The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [104]
“What do you mean?” Castle wanted to know, not sure he was following her explanation.
“If a cloth lies on top of a person and an image is directly transferred by contact from the body to the cloth, that image would be distorted when the cloth was lifted from the body and stretched taut,” she explained. “Let me show you a series of images that illustrate my point.”
Returning to her laptop computer, Bucholtz projected onto the screen several photographs of models used to produce shroudlike images by direct contact. One of the models, in particular, had been painted head to toe. When the cloth was lifted off his body, the image looked extended and distorted, fatter than the model and out of proportion to his body.
“I came to the conclusion that the image on the Shroud could have been produced only if the body somehow floated in air,” she said. “The Shroud rapped around the man’s head had to have floated above and below the body, such that both the upper and the lower part of the Shroud were pulled completely taut in a horizontal position to the body, so as to prevent any distortion of the image when it was transferred to the cloth.”
Returning to her hologram machine, Bucholtz next generated a three-dimensional hologram of the body of the man in the Shroud floating in midair. His arms could clearly be seen resting on his abdomen and his left leg was bent forward above the right leg; also, both legs showed the bending at the knee that would have resulted from the trauma of the crucified man raising and lowering his body to breathe.
After making a few more adjustments, Bucholtz caused the Shroud itself to appear in three dimensions, wrapped around the man, but suspended above and below the body in parallel lines. Everyone in the room could see the body of the man in the Shroud projected in space before them, as if they were watching a 3-D movie, but without the red-and-blue glasses. The long linen cloth was wrapped around the head of the dead man lying on an unseen plane in space, such that the Shroud stretched taut at a distance of several inches above and below the body, reaching down to the feet on both the upper and lower sections.
Bucholtz rotated the image into the room, so the audience could see from multiple different angles the hologram of the man suspended in the air with the cloth hovering above and below him as if in parallel planes.
“If you think about it,” she said, “the dorsal image could not have been formed so perfectly as it is if the man were lying on a rock bed in a tomb. His back would have been pressed down into the cloth and distortion of the image would have been inevitable. The same is true with the frontal image. Gravity would have pulled the cloth down on the man resting on his back dead in the tomb. Wrinkles and folds would have been inevitable. The amazing thing about the image on the Shroud of Turin is that there are absolutely no distortions. The muscles of the back and buttocks are not pushed in or distended from the man lying on his back. This type of image reflects no effect of gravity whatsoever.”
Looking at the hologram floating in midair as Dr. Bucholtz talked, Gabrielli was becoming more and more convinced he was witnessing just another version of a magic show, with the only difference being that this one was produced by a highly paid physicist with an expensive piece of advanced imaging machinery. Most magicians aren’t so lucky to have the resources of CERN at their disposal.
“The image we see on the Shroud could only have been produced if the image projected up and down simultaneously, from some imaginary plane that ran through the middle of the body of the man himself,” she continued. “You have to see here how the linen burial cloth is stretched out above and below the body as if they were two parts of one artist’s canvases framed and positioned above and below the body ready for painting. Now I will draw a plane through the center of the man lying on his back. From this plane, the image is simultaneously projected