Word: original
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...shroud: How did the image of a man, plainly crucified and preternaturally finely rendered, get on it in the first place? Were the image not allegedly Christ's, the matter would be relegated to obscure academic journals on Byzantine textile technology. As things stand, however, the conundrum of origin and the slim chance that the scientific dating may have been rigged (not likely) or flawed (a better possibility) are being employed by die-hard shroudies to shore up their hope that their cause is not lost. Faith is ratcheting up the scrutiny on science to unheard-of levels...
...scientists retreated to their labs. In October of the same year, the Oxford team gave a press conference at the British Museum. To eliminate suspense, they had helpfully written two dates on a chalkboard behind them: "1260-1390!" This estimated span for the origin of the shroud's linen was later detailed in an article co-written with the other two labs for the journal Nature, which straightforwardly stated that the radiocarbon-dating results "provide conclusive evidence that the linen of the Shroud of Turin is medieval." Nuclear physicist Harry Gove, who helped develop the radiocarbon-dating process used...
...photograph of the image at age 15. "It just didn't seem like a work of art to me; it whetted my interest and rocked my agnosticism." He eventually converted to Catholicism and penned what is probably the most stirring hypothetical description ever of the shroud's possible origin. "In the darkness of the Jerusalem tomb the dead body of Jesus lay, unwashed, covered in blood, on a stone slab," he wrote in his 1978 best seller The Shroud of Turin. "Suddenly there is a burst of mysterious power from it. In that instant the blood dematerializes, dissolved perhaps...
...image that were pressed onto the shroud in an attempt to rub off some of its sanctity. Adler believes the image must have been triggered by some sort of radiation process. But he stays away from speculation as to whether such radiation could have been divine in origin. "You can't go to the literature and find an explanation," says Adler. "Science can never authenticate this cloth, because there's no lab test for Christ-ness...
Although such a policy would seem to violate the smokers' civil rights, Harvard's crowded living conditions prove otherwise. The cracks in the walls and doors of Harvard's many old dorm rooms allow smoke to leave its room of origin. It pollutes hallways and seeps through the doors of non-smokers. Thus, these innocents are put at a higher risk of smoking-related ailments by their fellow students...