In 1934 G. B. Alfano focused attention on cells’ residual trace on cadaverous tissues, the so-called "Kirlian effect" that living organisms can absorb and emanate electromagnetic energy. Before death, the body of the man of the Shroud certainly stayed naked on the cross for some hours being therefore exposed to sunlight; consequently, its cells absorbed radiations that emanated after the body’s death.

The vanishing cellular elements ability, during their residual life, to release enough energy to impress a cloth of linen is not scientifically proven and very unlikely.

The same theory was later advanced by the researchers D. Willis (1969) and J.-L. Carreño Etxeandìa (1976) making a clear reference to atomic energy. They thought the image was formed after and by consequence of a nuclear reaction that makes matter into energy. Of course, this theory can not be reproduced in a laboratory and can not therefore be kept into consideration.

In 1966 the british philosopher Geoffrey Ashe advanced the thermal radiation energy theory. In order to prove it, he heated a bronze locket portraying a little horse in the middle, he layed a cloth on it and obtained a blurred sepia image. He then thought the Shroud impressions could simply be burns and arose the idea that thermal energy could change an organic fibres tissue form and color. But there were immediate interpretation difficulties as well. The main objection was on the impossibility to explain how radiation from a dead or alive body, in a natural condition, could release enough heat to lightly impress a cloth of linen (rapidly if at high temperature or prolonged if at lower temperature).

It is also important to observe that, by tests conducted through heated bas reliefs, impressions were not superficial to fibres but visibile on the back of the tissue too (and this is not the case of the Shroud). Moreover, it was proven that these impressions are not indelible: in fact, they fade away at sunlight. For example, a bronze bas relief at nearly 220°C temperature has allowed the pathologist V. Pesce Delfino to obtain an image showing a burn area on both sides fading away after a short period of time if exposed to sunlight (fig. 4).

A.D. Whanger from the United States, relating to Ashe theory, got the image of a little coin in 1984 making use of electrostatic energy. Also the tests conducted by the Shroud expert Mario Moroni on ionizing electric energy showed how the damp cloth reacts in a different way from the dry one: in the first case he reproduced a scorched image that penetrated on the other side but in the second case the image was Shroud like. Moroni gathered that the electrostatic field due to natural phenomenon enables the formation of an image similar to that on the Shroud but only if the cloth, isolated on surface by myrrh or oily substances, is in a totally dampless place.