Crop Circles...with some actual evidence

I have found two papers that are some what relevant[using the term very loosely] to the post with accelerated node elongation.--Artificially



jstor
Nothin good here,
Deals with chemical stimulant for promoting node elongation as well as other aspects, light,ect. However, it is talking about a specific type of Ammophila breviligulata or basically, a sand weed, beach weed.

and
Accelerated Hybridization of Oligonucleotides to Duplex DNA
Which basically deals with accelerated dna building, but I don't think its artificial.

interesting reading none the less

[edit on 26-5-2010 by Software_Pyrate]

The opinions amongst the people that make crop formations are as wide and varied as that of the audience (the general population).
Some do it as an artform purely, some do it as a type of ritual, some are seeking a paranormal experience. Many are not disapointed.
Listen to what the circle makers say, and even the skeptics will cringe a little. I think The real mystery lies buried in the human subconcious.

reply to post by Phage


i "imagine" a few would be real spawing the copy cats out there

question is what imformation are we depicting and communicating back?
what was the original intention?

or are the copycats the desired out come?

is it to learn or just expresion ?

XPLodER

i suggest anyone skeptical of the whole crop formation phenomenon watch this documentary titled "New Swirled Order" (covers a lot of the questions that have come up in this thread regarding the node elongations/ruptures and electromagnetic radiation):

What I want to know is where are the videos of the hoaxers making one of these really intricate crop circle designs? You know, the ones that are woven and really spectacular? Seems to me that if they are such talented artists that they would welcome the fame that comes with the work, not to mention the money they could possibly make. I hear people argue that they don't want to be responsible for crop damage.... a load of crap! People do all kinds of illegal things to have 15 minutes of fame.

So I ask again, where is the video evidence of these hoaxers planning,drawing, and executing one of those spectacular crop circles? I have seen videos of them creating a logo, and some squares and circles. Not very impressive.

reply to post by jennybee35

Watch the NatGeo program I linked earlier.

reply to post by Software_Pyrate


Daaaaaamn yoooouuuu!!! *shakes fist at*

I was just about to make a thread exactly like this one!
Have been thinking about it for a month, no kidding!

Well, at least the truth is out now...
I'll read it all in a minute.

I starred and flagged you anywayz...

Peace

I think the best way to look at this is to have a team artificially create a intricate crop circle and test it over time. And then compare it with other crop circles (complex or not).

At this point, we can only be sure of one thing. Crop circles exist. I completely agree with the OP on the HOW. Boards and strings don't cause burn marks.

reply to post by Phage


OK, Phage, I just watched the NatGeo videos, but they still don't answer the question. The only crop circle they showed being formed was a very simple design, and it took them 5 hours! I think the "alien" angle is a load of crap, as I just don't believe in "aliens". Atmospheric vortexes? Whatever. I really don't have any idea what causes them, but there is no more evidence that they are "man-made" than that they made by "aliens".

All of the junk about nodes and what have you is crap, too. I have lived on a working farm my whole life, and all crops blown down naturally, by strait-line winds, tornados, etc., stretch and bend like that to right themselves.

I really believe if all of these crop circles were man-made, they would have released lots of footage of themselves making them by now. There are too many ways to remain anonymous, and way too many people who would like the notoriety, even if having to remain anonymous.

I guess my final conclusion is just as it is with so many things: I HAVE NO IDEA!!

reply to post by jennybee35

I thought it was a pretty good circle.

Oh well, look at it this way. You've (to your mind) eliminated some possibilities. That's a good place to start.

reply to post by Phage


Yeah, it was pretty good, just not nearly as impressive as most of what people blame on aliens. All in all, I guess I won't lose any sleep over crop circles. They are beautiful and sorta mysterious. Guess I'll just enjoy them for what they are!

Why is there no mention of our Dutch guitar hero and physics Ph.D. Dr. Eltjo Haselhoff?
If this guy is anything; it's legit to the core!
Disapprove of him and you have disapproven yourself.

I believe most of us have seen this clip before, but it can hardly be seen too many times (fast forward to 4:35):

@7:11 "This is not rocket science. It's trivial experimental physics" -Dr. E. Haselhoff
@7:53 "...it is now a scientificly accepted fact that at least some crop circles were generated by balls of light." (narrator)

What I see in the CC discussions, more than otherwise on the boards, are that the "close mindedness" are more rampant than ever.
The sceptics in the field, who I respect in all their honour, seems totally locked on the fact that the "believers" here think that the CCs are made by aliens, as in: beings from another planet far off in the universe.
This is simply not the case!
Can we please move past that silly part of the CC discussions, please? At least I am very sick of it now.

