Ohio Shroud Conference Media Information

"Unwrapping the Shroud: New Evidence to be Rebroadcast on the Discovery Channel

The Discovery Channel will be rebroadcasting “Unwrapping the Shroud: New Evidence” on Sunday February 1 at 9 p.m. EST and again 4 hours later at 1 a.m.  (Check your local listings). It will be broadcast on Discovery’s regular and HD channels.

This Shroud of Turin documentary was first shown in December and received numerous positive reviews. Part of it was recorded at Ohio State University during a conference of about 100 scientists, historians and other researchers last August.

Discovery is featuring the broadcast on their home page. 

The documentary clearly explains why the previous carbon dating has been shown to be invalid by peer-reviewed scientific studies including the work of Raymond Roger and subsequently a team of scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

If you have wondered about the latest evidence concerning the shroud, this is an excellent production. Even if you are skeptical, it will help explain why many people believe it is genuine or are at least open to the possibility that it is.

Technorati Tags: Turin Shroud,Shroud of Turin,Christianity,Discovery Channel,Shroud Science Group,Joe Marino,Sue Benford,Ray Rogers,Los Alamos

Source: Unwrapping the Shroud: New Evidence to be Rebroadcast on the Discovery Channel

PRESS RELEASE: Los Alamos National Laboratory team of scientists prove carbon 14 dating of the Shroud of Turin wrong

COLUMBUS, Ohio, August 15 — In his presentation today at The Ohio State University’s Blackwell Center, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) chemist, Robert Villarreal, disclosed startling new findings proving that the sample of material used in 1988 to Carbon-14 (C-14) date the Shroud of Turin, which categorized the cloth as a medieval fake, could not have been from the original linen cloth because it was cotton. According to Villarreal, who lead the LANL team working on the project, thread samples they examined from directly adjacent to the C-14 sampling area were “definitely not linen” and, instead, matched cotton. Villarreal pointed out that “the [1988] age-dating process failed to recognize one of the first rules of analytical chemistry that any sample taken for characterization of an area or population must necessarily be representative of the whole. The part must be representative of the whole. Our analyses of the three thread samples taken from the Raes and C-14 sampling corner showed that this was not the case.” Villarreal also revealed that, during testing, one of the threads came apart in the middle forming two separate pieces. A surface resin, that may have been holding the two pieces together, fell off and was analyzed. Surprisingly, the two ends of the thread had different chemical compositions, lending credence to the theory that the threads were spliced together during a repair.

LANL’s work confirms the research published in Thermochimica Acta (Jan. 2005) by the late Raymond Rogers, a chemist who had studied actual C-14 samples and concluded the sample was not part of the original cloth possibly due to the area having been repaired. This hypothesis was presented by M. Sue Benford and Joseph G. Marino in Orvieto, Italy in 2000. Benford and Marino proposed that a 16th Century patch of cotton/linen material was skillfully spliced into the 1st Century original Shroud cloth in the region ultimately used for dating. The intermixed threads combined to give the dates found by the labs ranging between 1260 and 1390 AD. Benford and Marino contend that this expert repair was necessary to disguise an unauthorized relic taken from the corner of the cloth. A paper presented today at the conference by Benford and Marino, and to be published in the July/August issue of the international journal Chemistry Today, provided additional corroborating evidence for the repair theory.

 

Hat tip: Los Alamos National Laboratory team of nine scientists prove carbon 14 dating of the Shroud of Turin wrong « Shroud of Turin Blog

Shroud of Turin Conference at Ohio State University

 

News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Latina A. D. Rockhold

(614) 688-3310

rockhold.14@osu.edu

New Data at International Shroud of Turin Conference Precedes Exhibition in Turin

COLUMBUS, Ohio, June 24 — An international conference on the Shroud of Turin to be held at The Ohio State University will reveal new information regarding the controversial 1988 Carbon-14 (C-14) dating of the cloth believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth. The 1988 test gave the putative results at A.D. 1260–1390, but they were immediately questioned by many scientists as being inconsistent with other accumulated data on the Shroud. The Vatican recently announced that the Shroud will be exhibited in Turin in the spring of 2010, when millions are expected to see it. New evidence will be presented at the conference summarizing recent work by seven independent scientists of a world-renowned American research facility on Shroud samples adjacent to ones used in the 1988 dating. The research indicates that the area from which the C-14 samples were taken is chemically different from the main part of the Shroud, confirming research published in 2005 by a scientist who had studied actual C-14 samples. Due to the sensitive nature of the research and of the work of the research facility, the speaker and paper will only be announced at the conference.

“The Shroud of Turin:  Perspectives on a Multifaceted Enigma” will be held Aug. 14–17, 2008, at The Blackwell Hotel, 2110 Tuttle Park Place, on the grounds of The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.  The conference, which is open to the public, is being organized by the Shroud Science Internet Group, composed of about 100 scientists, scholars, and researchers from around the world.

The conference will also include presentations from five members of The Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), which had studied the most intensely-studied artifact in human history for five days in 1978. None of the data collected by the group suggested the Shroud could be a forgery.  If the 1988 C-14 test results were accurate, the Shroud could not be the actual burial cloth of Jesus.

However, in 2005, a member of STURP, the late Raymond Rogers, who was given access to leftover samples from the 1988 testing, authored a paper published in Thermochimica Acta in which he presented evidence that the sample used in the testing was not part of the original cloth possibly due to the area having been repaired.  Rogers believed his evidence invalidated the C-14 test.  While some researchers have challenged Rogers findings, there have been no rebuttals in peer-reviewed scientific literature.  Several new papers are being presented at the conference that will provide corroborating evidence for the repair theory, including two by M. Sue Benford (43016) and Joseph Marino (43016) whose paper at an international conference in Orvieto, Italy, in August 2000 prompted Rogers to undertake the research that led to his 2005 paper. One of the two papers by Benford and Marino will be published in Chemistry Today shortly after the conference.

