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

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry

The Shroud of Turin was not a good candidate for Libby’s new carbon dating method because too much of the cloth would have needed to be cut away and destroyed by incinerating it to extract the carbon. But a new method using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry would allow the cloth’s age to be determined using a much smaller sample. And that is what happened in 1988. And Teddy Hall made his flat earth quip.

The radiocarbon dating results did stimulate debate. The first responses from shroud apologists were a series of poorly developed and scientifically questionable hypotheses. For instance, some suggested that a fire in 1532, which nearly destroyed the shroud, somehow changed that ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 and carbon 13 isotopes in the cloth. Others suggested that a biological polymer had grown on the fibers of the cloth and that this newer material skewed the results. But these ideas, when understood, did not gain much support among scientists.