NEW 2005 SHROUD OF TURIN BROUHAHA: SCIENCE vs PAPAL CUSTODIAN
Cotton Fiber - Intrusion or Contamination on
the Shroud of Turin?
When Gilbert Raes cut a
sample from the Shroud in 1973, he found cotton fibers. It might have been that the cotton was
leftover fibers from a loom that was used for weaving both cotton
and linen cloth. It might have been that the Shroud was exposed to
cotton much later, even from the gloves used by scientists. But it could
suggest something else. To not investigate would be irresponsible.
After all . . .
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P.H Smith, while examining threads
from the sample at the Oxford University Radiocarbon Dating
Laboratory found similar indication of cotton. To him it seemed
like material intrusion. In an article entitled "Rogue
Fibers Found in Shroud," published in Textile Horizons
in 1988, Smith speaks of his discovery of "a fine dark yellow
strand [of cotton] possibly of Egyptian origin, and quite old . .
. it may have been used for repairs at some time in the past, or
simply bound in when the linen fabric was woven." This
should have concerns.
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Edward Hall, the head of the Oxford
radiocarbon dating laboratory, also noticed fibers that looked out
of place.
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Gilbert Raes, when he examined
some of the carbon 14 samples, noticed that cotton fibers, where
found, were
contained inside threads, which could help to explain
differences in diameter of some of the fibers. This may also explain why the
carbon 14 samples apparently weighed about twice as much as
expected.
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Giovanni Riggi, the person who
actually cut the carbon 14 sample from the Shroud stated: "I was
authorized to cut approximately 8 square centimetres of cloth from
the Shroud…This was then reduced to about 7 cm because fibres of
other origins had become mixed up with the original fabric …"
And Giorgio Tessiore, who documented
the sampling, wrote: “…1 cm of the new sample had to be
discarded because of the presence of different color threads.”
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Al Adler at Western Connecticut
State University had found large amounts of aluminum in yarn
segments from the radiocarbon sample, up to 2%, by
energy-dispersive x-ray analysis. The question should have been
asked, 'why aluminum?' It is not found elsewhere on the Shroud.
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No one knows for certain
if the Shroud of Turin is real. But if we
focus only on what is published in peer-reviewed
scientific journals then we know certain facts. The
Shroud is certainly at least 1300 years old.
It could be older. The images are unexplained. As
Philip Ball wrote in Nature, in
commenting on a 2005 article in
Thermochimica Acta
that showed that previous carbon 14 dating was
invalid, "It is simply not known how the
ghostly image of a serene, bearded man was made" If
we turn to a 2003 article in
Melanoidins
we find that the images on
the Shroud of Turin are a chemical
caramel-like darkening of an otherwise clear starch
and polysaccharide coating on some of the shroud’s
fibers It is not paint.
There is the enigma
of the second face on the reverse side of the Shroud
as reported in 2004 in the Journal of Optics
published by the Institute of Physics. Other
peer-reviewed evidence is clear: The bloodstains are
from real human blood. The images have peculiar 3D
properties. The Shroud was bleached by
methods used in the first century and not later in
the medieval.
Throw in some
history, and given what is known scientifically, and
there is ample reason to infer that the Shroud of
Turin is genuine. The thoughtful skeptical
inquirers aims not to achieve this or that
conclusion. Rather their aim is the process of
honest skeptical inquiry. There is ample room for
the thoughtful skeptical inquirer in Shroud
of Turin research. But the articles that appear now
and then in the Skeptical Inquirer
magazine are preposterously polemic, filled with
arguments refuted by peer-reviewed scientific
observation and lack proper historical
investigation.
The American
Chemical Society website quotes a thoughtful
skeptical inquirer, the late Raymond Rogers, the Los
Alamos scientist who showed that the carbon 14
dating was invalid: "The observations do not prove
how the image was formed or the "authenticity" of
the Shroud. There could be a nearly infinite number
of alternate hypotheses, and the search for new
hypotheses should continue." |
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