The Shroud of Turin A new website aims to make available to Catholics and researchers a collection of photographs of the Shroud of Turin by a scientific photographer who was part of a research project that spent more than 100 hours conducting tests on the shroud.
The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth 4.4m long by 1.1m, which shows the image of a man tortured and crucified. It is held by many Catholics to be the burial cloth that wrapped the body of Jesus after his death on the Cross.
From 1977 to 1981, a team of physicists, chemists, pathologists, and engineers from universities and US government laboratories conducted the Shroud of Turin Research Project, which concluded that “the shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourged, crucified man. It is not the product of an artist. The blood stains are composed of haemoglobin and also give a positive test for serum albumin.
“The image is an ongoing mystery and until further chemical studies are made, perhaps by this group of scientists, or perhaps by some scientists in the future, the problem remains unsolved.”
The project’s final report added that “no pigments, paints, dyes or stains” were found on the shroud’s fibres, adding that “it is clear that there has been a direct contact of the Shroud with a body, which explains certain features such as scourge marks, as well as the blood. However, while this type of contact might explain some of the features of the torso, it is totally incapable of explaining the image of the face with the high resolution that has been amply demonstrated by photography”.
There are no chemical or physical methods known which can account for the totality of the image, nor can any combination of physical, chemical, biological or medical circumstances explain the image adequately.
Vernon Miller was the official scientific photographer of the Shroud of Turin Research project. His photographs, and magnified micrographs of various aspects of the shroud, are now freely available to view or download at www.shroudphotos.com.