Vatican Insider is reporting The Holy Shroud: One Big Bang and the body was gone. So will Telegraph journalism follow, as we might expect?
Giuseppe Baldacchini is a physician who has worked for Italian research centre ENEA for a number of years. He is also a passionate scholar of that mysterious object which is the Holy Shroud of Turin and in recent days he has published a book about his findings, which readers can access by clicking on the following link. Of particular interest is a fascinating theory he has come up with to try to respond to a series of questions about how the image on the Shroud was formed and how the body which lay wrapped inside the winding sheet could have disappeared. Baldacchini presents two theories: one, that the Shroud is a medieval fake which is useful in worship rituals and/or religious propaganda in the Catholic Church, like many other relics. And two, that it is the genuine article and really did contain Jesus Christ’s body, making it a witness of his Resurrection.
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So how did the body disappear? Baldacchini’s response is this: “The only phenomenon in Physics that can lead to the complete disappearance of mass, producing an equivalent energy is the process known as matter-antimatter annihilation (AMA). . . .
Giucchini or when antimatter matters…
…or when matter antimatters. More Shroud Big Bang Boom fiction .
Now that they have finally found the bosson of Higgs someone will rapidly develop a new theory for the Shroud
I see that after just two years research, Italian art historians have just confirned that over 100 previously unidentified works were painted by the medieval artist Caravaggio, all found in his master’s workshop. Surprising that after over 100 years no-one has yet been able to identify the mysterious “forger” who produced one Holy Shroud! We know it wasn’t Leonardo – he didn’t get born yet! And again it’s not really Caravaggio’s style! Or anyone else’s style for that matter??!!
To every skeptics who still think the Shroud is a very brilliant artistic forgery, I recommend you to read my recent open letter that was published on this blog : http://shroudofturin.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/please-dont-forget-the-evidence-of-the-bloodstains/
I know I’ve done this before and I know it can sound a bit pretentious to plog his own text, but I really believe this letter make a very strong and honest case against any artistic forgery hypothesis that can exist… Oh and by the way, I’m currently writting a more complete article on the base of that letter and expect the work to be complete in the next few weeks. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever written anything better about the Shroud… Stay tune !
Finally, concerning the matter-antimatter annihilation thing, it sound to me a bit like Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons book ! In front of all these science-fiction hypotheses concerning the Shroud, I never know if I have to smile or to cry… These days, I’m more incline to smile because I know that most of these people are Christian believers who are blinded by their faith. So, it’s understable to some degree and I think, in some cases, we can forgive them. But in other cases (like here), when it is obviously done to make a buck using the name of Jesus, I say enough is enough !
Yannick, in this new forthcoming paper, do you intend to address the issue of the directionality in image formation?
Hello Gabriel ! No. As I said, it will be pretty much the same message than my open letter about the evidence of the bloodstains but it will be a much precise and complete paper. For those who don’t know, the main goal of my open letter and of my upcoming paper will be to show with enough conviction (I hope !) that any hypotheses of image formation involving any kind of artistic technique have been set aside long ago by science and the authenticity debate concerning the Shroud would greatly gain if we could focus only on the 4 scenarios I’ve describe in my open letter (well, at first, there was 3 scenarios but, to be more precise, I’ve split one of them into 2 different scenarios). I really hope this upcoming paper could be used by any defender of the authenticity of the Shroud against any skeptic who still think (wrongly, like science have already proved) that the Shroud is some kind of artwork… I hope a paper like that will help to elevate the debate while pushing it in the right direction.
For the directionality of the image formation, I’m surely not enough skilled in this field !!! For the moment, I trust Rogers judgement about that and say to myself : if this expert (who was one, if not THE person who best knew the Shroud) thought that the hypothesis he developed has some chances to be correct regarding all we know about the Shroud’s image (including the fact that the image seem to come from a vertical projection from the body), it surely the best hypothesis that exist out there ! It doesn’t mean he was surely right, but it means that theoretically (and even from an experimental perspective), his hypothesis can’t be set aside for the moment and deserve that some other expert take the lead and test it even more…
Just a thought on the matter/anti-matter thing. The destruction of about 70kg of mass by an equal amount of antimatter would give an energy release equivalent to ten thousand 1 megaton nuclear explosions (rough figures – but you get the idea). This would not only have destroyed any cloth but a fair part of the middle east.
To aljones909; This is all fine and dandy, but, it assumes something was ‘destroyed’.
R
Spelling it out clearly: Baldacchini is saying that the only known physical process leading to the disappearance of mass (where’s the body gone?) is a matter-antimatter annihilation. Every matter atomic particle, is supposed to be paired with an anti-matter particle, so we have positrons (anti-electrons), anti-protons, anti-neutrons etc. The wonder is that there was any matter left over after the “Big Bang” which created the universe. If a matter particle encounters an anti-matter particle, they are both annihilated, releasing energy according to Einstein’s equation: E = Mc^2. AJ is saying, “Suppose your average 1st century Jew is about 70 kg, then destruction of the total body mass would result in a 10 GT nuclear explosion.” However, clearly Baldacchini must be on the wrong track, as this didn’t happen. The body disappeared, but several people claimed to have seen Jesus afterwards, unless they’re de Wesselow animists. If we’re going to confine our thinking to purely physical processes, then a parallel universe becomes a much more credible alternative explanation. Parallel universes are to me a stepping stone in scientific terms towards a modern conceptual idea of the “supernatural” world. I wonder what Teilhard might have thought of that idea?
I really don’t think Teilhard of Chardin was a good advocate for any kind of “physical traces” of the resurrection that would have caused an image on the Shroud ! Forget it !!! At least, please, don’t make him say things that he didn’t say. I don’t think you did that but someone else can be tempted to extrapolate while using Teillard point of view on the Universe. The fact is that his point of view had nothing to do with the image we see on the Shroud.