Studio Sindone
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According to John Paul II, the Shroud is more and more a "challenge for the human mind", and for the science an "impossible object". Impossible even to falsify. Try to count the columns of the building on the right: you’ll note that an object is impossible when it can be only two-dimensionally designed fooling the eye with a trick of perspectives, but it can't be built in three-dimensional objective reality, being in conflict with the laws of geometry. But the Shroud is neither a painted matter, nor the outcome of a Middle-Age’s falsehood.
This is the result that ENEA has carried out with elegance combined with equal clearness, after a five-year study «aiming at understanding the chemical and physical processes able to generate on a linen an image similar to that of the Shroud» by means of ultraviolet laser radiation. The professors Di Lazzaro, Murra, Santoni, Nichelatti and Baldacchino, of the "International Workshop on the Scientific Approach to the Acheiropoietos (not man-made) Images" do state: should even a single test be successful (in particular on the Visage), we’d have a chance to demonstrate that the Shroud is an «handwork» later than the first century.
But in reproduction's attempts two elements merged incompatible with the sindonic image: a pigmentation too deep into the tissue, and some burnt filaments. In contrast, the image of the Shroud is very superficial (only a fifth of a thousandth of millimetre), and not caused by heat. The ENEA’s issue, according with the STURP’s one of 1978 states:
"Based on the results of dozens of measurements, the image of the body in neither a painting nor a printing, and not even the result of heat".
Describing the experiments, scientists talk about aspects of the Shroud-like coloration obtained by a radiation of energy of 50-100 billionths of a second. Scientists admit that the results have nothing to do with the generation of the whole image of the Shroud as it is, and for which it should be necessary a radiation of an immense energy, as a sudden hot flash, that for intensity and duration of the impulse, it should have a such precision that can only be get by a computerized system of micrometer movement XY designed ad hoc. The scientists of ENEA have proved that by "an extreme short and intense flash of VUV radiation" it's possible to obtain a similar coloring of Linen. "Just in this flash of light many faithfuls see the imprint that Resurrection of Christ left on the Linen". About coloring, scientists of ENEA have carefully documented the work and method followed., by performing trials that interested little little fragments of tissue, but they themselves declared that in order to extend the study to the whole surface of Shroud (over 4x1 meters) should have a power of 34.000 billions watt: it is an amount of energy that according to scientists «it makes impossible today to reproduce the entire image of the Shroud using a single eccimer laser. Such a power is in fact by far unobtainable with any ultraviolet source in vacuum built until today.» The soundness of the research and its conclusions are well recognized:
"[...] up to day all attempts to reproduce on a linen an image bearing the same features have failed. None of the few of them somehow similar to the Shroud displayed the same micro and macroscopic characteristics. So, the origin of the sindonic image remains still a mistery".
The text of the issue takes also into consideration the controversial dating of the C14 test:
"[…] it makes extremely unlikely to obtain a Shroud-like image with chemical contact-methods in a modern laboratory and even more so by a possible forger in the Middle-Ages".
Will now the detractors of the Shroud contest the ENEA’s work just only because its conclusions contrast with their believes? What can we think of the silence of the media about an absolutely honest science? Actually, ENEA’s caution and seriousness in the matter has nothing to do with that speculative approach of most media, that just to write something is always ready to emphasize whenever possible "upsetting discoveries" on the Shroud, exploiting the emotional and religious context surrounding it. The "sindonic mystery", in fact, pays still out in term of these conditions. Templars, extraterrestrials, Leonardo da Vinci and even Giotto have been from time to time made responsible for the Shroud. Greatly numerous attempts have been made to replicate it. Such countless reports have often confused the mind of the people, making it difficult to perceive what‘s scientific and what’s fancies. Not even the C14 tests, clearly belied by ENEA, have escaped for manipulating of protocol and speculating over, and were contested since the beginning for having been carried out on a fringe mending of the tissue, having clearly different chemical properties from the rest of the Shroud and largely contaminated by fire, water and effects of the many expositions.
The american chemist Raymond N. Rogers, of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and considered a leading expert in thermal analysis, had already pubblished a study (in english, available here) where since very first words he affirmed:
"Pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry results from the sample area coupled with microscopic and microchemical observations prove that the radiocarbon sample was not part of the original cloth of the Shroud of Turin. The radiocarbon date was thus not valid for determining the true age of the Shroud".
Time has come to look at the Shroud with new eyes, the eyes of devotion. In monsignor Ghiberti’s words: «The new technologies will enable us to carry out non-invasive tests and investigations on the linen, with absolute respect of scientific procedures and rules. This, with the aim to avoid objections, speculations, and pay respect to the religious meaning it represents for the Christians worshippers who endow in that Visage the mysterious witness of an endless love»
The detailed report of ENEA is available clicking here.
Source: La Stampa/Vatican Insider, Osservatore Romano, 30 Days, Enea29/12/2011
