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ZS2ABF > UFO 22.02.09 10:24l 456 Lines 27285 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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South African Ham Radio UFO Interest Group. Known as (SAHRUIG).
NEWS Volume 1 News letter No.243
Don't forget to "LOOK UP TO THE SKIES" you may see something exiting.
Your Comments, Sightings or UFO/Paranormal stories will be welcomed and
are needed. When submitting Sighting reports please send as much detail as
possible.
Address them via Packet to ZS2ABF @ ZS0ELD.ECP.ZAF.AF
Posted to BBS : /01/2009
Editror: I hope you liked the first part of this article. Here is Part Two.
*********** ************** ************
Crop Circles and their Message, by David Pratt, June 2005
Part 2 of 2 - (edited to reduce the size for Packet Radio)
6. Eyewitness reports
There are many reports of balls of light, or discs or columns of light being
observed over fields in which crop formations are subsequently found. Balls of
light, usually varying from egg-size to football-size, are often observed
flying over circles already present, sometimes weaving back and forth as if
inspecting the formation. In one videotape shot in daytime, a hawk dives
straight down towards a fairly opaque ball of light, only to veer away at the
last moment when it realizes that the light is not edible. Military jets and
helicopters have been seen trying to intercept balls of light, which then
proceed to toy with their chasers, sometimes blinking out and reappearing
behind the craft giving chase.
There are also several dozen accounts of a trilling sound being heard prior to
crop circles forming, and other reports mention the sudden absence of the
usual dawn chorus of birds and insects. In July 1989 a BBC crew recorded a
trilling sound with a frequency of 5.2 kHz in a crop circle. Other noises
heard inside them include buzzing, humming, hissing and high-pitched
whistling.
Over the years, some 70 people have said they have witnessed the formation of
a crop circle. In almost every case only simple crop circles are seen forming;
virtually no one has witnessed the appearance of a highly sophisticated
pictogram. Most eyewitnesses speak of a very powerful but localized force like
a wind hitting the field and spinning the crop down extremely rapidly, within
about 10 to 20 seconds, usually in the early morning or early evening.
One evening in July 1981, Ray Barnes witnessed a ‘wave’ or ‘line’ moving
through the heads of a cereal crop in Wiltshire. After travelling across the
field in an arc, the line dropped to the ground and radially described a
75-foot circle in a clockwise direction in a single sweep in about four
seconds, accompanied by a hissing noise. The crop went down as neatly as if it
had been cut by a giant flan cutter, and the plants showed absolutely no
spring-back (Corliss, p. 268; Pringle, 1999, p. 6). In June 1989 a witness saw
a big orange ball of light, about 30-40 feet in diameter, descend into a wheat
field in England. The bottom flattened as it touched the crop and the ground,
and disappeared a few seconds later after a single bounce. The next morning a
ringed circle was found at the same spot (Haselhoff, 2000, p. 20).
In April 1991 a man heard a high-pitched humming sound and saw a stationary
silver bell-shaped ‘craft’ project a spiralling vortex of aura-like light into
a field and make a 29-ft crop circle. The event occurred in broad daylight and
was over in a few seconds. In June 1996, intrigued by a buzzing sound, a
couple went out of their house at about midnight and saw coloured lights
swirling in the pitch-black sky above the East Field (Alton Barnes). 20
minutes later the lights congealed into one object from which a beam of white
light descended onto the field. Five hours later the ‘DNA’ crop glyph was
discovered at Alton Barnes, Wiltshire, 17 June 1996. (Silva, p. 140).
In 1966, not far from the white cliffs of Dover, a man saw a ‘translucent
glass tube’ descend from the sky. With the rain visibly deflecting off its
surface and the nearby livestock ‘seemingly transfixed’ by loud hissing
sounds, the tube created a circle in the grass. In 1990 a farmer tending his
field of barely found himself standing 10 feet from a 3-ft-thick rotating,
perpendicular tube whose earth-bound end stopped short of the ground, while
the other rose to a point out of view. The tube remained stationary as a
swirling motion manifested in the crop. In August 2001 Nancy Talbott and
Robert van den Broeke saw a series of three tubes of brilliant white light,
eight inches to a foot in diameter, flash down from the sky to the ground
within about six seconds, leaving a steaming ellipse with a T-shaped appendage
in a Dutch bean field (Silva, pp. 138-9).
