud, but nobody has been able to
simultaneously reproduce all microscopic and macroscopic characteristics. "In
this sense, the origin of the Shroud image is still unknown. This seems to be
the core of the so-called "mystery of the Shroud": regardless of the age the
Shroud, whether it is medieval (1260 – 1390) as shown by the controversial
dating by radiocarbon, or older as indicated by other investigations, and
regardless of the actual importance of controversial historical documents on the
existence of the Shroud in the years preceding 1260, the most important
question, the "question of questions" remains the same: how did that body
image appear on the Shroud?".
There are two possibilities, the scientists write, on how the sheet of the
Shroud was placed around the corpse: placed above and below (not in full contact
with the whole body stiffened by rigor mortis) or pressed on the body and tied
in order to be in contact with almost the entire body surface.
"The first method is supported by the fact that there is a precise
relationship between the intensity (gradient) of the image and the distance
between the body and the cloth. Furthermore, the image is also present in areas
of the body not in contact with the cloth, such as immediately above and below
the hands, and around the tip of the nose. The second method is less likely
because the typical geometric deformations of a three dimension body brought
into contact in two dimension sheet are missing. Moreover, there is no imprint
of body hips. Consequently, we can deduce that the image was not formed by
contact between linen and body".
Positive (l.) and negative view (r.) of the head on the Turin Shroud
Copyright: Public Domain
It is this observation, "coupled with the extreme
superficiality of the coloring and the lack of pigments" that "makes it
extremely unlikely that a shroud-like picture was obtained using a chemical
contact method, both in a modern laboratory and even more so by a hypothetical
medieval forger". "There is no image beneath the blood stains. This means
that the traces of blood deposited before the image was. Therefore, the image
was formed after the corpse was laid down. Furthermore, all the blood stains
have well-defined edges, no burrs, so it can be assumed that the corpse was not
removed from the sheet. "There are no signs of putrefaction near the orifices,
which usually occur around 40 hours after death. Consequently, the image is not
the result of putrefaction gases and the corpse was not left in the sheet for
more than two days".
One of the assumptions related to the formation of the image was that regarding
some form of electromagnetic energy (such as a flash of light at short
wavelength), which could fit the requirements for reproducing the main features
of the Shroud image, such as superficiality of color, color gradient, the image
also in areas of the body not in contact with the cloth and the absence of
pigment on the sheet. The first attempts made to reproduce the face on the
Shroud by radiation, used a CO2 laser which produced an image on a linen fabric
that is similar at a macroscopic level. However, microscopic analysis showed a
coloring that is too deep and many charred linen threads, features that are
incompatible with the Shroud image. Instead, the results of ENEA "show that a
short and intense burst of VUV directional radiation can color a linen cloth so
as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the
Shroud of Turin, including shades of color, the surface color of the fibrils of
the outer linen fabric, and the absence of fluorescence".
"However, Enea scientists warn, "it should be noted that the total power
of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that
corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000
MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to
reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power
cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful
available on the market come to several billion watts )".
However the Shroud image "has some features that we are not yet able to
reproduce ‒ they admit – for example, the gradient of the image caused by
a different concentration of yellow colored fibrils that alternate with
unstained fibrils". And they warn: "We are not at the conclusion, we are
composing pieces of a fascinating and complex scientific puzzle". The enigma
of the image of the Shroud of Turin is still "a challenge for intelligence",
as John Paul II said.
Turin (Italy) – Giulio Fanti, Professor of Mechanical and
Thermal Engineering at the University of Padua, and journalist Saverio Gaeta
have just presented the most recent findings of research into the Turin Shroud
in a new book. The linen cloth is venerated as a relic, and shows a quasi
photographic print of a crucified man. The Catholic church regards it as being
the burial cloth of Christ. While age tests in the eighties dated the cloth to
the Middle Ages and so suggested it was a forgery, vocal doubts of this analysis
had been expressed before and have now apparently been confirmed. According to
Fanti, the cloth does actually date from the first century.
The results of the new chemical and mechanical investigations carried out at the
University of Padua will be published in Fanti and Gaeta’s book "Il Mistero
della Sindone" ["The Mystery of the Shroud"], as well as in an as yet
unspecified scientific periodical..
The samples themselves go back to the microanalyst Giovanni Riggi di Numana, who
died in 2008. He was involved in the analysis of the Shroud in 1988, but before
that had supplied researchers with minute fiber samples taken at an earlier
date.
Recent investigations, it appears, have been conducted with the help of infrared
light and Raman spectroscopy – a method capable of revealing information on
the material properties of pigments. In addition, the tissue samples of the
grave cloth have been subjected to mechanical tests, and compared with the
properties of fibers of 20 known and securely dated fabrics from the time
between 3000 BC and 2000 AD.
It transpires that several scientists and professors (hitherto not identified by
name) from various Italian universities who took part in the investigations have
reached agreement that the Turin Shroud really does date from the time of Jesus.
Whereas infrared investigation of the fabric puts it at a time around 300 BC
(plus or minus 400 years), dating based on Raman spectroscopy yields a date of
200 BC (plus or minus 500 years) and that based on mechanical analysis gives 400
BC (plus or minus 400). The average of these thus results in a date of 33 BC
(plus or minus 200), centuries away from the results of the C14 dating of 1988
which concluded that the cloth was a product of the Middle Ages.
Already in 2008 Oxford professor Christopher Ramsey, who headed the C14
investigations, had admitted to possible errors in the former dating. Ramsey
stated that the two percent contamination of the linen investigated could have
resulted in a discrepancy of around 1500 years. Oxford University has not
offered to conduct a fresh investigation of the Shroud to date.
Grenzwissenschaft aktuell [Cutting edge of science]: Turin
Shroud dates from 1st century
The
Body of the Turin Shroud Man |
The Turin Shroud Part 1, Discourse 87