Science Finds Shroud of Turin Wasn’t Faked

A new theory posits that an instantaneous light burst at the moment of Jesus’ resurrection left the imprint of his image in the cloth used to bury him.

Just in time for what believers call a Christmas miracle, a team of Italian scientists has concluded that the cloth believed to hold the image of Jesus at the moment of his resurrection was not faked. They studied the chemical properties of the image and found it would be impossible to forge.

Previous attempts to study the cloth concluded that it was not 2,000 years old but part of a Medieval hoax dating back about 700 years. Those vying for the Shroud of Turin to be authentic claim that radio carbon dating in 1988 was flawed because it was done on a section of the cloth that was repaired after fire damage during the Middle Ages.

The current testing of the shroud, which is said to hold the electromagnetic image of Jesus’s face, proves the image was not faked using any known 14th Century technology.

Lead researcher Paulo Di Lazzaro told MSNBC.com science editor Alan Boyle, “It is obvious that a serious scientific work cannot prove any supernatural action.”

But the group of researchers, sympathetic to the story of the shroud as Jesus’ burial cloth, thinks they have proved the image’s chemical authenticity.

The group doing the latest tests on the shroud worked outside of business hours on their “curiosity-driven” research, which was not funded by the ENEA Research Center, where they work.

They team started with a question: could radiation have produced the Christ-like image etched in the cloth?

The short answer is yes. But there’s more to the story.

Di Lazzaro and his colleagues blasted modern-day cloth with an ultraviolent laser and they claim that they were able to reproduce the exact depth of the coloration — .2 micrometers — in the Shroud of Turin. Over five years, the team tested and re-tested, blasting the experimental cloth with laser pulses of varying lengths. They say that pulses lasting less than 50 nanoseconds produce the right “superficial Shroud-like coloration of linen yarns in a narrow range of irradiation parameters.”

Because lasers didn’t exist in the Middle Ages the team concludes that the shroud couldn’t have been faked. Previous studies suggested that the image of the bearded man was painted on the cloth. But Di Lazzaro refutes that, claiming that no brush stroke could be evenly painted at that miniscule depth.

Di Lazzaro and his team conclude, “These processes may have played a role in the generation of the body image on the Shroud of Turin.”

But Joe Nickell, who has been studying shroud science, also known as sindology, for decades says that Di Lazzaro’s research team stacks the deck in favor of the shroud’s authenticity by starting with the premise that the shroud is an impossible image.

Shroud of Turin

He tells MSNBC.com, “Making the assumption of a miracle is a really, really, really, really, really big assumption. That it’s done in the name of science is just astonishing.”

But the shroud team holds strong saying, “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 … is impossible to obtain in a laboratory.”

Nickell argues that the team starts with the answer and looks for scientific evidence to back up the claim. He says the latest tests don’t prove anything new despite their use of lasers and high-tech tests.

The Italian shroud team is careful not to draw conclusions about the shroud itself. And they stop short of offering any supernatural explanation for the image of a crucified Jesus in the cloth.

They say, “When one talks about a flash of light being able to color a piece of linen in the same way as the shroud, discussion inevitably touches on things like miracles and resurrection. But as scientists, we were concerned only with verifiable scientific processes. We hope our results can open up a philosophical and theological debate but we will leave the conclusions to the experts, and ultimately to the conscience of individuals.”

The research was presented at a science conference in May but kept under wraps until the British media pounced on this Christmas story, which will no doubt be an early Christmas present for shroud believers, but is likely to be greeted with a bah-humbug by those who doubt that the sepia-colored, 14ft-long cloth dates back to the date Jesus Christ’s crucifixion 2,000 years ago.