Thaindian News

London, Dec 20 (IANS) The Shroud of Turin could actually be Christ’s burial robe, even if decades of tests have suggested otherwise, reveals a new research.

Scientists in Italy believe the kind of technology required to create the Shroud of Turin did not exist at that time.

Carbon dating carried out in 1988 in Oxford, Zurich and Arizona suggested that the shroud was created some time between 1260 and 1390, the Daily Mail reported.

The research was disputed, however, because there was a possibility of contamination from patches of cloth that had been sewn on following a fire in Chambery, France, in 1532.

Burn marks sustained during the fire are visible along the edges of the shroud, where molten silver dripped onto the cloth in a series of triangular patches on both sides of the piece.

Theologians have suggested that the shroud, which is stored in the royal chapel at the Cathedral of St John the Baptist in Turin, was created when Jesus was resurrected.

Scientists from the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Development tried to recreate the piece, but found that they could only do so with advanced machinery.

Intense beams of UV light were fired at a piece of cloth but when they were unable to recreate the marks on the shroud they concluded that some form of electromagnetic energy (such as a flash of light at short wavelength) must have created the image.

“The double image (front and back) of a scourged and crucified man, barely visible on the linen cloth of the Shroud of Turin, has many physical and chemical characteristics that are so particular that the staining… is impossible to obtain in a laboratory,’ said the report of professor Paolo Di Lazzaro.