Spoiler: probably not.
Vittorio Zunino Celotto / Getty Images
Reports today contain the exciting news that a team of Italian scientists have written a paper suggesting that the Turin Shroud may be the real burial shroud of Jesus, rather than a medieval hoax, because earthquakes.
The idea is that an earthquake shortly after Jesus' crucifixion released a large burst of neutrons, which both created the image on the shroud, and increased the number of carbon-14 isotopes (the ones used in radiocarbon dating) in the material. This would explain why the radiocarbon dating of the shroud suggests it was created in the 13th or 14th century (which matches when the shroud first appears in historical records).
So... could this be true?
Via dailymail.co.uk
The claims are based on "piezonuclear fission", a pet theory of the paper's lead author, Professor Alberto Carpinteri - that crushing solids (like rocks) can cause atoms to split and release neutrons. If this was true, you'd expect an event like an earthquake to release loads of neutrons. The only trouble is that that there's no reason to think it is true.
While Carpinteri's team claim to have observed high levels of neutrons after crushing rocks, "the experiments are badly described and no other groups have been able to reproduce them so far," nuclear engineer Ezio Puppin told Nature in 2012. The idea also contradicts a large amount of well-established nuclear science.
After all, nuclear fission generally requires the input of a huge amount of energy - slightly more than, say, hitting something with a hammer. Or even hitting it with an earthquake.
In fact, one recent study suggests (very tentatively) that the intensity of low-energy neutrons might actually decrease around the time of an earthquake.
Via youtube.com
