13 more things that don't make sense. Cookies on the New Scientist website close Our website uses cookies, which are small text files that are widely used in order to make websites work more effectively.
To continue using our website and consent to the use of cookies, click away from this box or click 'Close' Find out about our cookies and how to change them Log in Your login is case sensitive I have forgotten my password close My New Scientist Look for Science Jobs 13 more things that don't make sense (Image: Loungepark / The Image Bank / Getty) Strive as we might to make sense of the world, there are mysteries that still confound us.
Axis of evil Radiation left from the big bang is still glowing in the sky – in a mysterious and controversial pattern Dark flow Something unseeable and far bigger than anything in the known universe is hauling a group of galaxies towards it at inexplicable speed Eocene hothouse Tens of millions of years ago, the average temperature at the poles was 15 or 20 °C. Fly-by anomalies Hybrid life Morgellons disease. 6 Insane Discoveries That Science Can't Explain. We like to feel superior to the people who lived centuries ago, what with their shitty mud huts and curing colds by drilling a hole in their skulls.
But we have to give them credit: They left behind some artifacts that have left the smartest of modern scientists scratching their heads. For instance, you have the following enigmas that we believe were created for no other purpose than to fuck with future generations. The Voynich Manuscript The Mystery: The Voynich manuscript is an ancient book that has thwarted all attempts at deciphering its contents. It appears to be a real language--just one that nobody has seen before. Translation: "...and when you get her to put the tennis racket in her mouth, have her stand in a fountain for a while. There is not even a consensus on who wrote it, or even when it was written. Why Can't They Solve It? Could you? Don't even try. As you can imagine, proposed solutions have been all over the board, from reasonable to completely clownshit. Our Guess: Voynich manuscript. The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system.
The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and may have been composed in Northern Italy during the Italian Renaissance.[1][2] The manuscript is named after Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish book dealer who purchased it in 1912.[3] Some of the pages are missing, but about 240 remain. The text is written from left to right, and most of the pages have illustrations or diagrams. The Voynich manuscript has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers, including American and British codebreakers from both World War I and World War II.[4] No one has yet succeeded in deciphering the text, and it has become a famous case in the history of cryptography.
The mystery of the meaning and origin of the manuscript has excited the popular imagination, making the manuscript the subject of novels and speculation. The Voynich manuscript was donated by Hans P.