On 11 August 1996, a man came forward with a video that he claimed to have
shot that morning during a crop-watch near Oliver’s Castle, a fort in
Wiltshire. It showed a ‘snowflake’ design forming while balls of light circled
overhead. The footage provoked bitter controversy among crop-circle
researchers. One group insists that the crop design is man-made and the video
a fake, and claims to have obtained a confession from the person who made it,
while others still think that both are genuine (Andrews, 2003, pp. 139-43;
Thomas, pp. 60-1). Whatever its true status, the video is at the very least a
good representation of what many witnesses have described.
7. Anomalous effects
There are numerous reports of electronic and mechanical equipment breaking
down in crop circles. Cameras frequently malfunction, and even when they do
work, the results may be overexposed, streaked, smeared, or entirely black.
Video equipment is also very vulnerable, and often picks up severe
interference. Battery draining is quite common, and even fresh power packs can
die. Cell phones often fail to operate within a formation but sometimes work
perfectly again if taken outside it.
A combine harvester short-circuited as it crossed the Milk Hill Koch fractal
(fig. 3.12). At Warminster, a tractor’s entire electrical system failed the
moment it crossed a circle’s perimeter, but sprang back to life as it was
towed out of the circle. In another incident, a tractor was seized by ‘static
discharges which shone like sparks over the body of the vehicle’. The next
day, a circle appeared at the same spot in the field. Farmers have also
reported the deflating of perfectly sound, heavy-duty tyres inside crop
circles.
The morning after the appearance of the ‘Beltane wheel’ (fig. 9.2), the BBC
was conducting a radio interview inside the glyph but the tape speeded up so
much that it stopped. When the interview was continued 50 yards outside the
formation, the equipment worked normally again. The experiment was then
repeated inside the formation, but the technical problems returned. Later in
the day a crew from ITV Bristol Television arrived, but their sound system
later turned out to have been so disrupted that most of the recording was
unable to be broadcast that evening.
Magnetic compasses frequently behave erratically both inside crop formations
and when flying directly over them. Witnesses sometimes report TV, cell phone,
smoke alarm and security device interference or malfunctions during nights
when a crop circle forms nearby. The night before the appearance of the 1991
Barbury Castle tetrahedron (fig. 3.6), residents in the nearby village of
Broughton experienced a power blackout and many residents reported balls of
coloured light flying above the field where the formation later manifested,
along with a low rumbling noise.
The effects of crop circles on humans vary widely. Many people experience
heightened awareness, elation, and a sense of peace and wellbeing inside crop
formations, and there are also many reports of healing. But in certain
formations some people experience nausea, headaches, dizziness,
disorientation, abnormal menopausal bleeding, lack of mental clarity, and
excessive fatigue. However, both positive and negative effects have also been
experienced in man-made formations. Distinguishing subjective, psychosomatic
factors from possible objective factors (ranging from pesticide residues to
unusual energies) is no easy matter.
Unlike humans, animals are not very susceptible to suggestion, but there are
many accounts of them behaving strangely in or near crop formations. Dogs
sometimes refuse to enter crop circles, others become either cowed and nervous
or uncontrollable inside them, and some become sick afterwards. Other dogs
show no adverse effects at all. Before the manifestation of a nearby crop
circle, dogs have been known to bark incessantly in the early morning hours,
and in one case a sheepdog tried to bite a hole through a thick wooden door.
8. Geometry
In the early 1990s astronomer Gerald Hawkins (who died in 2004) discovered
that the ratios between the areas or diameters of the various elements making
up crop patterns clustered around certain whole numbers: 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and
12. These are the numbers used to generate the diatonic ratios that define the
relative frequency of the white notes of a piano keyboard.* Based on an
analysis of the ratios embodied in 25 crop circles, he calculated that there
was a 1 in 400,000 chance of them arising by chance. Apart from bird calls and
the song of a whale, diatonic ratios do not occur in nature. Hawkins concluded
that crop designs demonstrated the remarkable mathematical ability of their
creators. He wrote to Doug and Dave to ask them why they’d used the diatonic
ratios – but never received a reply! (See Haselhoff, 2000, pp. 57-61, 139-40;
Silva, 2002, pp. 193-200.)
Hawkins discovered that the various ratios could be expressed in the form of
four mathematical theorems based on the principles of Euclidean geometry,
though they are not to be found in Euclid’s own work. He also discovered a
fifth, more general theorem, from which the other four could be derived. He
challenged the readers of Science News and The Mathematics Teacher to come up
with his unpublished theorem, given only the four variants, but no one
succeeded. In July 1995 a version of the theorem appeared, encoded in the
Litchfield ‘Torque’ crop circle. The fifth theorem involves concentric circles
which touch the sides of a triangle, and as the triangle changes shape, it
generates the special crop-circle geometric ratios.
