And here an article fresh out of the press:
The Shroud of Turin DuplicatedBy Massimo Polidoro in 'Skeptical Inquirer,
Vol. 34, No. 1, Jan/Feb 2010, p. 18'
...
Many
still believe it is the real burial cloth of Jesus.
Part of this controversy arises from the fact that, until now, it has proven difficult to understand the mechanisms of its formation and to obtain by simple means an acceptable
replica of the shroud and its features. That's why many call it "an impossible image."
The Lab Experiment"The most likely explanation, in my opinion," said Garlaschelli, a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, "is that the images, as it can be seen nowadays, is a chemical etching of the cellulose of the linen fibers. This degradation can be accounted for by non-neural impurities contained in the ochre that a mediaeval artist used to generate the image by a simple frottage technique. The original pigment came off during the many years of the shroud's
history, leaving the well-known weak ghostly image. This hypothesis, originally put forward by Joe Nickell,
had never been experimentally tested before."
As he did fifteen years ago with the "miracle" blood of St. Januarius, Garlaschelli set out to reproduce the full-sized shroud using materials and techniques that were available in the Middle Ages.
Garlaschelli placed a linen sheet, hand woven for the occasion, flat over a volunteer and then rubbed the linen with a pigment containing traces of acids. The
face was obtained from a bas-relief in order to avoid the inescapable wrap-around distortion. Garlaschelli then retouched the image by hand after laying the cloth flat on a tabletop. He artificially aged the pigment by heating the cloth in an oven and washing it, removing the pigment from the surface but leaving the fuzzy, half-toned image similar to that on the shroud. Garlaschelli then added blood stains, burnt holes, scorches, and water stains to achieve the final effects.
The result is impressive. The Shroud of Turin and Garlaschelli's
replica look remarkable alike.
"Our goal was not to show that the Shroud of Turin is a
fake, but rather that it is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics of the shroud," said Garlaschelli. "We have also shown that pigments containing traces of acidic compounds can be artificially aged after the rubbing step (by heating the cloth in an oven) in such a way that, when the pigment is removed, an image is obtained having all the characteristics of the Shroud of Turin. In particular, the image is a pseudo-negative, is fuzzy with half-tones, resides on the topmost fibers of the cloth, has some 3-D embedded properties, and does not fluoresce.
Garlaschelli does not expet to convince the believers, which was never
his goal. "If they don't want to believe carbon dating done by some of the world's best laboratories, they certainly won't believe me. However, we think that our attempts represent an interesting addition to the ongoing debate on this maybe-not-so-impossible image"
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