Jones Beene wrote:
BTW -- the implications of cloned DNA from the Shroud of Turin has
already been explored in (poorly written) fiction.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_Turin
In their book "The Second Messiah: Templars, the Turin Shroud and the
Great Secret of Freemasonry", Masonic historians Christopher Knight
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Knight_%28author%29> and
Robert Lomas <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lomas> claim that the
image on the shroud is actually that of Jacques de Molay
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_de_Molay>.^[33]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_Turin#cite_note-ReferenceA-32>
Jacques de Molay was the last Grand Master of the Order of the Knights
Templar <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Templars>, arrested for
heresy <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heresy> at the Paris Temple by
Philip IV of France <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_IV_of_France>
on 13 October 1307, and tortured under the auspices of the Chief
Inquisitor of France, William Imbert.^[34]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_Turin#cite_note-33> ^[35]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_Turin#cite_note-34> Per Lomas
and Knight, De Molay's arms and legs were nailed to a large wooden door
or panel, creating wounds similar to crucifixion, and after one period
of torture De Molay was wrapped in a piece of cloth in the fashion of a
shroud and left to recover, during which time acids in the traumatised
De Molay's perspiration created the image on the shroud.^[33]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_Turin#cite_note-ReferenceA-32>
This is supported by the hypothesis of Dr. Alan A. Mills in his article
"Image formation on the Shroud of Turin," in /Interdisciplinary Science
Reviews/, 1995, vol. 20 No. 4, pp 319--326, who calls the chemical
reaction auto-oxidation <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-oxidation>.
He also notes that the image corresponds to what would have been
produced by a volatile chemical if the intensity of the color change
were inversely proportional to the distance from the body of a loosely
draped cloth.
Per Knight and Lomas, De Molay was later executed together with a fellow
Templar leader, Geoffroy de Charney
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffroy_de_Charney>, into whose family
the possession of the shroud then passed, until Jeanne de Vergy, the
widow of De Charney's grandson, put the shroud on display at a church in
Lirey.^[33]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_Turin#cite_note-ReferenceA-32>
