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The honest skeptical inquirer considers . . .
What scientific tests prove that the neither the images nor the bloodstains were painted?
The following tests prove that paint pigments were not used to create the images or the bloodstains.
- Visible light spectrometry
- ultraviolet spectrometry
- infrared spectrometry
- x-ray fluorescence spectrometry
- thermography pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry
- laser microprobe Raman analyses
- microchemical testing
More significantly, we now know a great deal about the images that was not known when McCrone did his microscopic examination. The faint images, golden-brown in color, are the result of complex conjugated double bonds within a super-thin film of starch fractions and sugars.
See: Did Walter McCrone find paint on the Shroud of Turin? Did Walter McCrone find blood on the Shroud of Turin? Why might there be paint particles on the Shroud of Turin?
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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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