Scientists say Turin Shroud is supernatural

[jberryhill]

18. I'll have to put that on my list

I've never been to that museum but always hear about wonderful things in it.

I've seen some medieval tapestries and, quite frankly, if someone wants to see something miraculous on an old piece of fabric, that would be it.

Have you ever seen this:

Thermochimica Acta
Volume 425, Issues 1-2, 20 January 2005, Pages 189-194

Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the shroud of turin

Raymond N. Rogers

Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of California, 1961 Cumbres Patio, Los Alamos, NM 87544, USA

Received 14 April 2004; revised 14 April 2004; Accepted 12 September 2004. Available online 16 November 2004.

Abstract

In 1988, radiocarbon laboratories at Arizona, Cambridge, and Zurich determined the age of a sample from the Shroud of Turin. They reported that the date of the cloth's production lay between a.d. 1260 and 1390 with 95% confidence. This came as a surprise in view of the technology used to produce the cloth, its chemical composition, and the lack of vanillin in its lignin. The results prompted questions about the validity of the sample.

Preliminary estimates of the kinetics constants for the loss of vanillin from lignin indicate a much older age for the cloth than the radiocarbon analyses. The radiocarbon sampling area is uniquely coated with a yellow–brown plant gum containing dye lakes. Pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry results from the sample area coupled with microscopic and microchemical observations prove that the radiocarbon sample was not part of the original cloth of the Shroud of Turin. The radiocarbon date was thus not valid for determining the true age of the shroud.