Shrouded in Mystery No More?
March 23, 2005 — The Shroud of Turn has mystified scientists for years. Now a literature professor from Idaho says he can prove it's a fake.
For centuries, faithful have flocked to the Shroud of Turin, which is – believed to be the burial cloth of Jesus with the imprint of his body. The image is a photographic negative. When reversed, IT PRODUCES a clear picture of a bearded man.
But when the church let scientists do carbon dating on it, they reported the cloth was only about 650 years old, not 2,000.
Still, no one could explain how medieval artists could make such an image. Now a professor from the Midwest says he's figured out one way it could have been done.
Nathan Wilson/New St. Andrews College: "I assumed that if a medieval forger could do it, all the tools he'd have available to him to solve it would also be available to me. I should be able to do the same."
Literature professor Nathan Wilson tried putting white paint on a pane of glass, hoping to create the same effect.
Nathan Wilson/New St. Andrews College: "I painted a picture of Christ or a Christ-like face on the glass, and placed it over a dark linen... and left it in the sun for ten days."
The sun bleached the dark cloth except for where the paint blocked the sunlight. The result: a negative image, that – when reversed – showed what appeared to be a bearded man.
Nathan Wilson/New St. Andrews College: "The beautiful thing about this theory is that a medieval would not need to understand photo-negative imaging at all."
Experts have yet to examine Wilson's solution. But the old question, how medieval forgers could have faked this image now has a plausible answer.
(Copyright 2005 by ABC News and WPVI-TV 6. All rights reserved.)
abclocal.go.com |