Hawkins’ five theorems: 1. tangent theorem, 2. triangle theorem, 3. square
theorem, 4. hexagon theorem, 5. general theorem, where expanding and
contracting concentric circles give all the diatonic ratios.
It’s difficult to make crop formations that obey the theorems in the dark, but
the makers of authentic crop formations manage to work to a tolerance of 1%.
Hawkins’ work was published during the early phase of the phenomenon, but he
found that later, more elaborate designs still yielded the diatonic ratios.
If the lay of the flattened plants in a crop formation is examined closely,
pathways of crop about a foot wide are often found beneath the general lay.
They tend to have a different flow direction, and look like ‘construction
lines’. Clearly, the lines must have been put there by some intelligence, but
this does not automatically mean the patterns were made by humans using
mechanical implements. It’s interesting to note that the guidelines needed to
reconstruct crop patterns on paper pass through areas of what, in the fields,
would be standing crop. These sections of the construction lines can be rubbed
out on paper, but not in the crop itself.
9. Hoaxers and debunkers
On the whole, the mass media have miseducated and misinformed the public with
their negative and biased coverage of the crop-circle phenomenon. The emphasis
has been on dramatic stories about hoaxes rather than serious investigation.
Crop-circle researchers have sometimes been induced to visit fake circles and
when some fell into the trap of rashly pronouncing the formation to be
authentic, this was used to ridicule the entire phenomenon. This is like
saying that since some people have been deceived by imitation pearls, no
genuine pearls exist!
A crop-circle surveillance operation called Operation Blackbird, organized by
Colin Andrews and Pat Delgado, was carried out in July 1990 near Bratton
Castle, where many crop circles had appeared. The land is owned by the British
Ministry of Defence, and two army officers with high-tech cameras assisted the
operation. On the second night, Andrews received a call saying that a complex
crop design had appeared and been captured on film. Even before examining the
formation, he unwisely announced to the media that the formation was
authentic. Upon inspection, however, it turned out to be a poorly-made fake; a
horoscope game board and wooden cross had even been left in the middle of the
main circle, presumably to point the finger at new-agers. Evidence later
emerged to suggest that the British Ministry of Defence had ordered the
creation of a hoax pattern in an effort to discredit the phenomenon and the
researchers. Ten days after the fake formation had been made, a real crop
circle appeared in the field below Bratton Castle in a swirling motion lasting
less than 15 seconds, but the video tape was later removed from a locked box
by persons unknown (Andrews, 2003, pp. 131-6).
Hoaxers are also unable to reproduce the biophysical anomalies found in
genuine crop formations, such as unbroken stalks with elongated nodes and
explosion cavities. Man-made formations all have weight applied in some degree
to the crop, leading to broken and damaged plants. In a genuine formation, the
seeds are not knocked out of the seed heads and the plants seem to continue
growing as normal.
The Stonehenge Julia Set (fig. 3.11) appeared in broad daylight within a
15-minute time-window. Eyewitnesses report seeing simple crop circles form in
under 20 seconds, and it may be that the flattening process in authentic
complex crop glyphs takes the same amount of time, though how long it takes to
prepare them (and by what means) is unknown. Several major crop glyphs,
sometimes almost identical, have been known to appear over fairly wide areas
on the same night.
‘Triple Julia Set’, Avebury Trusloe, Wiltshire, 29 July 1996. 196 perfectly
graded circles spiral out from the centre and extend to a diameter of over
1000 ft. Joining the centres of corresponding circles in each of the three
arms with three lines generates a series of equilateral triangles, spiralling,
rotating and expanding from the centre outwards with awesome precision. A US
surveying company stated that to mark out the Triple Julia Set to this degree
of accuracy would take three to five days, adding two days for calculation
time and another three if working at night.
‘Beltane wheel’, oil-seed rape, Silbury Hill, Wiltshire, 14 May 1998. This
33-flame design appeared between 3 and 5 am. Its centre lies 20 feet into
undisturbed crop.
Some hoaxers concede that there is a genuinely paranormal crop-circle
phenomenon at work, alongside the hoaxing, and even claim to be inspired by
the real circle-making forces. Some of them have experienced anomalous sounds
and lights out in the fields. On one occasion, when a team went back to check
a circle they had made earlier, they discovered a new circle in the same field
and saw an orange ball of light emanating from it. Another group had just
started making a crop formation when two balls of light appeared and chased
them out of the field. Additions made to hoaxed formations sometimes result in
them complying with the sacred geometry ratios found in real formations.
