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The honest skeptical inquirer wonders . . .
Did Walter McCrone find blood on the Shroud of Turin?
According to the McCrone Associates web site: "There is no blood in any image area, only red ochre and vermilion in a collagen tempera medium.”
However, Alan Adler, an expert on porphyrins, the types of colored compounds seen in blood, chlorophyll, and many other natural products concluded that the blood is real. In collaboration with John Heller, the conclusions that the blood is real was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Applied Optics [19, (16) 1980]. The heme was converted into its parent porphyrin, and this was confirmed with spectral analysis. In addition, the x-ray-fluorescence spectra taken by other scientists showed excess iron in blood areas, as expected for blood. Microchemical tests for proteins were positive in blood areas but not in any other parts of the Shroud.
McCrone did not publish his finding in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Every other scientist who has physically examined the fibers from the Shroud disagrees with McCrone. His findings have not been successfully reproduced by anyone.
Walter McCrone was a world renowned microscopist. He was a true scientist and he knew his craft well. He founded McCrone Associates in Chicago.
See: Did Walter McCrone find paint on the Shroud of Turin? Why might there be paint particles on the Shroud of Turin? How do we know that the bloodstains are from real blood?
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Shroud of Turin and the Skeptical Inquirer
Fact:
The 1988 carbon 14 dating used invalid samples snipped from a
discrete medieval repair. Furthermore, kinetics constants for the
loss of vanillin from lignin indicates that the cloth is at least
twice as old as the dates determined by the carbon 14 dating with
the faulty samples.
By some estimates, from
examination of documenting photographs, there is sufficient new
thread (about 60%) to allow adjusting the cloth's date to
approximately the first century.
Fact :
The images are formed by a brownish, complex conjugated carbon
substance within a carbohydrate layer of starch fractions no thicker
than 1/100 the diameter of a human hair.
The images are probably the
product of an amino/carbonyl reaction.
Fact :
The bloodstains are real blood. The blood is unusually red for
old blood.
The blood probably stayed red and
did not turn black as blood normally does because trace chemicals
found in the starch fractions are hemolytic. Also, the blood is rich
in bilirubin, a bile pigment produced when a human body is under
severe traumatic stress. Bilirubin is bright red and stays red.
Fact :
There is a faint, superficial face image on the back of the cloth.
This supports the hypothesis of an
amino/carbonyl reaction.
Fact :
There are sufficient descriptive historical records to suggest that
the Shroud of Turin is the Edessa cloth (ca. before 544 to 944 CE)
and the Bucoleon Palace grave cloth of Constantinople (ca. 944 -
1204).
Fragmentary evidence suggests that
the Edessa Cloth originated in Jerusalem in the 1st century and that
it is the burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth.
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