When we talk about "proper" CCs, we talk of those not made by physical manpower, PERIOD. No boots, no strings and no wooden boards.
But of course man also makes CCs, that's a total no-brainer so you sceptics can stop informing us about that because we are not idiots, thank you!
The "proper" or "genuine" CCs are made, simply put by something else, what ever that may be. Okay?

I also see that some here just straight out refuse to think outside the box and just won't have any evidence at all to prove that CCs can also be generated without the influence of men treading through the fields.
You know what I come to think about when I observe such people?
The Spanish Inquisition! Welcome to the 21st century guys! We are allowed to see the bigger picture now.

reply to post by Phage


Man, I always looked up to you in a way Phage.
In every thread about cosmic events, UFO sightings or topics alike, I check your replies first before I make up my mind (not that I always follow your lead, even though I mostly do). I guess you easily have like 50 or so stars from me for your posts around the boards.
But I must say that you have, in this thread (only, so far) gone from what I observe as a rational, educated and trustworthy member to a bitter, negative and close-minded one. And I am very sad for this.

You are dangerously close to becoming a bit full of yourself in your quest to put down those who see that there is more to this world than what meets the eye.
If you fail, or deny yourself to see that as well, I feel sorry for you.
All the truth in the world is not printed in books already.
To be fully successful and enlightened, you need to seek answers in all kinda places, some of them might be a tad bit "murky" sometimes... Don't just discredit because you haven't heard of it before...

I don't want this to come out all to hard, but I tend to speak straight from my heart. I am more disappointed than mad at you, and you might not be able to care less about it...but now I've said what I wanted to say, nontheless.

Do you really discredit the Physiologia Planatarum?
If that isn't science to you, care to tell me what is?

Physiologia Plantarum is a peer reviewed scientific journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Scandinavian Plant Physiology Society.

(PP on Wikipedia)

reply to post by Software_Pyrate


Good thread,never thought of going indepth from this angle.I googled 'dr levengood peer reviewed scientific papers' and came across this.Don't know if it was reverenced as a source in this thread,but have a look. www.bltresearch.com...

reply to post by Software_Pyrate


Nice post, starred and flagged. It is the timely "crop circle season" annual parade of BLT. But what BLT present is flawed studies, assumptions, speculation. I think that this should be noted and considered very seriously.

BLT published just 3 papers in an attempt to give its study some credibility.
www.bltresearch.com...
These papers have been criticized for many reasons and even Levengoode himself concluded that the research that was published is in no way indicative of "genuine crop circles".
Take the "Nodes" fro example. Levengoode from BLT in one of their three papers says this:

Taken as an isolated criterion, node size data cannot be relied on as a definite verification of a 'genuine' crop formation (genuine is defined here as being a crop circle produced by external energy forces independent of human influence).

What is even more astounding is the Levengoode gives us an explanation for the "nodes" and distances them further as any kind of significant CC marker.

This situation was later explained by the crop owner as being due to excessive nitrogen application, resulting in color change, weakened plant stems producing lodging, and enlarged, bent nodes. This sample group was important in several respects. First, it demonstrated that enlarged node ratios cannot be used exclusively as a crop circle verification. Second, the absence of malformed embryos suggested that soil nitrogen is not a factor in this type of transformation. Finally. it suggested that the presence of a deeper green leaf color would be an indication that a crop formation might be caused by the application of excess nitrogen.

www.bltresearch.com...

Did you actually read the studies OP or did you just copy and paste the OP from a CC website?

BLT no longer has Levengoode involved, by the way.
But Nancy Talbot is still doing the convention and Lecture circuit annually, especially during CC season.
They still haven't published anything since the 90's but, according to your own source here, you can get this.

BLT Research has a package of scientific information available for $20.00 if you also send a 9x12 self addressed, stamped envelope to: Nancy Talbott, Box 127, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02140. To report a crop formation for examination call 617-492-0415 between 11:00 AM and 11:00 PM, and they will try to get field workers out there to do the job. For a cassette of the Nancy Talbott interview on 21st Century Radio, send $10.00 to Hieronimus & Co., Inc. P.O. Box 648, Owings Mills, MD 21117.

Notice that the BLT research pack for $20 goes to:

Nancy Talbott, Box 127, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02140.

and not BLT research
What scientific information is Nancy referring too? Why not just point us to peer reviewed scientific research that has been published?
I mean, that is what we all want don't we?

