Shroud of Turin Reproduced

[3113]

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake. The shroud, measuring 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches bears the image, eerily reversed like a photographic negative, of a crucified man some believers say is Christ.

"We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as the Shroud," Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the para-normal this weekend in northern Italy, said on Monday. A professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, Garlaschelli made available to Reuters the paper he will deliver and the accompanying comparative photographs.

...Carbon dating tests by laboratories in Oxford, Zurich and Tucson, Arizona in 1988 caused a sensation by dating it from between 1260 and 1390. Sceptics said it was a hoax, possibly made to attract the profitable medieval pilgrimage business. But scientists have thus far been at a loss to explain how the image was left on the cloth. Garlaschelli reproduced the full-sized shroud using materials and techniques that were available in the middle ages.

Full story here.

 

[rgraham666]

If I were Professor Garlaschelli I'd hire a good bodyguard.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I have long said that the Shroud of Turin was a fake. My opinion is not based on the carbon dating, although that is more evidence to support my opinion. My thoughts come from knowlege of the vast commerce that was carried on during the midevil period in "religious aritifacts." It is known that grave robbers ran amok digging up bones and selling them to monistaries as "true artifacts" of the various apostiles. It was comon for monistaries to claim they had the actual body parts of Jesus followers as a way of increasing the influence of their churches.

I know of, at least, three arms belonging to St. Peter, as well as his supposed official grave under the vatican.

 

[Stella_Omega]

The idea that it's ABSOLUTELY UnEXPLAINABLE OMG!!! is so important to some people...

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Damn, now not only will everybody want their own shroud of Turin, they'll be able to have one! I wonder if Garaschelli's offering stock in his souvenir company; I'd like to invest.

 

[cloudy]

Shhhh! Don't tell WRJames. He still thinks it's real, and carbon dating is just some fancy hocus pocus.

 

[lance gt]

This will probably become fodder for a new Dan Brown novel. Some quest for Tom to discover the hidden meaning of the shroud and it turns out to be Jesus' gay lover, Raffi, who's body was imprinted on the shroud, while doing a little bondage treatment, disproving the myth Mary Magdelen was his wife, and the first book was a hoax.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Actually, the Shroud has been duplicated several times over the past two decades. Then the "believers" come up with something else that proves it's really "The Shroud". The last thing, I believe is pollen from some plant that only grows in Israel.

The problems with proving or not proving the shroud is THE SHROUD is -

1) The shroud has been handled and contaminated by the hands of many people over the years.
2) The shroud was in a fire and burned some 600 years ago, which would have added additional contaminats.
3) The Vatican is extremely jealous of anyone closely examining the shroud and has historically been choosy of those allowed to do so.
4) The shroud has been repaired several times since it first appeared.
5) The sudden appearance of the shroud in 944 in Constantinople then it's reappearance in 1205 with a number of religious artifacts stolen from the Orthodox Church makes it unlikely to be real. Then 150 years later the shroud showed up in Turin where it has been kept ever since.

Relating to #5 the questions arrise where was the shroud for 911 years between 33 and 944? Is there any way of being sure the artifact is the same one stored in Constantinople that the crusaders recovered in 1205? What happened to the shroud in the interum between 1205 and 1857 when it arrived in Turin? The journey would have take one year or so from Constantinople to Italy, but not 152.

The other thing that is odd is that the radio carbon dating places the age of the shroud at just about the time the shroud was taken from Constantinople by the crusaders.

 

[3113]

Come on, JJ, there are easy answers to these questions:

Relating to #5 the questions arrise where was the shroud for 911 years between 33 and 944?

It was hidden in the closets of mystics who knew that importance of that number: 911. They knew it had to be hidden for that number of years in order to get the message to us about that date.

What happened to the shroud in the interum between 1205 and 1857 when it arrived in Turin? The journey would have take one year or so from Constantinople to Italy, but not 152.

Hey! They took the long way around. And got lost. It happens.

Geeze, you're such a skeptic.

