How the Turin Shroud could have been made?

Radiocarbon dating of 1988 places the Turin Shroud to the 14th century, but later investigations support a range of dates that are not in conflict with 30 AD. I will not discuss possible reasons what may have caused the radiocarbon date to be wrong. It seems to be wrong and the Shroud seems to be the burial cloth of Jesus, see the articles in [6]. It may prove the Resurrection in a certain sense, but it does not necessarily imply that the image was created by supernatural light. In this article I describe my suggestion how man-made light could have created the image. It would imply that the Resurrection happened, but not as a true miracle in the sense we understand it but as a ritual miracle fulfilling prophesies.

The image on the Turin Shroud resembles a result of the process, which turns paper yellow in the sun. Whether it is the same process or not will not be discussed in this article. I only postulate that if the Shroud is man-made, the process could have been that of yellowing of the linen in sunlight.

Article [1] from 1943 is a study of yellowing of paper in sun. The authors irradiated paper with a 2 kW lamp giving 389 nm peak and black body spectrum form 330 to 700 nm.

This is the range which yellows paper inside windowed rooms since glass windows block ultraviolet light from the sun. In one experiment the authors irradiated paper sheets of 20 cm times 20 cm for 17 hours with the radiation power 4 kW/m2. This means that the paper was irradiated with the energy density 17*3600*4 kJ/m2=244,800 kJ/m2. The authors kept the temperature at 30 C° in this experiment.

The relevant results of the article were that sun bleaches and yellows paper. If paper has lignin, it yellows regardless of temperature. If paper has no lignin, it yellows in 100 C° Humidity and higher temperature cause sunlight to yellow paper, in low humidity and lower temperature sunlight bleaches paper. Aging yellows paper even if it has no lignin. The article mentions that paper which was irradiated and stored in a dark place had after 15 months yellowed in places where it was irradiated, but not in places where it was not. Many other factors contribute to yellowing of paper, such as acidity, rosin content and dyes.

A recent article [2] from 2015 reports that lignin is visibly bleached after expose to sunlight for three days, or to 40 hours of light UV irradiation with 365 nm. The white degree of paper increases from 0.43 to 0.91. The abstract does not tell what was the energy density of the UV light, thus the results of [1] are used instead of those in the newer article.

The authors of [1] were only interested on the sunlight spectrum above 330 nm. They tell that the ultraviolet region of sunlight from 290 to 330 nm is responsible for half of the sunlight effect, but this part of the sun spectrum is usually blocked by the window glass. They also note that 25% of sky light power spectrum is between 330-440 nm. In the first century AD there were no window glasses. The results of [1] must be converted to the whole range of the sun spectrum. It probably does not much affect the required energy density 244,800 kJ/m2. The main differences between visible light and UV light are that UV light has more energy and it is absorbed much better e.g. by human skin. We can take these differences into account in the following calculations.

Let us first see if the image on the Turin Shroud could have been produced by sunlight. Mike Ware in [3] has refuted the photography theory of Nicholas Allen by calculating energies needed for proto-photography with the sun as the energy source. We will not look at his conclusions since Barrie M. Schwortz gave in 2000 [5] sufficient reasons why the image of the Turin Shroud is not a photograph made with a lens or camera obscura, but the energy calculation in [3] are useful in evaluating another type of proto-photography theories where light does not go through a lens but filters through the textile and reflects from the skin of the body. The first and apparently so far the only proposal of this type was made in 1997 by Serge N. Mouraviev in [4]. He suggested direct sunlight as the source of irradiation. The theory did not create wider interest and has not been continued further by others. A small calculation and information from [3] clarifies the problems of the theory presented in [4].

Only a small fraction of light can pass through the textile and then it must reflect from the skin of the body in order to imprint an image to the inside of the Shroud.

The Shroud has 3/1 herringbone twill weave. I could not find light permeability of this weave, but the Shroud passes light through and the blood stains have leaked to the other side, so the weave has holes. I estimate the light permeability in the following way. The 3/1 twill weave has 3 warps for 1 weft. The wefts can be tightly next to each other, thus 3 wefts take 3 places. The warps are separated by the wefts that go to the other side of a warp, thus 4 warps take 8 places. In fragment of the size 4 places times 8 places there are four places when a weft goes over a warp and creates two holes, one on each side of the warp. So there are 8 holes. It is difficult to precisely tell the size of a hole, but we can estimate that when a weft goes to the other size of a warp, it is a bit like fitting a round object into a square hole. The unfilled hole is (4-π)/4*100=21.5% of the square. Eight such holes in 4*8=32 squares gives the fraction of holes in 3/1 twill as 8*0.215/32=0.053. I estimate that about 5% of light goes through the Shroud.

