UNVEILING CROP CIRCLES

HISTORICALLY Jeff Wilson offers a little background here on science's early on recognition of the reality factor behind the phenomenon of Crop Circles, shown by the first high level conference held in Oxford back in 1991. It was attended by numerous serious doctorate scientists who considered it no more then akin to a 'weather phenomenon'. This was prior to the onset of the Doug & Dave 'phenomenon', whereby their unsupported claim to have 'hoaxed them ALL over the years' was based merely upon the publicly viewed production of just a few. Yet it was immediately lapped up by the media and public mind set placing a quick end to this earlier serious enquiry into the phenomenon, literally driving scientist right in to the 'closet' on this issue, fearing ridicule and rejection by their peers and society as a whole for any continued pursuits of the mystery.

This book detailed the state of crop circle scientific research by 1991, the last year that legitimate scientific or academic research into the phenomena was considered an 'acceptable' avenue of study. After 1991, the media, in general, has continued to promote widely the false idea that hoaxing (man-made attempts at replicating crop circle patterns) was responsible for the appearance of all crop circles worldwide. As the proceedings of this 1991 conference shows, serious academic research had already shown that crop circles had existed for centuries, that eyewitnesses had reported watching crop circles form without human involvement, and that there existed indications that a particular crop circle's location and environment had a role to play in its formation (including topography, geology, weather, and other environmental conditions).

Many scientists at this conference believed that crop circles could be created by a "breakdown vortex," a conventional whirlwind that devolves into a turbulent descending ring of air. Others believe electricity must also be involved. Dr. Terence Meaden, an atmospheric physicist, editor of the Journal of Meteorology, and former lecturer in physics at Oxford University, thinks electrically-charged atmospheric vortices might hold together better, producing more clearly defined circles. Yoshihiko Ohtsuki, professor of physics at Waseda University in Tokyo, thinks that ball lightning could combine with vortices to create a crop circle.

"Ball lightning continues to attract the attention of theoretical physicists worldwide, although solutions remain equivocal. Continuing good reporting of uncommon natural events is fundamentally essential for interpretation by inquiring scientists. As for wind-induced crop circles, progress has been made towards understanding the origins of natural occurrences ever since the first scientific observations of 1880. Mr. J. Rand Capron, who reported weather and other scientific data to local newspapers for many years, described in Nature in 1880 (vol. 22, 290-291) crop circles that he had studied in a wheat field in Surrey: "There were a few standing stalks as a centre" and other stalks "prostrate, with their heads arranged pretty evenly in a direction forming a circle round the centre, and outside these a circular wall of stalks which had not suffered". Mr. Capron concluded that the circles "were suggestive of some cyclonic wind action". There have been occasional eyewitnesses to genuine events ever since. Two theoretical papers published about ten years ago explain how breakdown of a natural eddy or other vortex could cause these phenomena."

"Unfortunately, hoaxers were attracted by the beauty and simplicity of natural circles, and their efforts at creating their own designs attracted media interest and compromised serious research. In 1992 (physicist) Stephen Hawking appropriately commented: 'Corn circles are either hoaxes or formed by vortex movement of air'. Yes, they are caused by both."

While there have been many scientific factors determined to exist over the years within authentic crop circles as opposed to hoaxed ones, none have become more accepted and validated by science then findings published a few years ago, developed out of the hard work of Professor Levengood and BLT Research, conducted over a 10 year period sampling and examining hundreds of formations throughout the 90's. Backed by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation this endeavor involved thousands of hours of hard work and meticulous dedicated effort, from the field to the laboratory over the years carefully charting, tracking, and documenting the study's results.

The rewards of their findings were the type that science could statistically stand behind, for they could be measured, documented and remained consistent. Most importantly they could not be duplicated by known hoaxing techniques and did not occur by any known natural means. They involved actual changes within the cellular levels of the affected crops themselves, as well as noted dynamic changes in numerous surface soil samples that had characteristics found only in the sedimentary rock of high cliffs where the pressure of tons of rock heated by the Earth's core over a considerable period of time would create them. Yet here they were found in the surface soil of formations that seemed to occur in some cases almost instantaneous.

Additionally within the past several years a type of light phenomenon has been noted to be associated with Crop Circles. While some are theorized to be formed by this light phenomenon, the most noted type is referred to as BOL's, acronym for Balls of Light. Recently these have been caught on video footage around formations for sometime even after they're formed. It is interesting to note in one of the scientific papers referenced here by Dr. Haselhoff, the correlation of statistical measurements from one of Levengood's former formation studies, showing how a spherical formation of electromagnetic energy would have been responsible for the creation of those resulting numbers.

