The Shroud of Turin Mystery – Background Information

On October 13, 1988, the world's press gathered at the British Museum in London for the release of the carbon-14 test results. When they entered the room, they saw the blackboard, above.

The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth bearing the hidden image of a man who appears to have been physically traumatized in a manner consistent with crucifixion. Some believe the shroud is the cloth that covered Jesus when he was placed in his tomb and that his image was recorded on its fibers at or near the time of his alleged resurrection. Skeptics, on the other hand, contend the shroud is a medieval hoax, forgery, or the result of natural processes that are not yet understood.

In 1988, an international team of scientific experts performed radiocarbon dating on snippets of the Shroud of Turin. The results showed that the famous cloth did not date back to the time of Christ's crucifixion in the first century A.D. In fact, the cloth seemed to have been manufactured sometime between 1260 and 1390 A.D. The team concluded the Shroud was nothing more than a medieval hoax.

In the years since the stunning announcement, Shroud experts and other investigators have called into question the accuracy of the dating. Stephen J. Mattingly, a Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio, also doubts the 1988 radiocarbon results -- though he blames not fire, but microbes.

Using Carbon-14 Dating…How does it work?

Any contamination with an object that was more recently alive will raise the relative abundance of C-14 atoms, producing an apparently younger age. In the case of the Shroud of Turin, says Mattingly, the younger contaminants were bacteria. "You might imagine that over hundreds of years or several thousand, the Shroud has come in contact with many thousands of species of bacteria and fungi and some were able to grow for short or long periods of time," he explains.

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The Shroud of Turin Assignment

Directions: Your job is simple. You will be playing the role of a radioactive dater. Through your extensive connections in high society, you have come across a patch of the famous Shroud of Turin. Knowing that the carbon-14 dating process done in 1988 has been controversial, you decide to use a new, experimental form of radioactive dating, using “radioactive M&M’s”. Here is your task:

1. Extract and purify your radioactive material

(count how many M&M’s you have)

2. Examine the half-life of the radioactive material by creating a data table like the one used in the penny lab.

* the # of M&M’s you have counted is how much radioactive material is left today  you will have to think of half-life in reverse and determine how many M&M’s were originally in the Shroud, assuming a half-life of 150 years.

3. Answer the questions below. (and enjoy the M&M’s after you have finished)

Data Table:

Half-Life ## of M&MsApproximate Date

Questions:

1. How many M&M’s would indicate that the Shroud was created sometime between 1200-1400 AD?

2. How many M&M’s would indicate that the Shroud was created during Christ’s time (100 AD)?

3. How is this process like Carbon-14 dating?