New Analysis Confirms Second Face on Shroud of Turin and Raises Questions About Other Images

NEW YORK, March 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Skeptics and people who believe the Shroud of Turin is the genuine burial shroud of Jesus have always shared one common perception: they thought they knew what the man on the shroud looked like. Now, new computerized image analysis suggests they may be wrong.

Results of this analysis published at http://www.shroudstory.com suggest that many characteristics of the images on the shroud are optical illusions caused by random plaid patterns in the cloth. For instance, because of these patterns, the face of the man on the shroud appears gaunt and the nose abnormally long and narrow. By using image enhancement technology to reduce the effect of the variegated patterns, the shape of the face changes significantly. The face takes on a broader look and the nose becomes realistic looking.

Shroud researchers have discovered that these patterns are caused by alternating bands of darker and lighter threads in the cloth. Ancient linen was often manufactured by bleaching the thread in batches before weaving, thus producing non-uniform whiteness in the cloth.

The plaid patterns are also cloaking details. Last year, two researchers, Giulio Fanti and Roberto Maggiolo of the University of Padua in Italy, reported finding a faint second face on the backside of the cloth. They published their findings in the peer-reviewed scientific Journal of Optics (April 14, 2004). Though the facial image was confirmed scientifically, it was not easy to see. However, by filtering out the plaid background with software developed by Robert Doumax, an expert in computerized image analysis, the second face becomes visible.

"The second face was an important find because it virtually eliminates artistic methods while giving credence to a hypothesis that a natural amino/carbonyl chemical reaction formed the images," said Daniel Porter, who posted the enhanced images on the Shroud Story website.

The Shroud of Turin is a fourteen-foot-long cloth with front and back images of a man who appears to have been scourged and crucified. The shroud is stored in St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Turin, Italy.

Since the mid-1970s, the shroud has been the subject of many scientific investigations. In 1978, a team of researchers found that the images were not painted and the bloodstains were genuine. Scientists also showed that pollen and limestone dust on the cloth may be from the region around Jerusalem. However, in 1988, carbon-14 dating of a sample cut from a corner of the shroud indicated that the material originated between 1260 and 1390.

Undaunted by the carbon-14 results, scientists continued to try to explain how the images were formed. The images consist of caramel-like substances thinner than most bacteria. Historians pieced together records that suggested the shroud was the famed fourth century, or earlier, Cloth of Edessa that disappeared from Constantinople when the city was sacked in 1204. Researchers M. Sue Benford and Joseph Marino, working with several textile experts, determined that the Shroud had been expertly rewoven in the precise location from which the carbon-14 sample was taken.

"We still don't know how the images were formed," said Porter. "But we are well past thinking the shroud was painted or that it is a medieval fake-relic. Chemistry proves that. We can make a good case that it is a burial shroud of a crucifixion victim. With some historical reasoning we can infer that it might have been used by Jesus."

Earlier this year, chemist Raymond Rogers, a Los Alamos National Laboratory chemist, showed that the sample used for carbon-14 dating was indeed from discrete reweaving of the cloth. By examining remaining material from the carbon-14 sample, he proved that what was tested was chemically unlike the rest of the shroud. Rogers found splices and dyestuff used to make the reweaving discrete. He also found chemical evidence that the cloth was at least twice as old as the carbon-14 dating had suggested. He published his findings in the peer reviewed scientific journal Thermochimica Acta (Jan. 21, 2005, Volume 425 Issue 1-2). John L. Brown, a retired Georgia Institute of Technology scientist, independently confirmed many of Rogers' findings.

"Casually accepting what we think we see on the shroud is one of greatest pitfalls in shroud research," said Porter. "People see all sorts of things like teeth or skeletal features that may simply be different patterns in the thread."

Not seeing things is a problem as well. It took chemical and microscopic analysis to reveal the discrete patch that was used for carbon-14 dating. It took advanced image analysis to find the second face on the backside of the cloth.

In addition, not one of these scientists has made the scientific claim that the man on the Shroud is Jesus of Nazareth... they may come to that conclusion from the preponderance of the evidence, but not because there is a "Jesus Test" that can be applied and give conclusive, scientific evidence.

the Shroud of Turin
prediction by Daniel R. Porter
"By 2012 scientists will not have developed an explanation for how images on the Shroud of Turin came to be on the cloth -an explanation that satisfies all of the physical and chemical properties of the images and does not violate basic laws of physics."

The great philosopher of empirical skepticism, David Hume, some two hundred and fifty years ago, challenged very effectively (but never disproved) the possibilities of miracles when he wrote, “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.” It could be that Hume’s skepticism is now being put to the test. The criteria, for now, suggest that it is a miracle by Hume's own standard. But that is so only because an explanation so far eludes scientists. I contend that an explanation will continue to elude scientists.

“No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.”

That is one of the things that make the shroud so fascinating... if it IS a fraud, then the fraud itself is miraculous!

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