Italian scientists find puzzling image on back of Turin shroud

London, England, Apr 13, 2004 / 22:00 pm

Italian scientists have found another image on the back of the Shroud of Turin, reported The Guardian yesterday. The scientists from the University of Padua also exposed the faint imprint of the face and hands of the figure on the front of the cloth, which is believed to be the imprint of Jesus.

The features of the image are visible only on the outermost fibres of the fabric.

The discovery was reported yesterday in the Journal of Optics A: Pure and Applied Optics, published by the Institute of Physics in London.

Giulio Fanti, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Padua, and his colleague, Roberto Maggiolo, said they worked on the image from a photograph taken by a churchman in 2002 while the backing cloth was being replaced during restoration, reported The Guardian.

According to the report, some scientists have argued that the imprint could have been made by a "corona discharge" between a corpse and a wrapping sheet when the corpse was immersed in an electric field. Another scholar proposed that “the image on the cloth is the result of an intense source of energy as the body passed through the cloth, perhaps at the moment of resurrection,” reported The Guardian.

Believed to be shroud of Jesus

The man, whose image appears on the shroud, seems to have been scourged, crowned with thorns, crucified with nails and stabbed in the side. Many Catholics believe that it was Jesus, who was wrapped in this cloth after his crucifixion.

The authenticity of the shroud has been a point of controversy for many years. In recent decades, experts have identified traces of blood, serum, myrrh, aloes and soil typical of Jerusalem on the shroud. The weave of the linen has also been linked with first-century Syria.

In 1988, three laboratories in Oxford, Zurich and Tucson each used radiocarbon dating on a tiny sample of the cloth. They separately dated the flax, from which the linen was woven, between AD1260 and 1390.

However,  many scholars have  provided multiple scientific reasons why the radiocarbon dating is not reliable.