Human skin reflects light, but reflectivity decreases fast when the wavelength decreases. At 400 nm skin reflects 20%, while at 280 nm only 2 %. The body in the Shroud was washed and anointed with myrrh and aloe. It is possible that the reflectivity of the body was much higher than 2-20%. It could have been even 60%, as there are suntan oils, which reflect most of UV irradiation. Mouraviev in [4] assumes that the body was anointed. I will assume that the reflectivity is 60%, it seems like a upper limit.

According to Ware in [3] sunlight can in optimal conditions in the zenith give 900 W/m2. Ware considers only the UV part, which is 7%, that is 63 W/m2 and still lowers it to 40 W/m2 since conditions are not always optimal. In order to calculate a theoretical upper bound for sunlight as the source of light that created the Shroud let us take the total power 900 W/m2. With 5% permeability through the twill and 60% reflection from skin with very protective anointment we get only 0.05*0.6*900 W/m2=27 W/m2 as the power density from sunlight. In order to get the energy density 244,800 kJ/m2 for imprinting an image on the textile without photographic emulsions we need 244,800,000/27 seconds. That is 210 days assuming that there is 12 hours of sunlight in a day. The body was taken from the cross before the sunset in Friday and the burial cloths were found soon after sunrise in Sunday. There was no much more than 33 hours for the image to be formed, assuming that the Shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus, as I will do because the Middle Ages theory is mostly discarded and the simplest alternative is that the chain of events closely follows the Gospel narrative. Consequently, 210 days is impossible. For a proto-photographic method to work, either the energy source was not sunlight or the image formation mechanism was not yellowing of linen in sun.

Mouraviev in [4] suggests that the light source was sunlight and the image formation was helped by myrrh and aloe, which in some way formed a coating to the inside of the Shroud. If so, then myrrh and aloe formed a light-sensitive substance. The possible improvement for image formation can be estimated from information given in [3]. Ware mentions that for any photosensitive material the minimum energy density for image formation is 34 kJ/m2. By using this energy density and the more realistic 40 W/m2 as the sunlight power instead of 900 W/m2, the required time for image formation is 28,333 s, about 8 hours. This is indeed within the time limits, but myrrh and aloe are not known to form photosensitive material. There are light-sensitive substances that could have been invented before the first century AD, but they either require too much energy or would have left distinct traces in the Shroud and there are none. Mike Ware in [3] goes through known proto-photographic possibilities and lists three alternatives.

Bitumen of Judea is the first. Joseph Nicephore Niepce made the first ever contact photograph in 1822 with this light sensitive material. Bitumen is soluble and can be washed away with lavender and cloves oils, so there does not need to be bitumen traces in the Shroud if this technology was used. Bitumen was used by Egyptians in mummification and the oils for removing it were also known. Unfortunately, according to [3] forming the image to bitumen in sunlight takes 3-4 hours, while for light sensitive material having the theoretical limit 34 kJ/m2 is needed only one second. Thus bitumen requires some 11,000 times higher energy density than the theoretical limit 34 kJ/m2. This means that instead of the energy density of 244,800 kJ/m2, bitumen needs 11,000*34=374,000 kJ/m2. Bitumen it is not any better than yellowing the linen with sunlight only and must be discarded.

The second alternative from [3] is rosin photography. Rosin, also known as colophony resin or Greek pitch, is resin from conifers and commonly used on many applications. It is solvable in turpentine. Parts, which have been exposed to light, harden and become less solvable, so washing out non-exposed parts makes it possible to create a photograph. Rosin photography requires about 40 times less energy than bitumen. Energetically this would be slightly better than yellowing linen with sunlight, but it is still not possible. The energy demand is c. 9,350 kJ/m2. To obtain this energy from 27 W/m2 sunlight takes 8 days in optimal conditions. There is also a second reason to discard this technology: the image in rosin photography can be created by dyes of some kind, and maybe some other way, but it is unlikely to resemble the result of the yellowing process.

