|
Return to List of Skeptical Questions
The skeptical inquirer thinks . . .
Did Walter McCrone find paint on the Shroud of Turin?
According to the McCrone Associates web site, the . . .
cloth depicting Christ's crucified body is an inspired painting produced by a Medieval artist just before its first appearance in recorded history in 1356.” According to McCrone the image is made up of “billions of submicron pigment particles of red ochre and vermilion in a collagen tempera medium.
McCrone's conclusions are flawed. He may have found trace amounts of pigment particles (iron-oxide and mercury-sulfide) but not enough material to form a visible image. That is the conclusion of every other scientist who has studied the Shroud or fibers taken from the Shroud. McCrone's observations have not been successfully reproduced by anyone. No collagen tempera has been found. Spectral analysis proves, beyond a doubt that the images on the Shroud were not painted using paints that McCrone claimed or with any other known paint used in the Middle Ages.
It is important to note that McCrone did not publish his finding in peer-reviewed scientific journals, the normal way that scientists report scientific findings. He published his finding a Microscope, a magazine that he edited and published.
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 blood on the Shroud of Turin? Why might there be paint particles on the Shroud of Turin? What scientific tests prove that the neither the images nor the bloodstains were painted?
Return to List of Skeptical Questions
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.
|
