Radiocarbon Dating
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Certain microscopic details of the images strongly suggest that they were formed by radiation: the superficial dehydrated oxidation of only the top-most fibrils of the linen. Further, the blood on the shroud is unusually red, also suggesting radiation. So, a radiation hypothesis explaining both the date shift to 1260-1390 and the formation of the images is attractive.
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Carbon dating can also be referred to as radiocarbon dating or C14 dating. Carbon dating is done by measuring the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 (C14/C12) in samples removed from the material of interest. The date is then calculated by assuming this ratio has only changed by decay of the C14, which has a half-life of about 5730 years. Like sand running down in an hourglass, with the amount of sand in the top half decreasing with time, the amount of C14 remaining in the sample indicates how long ago the plant was cut down to make the linen cloth. [Rucker 2020a, 2]
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The 1978 STURP research team proposed carbon-14 dating and devised a comprehensive protocol. A separate group did the testing ten years later using a limited approach, ignoring STURP’s protocol.
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In 1988, samples were cut from the corner of the Shroud and carbon dated at three laboratories in Tucson, Zurich, and Oxford. This resulted in an uncorrected average value of 1260 ± 31 AD. This value, when corrected for variations in the C14 in the atmosphere, produced a range of 1260 to 1390 AD. But multiple issues have convinced most Shroud researchers that this conclusion should be given no credibility. [Rucker 2020a, 2]
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The leader of the radio-carbon dating group, Harry Gove, admitted (in his own book) to a disdain for the STURP scientists, and he maneuvered to eliminate their association with the C14 dating project. The naturalistic worldview of the testers and their leader biased them toward discounting the Shroud’s authenticity and so suggesting the Shroud just is yet another sham religious relic. [Antonacci 2000, 193-196]
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In fact, the test coordinator (British Museum) asked one of the labs to make “adjustments” to its original calculated results—to make the dates correspond better to the other labs’ reports. That suggests a bias based on presumptions about the inauthenticity of the Shroud.
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The carbon-14 labs and personnel were largely unaware of all the plethora of persuasive evidence for the Shroud’s authenticity. So, they felt no obligation to explain how a 13th century forger could possibly have faked a sham shroud not knowing the microscopic details that we now know. [Antonacci 2000, 209]
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The raw data supplied by the three laboratories showed a consistent, linear, systematic error of 31 years per centimeter as the samples were taken closer to the body images. That is contrary to the simplistic hypothesis that the Shroud should show a uniform age. [Rucker 2020a, Figure 14] It is believed that the C14/C12 ratios were measured accurately but that something other than the decay of C14 had nonuniformly altered the C14/C12 ratios of the samples. [Rucker 2020a, 2]
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The Sudarium (see a discussion about it elsewhere in this compendium), the traditional head cloth of Jesus, was carbon dated to about AD 700, even though its blood patterns match those on the Shroud, yet its 2000-year history is independent from the Shroud. The neutron absorption hypothesis nicely explains this radiocarbon date for the Sudarium as well. [Rucker 2020a, 8]