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"The closest modern analogue to the Shroud is a radiagraph produced by injecting a subject with a radioactive tracer and counting the decay particles with a multi-million dollar collimated, computerized radiation detector used for heart and brain scans."

... and then printing out a representation of it. Do you have any theory on a piece of "film" that could be used to take such a "photo" ? Is there any known "self-developing" emulsion that the shroud whould show traces of ? If this theory were true, I would suppose that the "background radiation" over thousands of years might have overexposed it.

Regarding imaging and your question regarding a "film:"

Let’s begin with the fact that the image is contained within a carbohydrate layer that covers crown fibers within the thread of the cloth. There are between 70 and 120 cellulose fibers in single linen threads used to weave the cloth.

This carbohydrate layer is very thin; about the thickness of the scratch proof coating on eye glasses. This layer is made up of starch fractions, various saccharides. It is nominally clear. But in some areas it has turned straw-yellow due to a chemical change which is not unlike caramelization (browning of sugar by heat) or Maillard (chemical reaction of sugar with amines or proteins). These yellow areas are on fibers that are only about 15% the thickness of a human hair. In some cases alternating fibers are colored and not colored and it is by this density pattern of colored fibers that different shades of straw-yellow are produced. There is no imaginable way a forger could have applied anything selectively enough to areas so small. It can be done with laser precision but laser light does not produce the effect. Lasers can produce the heat in the carbohydrate layer but they have an effect on the cellulose fibers as well, and the fibers are unaffected on the Shroud.

This leaves two possibilities (or more that have not been thought of): a chemical reaction caused by Maillard, heat, or some unspecified energetic that would work (most ionizing radiations have been tried and eliminated or ruled out). The causation is either natural or miraculous.

Now if it is a natural phenomenon it is a chemical reaction. If it is a miraculously induced images (and it may be) it is still a change of state; call it what you want: a change to the double-double carbon bond chromophores, a dehydration of the coating, etc.. If God etched these images, He did it with a chemical change of state. This is no different than any other miracle. It is a change of state.

Interestingly enough the images can be removed from the fibers with adhesive and dissolved with reducing agents.

What is particularly interesting is this. If it is a chemical reaction it ENDED late enough for there to be a discernable image and it ENDED early enough to not over-saturate the image. There are no over-saturation points found anywhere in the image, what in photography is called over-exposure or wash out. How is that possible? If it is a chemical reaction something caused it to stop at the right time and before any bodily decomposition products damaged or destroyed the cloth or wiped out the image, as they would.

I don’t think it was caused by light of any kind. Nor do I think that ionizing radiation caused the image. Other hypotheses such as corona discharge, IR, UV, etc. don’t fit chemically. Not every possible energetic has been ruled out.

Chemical reaction makes sense as heavy amines (as vapors) would have reacted with impurities to cause an image. YES, without question, there would have been a Maillard reaction of some sort within about 30 hours time and a discoloration of the cloth. But the problem of image resolution, the 3D effects, etc. are hard to explain. And something caused a natural chemical process, if there was one, to stop.

There is something going on here that we cannot imagine. I firmly believe that the measure of a miracle is the result and not the process. Many scientists in Shroud research are confident that the process will one day be explained. I have my doubts.

Shroudie

... and then printing out a representation of it. Do you have any theory on a piece of "film" that could be used to take such a "photo" ? Is there any known "self-developing" emulsion that the shroud whould show traces of ? If this theory were true, I would suppose that the "background radiation" over thousands of years might have overexposed it.

Ah, there's the rub... Since every radiation source we KNOW about radiates in a spherical pattern from the source, much of the cost of the modern radiation camera is in building it in such a way that only specific, parallel to the collimation radiation can be counted.

The modern device uses long, sheilded tubes which allow only radioactive decay products that enter the tube, travel its length to impinge on a the sensor so as to "ignore" all other particles that are travelling in a path from the source budy that are non-parallel to the tube. This is what is meant by "collimated." (Think of a particle travelling through a soda straw without hitting the sides to hit a sensor at the opposite end.)

A piece of cloth is not thick enough to provide the "tube". I cannot think of ANYTHING that would allow only collimated radiation (Vertically or gravitationally collimated) to strike and form an image on a piece of cloth that will ignore other particles that strike the cloth at a different angle. The radiation (or whatever it was) that formed the image on the shroud went straight up AND straight down... with no particles (or what-ever) going even a little bit sideways!