Shroud of Turin reproduced

Italian scientist Luigi Garlaschelli recreated the Shroud of Turin, supporting his claim that the artifact is a fake and not the cloth that laid on the body of Jesus Christ before his burial. Believers claim that the image on the cloth is the miraculous Holy Face of Jesus. Garlaschelli will present his research and the, er, Shroud of Luigi, at the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims on the Paranormal's conference. This whole thing makes me want a Shroud of Turin blanket. I didn't find one of those, but this golf towel is kinda nifty! Anyway, from CNN:

Luigi Garlaschelli created a copy of the shroud by wrapping a specially woven cloth over one of his students, painting it with pigment, baking it in an oven (which he called a "shroud machine") for several hours, then washing it...

"Basically the Shroud of Turin has some strange properties and characteristics that they say cannot be reproduced by human hands," he told CNN by phone from Italy, where he is a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia.

"For example, the image is superficial and has no pigment, it looks so lifelike and so on, and therefore they say it cannot have been done by an artist." His research shows the pigment may simply have worn off the cloth over the centuries since it was first "discovered" in 1355, but impurities in the pigment etched an image into the fibers of the cloth, leaving behind the ghostly picture that remains today.

"The procedure is very simple. The artist took this sheet and put it over one of his assistants," he said.

"Scientist re-creates Turin Shroud to show it's fake"

• [Josh]

  David so glad you posted this!

  People today don’t realize what is on the shroud (from the coin images on the eyes to the pollens found in the fibers) or what any of it means. For awesome detail into the shroud and attempts to prove or disprove its authenticity, take a look at the online movie CREATION AND MIRACLES from the Diamond Brothers. It’s sedevacantist so you know it’s great!

• [AirPillo]

  For the record, I am a religious believer, and still think this shroud is a bunch of opportunist nonsense. I also find the carbon dating done on it to be pretty compelling, especially in addition to this.

  It is unnecessarily confrontational to make comments which make this out as a “believers vs. science” conflict. Both sides of this issue do this at times, without regard to the fact that people can exist in both camps at once.

  Take a cooperative tone, we all seek understanding together :)

• [zandar]

  “People believe what they want to believe.”

  ^

  What ridiculous human behavior doesn’t this explain?

  And sums up the futility of arguing with believers so succinctly.

  Although I do think the rest of us should go ahead and debunk anyway, because reason does make surprise appearances in the Halls of Decision Making every once in a blue moon.

• [Reverend Loki]

  I’ve been thinking my newborn daughter could use a Shroud of Turin baby blanket…

• [Phrosty]

  Silly theists.

• [friendlysoviet]

  There was plenty of superstitions and cults that was born out of late medieval Italy. Lots of it was lampooned as foolishness, but some of it still sticks around today, such as the Shroud of Turin.

  People are still going to believe in the Shroud of Turin, whether or not it can be reproduced. I don’t understand why Boing Boing is alienating the Catholics with their own summary stating that the Shroud is indeed fake.

  Also, it was my understanding the Shroud of Turin has been replicated many times before, even by Penn & Teller. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t understand the relevance of this post.

• [phisrow]

  Well, I’m guessing that this will have no more effect on public opinion than the carbon dating did; but I like the hack(perhaps a personalized blanket for every member of the family is in order, complete with their face and outline?).

• [IamInnocent]

  I don’t believe that the Shroud is what it is claimed to be but it is just a hunch from my part, I’ll admit, The sort of ‘proof’ presented by Garlaschelli here though makes as much epistemological sense as if by running a gas engine with Mazola oil one intended to disprove the existence of petrol.

  • [Daemon]

    He didn’t disprove the shroud. He disproved the claim that it was impossible to achieve the same effect through human handywork.

• [kaosmonkey]

  if you wrap a cloth over a subject’s face, transfer the image and unwrap, you end up with something like this

  http://www.daz-art.com/images/hi_poly_tut/bake2.jpg

  which is one of the reasons why, as unlikely as it sounds, I lean toward the theory that claims the shroud is an early discovery of a photographic process. It was never wrapped over anyone.

  • [SamSam]

    But the face that this scientist got on his shroud is much closer to the shroud of Turin than your simulation suggests. Indeed, it’s almost identical.

    So either the scientist is lying, or there’s a way to transfer the image of the face that gets you the result you’re looking for. My guess is that you simply don’t wrap so much. After all, there are no ears visible in the shroud of Turin.

• [RainyRat]

  “it looks so lifelike[...], and therefore they say it cannot have been done by an artist.

  Hang on, what? It looks lifelike, and therefore can’t have been created by mortal hands? So Garlaschelli’s version should have been more of a stick figure with a badly-drawn crown of thorns and the word “jEEzUs” next to it?

• [AirPillo]

  He didn’t disprove the shroud. He disproved the claim that it was impossible to achieve the same effect through human handywork.

  ^This.

  Science is a series of small steps. Before presuming to settle the matter, a proof of concept is needed.

  As far as faith in concerned even this evidence is significant and interesting. The medieval temptation to draw pilgrims with hoaxes is, as far as I know, well documented. This hoax would have been a very profitable one, if indeed it is a hoax. This evidence helps justify that question.

• [The Raven]

  Or perhaps, the body originally wrapped in the shroud was still alive?

• [ecolacha]

  the statement that the image could not have been reproduced by an artist is not the main issue at hand here. regardless of whether this person has re-created the image or not, the point is that the shroud of Turin exists and till date, the most convincing explanation for it’s symbolism is Jesus’ Crucifixion.

• [gATO]

  I’ll start by saying that this shroud thing is, to me, pure bullshit. Now, I’m no expert on ancient funerary customs, but it has always struck me as odd how nobody questions the fact that you have a perfect full frontal and back impressions of a body, on a cloth that was supposed to be wrapped around it. Isn’t that a dead giveaway about the shroud being a crappy fake, or were the funeral parlors of ancient Jerusalem just terribly lazy?

• [Tim]

  Oh come on… The image on the shoal has a mustache. I think I can actually see some spinach in his teeth…

  Besides, if it was real, wouldn’t it be a negative image? OMG…Jesus was black!

• [Napkins]

  Sometimes, if i drink to much, the next day i wake up in a shroud of urine.

• [technogeek]

  “In this case, we have a holy relic: the skull of Saint Catullus. And in the next case we have something even more amazing: The skull of Saint Catullus when he was six years old!”

  People believe what they want to believe.

• [albert001]

  Sure he was able to make a copy. Let’s see him do it with nothing to copy from. He didn’t prove anything. I agree with Daemon’s comment. Let’s see him do it not only hundreds of years ago with the tools available at the time, but also without anything in the world like this to imitate.

• [Tim]

  Actually, it is easy to know that the Shroud of Turin is a fake: look at the face. This is supposed to be Jesus? Remember, Jesus was a Jew while on Earth, so He would have been clean shaven and had short hair–as was the custom for most Jews 2,000 years ago. Yes, there were some with long hair, but those were the Jews dedicated to God at an early age; Jesus was a carpenter until He started His preaching.

  The face on the shroud is the European bias of what Jesus would have looked like; therefore, no scientific studies were needed to prove the shroud is a fake.

• [ChrissyStarr]

  The shroud was already investigated by the McCrone Research Institute. They determined that it was made around the year 1355. Walter McCrone was pretty much THE world expert on materials analysis using the polarizing light microscope. I took a week-long class taught by him, the guy was brilliant. R.I.P. Dr. McCrone.

  http://www.mcri.org/home/section/63-64/the-shroud-of-turin

  • [Anonymous]

    It would appear Dr McKrone is not that brilliant after all. http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/thibault%20final%2001.pdf