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.
]]>The title of his latest book is War of the Worldviews: Science vs. Spirituality. But Dr. Deepak Chopra admits that science and spirituality connected and shouldn’t be pitted against one another. He believes that both are critical to solving the big problems facing the world.
He says, “The scientific method is very precise but scientific human beings who lack a connection to the spirit will continue to create atom bombs, nuclear weapons and mechanized death and biological warfare, destruction of ecosystems and global warming.”
The book is designed as a point-counter-point discussion of God in science. Co-written with physicist Leonard Mlodinow, who is most well known for co-writing A Brief History of Time with Dr. Stephen Hawking, Chopra says the book is a primer about the beginning of the universe, evolution and how biology functions, all geared toward an audience who believes God is a necessary part of science.
Dr. Chopra, who is a medical doctor and neuro endocrinologist in addition to being a highly revered motivational speaker and spiritual leader, says that there are many things around us that science cannot yet answer.
He says, “Science cannot answer why there are laws. Science doesn’t say that God is a delusion. Science does not even at the moment understand what the human spirit or consciousness is. We’re having a conversation and discussing certain things and of course we need a brain to do that. But where is insight? Where is imagination? Where is creativity? Where is intuition? Where is intention? Where is free will? Science at the moment doesn’t address these questions.”
]]>Most movies have a beginning, middle and an end. But how can a movie maker portray the vast scope of a story when it starts at the beginning of the universe and proceeds out of order to the present and then to an unknowable future? That’s the difficult task that acclaimed director Terrence Malik undertook in the making of Tree of Life.
Critics were evenly split between loving and hating the film. It was perhaps the most expensive art house film, spending two years on special effects in post-production alone.
And part of that was due to the nature of the movie. Images from the Hubble Telescope were animated and put in 3D to convey the ability to travel through both space and time. The story within the movie begins with the birth of the universe, though it centers around a 1950s Texas family. The interplay between the natural world and the relationships of the characters opened a wide door for science to creep into an emotional context, giving depth and heart to the high resolution images from space.
Chris Lee reviewed the film for Newsweek/The Daily Beast and says, the “eye-popping visuals” set the scene for “trippy sequences that wrangle with themes of cosmic oneness—visuals such as the formation of Earth from the accretion of solar nebulae 4.5 billion years ago, imagery of the universe’s roiling primordial soup and what amounts to a sub-plot concerning a couple of soulful dinosaurs.”
Tree of Life began as a movie Malik conceived in 1978 called Q. After letting it incubate for 20 years, he returned to the film in 1998, which involved shooting microscopic jellyfish on the Great Barrier Reef, solar eclipses and even ice floes in Antarctica.
As Lee says, for Malik Q was supposed to be “a film encompassing his childhood, the creation of the universe, and what it all means.”
After 21 years orbiting in space, the Hubble Telescope sent back its one millionth science observation earlier this month. In sync with the space telescope Malik included some of the most recognizable images in a movie that has been orbiting him almost as long.
Critics argue over why he included these universal images. Perhaps they were used to punctuate a Bible verse mentioned at the beginning of the movie: Job 38, to spur the audience to think about where God is in human suffering. Or maybe the images are used to juxtapose the forces of brute nature and spiritual grace as the film examines two possible life paths and how they neither has to be mutually exclusive.
The style of the film allows the audience to draw its own conclusions and make individual connections. And it gives these beautiful images of distant galaxies a real place in our lives.
Tree of Life (movie trailer)
According to an ongoing MSNBC.com poll here’s what almost 30,000 people think. (You can vote here).
13.2%
God created everything in seven days as the Bible says, no Big Bang necessary.
3,891 votes
23.6%
There is no God and the Big Bang was probably responsible for all creation.
6,987 votes
38.9%
I agree with the Pope. If there was a Big Bang, it was God’s work.
11,507 votes
24.3%
No one really knows and likely never will.
7,180 votes
The Pope said, “The universe is not the result of chance, as some would want to make us believe. Contemplating it (the universe) we are invited to read something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God.”
The church has been trying to shed its anti-science label that first stuck when Pope Urban VIII accused Galileo of heresy for Adopting the Copernican view– against Bible teaching — that the Earth revolved around the sun. Since then most recent two popes have been reaching out to bridge gaps between the church and science.
Pope John Paul II said the theory of evolution didn’t contradict the teachings of the church. But rarely does a Pope comment on a scientific theory like the formation of the universe. By saying that the Big Bang got the universe rolling, the church is extending another olive branch to the scientific community.
But the church believes that the mind of God was responsible for the Big Bang and for our scientific understanding of how the universe began.
Pope Benedict said January 6 that some scientific theories were “mind limiting” because “they only arrive at a certain point … and do not manage to explain the ultimate sense of reality …”
In 2009, a senior Vatican delegation visited CERN, the giant European atom smasher, where particles are smashed together at near light-speed in an effort to simulate conditions of the very first moments following the birth of the universe about 13.7 billion years ago.
“The Church never fears the truth of science, because we are convinced that all truth comes from God,” Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, Vatican City’s governor, Told USA Today during that visit.
]]>Two Yeshiva University students are introducing science to religion in the wind tunnel of New York where powerful blasts of air rip down skyscraper lined streets. Wind power offers a new way to power Hanukkah.
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2009 has been declared the Year of Science. A group of scientific organizations has formed a network to promote science to the public. With many milestones being celebrated next year, Year of Science 2009 will celebrate the people, the process and procedures of science.
To find out more visit:
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