The third alternative given in [3] is molluscan dyes. The famous molluscan dye is Tyrian purple invented by Phoenicians some 1600 BC. Rich Romans wore robes dyed with Tyrian purple. Jews knew it as Argaman, used for dyeing ritual vestments in Judea. At least 12 species of shellfish give light-sensitive extracts. The images are easily fixed by washing and are durable. These light sensitive extracts can be used as the basis of photography, as was shown already in 1859. There is bromine in the Shroud and bromine is in Tyrian purple. Unfortunately, this cannot be the way the Turin Shroud image was formed. Tyrian purple, and other from this class, are dyes. STRUP found that the Turin Shroud does not have noticeable traces of any dyes. If the image had been made this way, the image would be made of dye. While there is bromine in the Shroud, it is evenly distributed in the Shroud and it is not responsible for the image. Also this promising and quite possible technology must be discarded.

Two of the three alternatives in [3] can create images on linen with sunlight passing through the textile and reflecting from the skin of the body in the given time, and the third is a dye. An early and later forgotten invention of silver-based photography would be a solution, but as [3] explains, there are good arguments against it, such as that no traces of silver were found from the Shroud in the investigations of the STRUP group. As [3] also discards all other proto-photography methods, we have to look for another source of light. The image was not made with sunlight. The problem is that according to accepted history a first century AD proto-photographer, or a medieval one for that matter, did not have any alternatives to sunlight.

This may not be a critical objection. If proto-photography and alternative light source were secret knowledge of magicians or some secretive profession, we very possibly would not know about them. The reason for postulating that there was such a source of light is that if there was not, then the Turin Shroud must have been made through a miracle.

The objection that there are natural processes that could have created the image, such as the Maillard reaction, is that they are still miracles: if a very rare event happens when it was expected to happen, it is a very rare coincidence, a miracle. It can be convincingly argued that Jesus intentionally fulfilled some prophecies, that all prophesies had to be fulfilled by the Messiah and that one of prophesy was rising from death. Thus, if a rare event imprinted an image on the textile just in the case of Jesus, it is a very rare coincidence. There are only three possibilities: a fairly common natural process, an intentional man-made process, and a miracle/coincidence. I investigate the second alternative.

Sunlight’s ability to bleach and yellow depends mainly on the ultraviolet part of the spectrum. There are very few chemical processes, which release ultraviolet light in significant amounts and which could have been invented in the first century AD or before. One such process is burning magnesium. Let us skip for the time being the issue of how first century AD people could get metallic magnesium, which was discovered in the 19th century, and calculate if magnesium light could create an image on linen if light passes through the textile and reflects from the body.

The process of burning magnesium is 2Mg+O2→2MgO. For one mole of magnesium, this process releases 601.6 kJ. One mole of magnesium weights 24.31 g. It follows that burning one gram of magnesium releases 601.6/24.31=24.75 kJ. Magnesium burns in the air with a very bright white flame at the temperature c. 2000 C°, and it can get much hotter than that. Obviously, textile cannot be put very close to burning magnesium. If radiation from burning magnesium disappears to the space and the magnesium flame is far from the textile, there will be low energy density. But if the experiment takes place in a large chalk cave, not a burial grave which is too small and heats up too much, most of the light probably reflects from the walls. In this way, or maybe by using other reflective surfaces, the light possibly can be focused so well that most of it falls to a 3 m2 surface. This 3 m2 surface is about the theoretical minimum for irradiating the Shroud, which is 4.4 m long and 1.1 m wide and the image is in the center. Most of the Shroud must be irradiated. If the magnesium flame is r=0.5 m away from the textile and the light spreads to every direction, the area of a ball surface is 4πr2 is about 3 m2. So, let us select the area as 3 m2: it cannot be made smaller and it is not totally impossible to achieve it without burning the textile.

The other assumptions can be as they were before: 5% of light passes the weave and we set optimistically that 60% of light reflects from the anointed skin. Some 10% of the energy of burning magnesium is in infrared, that is, in heat waves. If the rest, 90%, of the energy of burning magnesium contributes to yellowing of the Shroud, we can get the energy density 244,800 kJ/m2 by burning 3*244,800/(24.75*0.05*0.6*0.9)=1,098,990 grams of magnesium. The time for creating the image cannot be much longer than 33 hours. If 10% of the energy of burning magnesium is in infrared, then the heating power is 24.75*109,899 kJ/33*3600 s=23 kW.