In 1995, a five-petalled star appeared at composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
country residence at Kingsclere, despite the property being manned by a
24-hour security team. With the extensive grounds rigged with sensors and
microphones, a research team looking for the pictogram was apprehended within
minutes of their arrival. But nobody had been caught making the pattern.
Webber was on holiday at the time and his security staff rang to tell him what
had happened. Convinced that all crop circles were fakes, he was furious, and
demanded to know how the hoaxers had got in. When he was told that it seemed
there had not been any hoaxers, he burst out crying!
Complex design of crescents based on eight-fold geometry, Ogbourne St. George,
Wiltshire Downs, 15 June 2003. As with the West Overton glyph (fig. 3.20), the
plants were unusually laid: in the central circle, a central spiral motion
rotated outwards in eight movements, with stems barely touching the ground; in
between, the remaining plants appeared to have been gently pushed
approximately 20 degrees from the vertical. It was as if someone had simply
brushed their hand lightly over the young wheat. As the plants recovered, they
rose in alternate segments along different nodes, producing a ripple effect
that seems to be unhoaxable.
It is notable that there are relatively few cases of hoaxers being caught in
action. Only one man has ever been prosecuted for making a crop circle,
because usually no satisfactory evidence of hoaxing is ever produced to
justify a prosecution. The man in question was fined 140 pounds in 2001 after
making the mistake of faxing a copy of his design to a US radio talk show host
before making it. Some hoaxers obtain farmers’ permission for their ‘crop art’
beforehand and pay them a sum of money.
In 1998 the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) paid Team Satan to make a
crop circle in New Zealand. The finished result looked impressive from the
air. But the formation was harvested as soon as filming stopped, and not a
single researcher was allowed to inspect the lay of the crop. Ground
photographs showed a mess of broken and crushed stems; they were so revealing
that they were quickly removed from the internet.
The NBC documentary failed to show, or even mention, that the hoaxers had used
artificial lighting suspended from two 40-ton cranes. Nor did it mention that
the entire design had been marked out with stakes and string prior to filming.
Even then, it took over five hours to make – longer than the number of hours
of concealing darkness in summer.
It is noteworthy that Levengood and his team have found biophysical anomalies
that cannot be explained by mechanical flattening in 90% of the 300 or so
formations they have examined, which include complex glyphs as well as simple
circles. Unfortunately, it is impossible to take samples from every crop
formation to check for such anomalies, because this is a very time-consuming
and extremely costly process which needs to be conducted according to strict
scientific protocols.
11. Explanations
In the 1980s meteorologist Terence Meaden suggested that small, local
whirlwinds of ionized air, or plasma vortices, created by freak weather, were
responsible for making crop patterns. As multiple circles with multiple rings
began to appear, often arranged symmetrically and with their relative sizes
displaying diatonic ratios, Meaden’s theory began to look increasingly
far-fetched. He held that spinning vortices would form in dry, quiet weather
and only on the leeward sides of hills. But new crop formations soon
contradicted this by appearing in all manner of topographical and weather
conditions.
Intricate crop lays presented further problems. In one 54-ft-diameter circle,
for example, the plants were whirled in standard clockwise motion, but this
time laid toward the centre, with a thin band around the perimeter swirled
anticlockwise and pointing away from the centre. Furthermore, when the stems
were lifted, a second layer was found underneath, flattened counter to the top
one. Meaden stuck to the weather explanation, arguing that the whirlwind had
abruptly switched its rotation direction. The circlemakers later replied by
creating a formation with two annular rings around a circle, each element in
contra-rotation to the next.
The BLT research team’s theory of how crop patterns are made agrees with
Meaden’s in several respects. They propose that patterns are formed by
self-organized ion plasma vortices, but that these are nonmeteorological
plasma systems which originate in the ionosphere, a region of low-energy
plasma beginning about 40 miles up in our atmosphere. It was long believed
that the ionosphere and the earth’s surface were completely unconnected, but
electrical flashes (or sprites) are now known to occur commonly between
thunderheads (8 miles high) and the ionosphere. The BLT team suggests that
such plasmoids sometimes reach the ground, especially in the predawn hours,
and that as they descend, the magnetic pinch effect causes them to shrink in
size and spin faster.
