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Last updated: Thursday, 7 October, 2004 10:30
Crop Circle discussion
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John Lundberg
Crop Circles continue to defy explanation
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Are they a sign? Were they created by the weather, aliens or two blokes with a plank?

Join the discussion and tell us what you think.

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WATCH and LISTEN
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video
Researcher Colin Andrews: 20% of the designs defy reasonable explanation
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The BBC's Jane O'Brien: There are unexplained factors such as the lack of footprints
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The BBC's Francesca Kasteliz
"The latest in a long list of possible explanations"
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video
UFOs might fly using magnetic power which might cause crop circle formations
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BBC download guide
Free Real player
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SEE ALSO
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George Bishop of the Centre for Crop Circle Studies explains his theories

BBC Southampton's ghost section


BBC Southampton's psychic section

BBC Southampton's UFO Section
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WEB LINKS
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Lucy Pringle's Crop Circle website

Centre for Crop Circle Studies

David Kingston's Crop Circle website

Crop Circle database

Circlemakers

UFO, Abduction and Crop Circle website (iwasabducted.com)

Crop Circle Connector

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.

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FACTS
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In 1991 two landscape painters from Hampshire, David Chorley and Douglas Bower, claimed they started the whole crop circle hoax craze hoax in 1978, after drinking in a pub.

Ninety percent - and in some years, 98% - of the circles in the UK appear along the aquifer line (a layer of rock able to hold water), which runs from Dorset to Norfolk

One of the earliest reports was in Lyon in 815AD, and a late 16th Century woodcut depicts the devil mowing a field into patterns.
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tiny Some of your comments were answered by Crop Circle expert John Lundberg during a webchat session, which is now closed.


Steve, Somerset

Comment: Am I the only one who is struck by the parallel emergence of highly complex symbolic crop circles and computing power? Formations have become more complex and more precise.. and if you look at many you will see designs and accuracy that look like computer generated images. I can imagine that clever people have built and programmed a "crop circle" robot which when set loose in a field can do its stuff in the dark and with clinical precision.. this may also help to solve the greatest mystery to me.. how nobody has been caught in the act. We may be talking IT (information technology) not ET being at the heart of this phenomena.

<<Join the debate

David McManus,

Comment: Do you know about the in depth history of crop circles? As say "Were there anycrop circles before th turn of the century
(not the "Devil cutting wheat" in 1678, already know about it). Please respond quickly.


Andre, Ulm, Germany

Comment: I really wish that people could investigate more about crop circles (or any other subject) before jumping into any conclusions. Nobody should open their mouth and tell what the "truth" is without having the right knowledge to do so.

Personally, I used to believe that crop circles were made by hoaxters, and nothing else. It was just recently that I decided to take a look into this phenomena, and I am amazed about how much information I have found through books, DVD's, and articles in the Internet.

One has to be absolutely stupid to think that this phenomena is created by hoaxters.

My suggestion to anyone who reads this, and thinks that all crop circles are done by humans: Don't try to teach others your ignorance - read some books books about this subject!!!


Freddy Silva

Comment: So, another debunking job by the BBC.

Why don't you read the evidence in Secrets in the Fields, and stop wasting licence tax money promoting the human hoaxers?

A hoax is a fraud, so they must be copying something else, right?

I know you won't have the guts to ask this one but here goes:

"How is it possible for people with jack boots and planks to alter the crystalline structure of plants, and to superheat the water inside the stems, in a fraction of a second, distorting the delicate tissue of stems yet leaving the plants undamaged?"

But then, that would make things awkward, wouldn't it?
Answer: Sounds like you're referring to the work of the US biophysicist W C Levengood. It's interesting to note that several years ago crop circle researcher Colin Andrews sent Levengood some blind samples that had come from wind damaged crop and Levengood found the same biophysical changes that he was finding in crop circle samples.

To me this suggests the fact that the crop is laid flat and the stems are exposed to the direct sunlight is what's causing the biophysical changes.



Freddy Silva, Wiltshire

Comment: No, I am not refering to Levengood's work. I am refering to the superheating of the water inside the stems, as caused by infrasound. How do you account for that?

Also, In reply to your answer about Andrews sending blind tests to Levengood, I was involved with much of this sample gathering and I know all too well about the ability of people in a hurry mislabelling samples.

In any case, sunlight alone does NOT alter the crystaline structure of plants. An electromagnetic energy coupled with an acoustic pressure of several atmospheres would also be required. Explain that.
Answer:



ET, Space

Comment: What give you the right to trample on farmers land and ruining there crops?

Surely your committing an illegal act and you should be prosecuted?

And your also responsible for confusing genuine researchers who spend hours trying to find out the truth....your making their work much more difficult...why do you do it?
Answer: The research community tend to demonise us and caricature our activities. The crop circle phenomenon generates a lot of revenue for the Wiltshire economy people fly in from all over the world each year to view the crop circles. So much so that the local tourist board now actively promote the crop circles treating them as legitimate tourist attractions.