Are these figures reasonable or not?

Burning a ton of magnesium is clearly too much, but the amount is not so far from a possible range of, say, 50 kg of magnesium. Joseph of Arimathea had 100 pounds of myrrh and aloe with him, but maybe it was not exactly myrrh and aloe. We need improvements that cut down the energy demand by about 20 times. Article [1] mentions many factors, which can influence the yellowing process. One such factor is age. In [1] they noticed that after 15 months yellowing appeared. It means that before that time there was no yellowing and the energy density must have been smaller than the one needed for yellowing. Raising the temperature to 100 C° increased yellowing. Age and temperature may together give a 20 times improvement to the process. Additional improvements can come from lignin, rosin, humidity and so on. Finally one must notice that [1] discusses yellowing of paper, not of linen. I cannot show with this simple calculation that it is possible to form an image to linen through the textile and reflecting from an anointed body by using burning magnesium, but I can show that it is not possible by using sunlight. What should be done is to measure the actual parameters, which here have only been estimated: amount of light that passes through the weave, how much of this light reflects from an anointed body, what energy density is needed for image formation in linen, and what part of the spectrum of magnesium should be considered. It may be just possible to form the image in this way. Unfortunately the set of scientific articles in the best Turin Shroud website [6] did not answer these questions.

We can compare the above given numbers to the ones in [1]. The authors of [1] irradiated 0.04 m2 by 2 kW lamps. Here we irradiated 3 m2, an area 75 times bigger. Our arrangement produced 230 kW irradiation power. Divided by 75 it is 3 kW, fairly comparable to their 2 kW. As they managed to cool the papers, it should be possible to keep the textile from heating too much.

Lastly I turn to the problem how first century AD people could have got 50 kg of magnesium, which was not even discovered, at least not officially. The issue is that there are no documents that verify that people of that time knew anything of magnesium but there are many documents confirming the existence of magicians and accounts claiming that bright light was seen. Paul is one of them: he converted to Christianity after seeing a bright light. Some centuries later the Byzantine Empire had a secret weapon, the Greek fire. Nobody knows what it was, but it burned also in water. Magnesium has that uncommon property.

Long before the first century AD people were aware of magnetic stones. They occur naturally in some parts of Greece. They are magnesium oxide, MgO. The substance was later one of the substances used by alchemists. Smiths, who made steel for Damascus swords, must have known ferrosilicate (Fe,Si), since it is a byproduct of melting iron in the presence of quarts sand. If magnesium oxide and ferrosilicate are grounded to powder, mixed and heated to 1000 C°, which was possible at the technology of that time, they react and form magnesium:  (Fe,Si)+2MgO→2Mg+Fe+SiO2.

Magnesium is in gas form and the process requires a closed space. Today it would be made in vacuum. At that time, maybe they could have closed magnesium oxide and ferrosilicate mix into a hermetically sealed clay jar. The process spontaneously inverts if it is allowed to cool slowly, so the jar had to be cooled fast, maybe by submerging it into cold water. There is no evidence that magnesium was ever made in antique times, but they had the technical level to produce it.

Why I think the proposal of Serge N. Mouraviev, that light came through the textile, is worth studying? It is because the Turin Shroud is too good to be a painting and must have been made by some photographic process. It is not a normal photograph. In a normal photograph lighter and darker points are a result of illumination of the target and have a very minor relation to the distance from the lens or hole, as all points of the target are almost as far. In the Shroud lighter and darker points correlate directly with the distance of the textile from the body. If light comes through the textile and reflects from the body, we get exactly this effect: the distance between the body and the textile is small and shadows have little importance. Raymond Rogers in [7] may have opted for the Maillard process, but I discard as miracles all explanations, which propose a rare natural mechanism.

