SUBJECT: A UPDATE ON CROP CIRCLES FILE: UFO1228 MUFONET-BBS Network - Mutual UFO Network ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FIELD OF DREAMS? - AN UPDATE ON THE CIRCLE PHENOMENA ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [Contributed by Georgia MUFON] Not far from the mysterious ring of ancient megaliths at Stonehedge, a new phenomenon is sculpting circles in the cornfields of Southern England. More than 400 times last summer, an unseen agent blew across growing crops, creating circular patterns in the fields. The phenomenon almost always occurred at night, sometimes accompanied by a warbling sound and a moving orange light. Inside each perfectly drawn circumference, the corn lies bent but not broken, with its still-growing stalks swept into a matted and sometimes woven pinwheel --turning now clockwise, now counter-clockwise. When viewed form the air, many of the circles form complex patterns, arrayed as rings within rings, bull's-eye-style, for example, or of chains of giant beads connected by bars and embellished with exterior arcs. If a circle is laid down early in the season, when the crop is green, the rapidly growing stalks soon pick themselves up and grow straight again, so that the circle fades from sight until it appears only faintly etched into the vegetation. Once in a while, a circle forms with such force that plants are apparently blasted out of the center. Researchers from all over the world are struggling to understand what causes the phenomenon and have written at least half a dozen books about the circles- but no one has arrived at the definitive explanation. The conflicting theories, amassing almost as quickly as the circles themselves, cover everything from extraterrestrial visitors and the testing of star-wars weapons technology to tornado-like atmospheric conditions and plain old-fashioned hoaxing. The excitement over the fields is recent, but the phenomenon itself turns out to have a long history in the English croplands. Indeed, many legends from the Middle Ages refer to circles that formed in fields overnight. Back then, pundits talked of fairies dancing through the corn, or of mowing devils who came in the night and cut the crops in rings. Over the centuries, some scientists say, circles have been laid down continually. But they have been seen only occasionally and reported rarely. Today, with journalists, researchers and tourists literally combing the countryside for crop circles, more and more have been found. Although circles have since been spotted in parts of the United States, Canada, and Australia, most have cropped up in a area of England called the Wessex Corridor or Wessex Triangle--a triangular tract of land about 40 miles on each leg in the southern-central part of the country. Over the past ten summers, the phenomenon has become increasingly widespread, with the circles forming more and more frequently, in more numerous locations, and in even more intriguing patterns. Some of the patterns developed over time, as in the case of a large circle found last May with three concentric rings around it. Days later, airborne observers spotted a fourth ring a thousand feet wide and embracing the others in its circumference, leading some people to speculate that a peculiar fungus or virus was responsible. Others have attributed the patterns to hedge-hogs, perhaps, or even hippies. "It is a mystery," concedes Colin Andrews, an electrical engineer and local government official in Hampshire, who describes himself as one of the three foremost researchers on the circle phenomenon. Andrews brings a brisk, British enthusiasm to bear on the problem, but his style of study has earned him a lot of enemies in the global scientific establishment. Some claim that his book on the subject, "Circular Evidence", co-authored with Pat Delgado, is rife with circular reasoning. For the record, Andrews says, "There is no question at all that the phenomenon is beyond physics and science as we know it to be." "There is now an extraordinary amount of data leaning heavily in the direction of some form of intelligence," says Andrews. I'm not saying extraterrestrial intelligence. But I don't rule out extraterrestrial intelligence." The evidence for this equivocal comment is what Andrews calls the "precise placement" of the circles. They never haphazardly lap over the edge of a field, he points out, though some circles stretch hundreds of feet in diameter. Instead, they array themselves to within a fraction of an inch of roadways or hillsides as though they'd been placed there by an unseen hand. Andrews tried to get the drop on the circle makers last July and August with his Operation Blackbird--a surveillance effort he set up on the Salisbury Plain, in the heart of circle country. His scientific equipment consisted of thermal imaging cameras, infrared and low-light cameras, and tape recorders. Andrews himself was home in bed when the excitement unfolded in the form of flashing lights on one of the monitors, but a telephone call quickly summoned him to the site at 4:00 am. At sunrise the observers