Is the Shroud of Turin in Relation to the Old Jerusalem Historical Earthquake?

TL;DR

This paper explores the hypothesis that neutron emissions from the 33 AD Jerusalem earthquake could have caused the Shroud of Turin's image formation and affected radiocarbon dating, linking seismic activity to historical artifacts.

Contribution

It proposes a novel connection between earthquake-induced neutron emissions and the Shroud's image formation and dating inaccuracies, supported by recent experimental and seismic data.

Findings

Neutron flux from earthquakes could induce image formation on linen fibers.

Seismic neutron emissions may explain radiocarbon dating anomalies.

Neutron levels from earthquakes are significant but below lethal doses.

Abstract

Phillips and Hedges suggested, in the scientific magazine Nature (1989), that neutron radiation could be liable of a wrong radiocarbon dating, while proton radiation could be responsible of the Shroud body image formation. On the other hand, no plausible physical reason has been proposed so far to explain the radiation source origin, and its effects on the linen fibres. However, some recent studies, carried out by the first author and his Team at the Laboratory of Fracture Mechanics of the Politecnico di Torino, found that it is possible to generate neutron emissions from very brittle rock specimens in compression through piezonuclear fission reactions. Analogously, neutron flux increments, in correspondence to seismic activity, should be a result of the same reactions. A group of Russian scientists measured a neutron flux exceeding the background level by three orders of magnitude in correspondence to rather appreciable earthquakes (4th degree in Richter Scale). The authors consider the possibility that neutron emissions by earthquakes could have induced the image formation on Shroud linen fibres, trough thermal neutron capture by Nitrogen nuclei, and provided a wrong radiocarbon dating due to an increment in C(14,6)content. Let us consider that, although the calculated integral flux of 10^13 neutrons per square centimetre is 10 times greater than the cancer therapy dose, nevertheless it is100 times smaller than the lethal dose.