In Part 1, I examined strange markings on the surface of Mars. In this post, we’ll focus on things a little closer to home. Crop Circles first started appearing in British fields in the late 1970s, and were instantly seized upon by UFOlogists, who soon labelled themselves ‘cerealologists’. They claim the circles are formed by either natural phenomena like whirlwinds or ball lightning, supposed natural phenomena like ‘plasma vortices’, or, well, you know. Alien spaceships.
Of course none of the above ‘phenomena’ are more explanatory than the Occams Razor assumption: the crop circles are all hoaxes. Humans like ‘Doug & Dave‘ have made the crop circles that make it to the front page, and nowadays it isn’t even a big deal. Interestingly, since the human origins of the beautiful crop art was revealed, cerealologists are even more steadfast in their claims that some of the circles are real. They claim that 80% of the circles are human-made, and 20% defy explanation – they’re too perfect, or radioactive, or too complex, etc, etc. This, of course, ties nicely into the 80-20 rule that 80% of human-made circles are crude and obviously human-made, but around 20% are well-made enough to fool the experts!
One very clever crop ‘circle’ is actually a modified version of a human-originated message sent from the Arecibo telescope. It has an image of a Grey instead of a human, silicon added to the list of biologically important elements, etc. Of course, this message hasn’t had time to reach any nearby stars: the crop formation was made by humans.
A group called Circlemakers is paid to make advertisements in fields featuring logos and messages, and their most amazing formations are simply beautiful:
It is as works of art that crop circles should be appreciated. Giving the credit for these beautiful formations to alien beings with super-technology is simply denying what a few humans with rope and planks can achieve.
Next in the series: Life on Other Planets
Wow….. these are awesome! They are so diverse and beautiful and amazing! I love ‘em!
Left by Brianna on December 17th, 2006