Here are the major criticisms of BLT research and the mythology surrounding anomalous characteristics all inspired by BLT and that get paraded around like they are facts.

Abstract—Three papers published by W. C. Levengood (1994), W. C.
Levengood and N. P. Talbott (1999) and by E. H. Haselhoff (2001) suggested
the involvement of some kind of electromagnetic radiation during the creation
of crop circles. Here we discuss the methods and conclusions of the three
articles, pointing out the misrepresentation of the experimental protocols, the
misleading application of statistical procedures, the arbitrary discarding of
unwanted results and the weakness of the proposed physical model to the
suggested hypothesis.

www.cicap.org...

Here is an open debate about BLT and Haselhoff and Grassi et al on the problems and flaws in BLT's studies and Crop Circle research and the way they misrepresent the findings. www.cicap.org...
Here is the refutation of Levengood et al.

The BLT papers were conducted on just three circles.
Yet people think the research is based on circles from around the world.
They have never published any work like that.

The claims by BLT and Haselhoff that we discussed were based only on those three formations. BLT did mention t-tests for other data (Beckhampton, Maryland) and that is all. Should we – or anybody – be expected to guess about unpublished tests?

BLT fail to distinguish data from the control and the test group? WTF?

we did not dispute the average difference between samples collected in and out of the formation; rather, we highlighted the lack of a reliable criterion for labelling the data as "affected" or "control".

This is basic science. BLT can't even do that.

This sums up BLT and their claims.

Haselhoff misrepresents his and BLT's work when he states that they just found apparently non-random patterns deserving – in their opinion – of further study. First, the alleged t-tests mentioned by Haselhoff would not support the presence of any pattern anyway, but only the undisputed fact that in any circle – known man-made formations included – inner plants have longer nodes than outer ones. But even if the existence of a generic decrease-with-distance trend should be proved, it would be a very humble and unsurprising conclusion because it would bear no indication of any specific cause; possible causes include mundane factors such as the dynamics of wind near the circle borders and the behavior of circlemakers. On the contrary, the titles of their papers contain words like "anomalies" and "energies" and the texts go far beyond.

www.cicap.org...

I'll rpeat the last bit again, because that is what your entire OP is about.

On the contrary, the titles of their papers contain words like "anomalies" and "energies" and the texts go far beyond.

None of the research they produce even comes close to showing that at all.


Levengoode seems to think that correlation of certain anomalies leads to causation. This is a massive error. Huge.
But the big issue for most ATSers, I would argue is that some of us see these anomalies as evidence of a cause or proof that the circles are not man made.
Levengoode actually uses these anomalies to speculate what that cause is, and Levengoode from BLT states that is could be natural.
Ion Plasma discharges, like lightning.
Levengood believes that it could be Plasma Vortices that create circles. He states that in his papers and in interviews.
So even if you take BLT research at face value, it speculates that the CC's are natural events.

Is this what you can't get you head around OP?

"Is it possible that a pair of these downward directed, counterclockwise plasma vortices intersected and captured meteoric dust along the way, which in turn, was maintained or heated back to a semi-molten state by the microwaves of sub-vortices which carried it to the ground with its subsequent crop flattening energies? If so, this would indicate a heretofore unknown phenomenon of ionospheric plasma vortices descending to the Earth's surface."

www.tonyrogers.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by brent81


Oooo..I would like to watch this one...I'm on satellite so I have to wait till 2am so I don't max out my band width.

THanks.

reply to post by Raud


Sorry...
If there is any content that you would like to add...by all means...as this thread is still well alive...

reply to post by Ptenjakin


There have been groups(schools)and what not that have replicated cc's...

I think they did prove one thing however, that it takes a lot of time to do even a simple cc.
sorry no sources...

But i could not agree more.

I have been interested in CC's for a while now but it seems i've come to the board a tad too late, as all of my points have already been expressed. I also recommend watching The New Swirled Order, as well as, Crop Circles: Quest for Truth. They are both fantastic documentaries loaded with information (especially Quest for Truth).

reply to post by atlasastro


I do know that his experiments raises a lot of doubt. And the way in which they conducted them raises more doubt. And that his experiments can be categorized as trivial.

Yes, I do agree.

BUT.

It does not change the fact that node elongation has occurred in these circles.
All I'm saying is there is something more going on than wood and rope period

[edit on 27-5-2010 by Software_Pyrate]