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The Shroud of Turin, revered by Catholics as the sacred burial cloth of Our Lord in His tomb, is considered by some to be a hoax or forgery. Scientists who've examined it, however, understand that what caused the image to form on the cloth can't be reproduced with the current state of science.

After five years of conducting experiments on the Shroud of Turin, the Italian ENEA, the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, published a report that reads:

It should be noted that the total power of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts ).



The second thing that baffles scientists about the Shroud is the image on the cloth is a photographic negative, like film from a camera exposed to light. This was discovered in 1898 by Seconda Pia, an Italian amateur photographer, who photographed the Shroud for the first time in history. Concerning Pia, historians report, "When he took the picture he almost dropped the plate. That's when he realized that the image on the cloth is a negative. The lights and darks are reversed from what we're used to seeing."

When Pia took the picture of the rather obscure image on the cloth, the image of Our Lord was seen for the first time as a positive image, as when film is developed. This is even more astounding when one considers that photographic technology concerning negative film and positive pictures was discovered only in the 19th century.

The Shroud of Turin has been reserved as a miracle for modern science.

Watch the panel discuss the significance of this precious relic in The Download—The Shroud of Turin.

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