THE SHROUD OF TURIN is going to be subjected to new authenticity tests at Oxford University.

Age of shroud of Turin disputed again
John Follain (London Times)

A LEADING expert on the shroud of Turin has won the support of an Oxford University laboratory for new carbon dating tests on the venerated but controversial relic, which was dismissed two decades ago as a fake.

[...]

John Jackson, a physicist at Colorado University and a prominent expert on the relic, has argued that the tests were skewed by 1,300 years because of high levels of carbon monoxide. He said many other elements of the shroud, including details of the image, indicate that it is much more ancient.

“It’s the radiocarbon date that, to our minds, is like a square peg in a round hole. It’s not fitting properly and the question is ‘Why?’,” Jackson told an interviewer.

Oxford has agreed to work with Jackson to reassess the age of the shroud. He will now try to demonstrate through experiments in his laboratory that the results were flawed, in the hope that this could prompt new tests on the relic itself.

[...]

This was already reported last May, but it does not seem that any of the new tests have actually been done yet.

(Via the Agade list.)