The Occult Section

Crop circles have never really intrigued me. They are too easily hoaxed, many people have stepped forward showing how they have hoaxed them, and even if they weren’t hoaxed, I don’t buy into the “aliens are using UFOs to create them in order to communicate with us” theory. If they’ve mastered interstellar travel, I’m sure they could find an easier way to say “hi.” And now there’s more damaging evidence to show how crop circles could be faked.

The creation of crop circles seems to have gone high tech, according to an article in Physics World journal as related in the U.K. Telegraph. Apparently crop circles are now being created with magnetrons, which use magnetism and electricity to create heat.

Crop circles, mysterious patterns that seem to occur in wheat fields overnight, have been the subject of fascination for centuries. Explanations ranging from demons to space aliens have been posited over the years. Why demons or aliens would do such a thing is a matter of conjecture.

The crop circle phenomenon has been the subject of TV and movies, most notably “Signs,” a film by M. Night Shyamalan, starring Mel Gibson.

Crop circles are more often than not the work of human beings, either openly as a form of art, or clandestinely as a hoax. The standard technique is somewhat pain staking, using planks and rope to flatten crops to create intricate patterns.

But according to Professor Richard Taylor, director of the Materials Science Institute at the University of Oregon, crop circles are being created using magnetrons which are commonly found in microwave ovens. Very likely GPS transponders and lasers are also being used to exactly create patterns in wheat fields

This method allows hoaxers to do their work under cover of darkness, in a single night, and to be away before being discovered. Farmers and other people coming upon the crop patterns are left to wonder how they came to be.

Though it has been demonstrated, as related in an article in Scientific America, that human beings can create crop circles using even the traditional simple plank and rope method, the will to believe in some kind of supernatural agency is still very strong. The slogan often used on the TV program “The X Files,” which states “I Want to Believe” articulates the tendency succinctly.

Still the idea that groups of hoaxers, who clearly have too much time on their hands, are doing this just for their own amusement is a compelling enough story without bringing in artistically minded aliens. Perhaps someone could make a movie based on that premise as well.

The main sticking point believers have always had when it came to crop circles was the strange levels of radiation found within them. A few people with ropes and a plank of wood couldn’t cause this radiation, so it must have been a UFO, right? Well, the magnetron from a microwave could cause those radiation spikes. Or is that just what “they” want us to believe?

Technorati Tags: alien, aliens, conspiracy theory, cover-up, crop circles, debunking, extraterrestrial, flying saucer, great britain, hoax, media, mel gibson, News, paranormal, signs, thoughts, ufo, ufos, UK

I’m not really a big fan of crop circles. Nothing about them really suggests that there’s anything paranormal about them, especially since it’s been proven time and time again that humans with some rope and a wooden board can reproduce them pretty easily. I know there are sometimes trace amounts of radiation or molecular damage to the crops involved, but that doesn’t scream “UFO” to me. I’d like to think that any intelligent life from another planet that has mastered interstellar travel can communicate more effectively than drawing circles in a wheat field. However, they do tend to excite people and stir the imagination. Asia One News reports that a new crop circle formation was found yesterday morning.

Maybe they're just not good at doing portraits?

INDONESIA – Indonesian Air Force chief Marshall Imam Sufaat on Monday instructed his staff to use a helicopter to take aerial photographs of crop circles discovered on Sunday in Krasakan hamlet, Sleman, with residents alleging them to be traces of a UFO.

“If we examine the photographs, we will possibility see if the patterns were in fact created with powers beyond human knowledge,” Imam said as quoted by tempointeraktif.com, on the sidelines of the Air Force commander meeting in Yogyakarta.

Imam, however, declined to comment further on the geometric pattern.

The crop circles are in a paddy field and resemble a geometric artwork, while the other parts of the field remain untouched.

The patterns were first reported by a farmer, Tukiman, on Sunday at 6 a.m.

The pattern has already drawn hordes of locals and people from outside Yogyakarta, causing traffic jams in the vicinity.

For me, the patterns would have to be amazingly complex before I even considered something in the paranormal realm actually being responsible for them. It’ll be interesting to see what the photographs show.

Update: Fox News now has the story up as well, along with a picture of the crop circle. As I suspected, it doesn’t look any different than any other crop circles we’ve seen up until this point. I’m going to go out on a limb and call this a hoax.

Technorati Tags: alien, aliens, conspiracy theory, cover-up, crop circle, crop circles, debunking, extraterrestrial, flying saucer, indonesia, media, News, paranormal, people, thoughts, ufo, ufos

I never really saw the appeal of crop circles, even before they were largely debunked as people with way too much time on their hands walking around wheat fields at night with two ropes and a wooden board. Then again, who am I to judge, walking around haunted houses at night with a flashlight and a digital camera. But I digress.

