Friday, March 16, 2012

Radiation could have created Holy Shroud image

The Shroud of Turin, the linen sheet which, according to tradition, Jesus’ body had been wrapped in and carries the imprint of a man who was crucified in the same way described in Gospels, is still a mystery. 

A recently published study has concluded that the most likely hypothesis for the explanation of the origin of the image imprinted on the shroud is radiation, particularly the “corona discharge effect.”

This is according to Giulio Fanti, Professor of Professor of Mechanical and Thermic Measurements at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Padua who has been carrying out research on the Shroud for a number of years. 

The academic has presented the results of his study in an article that has just been published by the Journal of Imaging Science and Technology.

Ever since the Italian photographer Secondo Pia obtained the first photographic reproductions of the Shroud in 1898, many researchers have put forward image formation hypotheses,” Fanti told Italian daily newspaper La Stampa

“Many interesting hypotheses have been examined to date, but none of these is able to explain the mysterious image fully. None of the reproductions obtained manages to portray characteristics that are similar to the ones found on the Turin Shroud.”

The article scientifically examines all core hypotheses, comparing them to 24 of the Shroud’s unique characteristics, deemed to be the most important of the more than one hundred features published up until recently in international scientific journals. 

The first hypotheses formulated by researchers who analysed the first photographs taken of the Shroud in the early 1900’s are being reviewed and examined. For example the theories which attributed the formation of the depicted figure to chalk or ammonia, to the effect of lightening or a mould containing zinc powder. 

“I therefore took the most sophisticated of all the hypotheses into consideration, such as those relating to the diffusion of gas or to the Shroud’s contact with the body that had been wrapped in a sheet soaked in aromas and various other substances,” Professor Fanti said.

 “During my research - Fanti went on to say – I also considered the possibility of the combination of more than one mechanism in the image’s formation, returning to the ideas of those who, as of the second half of the last century, started to doubt the authenticity of the Shroud and therefore started suggesting image reproduction techniques used by medieval artists.”

Among the “artistic” theories cited in the article, are those put forward by Delfino Pesce and Garlaschelli. “I emphasised the fact that even the results of experiment results obtained in the 21st Century are hugely different from the extremely unique characteristics of the Shroud.” 

Many academics have presented excellent artistic copies from a macroscopic perspective; but unfortunately these fail to reproduce a number of microscopic elements, making the final result valueless.”

However, the conclusion reached after examining the possibility of radiation as the origin of the image, is different. Fanti refers to the theories put forward by other academics and describes the results obtained by ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development), which recently used excimer lasers. 

The Professor observed that “The radiation theory allows us to come closer to the particular characteristics of the Shroud image, but still poses one important problem: only small sections of the image, measurable in terms of square centimetres can be reproduced; otherwise resources that are not yet available in the laboratory would be required.” 

The experiments carried out by Professor Fanti in Padua, in collaboration with Professor Giancarlo Pesavento, have required “voltages measured at approximately 500.000 volts in order to obtain Shroud-like images that were just a few centimetres long.”

The results of the scientific analysis carried out by Fanti have been summarised in two tables which show that radiation release represents the most reliable theory. 

And among the radiation theories, “only the corona discharge effect (a certain form of electrical discharge) theory seems to provide an answer to all the unique characteristics of the image of the body on the Shroud,” event though, in order to get such a large figure as the one depicted on the Turin Shroud, “you would need voltages of up to tens of millions of volts. Or, you would have to look outside the field of science and see the phenomenon as linked to the resurrection,” Professor Fanti said.