could see circles alright, in the fields where the lights had been, but they turned out to be the handiwork of hoaxers. The thermal imaging cameras had picked up the body heat of the pranksters. "our location had been known," Andrews notes ruefully. (This is hardly surprising, because the British press grants ample coverage to Colin Andrew's ideas and activities.) Shortly after the grounding of Operation Blackbird, Andrews notes, British Army researchers got film footage of an orange light in the sky moving slowly to the east, dipping down to ground level, and then picking up speed before disappearing behind a dense forest. On the morrow, several circles appeared in the path of the orange light. The film may air in a BBC special. Other investigators disagree with Andrews and Delgado. Terence Meaden, an atmospheric physicist and founder of the Tornado and Storm Research Organization (TORRO) as well as the Circles Effect Research Group (CERES) says, "Their belief in a paranormal presence not only attracts hoaxers but makes it very hard for me to convince the scientists of the world that these circles merit serious study." Meaden first laid eyes on two corn circles some five miles from his Wiltshire home in August of 1980. He immediately fired off a short scientific paper explaining them in meteorological terms and has been refining his theory ever since: the circles are caused by whirlwinds, Meaden believes, that break down, hit the ground, and weave the crops into the tangled patterns of their spiraling winds. Electrical forces are also involved, Meaden adds. As the vortex sucks in air, it strips electrons off the molecules, turning them into ions that glow in the dark. Airborne particles of pollen, dust and sea salt hovering over the fields accelerate the buildup of electric charge inside the whirlwind, making it hum and shimmer with orange, yellow or red light. From a distance, the bulge in the whirlwind may look like ball lightning, and it's noise may sound similar to humming, buzzing, or even a siren's wail. Numerous other researchers embrace Meaden's theory, including Jenny Randles and Paul Fuller of the British UFO Research Association, who are the authors of "Controversy of the Circles" and, more recently, "Crop Circles: A Mystery Solved". Fuller is also the editor and publisher of a new scientific journal called "The Crop Watcher", which keep a weather eye on the circles phenomenon and takes a staunchly meteorological stand. As far as Fuller and Randles are concerned, Meaden's theory also accounts for a good number of UFOs sighted in Wiltshire. This is because the strong electrical effects that are thought to charge the circle-making whirlwinds can set compass needles spinning, stall cars, stop watches, cause power failures, and fill the air with cracking, buzzing noises. These kinds of events are also the stuff of UFO reports. Indeed, Randles points out, circles appear at sites of reported close encounters. But in reality, it is the circle phenomenon that produces the illusion of the alien spacecraft, Randles maintains, not some extraterrestrial beings whirling their messages over the ground. "We now have twenty-four eyewitnesses who all report an atmospheric vortex-- similar to a tornado or whirlwind," Randles says. This is an astounding number of firsthand accounts, given that 90 to 95 percent of crop circles are thought to be formed between three and five o'clock in the morning. (Other more mystically oriented crop watchers holding vigils in the cornfields have observed no such vortex but instead reported hundreds of "black rod-like things, or thongs," according to one account, "that jumped up and down above the top of the crop." As for the fact that the circles seem to be increasing in quantity and complexity, Randles offers a number of down-to-earth possibilities that could affect circle-making conditions, from pesticide spraying to the removal of hedgerows, to chlorofluorocarbon buildup in the atmosphere, to the depletion of the ozone layer. "We've been called the greatest party poopers in history," says Randles, who finds the geometric regularity of the circles no more astounding then the complex formations to be seen among snowflakes. "People would rather come up with the daffiest solutions possible." Some of the sober solutions were aired publicly last June 23, when Meaden chaired the First International Conference of the Circles Effect, which drew scientists from as far away as Japan and the United States to a one-day parley at Oxford University. Animated exchanges between the presenters and the audience, which included Colin Andrews and Pat Delgado, were the order of the day. At the end, Meaden told the gathering that decades more research might be required to pin down all the details of the full answer. "Just listening to these people was such fun," commented American attendee John T. Snow, professor of atmospheric science at Purdue University. "There was lots of discussion, but very little real study reported." Most of the "crop circle studies," he said, entailed visiting the sites and speculating