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Prominent Los Alamos Scientist Proves 1988 Carbon-14 Dating of the Shroud Used Invalid Rewoven Sample

Courtesy of Shroud.com:

A new, peer reviewed scientific paper by Raymond N. Rogers, retired Fellow of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, was published on January 20, 2005, in the latest issue of the journal Thermochimica Acta, Volume 425, Issues 1-2, Pages 189-194. Titled “Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the Shroud of Turin”, the paper concludes:

“As unlikely as it seems, the sample used to test the age of the Shroud of Turin in 1988 was taken from a rewoven area of the Shroud. 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.”

In a press release earlier this week, Rogers stated, “The radiocarbon sample has completely different chemical properties than the main part of the Shroud relic. The sample tested was dyed using technology that began to appear in Italy about the time the Crusaders’ last bastion fell to the Turks in AD 1291. The radiocarbon sample cannot be older than about AD 1290, agreeing with the age determined (for the sample) in 1988. However, the Shroud itself is actually much older.”

As a result of his own research and chemical tests, Rogers concluded that the radiocarbon sample is totally different in composition from the main part of the Shroud of Turin and was cut from a medieval reweaving of the cloth. Rogers was also the leader of the chemistry group for the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), the scientific team that performed the first in-depth scientific examination of the Shroud in 1978.

The journal paper (or at least the abstract) is available here. The full-text and PDF versions are available at the bottom right hand corner of the page. Registration is required to read these articles.

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