The mended corner of the Shroud of Turin was the cause of the carbon
14 dating failure
supposedly proved that the
Shroud of Turin was medieval. But not everyone was convinced. An
overwhelming amount of other data suggested that the Shroud was indeed
much older, perhaps first century and from the environs of Jerusalem.
New in 2008: A team of nine scientists
at the Los Alamos National Laboratory has confirmed
that the carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin is
wrong. See the Fact Check page at
Many researchers who were not experts in radiocarbon
dating attempted to explain why the carbon 14 dating was wrong. Several
ideas were put forward. Some of these explanation gained traction in the
media and with the public.
One hypothesis was that a serious fire in 1532 that
nearly destroyed the Shroud had somehow changed the measurement age of
the cloth. Another theory was that a bioplastic-polymer growing on the
cloth contaminated the sample. These ideas were scientifically
insupportable. Scientists, who were knowledgeable in radiocarbon dating,
science dismissed these ideas as preposterous.
Photomicrograph of fibers from a warp segment of carbon-14
sample. Chemically, it is unlike the rest of the Shroud.
In 2005 an article appeared in a peer-reviewed
scientific journal Thermochimica Acta, which demonstrated
that the carbon 14 dating was flawed because the sample was invalid. It
turns out that the corner from which the sample was taken for carbon
dating had been mended. As a result, the sample included a significant
amount of newer material.
Moreover, this article, by Raymond N. Rogers, a
well-published chemist, and a Fellow of the Los Alamos National
Laboratory, explained why the cloth was much older. It was at least
twice as old as the radiocarbon date, and possibly 2000 years old.