on the sights there. Snow's own conjecture is in line with meaden's--that most of the circles are the artifacts of whirlwinds. Snow thinks many of the more elaborate patterns in the cornfields are hoaxes, perpetrated to keep news media interest in the crop circles alive. Says Snow, "There's probably an interesting meteorological phenomenon behind them that should be studied, but it's tough to do serious science in such an atmosphere of sensationalism." Christopher Church, an expert in tornado-like flows at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, also attended the circles conference and also goes along with the vortex idea--up to a point. "I think the very bizarre features, such as the rectangular patterns and arcs that look like photographs or sand paintings," Church says, "can't be explained by natural causes. You could call it hoaxing, or you could call it an artistic challenge." Church is sufficiently challenged by the problem to do some laboratory testing. He plans to construct a model of two to three square miles of the surface of the Hampshire countryside, where many circles appear. His tabletop model will miniaturize the area's horseshoe-shaped depression surrounded by hills. Then he'll put the model in a whirlwind tunnel, blow smoke at it from half a dozen directions, and see whether vortices appear. The key question, he says, is not whether vortices could create the circles in the corn, but whether they actually form as frequently as the vortex model suggests. The vortex theory, however, is not the only scientific explanation. Eying the circles from across the English Channel, optical engineer Jean-Jacques Velasco of the CNES (The French counterpart to NASA) declares that "no known meteorological phenomenon will produce rings on the ground, much less double rings, without touching the vegetation in the middle of the rings." Instead, he suggests, the circles may be the result of military tests of advanced star- wars weaponry. Indeed, when Velasco observed vegetation from crop circles under a microscope, he found that bent stalks plucked from crop circles looked as though they had been twisted and subjected to some form of heating. The heat source, he speculated, could be an infrared or microwave beam of high intensity. Such a beam could be produced by the powerful lasers used in experimental defensive weapons under development in the United States, the Soviet Union, and possibly the United Kingdom as well. The proliferating patterns in the cornfields, by this argument are the fallout from testing a new defense strategy. Although Valesco's ideas are roundly rejected by British and American researchers, Valesco will be testing the idea in his laboratory on a small scale, by conducting experimental test shooting of plants with microwave and infrared guns. Other theories range from the mischievous (tracks left by helicopters flying upside down) to the mysterious (warnings of ecological disaster chiseled in the corn in ancient Sumerian script). Some modern observers cling to the notion that the circles are the work of fairies or nature spirits. "I've been studying these circles for five years now," notes Archie Roy, honorary senior fellow in physics and astronomy at the University of Glasgow, a researcher well-known for his interest in the paranormal, "and I don't believe we have any real idea of what they are or what causes them." Roy is president of the newly formed Centre for Crop Circle Studies, which is charged with building up a national computer database of relevant facts about all the crop circles they inhabit, their size, and the meteorological conditions in the areas where they form. One of the center's first official acts was to meet with the National Farmers Union and draw up a "Code of Practice" for researchers wishing to inspect circles on private land. (Investigators are expected, for example, to ask farmer's permission before entering the fields, to keep the gates closed, and to refrain from littering.) The first issue of the Centre's fledgling journal of crop circle studies, called "The Cereologist", appeared late last summer and ran true to its editorial policy of standing "receptive to the news, views, and theories of any group or individual who is engaged in these studies, subject only to their courteous expression." Beyond the usual suspects (atmospheric effects, fairies, extraterrestrial, hoaxers), the journal gave reports from dowsers, channelers, and mystics. Novelist Patrick Harpur, a student of alchemy, offered this view of the crop circles; "They are like dreams," he said, "To interrogate them is to force them to lie, to interpret them is to diminish their richness; to explain them is to misunderstand them...Crop circles are like mouths that speak to us of the strangeness and depth of things--speak to the heart more than the head and to the soul more than the heart." =END= ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ********************************************** * THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo * **********************************************