APOD: The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript (2010 Jan 31)

[pav]

The object in the middle is neither the sun nor is it the moon. Seeing with a 3-D perspective reveals a ring.

[Redbone]

Yes, it is a ring. And the face does not look happy. The drawing appears to be that of a child. I'd also go with a a young Leonardo da Vinci.

[Ski-Me]

I'm pretty new to this type of discussion, so here's what I think so far.
It looks like it could be a calender keeping track of solar eclipse throughout a 12 month period over 3 years.
I get the 3 years from the 3 outer rings.
Or maybe it's just a 12 month calender with the red arms representing months, the blue representing day and the stars night. I count this calender as having only 48 weeks and the yellow colored stars, well, they're obviously significant, but I don't even have a guess as to why. The number of stars between the blue and red may also have an important meaning too.
That's the best I can come up with. Feel free to flame my opinion, just try to be nice. Remember I'm new to astronomy and I have a lot to learn. I'm sure this web site will help me out immensely.

Mike

[Ski-Me]

New conclusion. Since it's a ring, the man in the ring looks so unhappy that it just may be a diary explaining what led to the divorce.

[wonderboy]

It would appear that there is no consistency in the centrepieces of these circles, this may be for reasons unbeknownst to us but i found this on wikipedia of all places which shows page 68 of the book which folds out and shows three similar-esque circles to the one we are discussing. the point of interest comes in the last circle on the right which is the most similar. there are 16 arms coming from the "sun" rather than the 12 in our photo meaning the months of the year are out of the equation. I do however think it is some sort of rudimentary calendar and a mans take on days, weeks and months depending on the location of the sun and how many prominent stars were seen in the sky. I am aware that light pollution would have been 0 at this point in history therefore there would have been millions of prominent stars, what I infact mean is stars that were of more interest than others. its a strange one indeed.

[kevin]

the blue shaded areas would be daytime and the red pins would be the red or orange sun when it gets close to the horizon, therefore changing to night which would be the white pie pieces. thats what i see anyways.

[wonderboy]

I'm pretty new to this type of discussion, so here's what I think so far.
It looks like it could be a calender keeping track of solar eclipse throughout a 12 month period over 3 years.
I get the 3 years from the 3 outer rings.
Or maybe it's just a 12 month calender with the red arms representing months, the blue representing day and the stars night. I count this calender as having only 48 weeks and the yellow colored stars, well, they're obviously significant, but I don't even have a guess as to why. The number of stars between the blue and red may also have an important meaning too.
That's the best I can come up with. Feel free to flame my opinion, just try to be nice. Remember I'm new to astronomy and I have a lot to learn. I'm sure this web site will help me out immensely.

Mike

Damn you and your eloquent ways of putting things better than me, I had this idea aaaages ago and was trying to express it, i think the stars represent days of the week for the corresponding month. We know its 7 now, but back in the day 7, 8 or 9 would have been a pretty good guestimation particularly if the guy was only counting 48 months in the year.

Result!

The website address for the other stars is http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... 0f/68r.jpg

[wonderboy]

the blue shaded areas would be daytime and the red pins would be the red or orange sun when it gets close to the horizon, therefore changing to night which would be the white pie pieces. thats what i see anyways.

The stars actually get a fair bit lighter the closer you get to the sun if you look closely as well. Remember a night sky without light pollution. it would appear really white and bright with all the stars and galaxies and the moon and what not. perhaps white is his visual representation of the brightness of the night sky (an oxymoron in itself but a good one all the same).

[dgrace]

If the Voynich Manuscript is not a hoax, which I believe is the most probable explanation—then I think the picture has more to do with time rather than constellations.

Surrounding the central face image, the Sun, are twelve red radials, which could possibly be twelve months of the year. Moving outward, next we see the twenty-four white and blue radials which represent the twenty-four hours of the day. Next are the white radial divisions, which alternate between having text and stars. Here too we have twenty four divisions representing twenty-four hours of the day.

Lastly, we see three outer concentric rings filled with text, which are continuous except for a break at the twelve o’clock position. The outer ring could represent the first eight hours of daylight. The middle ring the second eight hours of the day/evening, and the third inner ring the night time eight hour period of the twenty-four hour diurnal cycle.

Or, the entire circle may represent the earth acknowledging its most characteristic twenty-four hour diurnal rotation on its axis about the Sun.

R. Grace

[marsmaid]

At first glance it reminded me strongly of Elvish characters and the drawing style of Tolkien's Father Christmas Letters - for whatever that may be worth. My gut feeling also says "hoax". some people are creative for creativities sake

[Mousira]

In some ways, the text seems similar to Arabic, only inverted. So I believe it may be possible to say that the text in whole is written backwards.
There is similar words, meaning these would be related to filler words. (The, And, etc...)

