The Shroud of Turin’s 1988 radiocarbon dating: result and disputed critiques

▶

Key facts

• Radiocarbon dating was announced by Willard Libby in 1949 and developed through the 1950s; conventional beta-counting required gram-scale carbon samples, while AMS later allowed milligram-scale samples.
• AMS radiocarbon dating emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s and was already established by 1988; calling it “unproven on cloth” is not supported.
• The three laboratories reported a calibrated date of 1260–1390 CE at 95% confidence.
• The video cites a three-day 1986 meeting in Turin involving Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero and argues that many proposed protocols were not followed; that interpretation should be attributed to the video.
• Some underlying laboratory records became public after a 2017 Freedom of Information request; the laboratories’ measurements and conclusions had already been published in Nature in 1989.
• The video argues that the 1260–1390 CE range cannot be reproduced without excluding outliers. Outlier handling has been questioned, but deliberate manipulation is not an established finding.
• The Shroud’s documented 14th-century history raises contamination and repair concerns, but burial is not required for radiocarbon dating and above-ground status alone does not make it a poor candidate.

← All stories

AI-generated text · images from the original sources · always verify with the sources.