Starship Asterisk*

What is the strange astronomical Voynich manuscript? This manuscript was discussed on the 2002 August 26 APOD and the 2005 January 22 APOD respectively found here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020826.html , http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/ap050122.html .

Any insight involving what the manuscript says, which culture wrote it, or even when it was written could be a breakthrough in this stalled historical field.

My hope is that the broad international collective experience and proven intelligence of the diverse APOD readership will be able to uncover some previously overlooked clue. Please feel free to post your thoughts!

- RJN

The discussion was continued here

Dr Nemiroff,

I have alerted a professor of astronomy in Texas who specializes in astronomical "riddles" and is a frequent contributor to S&T. His latest work was the precise dating of the marathon run 2500 years ago.

Ayi, that's fantastic! I really enjoyed that article on the dating of the original marathon. And Dr. Nemiroff, I think this is a fantastic discussion topic. I've always been intrigued by the Voynich Manuscript, yet never could identify what I thought was the logical conclusion. I'm interested to see what sort of new ideas get generated by your discussion.

~Neal

To see the ms go to http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/photonegatives/ and search for "voynich". Most of the pages are botanical; the astronomical (?) parts may be instructions for when to plant or when to pick certain herbs.

Heh. I spent most of yesterday researching the various online places for the Voynich Manuscript (I'm sure all the links Dr. Nemiroff's description access will already appear visisted on my browser!), and probably the best one I came acrossed was actually (and I doubt fellow webnerds would be surprised) the Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript

Some very plausible explanations there. The Johannes Marci authorship theory resonates with me, but I'm just guessing based on the various web pages I surfed...

Should make for an interesting discussion!

~Neal

RJN wrote: My hope is that the broad international collective experience and proven intelligence of the diverse APOD readership will be able to uncover some previously overlooked clue. Please feel free to post your thoughts!

- RJN

Nice troll.

The Voynich manuscript is a medieval forgery, probably created to swindle a nobleman. There are obviously multiple authors, and in one part, one of them gets bored and starts drawing naked chicks in the margins- like he's just going through the motions.

Well Im not a scientist but if i had to guess I would think its a calendar becuase it contains roughly 12 cloumns of stars and words. the circle might also symbolize the pattern of time (never ending). Just a suggestion..

Unfortunately, I strongly suspect that this "manuscript" is but an old hoax. We tend to consider ancient manuscripts as harboring inscrutible wisdom, but hoaxes are as ancient as anything ... e.g., see this artice from Scientific American:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID ... 414B7F0000

Hello APOD,

well, you asked for it and so, if you would like, please visit my website that contains my insight into the posible solution of the Voynich manuscrpit:

http://www.voynich.co.sr

My work has allready been published in a shorter form in "Planeta", Serbian Popular Science monthly magazine, on October 28th 2004, page 42.

Please note that there are many attempts to dechiperement of this manuscript and mine is perhaps the latest and the newest in a series of attempts.

Sincerely yours,
Adrian Nedelkovic,
Beograd (Belgrade) Serbia

The face is definitely Asian
Look for an obscure Asian dialect

Assuming this to not be a hoax as many such texts are, I would pose the following interpretation of the picture posted. The center is the moon with all phases superimposed. the radiant fingers represent the calendar months. The 8 to 12 small stars in each arm could indicate phase periods durring non-new moon cycles. The script actually looks like German script from the period and may be a Germanic form of Latin or coded to avoid charges of occult activity. Again if not a hoax, it probaple doesn't date prior to the 13th century. Has it been carbon dated? Have the inks been tested?

What about an horoscope? Since ancient times, jokers of all kinds wrote these things.

Wired had an artcile on it recently. Apparently, Gordon Rugg figured out how the manuscript was made. He believes it's a hoax.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/rugg.html?pg=1

Not to sound like a nut, but might Velikovsky's work be of some use in this matter? It would be of no use for a translation, but might be helpful if the odd constelations match.

Bruck wrote:Unfortunately, I strongly suspect that this "manuscript" is but an old hoax. We tend to consider ancient manuscripts as harboring inscrutible wisdom, but hoaxes are as ancient as anything ... e.g., see this artice from Scientific American:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID ... 414B7F0000

Following Scientific American's article, Wired had an interesting story a month later describing Gordon Rugg's investigation of the manuscript, his analytical method, and its application to other areas of inquiry.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/rugg.html

I would suggest you consult the people at Kew Gardens. They would be able to identify the plants, and it's possible that the sun image on APOD has something to do with planting and harvesting cycles.

These sorts of books and images also often have a theological subtext, particularly the circle with spokes and a hub

It looks like an astrology chart, possibly written in one of the Celtic languages. It could be from the area of Stonehenge, in Cornwall County in Southwestern England, in the ancient Celtic language of the Cornish

In all likelyhood it's a hoax, or it's a writing equivilent of "tongue". It has the signiture of an intelligent, well-intentioned monk who's been cooped up too long. Naked women? c'mon, looks like medeval porn to me. Believe me, I'm amongst the first to glom on to an unsolved puzzle such as this manuscript and give my all to reach the solution, but this one is doomed to rapidly diminishing returns.

....We'll see.

-?

I am wondering if anyone has ever put this up to a mirror or looked at it from the other side?

Some of the slant to the letters look backwards to me.

It's the sort of thing that a clever schizophrenic may make, the foreign language would be just thought disorder.

even a cursory reading of the manuscript and these articles shows that the patterns do no match the rhythms and structure of human language, no matter what encoding was or was not added to it.

this bugaboo keeps coming up because people don't do even rudimentary homework. please relegate it to the hoaxes and urban legends bin...once and for all. move along, nothing to see here

To see the ms go to http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/photonegatives/ and search for "voynich". Most of the pages are botanical; the astronomical (?) parts may be instructions for when to plant or when to pick certain herb

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It would seem useful to have a botanist try to identify the many plant illustrations and use that as a starting ground for translation.

My guess is the book is actually an alchemical text written in code. See Carl Jung's works on alchemy for reference.

In an article in Scientific American, July, 2004, a convincing case was made that the Voynich manuscript is not written in a code or an unknown language, but that the entire manuscript is an elaborate fraud. The article outlines how this could have been accomplished using tools and techniques available at the time the manuscript originated, between 1470 and 1500 A.D.

Richard C. Keech, M.D.
Torrance, California