According to an article on BoingBoing.net, crop circles are not anything even as remotely outlandish as extraterrestrial art. Nor are they hoaxes with rational, earthly explanations. You’d have to be crazy to think that, huh? No, apparently they are (and I’m going to do my best here to interpret what this guy is saying, so cut me some slack) the results of a microwave calibration system for a new, top-secret military weapon that just happens to leave these perfectly artistic (and not naturally random) patterns on the crops. Yeah. I’ll let the author explain:

In Sept. 1991, I published in a New Age magazine my own hypothesis about the Crop Circles phenomenon. I speculated they involved a military aerial device (not a space-based instrument) for generating such designs using focused microwave beams, such as a “maser.” At the time nobody wanted to hear that the beautiful pictures in English corn fields might be crafted by a technical team inside some lab, bouncing signals from a hovering platform and using individual corn stalks as simple pixels to calibrate a lethal device. So my paper was met with dead silence.

More recently, however, New Scientist has run an article titled “Microwaves could defuse bombs from afar” (April 18, 2009 issue). It begins: “The next weapon in the US army’s arsenal could be a laser-guided microwave blaster designed to destroy explosives. The weapon, called the Multimode Directed Energy Armament System, uses a high-power laser to ionize the air, creating a plasma channel that acts as a waveguide for the stream of microwaves.”

These things are typically revealed 30 years after they are tested, which fits well with the heyday of the crop circle frenzy.

It is interesting–and sobering–that nobody picked up on the New Scientist article either. The New Age folks were too busy deciphering the Alien Glyphs… while the scientific community had been hoodwinked by a few cleverly revealed and widely publicized hoaxes, and had long dismissed the whole thing.

This is consistent with the hypothesis I had presented, of beams from a low-observable dirigible (such as the object an English friend of mine, an Oxford physics professor, saw from his glider in England, which was a perfectly-reflecting cylinder) using corn fields as a convenient calibration target. Why this isn’t obvious to the paranormal research community is a complete puzzle to me.

Even the aliens know which is the superior browser.

Oh yes, completely obvious. It’s one thing for skeptics to try to be too rational. For example, telling the experienced woodsman that the Bigfoot he saw was actually a moose, or an Air Force pilot that the UFO he saw was Venus. But to make up an explanation that is seemingly more reality-based, yet only a smidgen or so more than the extraterrestrial graffiti theory, is just as ridiculous as jumping to an out-of-this-world explanation. I think accepting the fact that hoaxers and pranksters are responsible for crop circles is the more responsible thing to do here.

Occam’s Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. To me, microwaves being bounced off of airborn reflectors, which then create very artistic and not-at-all random patterns in crop fields is actually more convoluted than the extraterrestrial theory.               

Technorati Tags: crop circle, crop circles, debunking, extraterrestrial, flying saucer, great britain, hoax, media, News, paranormal, people, supernatural, thoughts, ufo, ufos

It’s interesting when stories like this don’t get more attention than they do.  I’m guessing it was all over British news, but didn’t really make its way over to America.

The sergeant, who has not been named, was off-duty when he saw the figures standing in a field near Silbury Hill, and stopped his car to investigate.

However, as he approached the ‘men’ – all over 6ft tall with blond hair – he heard “the sound of static electricity” and the trio ran away ”faster than any man he had ever seen”.

The officer returned to his home in Marlborough, Wiltshire, and contacted paranormal experts and told them he had spotted a UFO.

Wiltshire Police has refused to comment on the incident, saying it is a ”personal matter” for the officer involved.

Crop circle researcher Andrew Russell, who is investigating the bizarre sighting on behalf of the officer, described the moment his sighting was made.

He said: ”At first he thought they were forensic officers as they were dressed in white coveralls. He stopped his car and approached the field.

”The figures were all over 6ft and had blond hair. They seemed to be inspecting the crop. When he got to the edge of the field he heard what he believed to be a sound not dissimilar to static electricity.

”This crackling noise seemed to be running through the field and the crop was moving gently, close to where the noise was.

”He shouted to the figures who, at first, ignored him, not glancing at him. When he tried to enter the field they looked up and began running.

”He said; ‘They ran faster than any man I have ever seen. I’m no slouch but they were moving so fast. I looked away for a second and when I looked back they were gone.

Aliens? Or really fast moving tall blond people? The world may never know…

Technorati Tags: aliens, crop circles, extraterrestrial, flying saucer, great britain, News, ufo, ufos, UK