Shroud of Turin - Recent Developments

Recent Developments

In 2010, professors of statistics Marco Riani and Anthony C. Atkinson wrote in a scientific paper that the statistical analysis of the raw dates obtained from the three laboratories for the radiocarbon test suggests the presence of contamination in some of the samples. They conclude that: "The effect is not large over the sampled region … our estimate of the change is about two centuries."

A team of graphic artists tried to recreate the real face of Jesus in a special two-hour documentary on the History Channel broadcast for the first time in March 2010. The image was made by taking the image of the Turin Shroud and transforming it onto a 3D form to compose and inspire a CGI image of a detailed face.

The Shroud was placed back on public display (the 18th time in its history) in Turin from 10 April to 23 May 2010. According to Church officials, more than 2 million visitors came to see the Shroud.

In December 2010 Professor Timothy Jull, editor of Radiocarbon, coauthored an article with a textile expert in this peer-reviewed journal. They analyzed an unknown sample of 1988 and concluded that they found no evidence of a repair.

In November 2011, F. Curciarello et al. published a paper that analyzed the abrupt changes in the yellowed fibril density values on the Shroud image. They concluded that the rapid changes in the body image intensity are not anomalies in the manufacturing process of the linen but that they can be explained with the presence of aromas and/or burial ointments. The paper also states that this consistent with the observation that based on the stochastic distribution of yellowed fibrils the image is not the work of an artist, and may have been formed over several decades. However, their work leaves the existence of an energy source for the image an open question.

In December 2011 scientists at Italy's National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Development ENEA announced that their series of tests demonstrated the image on the shroud could, in their opinion, only have been created by "some form of electromagnetic energy" such as a flash of light at short wavelength. Professor Paolo Di Lazzaro, the lead researcher, indicated in an e-mail interview that '….it appears unlikely a forger may have done this image with technologies available in the Middle Ages or earlier', but their study does not mean the Shroud image was created by the flash of a miraculous resurrection, contrary to how the story was presented in the media, especially on the Web. Prominent skeptic Joe Nickell, however, is not impressed with the news. He indicates the latest findings is nothing new despite being 'dressed up in high-tech tests' and doesn't prove much of anything.

In December 2011 physicist Giulio Fanti published a critical compendium of the major hypotheses regarding the formation of the body image on the shroud. Fanti stated that "none of them can completely explain the mysterious image". Fanti then considered corona discharge as the most probable hypothesis regarding the formation of the body image.

In his 2012 book "The Sign", art historian Thomas de Wesselow (who has stated that religiously he remains an agnostic and does not believe in the resurrection of Jesus) has written that he has come to view the shroud as genuine. In the book he argues that the Shroud caused the disciples to believe that Jesus had resurrected, but he does not support the historicity of the resurrection itself. According to the Daily Telegraph de Wesselow has mostly assembled and reinterpreted the work of other researchers, rather than doing firsthand research himself.