Modern Mysteries

Voynich manuscript has 'genuine message'

By T.K. Randall
June 22, 2013 ·  36 comments

Image Credit: (PD) The Voynich manuscript is a book containing strange undecipherable text and images that dates back to the 1400s. Regarded by many to be a hoax, the manuscript had disappeared for centuries until antique book dealer Wilfrid Voynich came across it in 1912. Despite numerous examinations of the text nobody has yet succeeded in deciphering what it says, even a WWII code breaker team were unable to make any sense of it.

But now a theoretical physicist believes he may have made progress on it. Marcelo Montemurro and a colleague from the University of Manchester have used a computerized statistical model to identify words and phrases within the text that appear to show some meaningful linguistic pattern.

"The text is unique, there are no similar works and all attempts to decode any possible message in the text have failed," said Montemurro. "It's not easy to dismiss the manuscript as simple nonsensical gibberish, as it shows a significant [linguistic] structure."[!gad]The Voynich manuscript is a book containing strange undecipherable text and images that dates back to the 1400s. Regarded by many to be a hoax, the manuscript had disappeared for centuries until antique book dealer Wilfrid Voynich came across it in 1912. Despite numerous examinations of the text nobody has yet succeeded in deciphering what it says, even a WWII code breaker team were unable to make any sense of it.

But now a theoretical physicist believes he may have made progress on it. Marcelo Montemurro and a colleague from the University of Manchester have used a computerized statistical model to identify words and phrases within the text that appear to show some meaningful linguistic pattern.

"The text is unique, there are no similar works and all attempts to decode any possible message in the text have failed," said Montemurro. "It's not easy to dismiss the manuscript as simple nonsensical gibberish, as it shows a significant [linguistic] structure."

Source: BBC News | Comments (36)

Tags: