Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

Flax Fibers

Flax fibers, from which the linen thread of the shroud is made, vary in thickness as well. But on average they are about 10 to 20 microns thick or about one-tenth to one-fifth the thickness of a typical human hair. Twist or spin together somewhere between 70 and 120 of these fibers and you get a single thread of the sort used for weaving the shroud’s linen fabric.

The layer or cell wall is thinner still. We said that Rogers had found an impurity layer and we might wonder how thick that is. Rogers had measured the thickness of the layer in places and found thickness ranging between 160 and 600 nanometers. That’s not microns; that is nanometers. Not millionths of a meter but billionths. That standard human hair that is 100 microns thick is 100,000 nanometers thick. If you could possibly slice that human hair lengthwise, from end to end, into 166 very thin slices, each slice would be as thick as the thickest coating Rogers found.  And the thinnest coating Rogers found was about one-fourth of that. The coating, in most cases is about as thin as the wall of a soap bubble drifting through the air. It is as thin as the glare proof coating on modern eyeglasses. Take a coin out of your pocket. Polish it between your fingers and thumb. It has a coating of oil on it as thick as the coating Rogers believes he has found on the shroud’s fibers. You can’t see it but it is there.

Hair is 100,000 nanometers thick. A flax fibers is about 15,000 nanometers thick. The impurity layer on the shroud is about 600 nanometers thick. The layer is only ten percent of the diameter of a red blood cell. That is thin, plain and simple.