Dark Knight said:
The Shroud hasn't been proven to be a forgery. The material closest to the image needs to be tested, as only the fringe material has been so far.
That's correct, DK, the Shroud has not been proven to be a forgery.
From this
link
It was not until 2005 that things changed. An article appeared in a peer-reviewed scientific journal
Thermochimica Acta, which proved that the carbon 14 dating was flawed because the sample was invalid. 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.
It was
Nature, another prestigious peer-reviewed journal, that in 1989, reported that carbon 14 dating proved the shroud was a hoax. Rogers found no fault with the article in
Nature. Nor did he find fault with the quality of the carbon 14 dating. He defended it. What Rogers found was that the carbon 14 sample was taken from a mended area of the cloth that contained significant amounts of newer material. This was not the fault of the radiocarbon laboratories. But it did show that the dating was invalid.
Immediately after the publication of Rogers paper,
Nature published a commentary by scientist-journalist Philip Ball. Attempts to date the Turin Shroud are a great game, he wrote, but don't imagine that they will convince anyone . . . The scientific study of the Turin shroud is like a microcosm of the scientific search for God: it does more to inflame any debate than settle it. Later in his commentary Ball added, And yet, the shroud is a remarkable artefact, one of the few religious relics to have a justifiably mythical status. It is simply not known how the ghostly image of a serene, bearded man was made.
Ball, who understood the chemistry of the shrouds images, rejected a notion popularized by many news accounts that Leonardo da Vinci created the image using primitive photography. He called the idea flaky. He also debunked the sometimes reported speculation that the image was burned into the cloth by some kind of release of nuclear energy from Jesus body. This he said was wild.
Almost all serious shroud researchers agree with Ball on these points. When flaky and wild ideas appear in newspaper articles or on television, as they often do, scientists cringe. Rogers referred to those who held such views as being part of the lunatic fringe of shroud research. But Rogers was just as critical of those who, without the benefit of solid science, declared the shroud a fake. They, too, were part of the lunatic fringe.
