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Scientists shocked to find the image of President Barack Obama of the United States on the Shroud of Turin.

I was away from my office and in Los Angeles yesterday when the story broke in the media that an Italian professor had "reproduced" the Shroud using techniques that were available in the 14th century. Although I didn't have my computer with me, my mobile phone rang again and again with friends calling to read me the story, so I heard the news almost immediately. Upon my return late last night, my mailbox was flooded with e-mail, my answering machine was nearly full of messages and more than 20,000 people had visited the website since Tuesday morning. I finally was...

Barrie Schwortz 7 October 2009 EDITOR'S NOTE: I have been invited to appear on the Coast to Coast talk radio program with George Noory on Wednesday night, October 14, 2009, (early Thursday morning, October 15, 2009), where we will discuss this story in more detail. Check your local listings for the air time in your area. Also, watch for the next regular update to the website around the end of October.

Teacher Has Theory on the Shroud of TurinThursday March 24, 2005 1:46 PM By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS Associated Press Writer SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - Nathan Wilson is an English teacher with no scientific training, but he thinks he knows how Jesus' burial cloth was made and he thinks it's not a physical sign of the resurrection. In other words, in Wilson's estimation, the Shroud of Turin is a fake - produced with some glass, paint and old cloth. And that theory, especially with Easter this weekend, has so-called ``Shroudies'' a buzz. ``A lot of religious people are upset,'' said Wilson,...

Scientist re-creates Turin Shroud to show it's fake updated 3:41 p.m. EDT, Wed October 7, 2009 By Richard Allen Greene CNN (CNN) -- An Italian scientist says he has reproduced one of the world's most famous Catholic relics, the Shroud of Turin, to support his belief it is a medieval fake, not the cloth Jesus was buried in. Luigi Garlaschelli created a copy of the shroud by wrapping a specially woven cloth over one of his students, painting it with pigment, baking it in an oven (which he called a "shroud machine") for several hours, then washing it. His result...

Scientists have reproduced the Shroud of Turin — revered as the cloth that covered Jesus in the tomb — and say the experiment proves the relic was man-made, a group of Italian debunkers claimed Monday The shroud bears the figure of a crucified man, complete with blood seeping out of nailed hands and feet, and believers say Christ's image was recorded on the linen fibers at the time of his resurrection. Scientists have reproduced the shroud using materials and methods that were available in the 14th century, the Italian Committee for Checking Claims on the Paranormal said. The group said...

An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake. The shroud, measuring 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches bears the image, eerily reversed like a photographic negative, of a crucified man some believers say is Christ. "We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as the Shroud," Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the para-normal this weekend in northern Italy,...

I am extremely pleased to announce that our new non-profit organization, the Shroud of Turin Education and Research Association, Inc. (STERA, Inc.), has received final approval and 501(c)(3) non-profit status from the I.R.S. and has begun to function. As you may have noticed on the Home Page of the site, I have already begun the process of transferring the ownership of www.shroud.com to STERA, Inc., which will become the formal publisher and legal owner of this website in the very near future. I will remain as Editor of the site and become Executive Director of STERA, Inc. I have also...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI confirmed his intention to visit the Shroud of Turin when it goes on public display in Turin's cathedral April 10-May 23, 2010. Cardinal Severino Poletto of Turin, papal custodian of the Shroud of Turin, visited the pope July 26 in Les Combes, Italy, where the pope was spending part of his vacation. The Alpine village is about 85 miles from Turin. The cardinal gave the pope the latest news concerning preparations for next year's public exposition of the shroud and the pope "confirmed his intention to go to Turin for the occasion," said...

Pope Benedict XVI confirmed his intention to visit the Shroud of Turin when it goes on public display in Turin's cathedral April 10-May 23, 2010. Cardinal Severino Poletto of Turin, papal custodian of the Shroud of Turin, visited the pope July 26 in Les Combes, Italy, where the pope was spending part of his vacation. The Alpine village is about 85 miles from Turin. The cardinal gave the pope the latest news concerning preparations for next year's public exposition of the shroud and the pope "confirmed his intention to go to Turin for the occasion," said the Vatican spokesman, Jesuit...

To believers it is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, miraculously marked with his image. But the Turin shroud was widely dismissed as a hoax in 1988 when scientific tests found it could not be more than 1,000 years old. Now one of the scientists who first studied 12 foot-long sheet has spoken - from beyond the grave - of how he came to believe that it could be genuine. A video made shortly before Raymond Rogers died in 2005 has been discovered, in which the U.S. chemist reveals his own tests show the relic to be much older -...

