On Wednesday, July 14 a guest on William Henry's Revelations offered the opinion that most of the crop formations of the astonishing 2009 season were probably manmade. After the program, Whitley Strieber commented privately that what was needed was a formation so extraordinary that it ended the debate, and enabled us all to begin to address the much larger question of what they REALLY are. Between 4:00AM and 5:18AM English Summer Time on the 14th, in the famous east field near Alton Barnes, just such a formation had appeared. Or did it?
Here's a link to the article: http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=7708
Crop circles have always fascinated me. Some you can tell are man made. Others leave you scratching your head.
(http://www.unknowncountry.com/img/news/072009/eastfield-1.jpg)
I admit it's beautiful. However, whose opinion is it that it can't be made in a few hours (much less days!). The two spiral arms both end conveniently at demarcations in the field. (I guess they're tractor tread marks?) So too does the main axis for the weft. From overhead, you can see a very pronounced perimeter circumscribed. I've never made one of these, but I'm fairly certain that, with the right number of participants in night-vision goggles, with at least two of them in possession of a 42 foot rope to map out the geometry, you could quickly inscribe a circle with an 84-foot diameter whose radius is determined by that main central tractor tread. Use the central tractor tread to select diametrically opposite points on the circumference of the circle, and then us these as the center points of new circles so that two more 84 foot diameter circles can be partially circumscribed from those points, and you get those two "spiral arms." The rest of the job merely entails sneaking people in and out of those spiral arms or tractor treads, into the main circle, so that they can do their frantically paced warping and wefting. Then everyone heads to an all-night pub in the West End of London to laugh about it and contact the media as soon as the phone lines open in the morning.
Beautiful--yes. Extraterrestrial? Nah. The choice of materials for crop circles is inherently suspicious, anyways. I realize there are "ice circles" and "snow circles," as well, but the choice of wheat and other grasses seems selected more for the convenience of human artisans. And when, exactly, did this phenomenon begin? Right after Erich von D?niken published his famous 1968 book of sophistry about the Nazca Lines, mysterious petroglyphs and other "mysteries" of the ancient world. You just can't ignore coincidences like that. :)
What is amazing to me is how large some of these are and the precise and perfect lines they turn out with. Symmetry is perfect. I suppose I am just the type of person to believe these things, thus they get away with making people believe it to be something other than man made.
Just call me Gullible Gus. {8I
LOL! Never under estimate a bored artist. ;D
Here's a nice infra red time lapse video on the subject. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_opN9ghPKQ
And here's a cool How Stuff Works article: http://science.howstuffworks.com/crop-circle5.htm
I agree; crop circles are not created by extra terrestrial beings. The thing about crop circles that absolutely amazes me is that people refuse to accept that fact.
One must realize that any culture capable of building vehicles that could transport them across the unimaginably vast expanses between star systems would have a lot of resources invested in the voyage. Are we supposed to believe the objective of spending all the time and effort to make such a trip was to creep around a wheat field in the middle of the night making pretty patterns? :)
Oh, I almost forgot this link to Circlemakers.org:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/framed.htm?parent=crop-circle.htm&url=http://www.circlemakers.org/natgeo.html
Be sure to check out their Top of the Crop image gallery. ;D
I guess if people who have no machinery, little or no resources can build the pyramids, then it is possible for people in this day and age to make some purrrrdy little designs in the farmlands of the good old U.S. of A.