A Brief Review of the Recent CNN Documentary and (its) Medieval Photograph Theory

Has there been a “scientific” attempt that has come close to explaining the actual processes that would have taken place during the Miracle to produce the image? In other words, is there any process or combination of processes, no matter how “impossible”, that would duplicate the image. X rays, cosmic rays, quantum events, dark matter?

Many theories, but none can explain everything we know about the Shroud. We do know what the image is composed of now. It is change in the color of a soap bubble thin (70-100 Ångstroms thick) coating that was left on the fibers of the Flax when it was retted (prepared by washing in a process using a plant material similar to soapwort) before it was "hank" bleached. This starch like coating underwent a chemical change called a Maillard reaction, similar to the change in bread dough turning brown when it is baked, forming a caramel like sugary substance, ONLY where the image was formed.

What we do NOT know is the modality that caused the melanoidin change. We do know that what ever it was it effected the coating proportional to the distance from the body (which is how the quasi-3D information is encoded in the Shroud), was vertically collimated to an absolutely amazing accurate degree, and did not penetrate through Shroud to the other side except for some areas of the Face on the Shroud. In addition, whatever created the image on the Shroud did so with an X-Ray quality as the teeth in the upper and lower jaws are visible as are orbits of the eyes, and the flanges of the hand, which is why some critics claim the fingers of the hands are too long. Many of the proposed methods can duplicate one or two of the features of the Shroud but not all of the them. . . and therefore are not the modality of the Shroud's creation.

Mailllard reactions can be caused by heat, radiation, chemical changes,l exposure, age (its why cloth turns yellow), and even some biological reasons.

It really does take more faith to be an atheist...proto-photography, can you believe that leap of faith?

As I posted once before. Which is the greater miracle? That an completely unknown 14th Century polymath should create a work of art that stumps the all scientist and scholars of the 20th and 21st Centuries using techniques they cannot derive from the work or duplicate using the technologies available to them 700 years later, and knew to include things on the Shroud such as dust in the area of the feet and backside of the Shroud where it would have been spread on rock from a form of Travertine Aragonite that only exists out side the eastern gate of Ancient Jerusalem, gathered pollen from the Israel area to dust over the cloth he was using, including pollen for a plant that was indigenous only to an area of about 500 miles around Israel and went extinct circa 800AD, and then this Genius artist disappeared, leaving not trace of himself or any other similar art work or the techniques he used; or that a miraculous cloth was left behind by a person who was reputed by history and his followers to DO miraculous things? The doubters prefer to believe the former against all logic and evidence.

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