The Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (ORAU) will re-examine the Shroud of Turin to pinpoint its time of origin
As the newspaper The Telegraph notes, it was ORAU in 1988 that announced that the shroud was a late falsification of the 13th-14th centuries. Now scientists expect to correct their findings. The results of their research will be released on BBC2 on Easter Sunday, March 23rd (Gregorian calendar).
The head of ORAU, Professor Christopher Ramsey, explained the purpose of the project: twenty years ago, the calibration of the results of radiocarbon analysis was less accurate, and now scientists have more information about how the isotope C14 behaves in the atmosphere. Moreover, it is possible that later pieces of fabric - "patches" were obtained for the study. However, according to Ramsey, it is unlikely that the new results will be radically different from the old ones, but still they should be rechecked. The fact is that in 1988, independent dating of the Shroud was carried out by three internationally recognized institutes at once: ORAU, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. The scatter of dates was from 1260 to 1390 AD, as a result of a consensus about the age of the shroud does not exist.
In the documentary on BBC2, it is supposed not only to voice more accurate dates, but also to cover in detail the history of the so-called Constantinople and Jerusalem shrines, which are probably the same, etc.
