Thursday, February 13, 2014

New Study Suggests Image on Shroud of Turin May Have Been produced by Neutrons

It appears that the shroud of turin may be genuine after all, according to an Italian research team led by Alberto Carpinteri. Carpinteri, who has hypothesized a highly disputed piezonuclear fission theory, is using that theory to argue that neutron emissions is responsible for the image on the shroud.

(Phys.org) —An earthquake in Old Jerusalem might be behind the famous image of the Shroud of Turin, says a group of researchers led by Alberto Carpinteri of the Politecnico di Torino in Italy in an article published in Springer's journal Meccanica. They believe that neutron radiation caused by an earthquake could have induced the image of a crucified man – which many people believe to be that of Jesus – onto the length of linen cloth, and caused carbon-14 dating done on it in 1988 to be wrong. 

Neutron emissions from an earthquake? Really? I Googled neutron emissions earthquake to check if there was any genuine scientific basis to this idea. Absolutely no hits that were not connected to this story. There were some hits on piezonuclear fission, mostly saying that most scientists dispute Carpinteri's theory.

 I take away three things from this:
  1. Neutron radiation would explain the late carbon 14 date because some of  the neutrons would have  been absorbed  by the  extant carbon and transform some of  it into carbon 14, increasing the amount of carbon 14. This increase would yield a more recent date than the actual date. (Another example of why dating methods are not always reliable and should not be used to dogmatically argue for a specific age of the earth).

  2.  Any evidence of neutron radiation as the cause of the image on the shroud would eliminate the possibility of forgery, as technology capable of producing such radiation did not exist amongst human until recently.

     
  3. The researchers do not want to accept the most likely explanation - that the release of neutrons was from a sudden increase of energy that was released when God raised Jesus from the dead. Earthquakes would generate very little neutron radiation, and what little that would be generated would be through heat from the friction of the moving plates. This radiation would be widely dispersed and would affect a wide area and not just the shroud. It would not have emitted a focused blast of neutron radiation that would affect an image while leaving no trace of any other effects.

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