As for the symbol in the middle, i believe it's both sun and moon. Relating to the time of day. Once around for the first 12 hours, then again for the second half. Relating to AM and PM.

Just thoughts, anyway.

edit: spelling. Still waking up -.-

[kevin]

I noticed alot of the words look similar, like only 1 or 2 (symbals/letters) off.

[neufer]

The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript

• • OTTOMAN empire
  
  Sun, from the Falnama, Iran, Safavid period, 1580s
  opaque watercolour and gold on paper, 39.5 x 24.5 cm,
  Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul

Falnama: The Book of Omens

<<Whether by consulting the position of the planets, casting horoscopes, or interpreting dreams, the art of divination was widely practiced throughout the Islamic world. The most splendid tools ever devised to foretell the future were illustrated texts known as the Falnama (Book of omens). Notable for their monumental size, brilliantly painted compositions, and unusual subject matter, the manuscripts, created in Safavid Iran and Ottoman Turkey in the 16th and early 17th centuries, are the center piece of Falnama: The Book of Omens.>>

[Dianna Huntress]

Agreed that it is the Moon with phases, face & the Sun seemingly at an eclipse but it could mean for night or day use. Counting up the stars in each of the 12 segments for asterisms is going to take some time. The circles being planet depictions possibly at the date it was concieved also will take some time. I should like to point out that considering the circles & segments, even the writing were very carefully drawn, the colouring in seems to have been added by someone else maybe at a later date hiding maybe more script. The illumni started in the area this originated & maybe before Italy in its barrage of seperate states had a lesser known language which was used. I'll stop short of suggesting it would be an excellent centre piece for any marble foor plan or throwing a pebble on it for getting a prediction or childs colour or number & listen to others remarks with interest. Thanks APOD for the fun conunderum.

[jvsvh29]

The July 2004 edition of Scientific American magazine included an article analyzing the Voynich Manuscript, concluding that the text is gibberish. http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... ic-2004-07

[The Code]

The July 2004 edition of Scientific American magazine included an article analyzing the Voynich Manuscript, concluding that the text is gibberish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibberish

[polymath]

The first question that comes to my mind is what is the function of the Voynich manuscript. Or as Louis Sullivan coined the phrase "Form ever follows function."

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic,
Of all things physical and metaphysical,
Of all things human and all things super-human,
Of all true manifestations of the head,
Of the heart, of the soul,
That the life is recognizable in its expression,
That form ever follows function. This is the law.

I see two possible opposite functions; to conceal information from prying eyes, to deceive curious eyes. The eclectic nature of the illustrations in the Voynich manuscript suggest neither can be ruled out without deciphering the whole. If intended to conceal information, it does a damn good job of it. If intended to deceive, it also does a damn good job. Perhaps millions of man-hours have been expended in its lifetime seeking answers to what it means, if it means anything.

The particular manuscript page posted at APOD 01/31/2010, to me, resembles a compass rose depicting an annular eclipse. In general, though, I suspect the manuscript is a journal of wild speculations contrived to be understood exclusively by its creator, Perhaps an emotionally disturbed individual who maundered through life, in part, in an imaginary ecstasy. Paranoid, delusional, megalomaniacal, perhaps. Under a toxic influence, perhaps.

Anyway, my conclusion is it's an entertainment for its creator, in making, in experiencing, and in possessing it. If it were ever deciphered, it would likely make little practical or logical sense, but have an underlying rationale appreciable as a work of creative vision.

[FieryIce]

Too bad you banned craterchains, you might have gotten some where with this think tank.

The book mentioned in the youtube ...

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

well the book, The Voynich Manuscript An. Elegant. Enigma, can be found at: http://www.nsa.gov/about/_files/cryptol ... script.pdf
good luck

[Spencer]

Hi folks, Here is yet another opinion....

I agree, the page on APOD today is a representation of an eclipse! The book over all has been in the corner of my mind since I first encountered it on APOD some time ago. Thanx to wikkimedia we now have access to the full manuscript!!!

A Hoax, not likely, way to much effort. Davinci, Doubt it, the biological references to plants suggest Gregor Mendal or another learned member of the aristocracy with knowledge of plant biology Davinci was more about animal biology.

Perhaps the Franciscan, Roger Becon(SP?).

The overall tone of the manuscript suggest it was teaching natural philosophy to leaders of lay people in an effort to explain what was considered mystical/Magical. The timing was such that the catholic church was suppressing such thot!

I would like to cross refrence the text to languages that were spoken but not written around that time. Similar to reading the seriac(SP) Version of the bible because it was closest to aramaic (the language Jesus spoke).

