Not sure if this is the right place for this, but I am curious. I'm very interested in ancient undeciphered scripts. I notice Enigma@Home uses brute force computer power to crack WW2 codes, but could this also be applied to things like Rongorongo, Linear A, the Voynich manuscript or Indus Valley script? I don't know how deciphering these would work, but is there any chance lots of computer power would help? Maybe running thousands of scenarios until one figures it out?

I know an ancient language is very different than a decoded known language, but I would be super pumped to help historians read these writing systems. Can you throw enough computer use at these problems to help solve them, or would it be impossible?

Enigma works with a known algorithm and unknown variables, the project does a "brute force" using all possible key values through the algorithm. I'm not familiar with the examples you gave, but in order to crack a code without knowing part of the means of encoding it (the algorithm, a key, the deciphered message, etc) you would be looking at some kind of advanced experimental computing that probably would need nodes with a very fast connection between them. It might be something that quantum computing could tackle, but I don't see it coming to a BOINC project any time soon.

---

My Detailed BOINC Stats