New evidence suggests the Turin Shroud could have been the cloth in which Jesus was buried, as experiments that concluded it was a medieval fake were flawed. Radio carbon dating carried out in 1988 was performed on an area of the relic that was repaired in the 16th century, according to Ray Rogers, who helped lead the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STRP). At the time he argued firmly that the shroud, which bears a Christlike image, was a clever forgery. snip "Sue and Joe were right. The worst possible sample for carbon dating was taken. "It consisted of different...

Medieval knights hid and secretly venerated The Holy Shroud of Turin for more than 100 years after the Crusades, the Vatican said today in an announcement that appeared to solve the mystery of the relic’s missing years. The Knights Templar, an order which was suppressed and disbanded for alleged heresy, took care of the linen cloth, which bears the image of a man with a beard, long hair and the wounds of crucifixion, according to Vatican researchers. The Shroud, which is kept in the royal chapel of Turin Cathedral, has long been revered as the shroud in which Jesus was...

Benedict XVI’s announcement will allow millions of people to see the linen cloth that according to tradition was wrapped around the body of Jesus after his death, showing that “mysterious Face, which silently speaks to the hearts of men, inviting them to see in it the face of God.” Vatican City (AsiaNews) – For 40 days in the spring of 2010 it will be possible to see the Shroud of Turin which, according to tradition, is the cloth in which the body of Jesus was wrapped after his death and which shows the marks of the Passion and Crucifixion as...

As a child in Chicago in the early 1950s, I watched my first TV special about the Shroud of Turin---shown there on Easter Sunday. I was amazed by the mysterious linen cloth, when all we really knew was that it had the shocking image of a crucified man complete with what appeared to be blood stains and bruise marks, that the image seemed to be almost a photographic negative, and that the provenance of the Shroud was highly questionable. After all, a Bishop had written in 1389 that the Shroud was just a painting and that he knew the unnamed...

The Shroud of Turin is a controversial topic. There have been many documentaries aired on the shroud, but few if any have risen to the coherence and intellectual integrity of Unwrapping the Shroud:New Evidence which was aired on December 14, 2008 at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on the Discovery Channel. It was re-aired on December 20th with some minor corrections. I've been personally interested in the shroud for many years, almost half a century, and in that time I've seen many shroud documentaries and have quite a few of them in the form of video cassettes and DVDs. Shroud...

The Shroud of Turin is one of the great enduring mysteries of all time, with its authenticity debated for years. Many believe it's the burial cloth of Jesus and the only physical link to Him, while others maintain that it is nothing more than an elaborate hoax. In fact, in 1988, a team of scientists radiocarbon dated the Shroud and concluded it was fake, dating back to the Middle Ages (1290-1360), long after Jesus was crucified. And that's where the story stood, unchallenged -- until now. Discovery Channel's one-hour original special UNWRAPPING THE SHROUD: NEW EVIDENCE attempts to unravel the...

INTRODUCTION: In 1978, a team of scientific researchers (STURP: Shroud of Turin Research Project) was allowed for the first time to carry out a scientific comprehensive study of the Turin Shroud. Visual examination, macro and microphotographies, X-Ray radiographies; IR, visible and UV reflectance spectroscopy and photographs and UV-Vis fluorescence studies were conducted in situ. 32 surface samples (5 cm2 each) were obtained from specific locations using inert, non-reactive pure hydrocarbon sticky tapes for later examination. The results of the studies were published in different peer-reviewed scientific journals in the following years. In 1981, STURP officially concluded that: «No pigments, paints,...

Abstract The Sudarium of Oviedo has been studied intensively with a petrographic (polarizing) microscope. It is composed of pure flax fibers, and they show the same characteristics as the Shroud of Turin. The technology used to prepare the linen cloth appears to be identical to that described for Roman times by Pliny the Elder (Natural History XIX, 3, 16-18). Flax fibers are mostly crystalline cellulose, and the crystals have a fibrillar structure. The fibers are birefringent between crossed polarizers; however, the birefringence changes depending on the past history of the material. Perfect, new flax fibers show extinction (the segments between...

I became involved with the analytical aspect of the Shroud when Ray Rogers asked me for help in conducting certain Shroud image formation studies. He needed an alpha-particle source to complete investigation of possible image formation processes and some radiochemical calculations on the depth of penetration of an emitted alpha-particle into flax fibers. I provided him with both and he asked further for X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) measurements on a special sample he termed a “spliced thread” or R1 sample. The XPS measurements were made and he was quite excited at the results because they indicated the two ends of...