Furthermore, speakers will present the findings of scientific analysis of dusts and particles collected during the 1988 C-14 testing.   In addition, there will be a paper by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Department of Evolution, Systematics, and Ecology Professor of Botany, Avinoam Danin, Ph.D., who presented evidence at the 16^th International Botanical Congress in St. Louis in 1999 that suggested that the C-14 test in 1988 had been invalid.  Dr. Danin, whose research places the Shroud's geographical origin in the Middle East. will present new botanical evidence that raises new questions about the Shroud's image-formation process.

For more information regarding the conference, which commemorates the 30^th anniversary of the 1978 STURP study and the 20^th anniversary of the C-14 dating of the Shroud, or to register, visit ohioshroudconference.com. Registration is also available by visiting ced.osu.edu/CED_conference.html or calling the Office of Continuing Education at (614) 292-8571.

The Department of Conference Management in The Ohio State University Office of Continuing

Education (CEd) specializes in providing meeting and conference management services — from pre-conference concept to post-conference follow-up — on a cost-effective basis to the university community as well as to private and public businesses and associations. For more information on CEd’s Conference Management services, visit ced.osu.edu and click on “Conference Management,” or contact Sarah Sieling in the Office of Continuing Education at (614) 292-8571.

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Media Inquiries

Please Direct all media inquiries to JMarino240@aol.com

More on the previous post about carbon 14 dating

An interesting story appears at LifeSite.net:

Excerpt: Shroud Dating May Have Been Inaccurate - BBC Interviews Radiocarbon Expert

NOVARA, Italy, February 5, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The techniques used in 1988 by three separate teams of scientists to date the Shroud of Turin to the middle ages, may have been inconclusive, a radiocarbon dating expert at Oxford University has told the BBC.

According to the Church official in charge of the Shroud, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, director of Oxford's Radiocarbon Accelerator, whose specialty is the use of radiocarbon dating in archaeological research, told the BBC that radiocarbon dating techniques have developed since 1988, and that the Shroud's long history of travel, exposure to the elements and handling could have skewed the results . . .

. . . In 2005 a second analysis indicated that the cloth sample used by the 1988 teams had been taken from a part of the Shroud that was not part of the original cloth.

The interview with Dr. Ramsey will be broadcast by the BBC on Easter Saturday.

See previous post for more information.

An interesting story appears at LifeSite.net:

Excerpt: Shroud Dating May Have Been Inaccurate - BBC Interviews Radiocarbon Expert

NOVARA, Italy, February 5, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The techniques used in 1988 by three separate teams of scientists to date the Shroud of Turin to the middle ages, may have been inconclusive, a radiocarbon dating expert at Oxford University has told the BBC.

According to the Church official in charge of the Shroud, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, director of Oxford's Radiocarbon Accelerator, whose specialty is the use of radiocarbon dating in archaeological research, told the BBC that radiocarbon dating techniques have developed since 1988, and that the Shroud's long history of travel, exposure to the elements and handling could have skewed the results . . .

. . . In 2005 a second analysis indicated that the cloth sample used by the 1988 teams had been taken from a part of the Shroud that was not part of the original cloth.

The interview with Dr. Ramsey will be broadcast by the BBC on Easter Saturday.

See previous post for more information.

Noted with interest

The following email to L'italoEuropeo from the Oxford University press office was published on L'italoEuropeo's website:

Professor Christopher Ramsey of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit has been working with a team from Performance Films Ltd making a film about the Shroud of Turin for the BBC.  The film will examine the evidence for the authenticity of the Shroud.  The film will also mark the 20th Anniversary of the original carbon dating completed by Zurich and Arizona laboratories as well as Oxford. All three labs gave a mediaeval date for the Shroud.

Another contributor to the film, while not doubting the validity of original radiocarbon measurements, has developed a new hypothesis, based on information not available twenty years ago, that he believes may explain why the mediaeval date for the Shroud is in error.

Professor Ramsey said: "I am always willing to consider any serious suggestions of why the dating might not be correct and to do further tests to investigate such suggestions.   In this sense, I keep an open mind - as I would about any scientific investigation.  However, my strong intuition, based on my experience in this field, is that the new hypothesis will not challenge the accuracy of the original radiocarbon dating exercise".

Experiments are being conducted to test the hypothesis and will be discussed in the film which is planned for transmission on BBC2 at 9:00pm on March 22nd.

See the next posting in this blog for more information.

The following email to L'italoEuropeo from the Oxford University press office was published on L'italoEuropeo's website:

Professor Christopher Ramsey of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit has been working with a team from Performance Films Ltd making a film about the Shroud of Turin for the BBC.  The film will examine the evidence for the authenticity of the Shroud.  The film will also mark the 20th Anniversary of the original carbon dating completed by Zurich and Arizona laboratories as well as Oxford. All three labs gave a mediaeval date for the Shroud.

Another contributor to the film, while not doubting the validity of original radiocarbon measurements, has developed a new hypothesis, based on information not available twenty years ago, that he believes may explain why the mediaeval date for the Shroud is in error.

Professor Ramsey said: "I am always willing to consider any serious suggestions of why the dating might not be correct and to do further tests to investigate such suggestions.   In this sense, I keep an open mind - as I would about any scientific investigation.  However, my strong intuition, based on my experience in this field, is that the new hypothesis will not challenge the accuracy of the original radiocarbon dating exercise".

Experiments are being conducted to test the hypothesis and will be discussed in the film which is planned for transmission on BBC2 at 9:00pm on March 22nd.

See the next posting in this blog for more information.