“Well, corona discharge is a phenomenon which typically produces two superficial images
on both sides of a cloth exposed to such electric energy because the image formation is linked to the electric field variation in this area. I do not know of any other phenomenon capable of imprinting a doubly superficial image leaving the inner volume of the fabric as a non-image area.”
                                                            –Giulio Fanti

imageLouis C. de Figueiredo, in a comment on this blog, offered to send along some material about the subject of the doubly superficial image (second face):

I still have the old interview-article covering part of this topic in pdf and will send it to Dan later, leaving it to him to decide whether it should be uploaded. After having been advised from serious sources in the realm of Shroud studies that there is no second image, the decision was taken to store it for a while.

The shroud.com 1 December, 2014 update has put the latest interview-article on the “black list”, together with others that have had no peer review. I make it a point not to be anyone’s mouthpiece and do think that there should be explanations from whoever proffers any paper, whether scientific or historical.

Pictured:  Giulio Fanti, the subject of the interview.

At my request  Louis sent it along. Do read Science and religion meet in Shroud research by Louis C. de Figueiredo. Here is how it begins:

Professor Giulio Fanti teaches at the University of Padua and has been a member of technical teams of various International Space Missions. He is the author of the comprehensive and profusely illustrated book La Síndone, una sfida alla scienza moderna as well as more than a hundred papers published in Italy and in international journals. In 2004 he and a colleague, Roberto Maggiolo, discovered the faint image of a second face on the reverse side of the Turin Shroud using highly sophisticated image processing techniques. The discovery received wide attention after media reports and was published as “The double superficiality of the frontal image on the Turin Shroud” in the peer-reviewed scientific Journal of Optics A: Pure and Applied Optics, of the Institute of Physics in London. It did not, however, appear to have received due attention in Turin and, for that reason, may not even have reached the right desk in Rome.

One prominent Shroud scholar who has contested the finding is Professor Bruno Barberis, Director of the International Centre of Sindonology, however Fanti is only willing to entertain such opposition if it comes in the form of scientific proof against his published results. This need to transform claims into scientific findings was also seen by this author back in 2003, when told by Professor Avinoam Danin of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, another giant of Shroud studies, that he would only answer the doubts raised over the presence of Gundelia tournefortii pollen grains on the relic by Professor T. Litt if they came in published form.

It is thus obvious that there is a lot more to be done in the realm of Shroud studies, a new analysis of the Shroud being the topmost priority, conducted of course by all the well-known Shroud scientists, whatever their points of view. After all, it is not a question of faith versus the Turin Shroud. Meanwhile, efforts are being made to unravel the mystery and in the following interview Fanti makes an in-depth and up-to-date analysis of the current state of knowledge.

The bolding emphasis in the above quote is mine. Do read on.