The team proposes that the same causative agency lies behind the creation of
nongeometric crop designs, where the same bent and elongated plant nodes are
found as in genuine crop circles. Although plasma spontaneously organizes
itself into a vortex, if the energy level gets too high the vortex pattern
breaks down, and the forces discharge unstably and chaotically.
The team argues that certain crop lays can be explained as a result of two
interacting plasma vortices with opposing rotation. But what about all the
numerous other intricate and multi-tiered lays? It’s doubtful whether very
brief bursts of intense microwaves emitted by plasma systems can fully explain
elongated nodes and expulsion cavities, and they certainly cannot explain the
increased degree of crystallization of clay minerals in crop-circle soils. The
correlation between these two phenomena strongly suggests that whatever caused
the increased crystal growth in the clay minerals was also responsible for the
plant abnormalities. Moreover, microwaves can render soil and plants sterile,
but this is very rarely observed in crop circles.
Eyewitness reports of crop circles forming, together with the varying effects
crop formations have on humans, animals and equiment, suggest that crop
circles are not all created by exactly the same mechanism. Sometimes crop is
flattened by the violent movement of air, and funnels or tubes of light
reaching down from the sky are seen, sometimes lights are seen in the absence
of any whirlwind, and sometimes crop is seen to collapse without any clues as
to the nature of the forces involved. The fact that plant tissues seem to
become supple at the moment of flattening and that clay minerals in the soils
undergo enhanced crystallization indicates that unconventional energies are
involved. Spontaneous plasma vortices might be responsible for
nongeometrically downed crop and for some of the plain, unadorned circles. But
there appears to be some form of intelligence involved in planning and
executing complex designs.
As for the balls of light often seen around crop circles, the question remains
as to whether they are making them (guided perhaps by some higher
intelligence), exploring them, or utilizing their energy. Some lightforms act
like inquisitive creatures or bioforms. Tubes of light might indicate that
crop patterns are projected down onto the ground from above. Some formations
appear without any strange luminosities being observed, but it should be borne
in mind that psychics report seeing lights that are invisible to our physical
senses.
Some people have argued that crop circles are communications from
extraterrestrials. Flattened crop was once attributed to the landing of flying
saucers. When it was noted that crops were swirled down instead of being
crushed, the effect was attributed to the energy fields of the crafts’ drive
systems. When the formations became more complicated it was suggested the
aliens might be using energy beams to create them, or sending out probes, in
the form of balls of light, to make them.
Both crop-circle and UFO manifestations tend to cluster in certain locations,
e.g. near geological fault lines and water sources. A large proportion of UFO
sightings occur over the chalk lands and aquifers of the Wessex triangle in
southern England – which is also the main centre of crop-circle activity.
According to dowsers, formations tend to be located in areas where lines of
earth energy cross or are very strong, and these energy-rich sites seem to
facilitate the manifestation of crop circles.
Some people believe that many crop formations are made not by aliens but by
the military, using secret energy-beam technology. The military have certainly
shown an interest in crop glyphs and the mysterious balls of light (and in
UFOs in general). But there is no reason to think they have any greater
understanding of such phenomena than the public at large. A more promising
line of enquiry, being pursued by many researchers, is to look towards unusual
earth energies, etheric and psychic forces, and higher intelligences capable
of interacting with our own individual and collective minds – but earth-bred
and from inner space, rather than from outer space.
12. Meaning
Many people believe that crop formations carry a symbolically encoded message.
As with mythology, symbolism appeals to our imagination and is open to
different interpretations. But most researchers would agree that crop
formations are ‘mandalas of hope’ for our troubled world.
The basic element of crop glyphs is the circle, which can symbolize unity,
boundless space, and the universal creative spirit or godforce. Crop circles
with rings and satellite circles sometimes resemble diagrams of the chemical
elements, with their orbiting electrons. For instance, a central circle
orbited by four satellites (quintuplet) symbolizes the carbon atom, with its
four outer electrons, as well as being reminiscent of a Celtic cross.
Let’s enjoy the formations while we have them and validate their significance
simply by the fact they are gorgeous to look at, having made many very happy
and left us carved a little deeper and a little wiser by the questions and
issues they have raised. ...
For one thing everyone agrees on, even the most committed sceptics, is that
wherever they come from, the glyphs are art of the highest order. ...
If grace and beauty are all the crop circles have brought into our world, we
have reason enough to be thankful.
(Thanks to Dave Pratt).
*********** k ************** **********
FAIR USE NOTICE:If This page contains copyrighted material the use of which
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distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted
material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107.
This document is shared information that is intended to assist anyone and
everyone with a further understanding of UFO information from around the
world.
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