OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

HOME |   PROGRAM |  CONFERENCE NEWS |    PAPERS |   STUDENT POSTERS |   LINKS |   MEDIA INFO

SHROUD SCIENCE GROUP
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

 

 

The Shroud of Turin:
Perspectives on a Multifaceted Enigma


OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
BLACKWELL HOTEL

Concluded


August 14 through August 17, 2008

PRESS RELEASE: Los Alamos National Laboratory team of scientists prove carbon 14 dating of the Shroud of Turin wrong

COLUMBUS, Ohio, August 15 — In his presentation today at The Ohio State University’s Blackwell Center, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) chemist, Robert Villarreal, disclosed startling new findings proving that the sample of material used in 1988 to Carbon-14 (C-14) date the Shroud of Turin, which categorized the cloth as a medieval fake, could not have been from the original linen cloth because it was cotton. According to Villarreal, who lead the LANL team working on the project, thread samples they examined from directly adjacent to the C-14 sampling area were “definitely not linen” and, instead, matched cotton. Villarreal pointed out that “the [1988] age-dating process failed to recognize one of the first rules of analytical chemistry that any sample taken for characterization of an area or population must necessarily be representative of the whole. The part must be representative of the whole. Our analyses of the three thread samples taken from the Raes and C-14 sampling corner showed that this was not the case.” Villarreal also revealed that, during testing, one of the threads came apart in the middle forming two separate pieces. A surface resin, that may have been holding the two pieces together, fell off and was analyzed. Surprisingly, the two ends of the thread had different chemical compositions, lending credence to the theory that the threads were spliced together during a repair.

LANL’s work confirms the research published in Thermochimica Acta (Jan. 2005) by the late Raymond Rogers, a chemist who had studied actual C-14 samples and concluded the sample was not part of the original cloth possibly due to the area having been repaired. This hypothesis was presented by M. Sue Benford and Joseph G. Marino in Orvieto, Italy in 2000. Benford and Marino proposed that a 16th Century patch of cotton/linen material was skillfully spliced into the 1st Century original Shroud cloth in the region ultimately used for dating. The intermixed threads combined to give the dates found by the labs ranging between 1260 and 1390 AD. Benford and Marino contend that this expert repair was necessary to disguise an unauthorized relic taken from the corner of the cloth. A paper presented today at the conference by Benford and Marino, and to be published in the July/August issue of the international journal Chemistry Today, provided additional corroborating evidence for the repair theory.

Where to stay during the conference? See best hotel deals in Columbus, Ohio


Pre-Conference Links:

HOME |   DETAILS |  REGISTER |  BLACKWELL HOTEL

Web Sites Maintained by Members of the Shroud Science Group

Shroud of Turin Web Sites:

  • The Shroud of Turin (B. Schwortz)
  • Shroud of Turin Story (D. Porter)
  • Shroud of Turin Education Project (in memory of Father Kim Dreisbach)
  • Scientific papers (of G. Fanti)
  • Shroud.info (H. Felzmann)
  • The Shroud of Turin for Scandinavian Languages (N. Svensson)
  • Council for Study of the Shroud of Turin (A. Whanger)
  • Crucifixion and Shroud Studies (F. Zugibe)
  • Facts Plus Facts on the Shroud of Turin (D. Porter)
  • Shroud of Turin for Journalists (D. Porter)
  • Shroud University (in memory of Father Kim Dreisbach)


Individual Homepages:

  • Ray Schneider

Blogs:

  • Shroud of Turin Blog
  • Shroud of Turin Topics
  • Shroud of Turin and the Resurrection of Jesus

Wiki Sites:

  • Shroud Science Group's Shroud of Turin Wiki