[Vision2020] Shroud

Sun Mar 27 17:18:29 PST 2005

Hello All,

I posted this at a Christian blog site that had much
debate about Nathan Wilson's Shadow Shroud. So it's
mostly critical of his method but does discuss recent
aspects of the Shroud of Turin. 
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Hello,

Mark K let me know of the debate going on here. I am
chemist at the University of Idaho and know about the
chemistries of the Shroud of Turin (ST) and something
about Nathan Wilson’s shroud. Nathan has produced a
good looking copy. However, it doesn’t match the
scientific results of ST examinations. Nathan used a
flax cloth. Flax and many plant materials contain a
pigment called lignin. Lignin sun-bleaches to a
lighter color. The ancient Egyptians knew about this:

http://schools.lwsd.org/ICS/ISProjects/ivy6hathi/clothing.htm

And used the sun-bleaching process to produce white
linen from flax. The problem with Nathan’s approach is
many-fold.

1. The color hues on the ST is not due to lignin. It
is a very superficial oxidation of fibers themselves.
And only those supposedly in contact with the body
(and the opposite side see below #2). What is very
interesting is that only the outermost fibers have any
color, about the width of a bacterium. Nathan’s work
would not do this. See also:

http://www.shroudstory.com/faq/turin-shroud-faq-12.htm

2. The ST has a backside mirror image of the body
(very faint) discovered by the same imaging techniques
used by the spy satellites and magnetic resonance
imaging machines. Nathan called this “ad hoc” on his
web site but it is hardly so. His shroud won’t have
that feature. The discover's web site:

http://www.dim.unipd.it/misure/fanti/fanti-ingl.html

the publication in a good quality peer-reviewed
journal:

http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1464-4258/6/6/001/

Fanti is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at
University of Padua.

3. Lignin color isn’t stable, Nathan’s shroud image
will be long gone in 100 years and the ST’s image has
persisted for at least 700 years or more.

4. There were no flat panes of glass of the size
needed to fake ST using Nathan’s method in the years
1200-1400 AD when it was supposedly faked. I am not a
glass expert but I talked about this with medieval
historians. Glass 2-3 feet in diameter was available
but they were very wavy, full of bubbles, and had
variations in frostiness across each pane. Overlaying
several panes of this type of glass would not produce
a clean figure. Lines and waviness would appear in the
Wilson method of producing the ST fake. Glass of the
type he would need did not appear until about 1700 AD.

5. The ST is not a medieval fake. It might be an
ancient one though. Recent chemical dating on the
parts of the ST not rewoven by medieval hands put the
date of the ST back to Roman times.

Those are just a few of the problems. It is very
disappointing to see the press runaway with this. They
did not ask him any hard questions. He is not
answering them at his web site either. He tends to
blow off any science that conflicts with his shroud.

If you are wondering as a scientist I cannot prove the
ST as genuine nor can I prove it's forgery. Whimpy
answer but that's the best I can do for now.

If you have any questions just contact my office.

All the best. 
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Also a recent exchange at a blog site:

http://right-mind.us/archive/2005/03/25/2718.aspx#FeedBack

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Also you may want to least glance over the chemical
dating paper that indicates the Shroud to be between
1300-3000 years old not 700 as done by radiocarbon
work in 1988:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6THV-4DTBVHC-1&_user=10&_handle=B-WA-A-W-WE-MsSAYWA-UUA-AAUYDUBWCC-AAUZWYVUCC-YZVWZVCUC-WE-U&_fmt=full&_coverDate=01%2F20%2F2005&_rdoc=26&_orig=browse&_srch=%23toc%235292%232005%23995749998%23553672!&_cdi=5292&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=81e06062c69f518054be93094e326cda

It is in a peer-reviewed journal. It was done by Ray
Rogers, Ph.D. of Los Alamos National Lab.
Unfortunately he died only a few weeks ago. I’m afraid
he took a lot of expertise with him.

Nathan Wilson could forward to me samples of his
shroud and original material. I’m not a textile expert
but I would be able to send them along to people that
specialize in that field. He might be proven right
about his hypothesis after all. I asked him last week
and haven’t heard back. He did get back to me with
high quality jpg’s. I had them sent along to an
imaging expert who will examine them for 3-d
characteristics. Nathan’s 3-d pictures at his web site
are very noisy and really don’t show any such
characteristics. 

http://www.shadowshroud.com/images.htm

BTW the real Shroud has 3-d characteristics because it
is basically a negative of a photograph. A painting
wouldn’t do that. How that photograph got there on a
flax shroud is a mystery.

A recent National Geographic article:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0409_040409_TVJesusshroud.html

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