 

[WRJames]

I looked at the article. The part that says they rubbed the cloth on the body sounds wrong. The image on the Shroud is not consistent with that process. It will be interesting to see what the actual artifact looks like.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I looked at the article. The part that says they rubbed the cloth on the body sounds wrong. The image on the Shroud is not consistent with that process. It will be interesting to see what the actual artifact looks like.

*laughing my head off here*

 

[WRJames]

*laughing my head off here*

Stella -- wrapping produces lateral distortions not seen on the Shroud. This is the same gross error your so called expert skeptic made, remember?

So -- once we see what this looks like, and if they somehow (miraculously?) found a way to wrap that would produce and undistorted image -- then I might pay attention to it.

Otherwise -- wrapping has been tried before and it didn't work.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Okay.

*Forces grin off face and looks appropriately respectful.*

 

[lance gt]

I saw a Doc on the shroud a while back and they showed how Leo DaV had the materials and technology to make the shroud. He was into alchemy big time and figured out a method using silver nitrate and a pinhole lens to make the impression. The time frame matched with the dating, so the myth was born. They did manage to make a shroud though that looked the same. Maybe Leo was making some cash on the side while the painting panned out, making religious artifacts. Hell'uva big seller to a church.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Thank-you all for demonstrating that credulity isn't restricted to believers. Oxford University has renounced its carbon dating due to the high probability of contamination by smoke from a fire in the Middle Ages. The continuing bugger is that the image has not been shown to be pigment and the 'researcher's' throw away line that it probably faded away over the intervening centuries is as much a statement of faith as Dawkins' undetected Selfish Gene. The latter only shows how little the man knows about how genetics really works.

So, has the Shroud been proven a fake? No. Has it been proven real? No. It's just there, sort of like dark matter.

 

[Stella_Omega]

But dammit Bear, I WANT to believe it's a fake!

My WHOLE WORLD VIEW WILL CRUMBLE if the shroud can't be reproduced!

 

[voluptuary_manque]

But dammit Bear, I WANT to believe it's a fake!

My WHOLE WORLD VIEW WILL CRUMBLE if the shroud can't be reproduced!

Oh it can! It just takes 20th Century technology to do it.

 

[3113]

Oh it can! It just takes 20th Century technology to do it.

Excellent. If you believe that I've a few holy relics to sell you...

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Excellent. If you believe that I've a few holy relics to sell you...

Wrong church. We tossed out the relics along with papal indulgences.

 

[3113]

But dammit Bear, I WANT to believe it's a fake!

Isn't it funny how many times you hear someone say, "It couldn't have been done in ancient times! It's either a miracle/aliens from outer space because only modern technology can copy it!"

They said it about building the pyramids, about Stone Henge, about sailing across the Atlantic, about the heads at Easter Island...it couldn't have been done by people who didn't have modern technology, therefore it must be ________________ (fill in the unlikely blank)."

And then some bright fellow thinks to ask the folk of Easter Island, "Can you make a head for us?" and low and behold, they do, they make it exactly as their ancestors did hundreds of years ago, with primitive tools and clever engineering tricks to move it, no modern technology needed.

You know, people have been smart and clever for a very long time. And just because some stupid people in our time are utterly unimaginative, doesn't mean that one should be skeptical in the opposite direction--i.e., saying that it could not have been made by mere mortals.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Isn't it funny how many times you hear someone say, "It couldn't have been done in ancient times! It's either a miracle/aliens from outer space because only modern technology can copy it!"

They said it about building the pyramids, about Stone Henge, about sailing across the Atlantic, about the heads at Easter Island...it couldn't have been done by people who didn't have modern technology, therefore it must be ________________ (fill in the unlikely blank)."

And then some bright fellow thinks to ask the folk of Easter Island, "Can you make a head for us?" and low and behold, they do, they make it exactly as their ancestors did hundreds of years ago, with primitive tools and clever engineering tricks to move it, no modern technology needed.