The L-NEAT 101 Section contains an article written by Team Member Dr. Lietzau that describes the social/political climate, in a most perfect way, creating the need to establish this most important process based upon the previous hard work of Levengood and BLT Research. As Dr. Lietzau had been peripheral associated with all of the involved parties and is deeply involved himself as a part time scientist in the phenomenon he has extended an effort to layout and establish necessary protocols for a field testing process that can be applied to new formations named the L-NEAT Process, after Professor Levengood himself.

'ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS Ltd' 1999 ARTICLE OFFERS INSIGHT INTO LACK OF CREDIBILITY WITH DOUG & DAVE'S HOAXING CLAIMS

Laurence Rockefeller, the American millionaire and philanthropist, is funding scientific research into crop circles, it emerged yesterday. Why? After all, this is a problem that everyone thought had been solved.

The Crop Circle Mystery caused headlines and arguments nearly every summer for 20 years. Strange shapes were appearing in cornfields in Wiltshire and other counties. From the ground, the corn was seen to be beaten down, amazingly regular. From the air, the patterns appeared.

They came first as simple circles. Later, there were circles within circles, then more intricate patterns still - circles radiating spiral arms, circles joined by straight lines, circles arranged in squares, even snowflake patterns of amazing intricacy and beauty.

For 20 years arguments raged. Were they caused by circular winds? Or were mysterious forces at work? The obvious solution was human hoax. But if so, how?

In 1992, two Southampton men, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, confessed to making corn circles: every summer night for 20 years. Their method was simple: rakes and planks of wood to bash down the crop, ropes to guide them to a perfect circle, loops of wire on hats to guide straight lines.

It began as fun but, as UFO theories snowballed, they wanted to see how credulous people could be.

Dave Chorley died in 1996. The pair had retired from circle-making some time before. That should have been the end of the mystery. Yet corn circles continued to appear.

'They are worldwide,' says Michael Green, President of the Centre for Crop Circle Studies. And this week, the first of this season's British crop, 12 of them, have been seen in fields of oil-seed rape in Hampshire and at Milk Hill, Wiltshire.

Andrew Thomas, author of the crop-circle book, Vital Signs, claims that the Bower-Chorley 'confession' was itself a hoax: 'They could not explain how they laid the stalks so perfectly; nor why the circles have continued to appear.'

And now Laurence Rockefeller, brother of the late Nelson Rockefeller, is funding a researcher to re-investigate the phenomenon.

He is paying Connecticut-based Colin Andrews to engage staff and they have flown reconnaissance flights over Wiltshire and Hampshire. Andrews has a database of 10,000 crop circles. With computers and satellites, the research and debate has re- opened. So what could cause them?

'First theories were circular winds, mini-cyclones or "dust-devilsî [tiny tornadoes], says Montague Keen, scientific adviser to the Centre for Crop-Circle Studies for three years. 'A meteorologist devised a theory of "plasma vortexes", spiralling winds of electrically-charged air.'

Ball lightning was another possibility - again circular, again involving powerful and little-understood forces of electricity.

'But straight lines do not come from natural phenomena,' says Keen. 'The patterns became increasingly complex and no natural phenomenon can change and evolve like that. There were too many for them all to be hoaxes.'

A U.S. physicist found evidence that corn inside the circles under-goes chemical and biological changes. It takes up more nitrates than corn outside, and microscopic holes form in the stem tissue. These changes seem to argue for a sudden, sharp infusion of energy into the circle - far more than could come from men with planks or rollers.

'I was never quite convinced that his research was sufficiently rigorous' says Mr Keen, 'but there were certainly electromagnetic changes within circles. Compasses behaved strangely; people felt either distress or euphoria inside the circles; and batteries went flat unaccountably often.

'All this seems to point away from hoax towards something very strange, indeed. There is clearly some kind of intelligence behind them.'

And if it is not natural intelligence? 'Well, then you are thrown back to imagining some wholly unnatural intelligence.' As, for example, some form of psychic projection from human beings - dead or alive.

'Some shapes of the early Eighties seemed similar to shapes carved into rocks by Palaeolithic man,' said Michael Green, President of the Centre for Crop Circle Studies.

The first corn-circle for which evidence is claimed appeared in Hertfordshire in 1678. A pamphlet shows a woodcut of a circle mown in a field of oats, and the devil mowing.

The pamphlet describes the sky over the field that night as being 'all of a flame'; so here, too, for those who are willing to believe, is a link with flying saucers and UFOs.

For, of course, there are the aliens as the final theory of crop circles. Michael Green does not believe that little green men are responsible - but he believes some kind of non-human intelligence is behind them.

He points to a succession of shapes, from simple to complex to very complex indeed. Can these be messages to be read by all of mankind?

'These are written large on the landscape. They are there to be seen. There is a non-human intelligence behind them,' says Mr Green. 'That's what points one towards thinking the unthinkable.'