Farmers can also benefit from interest in the circle. For example, the "Julia Set" crop circle that appeared opposite Stonehenge in 1996 was so popular that it was stopping traffic on the A303 and was getting more visitors than the Henge itself.

The farmer put up signs and charged entry to the formation, apparently he managed to make approx £30,000. The amount of crop that was flattened was probably in the region of half an acre which would be worth - at most - about £100.

If a formation is not heavily visited the farmer should be able to recover the flattened crop by dropping the blades on his combine, it's no different to wind damage.

We have a good relationship with many of the farmers around Wiltshire. From time to time we're asked to create formations for the media or for commercial clients and the farmers we work with get paid well for letting us create formations in their crops.


Sam, Brighton

Comment: IN SIGNS THE STALKS WERE FLAT IN THE CROP CIRCLES BUT NOT SNAPPED.hOW?
Answer: The magic of Hollywood, the bent stalks that you see in the movie were props. According to Larry Fulton who oversaw the creation of the crop circles used in "Signs" they actually had to replace the flattened corn every three days as it kept dying.


Michael W, London

Comment: As a professional engineer first, and a crop circle chaser second, I was very interested in your formations. These are well done, consisting essentially of parallel rows of 1 dimensional raster scans. You don’t really even need a computer to do this – just squared graph paper.

Television imaging works in the same way, so the construction aspect of this shouldn’t be a mystery, although I suspect many people will marvel as to how it was done. I guess you really do this as an art form and I have no problem with that.

Do you ever marvel about the so called ‘real’ formations which exhibit truly baffling scientific evidence of energy absorption? Using x-ray powder diffraction, it was found that soil samples within the circles exhibit crystal growth that can only be achieved in a lab at temperatures of 600-800C.

This would reduce the crop to a cinder. Personally, that’s where the physics will surpass anything we can conjure as an art form. That is what really absorbs me and I cannot come up with any explanation for these phenomena.

Basically, my question is – do you concern yourself at all with such questions or simply treat crop circles as an art form?
Answer: Both. The three core members of our organisation - Rod Dickinson, Wil Russell and myself - are all artists and we view the crop circles that we create as our artworks. In a nutshell what we are doing is creating belief systems for other people to inhabit. We see all of the myths and folklore that build up around our work as part of that process. The crop circle phenomenon could be describes as the largest mass-participation artwork in human history with the media, the researchers, the circlemakers, the scientists and the general public all contributing to, and perpetuating the phenomenon.


John Callaway, Southampton

Comment: How do you explain the crop circles which appeared up to sixty years ago.
Answer: Doug Bower has always maintained that he took his inspiration for the formations he and Dave Chorley started creating in the mid 70s from a newspaper report about a swirled circle that was discovers in reeds in Tully, Australia in 1966.

At the time the swirled circle was described as a "saucer nest" as it was alleged to have been produced by a UFO that was seen to land in the lagoon. Doug and Dave's circles fed off of the mythology of "saucer nests" and it was always their intention for the circles they created to be viewed as UFO landing traces, which inevitably they were. You can find out more about the Tully case on our website

Reports of swirled circles go back way beyond 60 years.

There are reports as far back as 324 years ago. A 1678 pamphlet which depicts a "mowing devil" and describes an unusual luminous phenomenon being seen in a field states how the next day circles were found cut into the crop of oats.

I don't know if it was the result of 17th century circlemakers but it's this type of story that nourishes the contemporary circlemaking phenomenon.

Another interesting case of swirled circles being discovered 122 years ago in 1880 is covered on our website.


Elizabeth Foster, New Milton, Hants

Comment: Can you tell me again what the binary message was re the crop circle of an 'alien' with the disc produced on 16 August this year. I couldn't get all the words down. Thank you
Answer:
"Beware the bearers of false gifts and their broken promises. Much pain but still time. Believe. There is good out there. We oppose deception. Conduit closing (bell sound)"

If you want to check the binary message yourself you need to start at the centre of the spiral and note down a 1 if the crop is standing and a 0 if the crop is flattened. once you have the string of binary numbers you can use this handy binary to ASCI translator to turn the message into English.


Monica, St. Albert, Ab, Canada

Comment: I was able to stand in and view the Wheetabix circle you created. Frankly, it was messy -- not at all like for example, the Lotus one at Stonehenge.

Answer: The formation was one of the most heavily visited crop circles that appeared this year due to its location, right beside West Kennet Long Barrow and opposite Silbury Hill.

So I'm sure the lay was messy seeing as 1000s of shoes had trampled all over.

q: there is no art without risk / jean cocteau

Crop Circle discussion
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