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Press Update - October 6 2008

Top Scientist calls for reinvestigation into authenticity of the Shroud of Turin

A new Carbon 14 dating investigation into the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin has been triggered by the BBC film, Shroud of Turin to be broadcast on BBC Two on Saturday 22^nd March at 8.30pm. 

Professor Christopher Ramsey, director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit – the Oxford Laboratory that carried out the original C14 dating test in 1989 that deemed the Shroud a medieval fake - has called for the C14 community and others to revisit the subject.

Dr John Jackson, a physicist from the USA, and a contributor to the film, has developed a new hypothesis based on information about C14 dating unknown when the Shroud C14 test was done 20 years ago.   This new hypothesis could explain how a genuinely ancient piece of linen could produce a distorted younger age.

Professor Ramsey has begun a collaboration with Dr Jackson to investigate the new hypothesis which has the potential to explain the discrepancy between the C14 dating and the age required for authenticity or links with earlier Shrouds.   

The details of this collaboration are reported in Shroud of Turin along with new historical evidence that places the Shroud earlier than the medieval date determined by C14 in 1989. Professor Ramsey says:  "With the radiocarbon measurements and with all of the other evidence which we have about the Shroud there does seem to be a conflict in the interpretation of the different evidence.  And for that reason I think that everyone who has worked in this area, radiocarbon scientists and all of the other experts, need to have a critical look at the evidence that they’ve come up with in order for us to try to work out some kind of a coherent story that fits and tells us the truth of the history of this intriguing cloth.”

Shroud of Turin is presented by Rageh Omaar and available for international distribution pending the conclusion of the new C14 tests.