The reason is that a rare process might have been the cause of a medieval forgery, done after the Gospels were written, but if the Shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus, the rare coincidence filled a prophesy. Jesus drove to Jerusalem with a donkey and cleansed the temple. These were intentional actions, which fulfilled prophesies. Raisin from death may be predicted in the Jeselsohn stone (Gabriel’s revelation), but even if we discard this, Jesus apparently did propose drinking his blood and eating his flesh in the symbolic form of Communion. This is a reference to the Passover lamb, which must be eaten and the remains burned before the night is over, meaning that the lamb must disappear. Therefore the body had to disappear from the grave. While there is no prophesy of an image, a image printed to the burial cloth is still too much of a coincidence. Symbolic drinking of blood is natural, since redemption is in blood and redemption is the good message of the Messiah in the End of the Times. Therefore the miracles had to happen, but they could happen symbolically as blood was consumed symbolically. Was the Resurrection symbolic? There is a reason to believe so. Gnostics naturally had their theories, but they are too late and can be discarded, but there is the Epistle of Barnabas and the story of the choice between Jesus and Jesus Barnabas. Both refer to the great day of redemption, when two goats were selected, one sacrificed and the other driven to the wilderness.

The essential passage of the Epistle of Barnabas tells how the one driven into wilderness returns and people ask, is this not the one that we already crucified, since both were in so similar. As it is a Christian text – it was used by Christians, not by any sect – the sacrificed goat is Jesus. Who is the other goat? The text seems to imply that the Resurrection was a mystery play fulfilling prophesies.

This does not mean that early Christians would not have believed that Jesus was raised to Heaven. That was certain, since an innocent sacrifice will rise to Heaven, which is why many Christians willingly become martyrs. Jacob the Brother of Christ testified that Jesus indeed was sitting next to God and coming to judge people. Fulfilling prophesies symbolically was quite acceptable. The deeds set for the Messiah in prophesies were impossible, and it means that they are done in another way. Untying the Gordian knot was impossible, so Alexander the Great solved it by cutting. It was an acceptable solution. This is a difference between us and ancient people. We think that if the Resurrection was not real in the concrete sense of the world, then it was not real, but this was not so for early Christians. A person does not physically die in baptism, but for Paul the old soul actually dies. Redemption is in blood and while wine is not physically blood, redemption is real. The Resurrection was real even if it was a ritual, since fulfilling prophesies meant that the End of Times had arrived and all said by the prophets would be filled. Jesus had to be raised to brightness and the body had to disappear. What remains of the Passover lamb is burned. Whatever was done, it was done according to the scripture and as we have the scripture, we can find out what was done. It only requires understanding how they understood the scripture. According to a legend of Saint Thomas, he visited India and Jesus appeared in the body of Thomas. In the Gospels is told how two disciplines walked to Emmaus and they did not recognize Jesus. Only from his words they recognized him. Enough information has been given in Christian texts for understanding the nature of Resurrection as it was understood in early times.

It is for these reasons I think it would be very useful for Turin Shroud studies to measure the relevant parameters in the theory of Mouraviev. Without the correct parameters it is not possible to say if the image could have been formed by light coming through the textile and reflecting from the body and if there was a sufficient source of light for this process.

 References:

[1] Herbert F. Launer and William K. Wilson, “PHOTOCHEMICAL STABILITY OF PAPERS”, 1943, http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/jres/30/jresv30n1p55_A1b.pdf

[2] Jingy Wang et al., “Reduction of lignin color via one-step UV irradiation”, 2015, http://pubs.rsc.org/-/content/articlelanding/2016/gc/c5gc02180d#!divAbstract

[3] Mike Ware, “On proto-photography and the Shroud of Turin”, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mike_Ware2/publication/273294114_On_proto-photography_and_the_Shroud_of_Turin/links/5712442708aeebe07c039eb1/On-proto-photography-and-the-Shroud-of-Turin.pdf

[4] Serge N. Mouraviev, “The Image Formation Mechanism on the Shroud of Turin: A Solar Reflex Radiation Model (the Optical Aspect)”, 1997, http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/mouraviev.pdf

[5] Barrie M. Schwortz, “Is The Shroud of Turin a Medieval Photograph?

A Critical Examination of the Theory”, 2000, http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/orvieto.pdf

[6] Shroud of Turin Website (ed. Barrie Schwortz), http://www.shroud.com/

[7] Raymond N. Rogers and Anna Arnoldi, “THE SHROUD OF TURIN: AN AMINO-CARBONYL REACTION (MAILLARD REACTION) MAY EXPLAIN THE IMAGE FORMATION”, 2004, http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/rogers7.pdf

 

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