Sunday, September 16, 2012

Unsolved Mysteries - That Have Puzzled Scientist for Decades

Sometimes it is hard to believe that unsolved mysteries still exist in this day and age. In the last century, humankind has made extraordinary technical advancements. We have walked on the Moon, uncovered the building blocks of life itself, DNA, ventured deeper into the oceans than ever before and invented the self-strirring coffee mug! However even with our amazing progress as a species there are still mysteries out there to which the solution eludes us. Here you will find some of the most puzzling unsolved mysteries in recorded history. Mysteries such as:

The Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich Manuscript is a manuscript written in the Middle Ages in an unknown language using an unknown alphabet system. Attempts have been made to interpret the document for over 100 years, but there hasn't been a single breakthrough yet. The Book includes illustrations of plants (with some of them being unknown to modern bottanists) and astronimocal information. It is possible that the book is the work of an alchemist who used codes to keep his discoveries a secret but, until the book is decoded, no one knows for certain.

Like its contents, the history of ownership of the Voynich manuscript is yet another unsolved mystery. The codex belonged to Emperor Rudolph II of Germany, who purchased it for 600 gold ducats and believed that it was the work of Roger Bacon. It is very likely that Emperor Rudolph acquired the manuscript from the English astrologer John Dee (1527-1608). Dee apparently owned the manuscript along with a number of other Roger Bacon manuscripts. In addition, Dee stated that he had 630 ducats in October 1586, and his son noted that Dee, while in Bohemia, owned "a booke... containing nothing butt Hieroglyphicks, which booke his father bestowed much time upon: but I could not heare that hee could make it out." Emperor Rudolph seems to have given the manuscript to Jacobus Horcicky de Tepenecz (d. 1622), an exchange based on the inscription visible only with ultraviolet light on folio 1r which reads: "Jacobi de Tepenecz." Johannes Marcus Marci of Cronland presented the book to Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680) in 1666. In 1912, Wilfred M. Voynich purchased the manuscript from the Jesuit College at Frascati near Rome. In 1969, the codex was given to the Beinecke Library by H. P. Kraus, who had purchased it from the estate of Ethel Voynich, Wilfrid Voynich's widow.

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