You know, people have been smart and clever for a very long time. And just because some stupid people in our time are utterly unimaginative, doesn't mean that one should be skeptical in the opposite direction--i.e., saying that it could not have been made by mere mortals.

3, I would say that during Jesus times the shroud could not have been faked. However, it's a giant leap in technology between 33 AD and 1300 - a thechnological jump nearly as large as between 1300 and 1940.

I agree in the 13th century it could have been faked. In 1950 it could have been faked. It appears in 2009 it has been faked. From another direction, could any of us make weapons as well as the Clovis people using only "primative" tools? If we did, could we use them effectively?

Unfortunately, in our egotism we tend to believe we are so much smarter than our ancestors because we have gasoline engines and cell phones. I believe we have forgotten much of what our ancestors learned from observation of nature. It seems to me they understood the basics of mechanical engineering, how to raise an obolisk without 1000 slaves, to move 50 ton blocks with only muscle, levers and wooden sleds and other such.

I don't really think we've learned all that much, just refined what our ancestors taught us and employed what they knew in new directions.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Well, here are some modern Clovis points, at least. Awfully pretty!

and i remember back in the nineties, a guy who could make them. At that time, people were saying how the technology would never be recovered. The guy found some of his own points in a museum display-- someone he'd been selling to was "ancienting" them and turning them into counterfeits.

He was pretty upset.

 

[Dragonlipz]

I just want to know if wearing one would make me look fat?

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Isn't it funny how many times you hear someone say, "It couldn't have been done in ancient times! It's either a miracle/aliens from outer space because only modern technology can copy it!"

They said it about building the pyramids, about Stone Henge, about sailing across the Atlantic, about the heads at Easter Island...it couldn't have been done by people who didn't have modern technology, therefore it must be ________________ (fill in the unlikely blank)."

And then some bright fellow thinks to ask the folk of Easter Island, "Can you make a head for us?" and low and behold, they do, they make it exactly as their ancestors did hundreds of years ago, with primitive tools and clever engineering tricks to move it, no modern technology needed.

You know, people have been smart and clever for a very long time. And just because some stupid people in our time are utterly unimaginative, doesn't mean that one should be skeptical in the opposite direction--i.e., saying that it could not have been made by mere mortals.

3, I would say that during Jesus times the shroud could not have been faked. However, it's a giant leap in technology between 33 AD and 1300 - a thechnological jump nearly as large as between 1300 and 1940.

I agree in the 13th century it could have been faked. In 1950 it could have been faked. It appears in 2009 it has been faked. From another direction, could any of us make weapons as well as the Clovis people using only "primative" tools? If we did, could we use them effectively?

Unfortunately, in our egotism we tend to believe we are so much smarter than our ancestors because we have gasoline engines and cell phones. I believe we have forgotten much of what our ancestors learned from observation of nature. It seems to me they understood the basics of mechanical engineering, how to raise an obolisk without 1000 slaves, to move 50 ton blocks with only muscle, levers and wooden sleds and other such.

I don't really think we've learned all that much, just refined what our ancestors taught us and employed what they knew in new directions.

Might I point out that I teach the Classical period? And that I am a technology junkie? I know full what the pre-Dark Age people were capable of and it is far, far more than you think. We might not know what the Mesopotamians used their battery for but they made them by the hundreds and they work. No, Jenny, the technology of 1300 was a long ways from what could be done in the Greco-Roman world of 33 AD. Would you believe a 'Mullberry' type of harbor? Case from concrete and floated to where it was needed at Herod's harbor of Cesaerea? If Classical technology had not been lost because people forgot how to read we wouldn't be carrying on this conversation via keyboards. We wouldn't even be living on Earth. There is a gap of 1300 years between what they knew in 500 AD and what had to be reinvented starting in the Renaissance. We lost the stars, people, we lost the stars . . .

 

[Dragonlipz]

My second ex-wife (I'm from the Ozarks so we are still blood relatives even though we are officially divorced) could fake a whole lotta stuff including a night-into-day orgasm.....