Skeptic

Gordon Rugg’s work showed that the Voynich Manuscript could have been hoaxed. Whether or not the manuscript actually was a hoax was another question. A key problem was finding a suitable type of statistical analysis. A breakthrough comes with the publication in Cryptologia this April of an article by Austrian researcher Dr Andreas Schinner, a theoretical physicist and software engineer at the Johannes Kepler University.Schinner analysed the text of the manuscript using specialist statistics capable of handling quasi-stochastic distributions, and found that the manuscript’s statistical properties were consistent with a hoax consisting of meaningless gibberish produced using Rugg’s method or a similar quasi-random method.

This does not prove that the manuscript is a hoax, but it strongly suggests that the hoax theory is correct. If there is meaningful coded material in the manuscript, then either:- there is only a small amount, surrounded by largeamounts of meaningless padding – otherwise the statistics would have come out differently, or - if there is a large amount of meaningful coded material, then it must have been encoded using a method which just happens to produce the same statistical properties as a quasi-random gibberish generator.

View: Full Article | Source: Knowledge Modelling

Recently leaked emails from the University of East Anglia that are believed to show a cover-up intended to maintain the notion that temperatures are rising due to human activities will notchange the UN"s policy on global warming."The leaked emails from the University of East Anglia will not affect the UN"s advice on global warning, said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN"s climate change body.

"

View: Full Article | Source: TimesOnline

A poll held by British newspaper The Times has revealed that less than half the population believe that humans are contributing to global warmingwhile 15% did not even believe global warming was happening at all."Less than half the population believes that human activity is to blame for global warming, according to an exclusive poll for The Times."

View: Full Article | Source: Times Online.

The Shroud of Turin has been reproduced by an Italian scientist in another attempt to prove that the cloth bearing an image of Christ's face is a fake. A professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia said he had used materials and techniques that were available in the Middle Ages. These included applying pigment to cloth and then heating it in an oven.

Tests 20 years ago dated the fabric to between 1260 and 1390, but believers say it is an authentic image of Christ. The linen cloth, measuring about 4.4m by 1.1m (14.4ft by 3.6ft), holds the concealed image of a man bearing all the signs of crucifixion, including blood stains. Tests in 1988 have been repeatedly challenged, and scientists remain unsure how the image came to be on the cloth.

Scientist Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to present his findings to a conference on the paranormal at the weekend, said many people believed that the shroud "has unexplainable characteristics that cannot be reproduced by human means".

But, he added: "The result obtained clearly indicates that this could be done with the use of inexpensive materials and with a quite simple procedure."

To view the rest of this article, please visit the source

Source