My thot is that the manuscript was a written form of an oral language in an attempt to share with lay people Scientific knowledge that was being kept from them by catholic suppression.

[keshlam]

The hoax or alchemy proposals seem equally plausible to me. Expensive hoax, in time invested... but given the price it might have commanded, perhaps worth the effort.

I don't entirely buy the assertion that the text is too statistically consistent to be fake; I can produce glossolalia which sounds plausible phonetically, and a word-substitution code would have the right statistics at that level... but the text may carry no more sense than the classic "colorless green ideas sleep furiously". (Or an extended rant upon "he who buys this book is a fool.") All the stats screen out is *sloppy* fakery.

On the other hand, once one assumes that it is a code rather than a cypher, possibly with elided words and possibly with alchemical references (which do read as nonsense if one doesn't know the conventions), that does suggest that there may be meaning... and suggests a possible approach to analysis.

As to this APOD being "not scientific" -- well, alchemy is the root of chemistry in both the practical and linguistic senses. And history and linguistics are sciences, despite their retrospective nature -- in some sense, astronomy itself is a retrospective science, since all the "experiments" happened so long ago. And *if* the astronomical references in the diagrams might provide any assistance to decoding this text, it certainly makes sense to invite folks with an interest in this topic to cast an eye over it. I consider this as legit an APOD as a picture and discussion of Stonehenge's observatory functions -- or of the mechanics of the space program, which are arguably engineering rather than science and which aren't directly astronomical.

[skateboardkid]

Maybe it is so secretive because it is a personal diary. The drawings are there, like we all do when scribbling on top of our work. Hence, they make no sense to you guys. The language was coded so no one could read the personal entries. Could we all be over thinking it? Remember, they had no television then, and would be a neat way to pass time.

[nyingjey]

I looked at some pages from the manuscript online (amazing modern technology)

http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_cro ... htype=ITEM

My impression is that it reads right to left and bottom to top. It would be useful to take a look at it in a mirror as it reminds me of deVinci's backward writing.

It feels like it is just notes. If we did decipher it, it wouldn't be much interest to us in terms of content.

My herb instructor said that there was a period of time where the plants were not drawn accurately. It had to do with religious beliefs. To accurately draw the plants was to put oneself on the same pedestal as God (if I remember the explanation correctly). So it is not unusual for the plants to be drawn inaccurately if it is from that period of time.

[solrey]

I've been around botanists and herbalists long enough to instantly recognize what this manuscript is.
The first part of the manuscript is descriptions of plants, likely medicinal herbs. The second part is astronomical/astrological and the third part appears to be "recipes" for "elixirs" (medicines) using the plants depicted in the first part. The language strikes me as some obscure form of Gaelic perhaps.

I believe the astronomical/astrological section is just a guide on when to make the recipes, which was a critical aspect of alchemy. There might also be information in that section on the timing of planting and/or harvesting the medicinal plants.
It makes sense in the order of the sections in the manuscript; info about specific plants, info about when to make the elixirs from those plants and the last section are the recipes for those elixirs.

A page from the first section describing a specific plant:


A page from the astronomical/astrological section:


A page from the "recipe" section:


If this is indeed a treatise written by a respected alchemist/herbalist like Bacon, it would have enormous value in those times, so the high price paid by Rudolph II is understandable.

peace,
Tim

[neufer]

The book mentioned in youtube

The rest of the story:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhNfWUd_g_4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLlQyZolA7c&NR=1

<<[ John Dee (13 July 1527–1608 or 1609) ] has been defamed through the centuries as a necromancer, but it's the opinion of many writers that his angelic-cabalistic- alchemical work, his Philosophers Stone, the Monas Hieroglyphica (1564) may have been a cover for covert operations carried on in the name of her majesty. The 007 was the insignia number that Elizabeth was to use for private communiques between her Court and Dee.

• 

Dee signed his letters with two circles symbolising his own two eyes and indicating that he was the secret eyes of the Queen. The two circles are guarded by what may be considered a square root sign or an elongated seven. For Dee, seven was a sacred cabbalistic and lucky number.>>

Monas Hieroglyphica 1564 : Shakespeare born on St. George's Day (Dr. Faustus author born same year)
Chymical Wedding 1616 : Both Shakespeare & Cervantes die on St. George's Day

St. George: patron saint of England & Portugal (Both countries persecuted by Spain]

[omid]

I am curious enough to put this put there and ask for feedback. The APOD shows a picture from the manuscript and says it is somehow related to the sun. Does anyone else disagree with this? To me, it very much looks like the moon. If you look at the lines that are drawn on the figure in the center, I see the phases of the moon. That's just my take, anyone else care to share why it is thought of as the sun...