John-B wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2020 2:34 pm
Today's UFO Files TV was about crop circles where three men who had admitted making all the crop circles since 1976 were challenged to recreate one from a photo in oil seed rape. They did it in five hours and it was quite a good replica. However, when the scientists looked at it they found that stalks were crushed and broken instead of neatly bent over as found in most "real" crop circles. Also, the real ones have holes in the stalk joints caused by sudden intense heat and elongated lower stalk joints which are graduated in perfect progression between the stalks at the centre out to the normal joint length at the perimeter. This has been found all over the world and the men haven't achieved this effect or travelled abroad.
This is a re-hash of stuff on TV in the 90s, with info from other hoaxers omitted (Bower and Chorley were not the only active hoaxers).
What the other hoaxers said they'd started to do, was later replicated in the 2002 TV documentary "Crop Circles: Mysteries in the Fields" in which MIT Aerospace Engineering students were challenged to create a crop circle within four hours that duplicated the radiation, the presence of magnetite, and the bursting of the stalks. Summary -
They designed and built several portable contraptions: a magnetron wave guide (a magnetron from a microwave oven), a ‘Flamschmeisser’ (a home-made water-pipe cannon, that shot iron powder through a ring of flame) so as to ‘spread iron molecules in the soil inside the crop circle’, and an incendiary bomb filled with iron powder. In just under four hours they created a 92 metre long pictogram consisting of a single plain circle joined by a straight line to a larger circle, 30.5 metres wide, containing a triangular diagram, (based on the shape of an MIT building). Their crop circle replicated the expulsion cavities in the stalks and the presence of high levels of magnetic iron particles, but not the radiation: however given that this was a first attempt by inexperienced amateurs two out of three of the markers of ‘genuine’ crop circles seems a reasonable result.
It's also worth reading this PDF
Note also that Bower and Chorley, who in 13 years (from 1978 until 1991 when age and the efforts involved prompted their retirement) had made as many as 25–30 fake crop circles and other more complex formations every year, stated that when crop circle ‘experts’ started to expect ‘different things other than circles’ they switched to providing diagrams, and then in 1991, a pictogram. Widespread publicity inspired many imitators, and during many of their nocturnal activities in the later part of the 80s, Bower and Chorley began to see other hoaxers at work in other fields.
It seems that, while natural forces such as a "dust devil" (small whirlwind) created the occasional crop circle well before Bower and Chorley, because they were relatively uncommon with little newsworthiness, they were rarely reported until the 1970s and 1980s when the media were more willing to report any ‘strange’ phenomena, especially where there was a possible UFO connection. Then, once the circles became media features a self-perpetuating band of believers and a coterie of copyists developed, each seeking to outdo each other. Bower and Chorley said that they became increasingly disillusioned, for as Chorley stated in 1992 -
people were having fun, we had lovely art forms in the fields with a hundred people ooing and ahing - but unintentionally they had spawned a major industry. Even worse, it provided the opportunity for a few clever individuals to appropriate the phenomena to their own advantage, and in doing so, to make a great deal of money out of what had been meant to be nothing more than a harmless prank.
John-B wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2020 2:34 pm
76 people have witnessed a strange ball or flash of light over a crop and seen a crop circle made in seconds before their eyes. There was a video of a melon sized ball of light flying over a tractor and the farmer later confirmed that he had seen it.
Makes me think of
THIS mixed with
THIS. The point is that people were making money out of this, tourism, pubs, hotels, even some farmers.
John-B wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2020 2:34 pm
Are aliens creating these light-balls?
No it's the
Avebury spirits - Avebury Stone Circle Orbs or "Visible Energy coming from the Earth"
John-B wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2020 2:34 pm
One crop circle has been proved as showing pi in crop lines in a circle which are different lengths with notches to show the place one number measurement changes to the next - to seven places of decimals. Others seem to show digital binary code, although a translation seemed a joke. The programme didn't say whether these were of human or unknown origin.
Note that the pi crop circle was in a field near to Barbury Castle which is less than 5 miles from Avebury. The crop circle with the joke appeared beside Wilton Windmill (about 11 miles from Avebury) and had 12 segments, within each segment there were 8 partly concentric rings. Each of these segments indicated a binary code which in Ascii transposes into an approximation of Euler’s equation. The only problem was that in the equation, "i" (mathematical symbol for the square root of -1) was actually "hi".
So not all the hoaxers are
CIDER DRINKERS who go out of the pub into a field with a plank and rope. Indeed, they now have to go to great lengths to plan and execute the pattern in order to get into the media.
A 2003 research paper found that Avebury is the epicentre for crop circles
and concludes -
Three factors have been identified in this paper as having a strong influence on the spatial distribution of crop circles in England: proximity to main roads, proximity to areas of medium to high population density, and proximity to significant heritage areas. The fact that reported crop circles are located in areas of high accessibility would seem to support the view that crop circles are part of a modern-day pilgrimage tradition, perhaps as British megaliths once were.
Full research paper in PDF
John-B wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2020 2:34 pm
I'm not glued to the TV all day; I managed to take the Dart out in a sunny break in the weather when the roads were surprisingly dry after all the rain recently.
However your posts are making me laugh, the downside is that my replies keep me glued to google and my keyboard for several hours