331 lines
18 KiB
Plaintext
331 lines
18 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
(word processor parameters LM=8, RM=75, TM=2, BM=2)
|
|
Taken from KeelyNet BBS (214) 324-3501
|
|
Sponsored by Vangard Sciences
|
|
PO BOX 1031
|
|
Mesquite, TX 75150
|
|
|
|
There are ABSOLUTELY NO RESTRICTIONS
|
|
on duplicating, publishing or distributing the
|
|
files on KeelyNet except where noted!
|
|
|
|
March 8, 1992
|
|
|
|
CIRCLES3.ASC
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
This file shared with KeelyNet courtesy of Mathew Bevan.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
SOURCE: The Times DATE: 27 July 1990
|
|
|
|
George Hill goes down on the farm and discovers that corn circles
|
|
are grist to a media mill, whether messages in Sumerian, natural
|
|
phenomena or simply hoaxes . In spite of the giant graffiti
|
|
mockingly imprinted this week on a cornfield just under their noses,
|
|
the research team seeking to crack the mystery of corn circles at
|
|
Westbury Hill in Wiltshire mean to continue their vigil until the
|
|
crop is harvested in two or three weeks' time.
|
|
|
|
The standing corn is the writing-paper on which some little-
|
|
understood influence inscribes, with uncanny precision, signs which
|
|
seem to grow more numerous and more complex every year. With five
|
|
low-light video cameras trained day and night on the ripening
|
|
cornfields which stretch away to the horizon from their vantage-
|
|
point on the chalk ramparts of the prehistoric Bratton Fort, the
|
|
team hopes to catch the moment of formation of one of the circles.
|
|
|
|
The scene at Bratton Fort on Wednesday, on the morning the hoaxers
|
|
had been at work, did little to promote the credibility of the
|
|
circles as a genuine scientific phenomenon. Down below was the
|
|
evidence of the work of a party of buffoons to damage somebody
|
|
else's property and livelihood, while high on the escarpment the
|
|
angry and excited figure of Colin Andrews, one of the leaders of the
|
|
project, was letting himself be drawn by bands of the international
|
|
media into dropping hints which will not help workers in the field
|
|
to gain respectable backers for future research.
|
|
|
|
An atmosphere of silly-season gaiety hung over the encampment. It
|
|
will be harder than ever now to wrest the subject from the mystics
|
|
who prefer supernatural to natural explanations, and the cynics who
|
|
are satisfied that everything can be explained on the basis of
|
|
bucolic humour or press circulation-battles. Because the story is
|
|
all about ripening corn, it breaks every year just at the time when
|
|
serious news tends to be afflicted by its usual summer drought. As
|
|
Mr Andrews spoke of ``an airborne consciousness'', which he declared
|
|
could not inappropriately be described as ``supernatural'', the
|
|
representative of the Today newspaper stood at his shoulder with a
|
|
proprietorial smile.
|
|
|
|
For those who have been so merrily making hay out of the corn in
|
|
recent weeks, any turn in the tale, whether hoax or otherwise, can
|
|
|
|
Page 1
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
be turned to account except one: a natural explanation. A solution
|
|
to the mystery would spoil the fun and they would be thrown back on
|
|
the Loch Ness monster. So successful has the drive to mystification
|
|
been, that a spokesman for the Meteorological Office yesterday was
|
|
still taking the classic attitude of conservative science to a
|
|
puzzle with overtones of the occult, and dismissing the whole
|
|
phenomenon as ``a glorified hoax''.
|
|
|
|
In spite of Wednesday's prank, and earlier jollities like the
|
|
appearance of the message ``WEARENOTALONE'' on a Hampshire hillside
|
|
in 1983, and last year's report of rings at an Essex village called
|
|
Littley Green (Littley Green Men: geddit?), there can be no doubt
|
|
that many circles are not hoaxes. If the 400 rings which have been
|
|
reported this year are all man-made, then the sun must have touched
|
|
an alarmingly large number of industrious humourists.
|
|
|
|
Many are in remote spots where the chances of publicity would be
|
|
slight. Similar circles have been reported in many other countries
|
|
where there has been no ballyhoo to encourage pranksters, and as
|
|
long ago as 1936, 1918, and even 1678. ``It is usually easy to
|
|
distinguish a natural circle from a man-made one by looking at the
|
|
way the stalks have been pressed down,'' says Paul Fuller,the joint
|
|
author of Crop Circles a Mystery Solved, to be published next month.
|
|
|
|
``If you visit a fresh one, you can see how the crops have been
|
|
pressed down in a spiral or circular pattern, sometimes so gently
|
|
that they have not even been flattened, sometimes pressed so firmly
|
|
into the soil that they leave a mark in it. The traces left by human
|
|
intervention are quite different.''
|
|
|
|
But there are aspects to the circles which make them tempting
|
|
subjects for science-fiction speculation. Witnesses who have been
|
|
nearby when they form frequently speak of strange lights and buzzing
|
|
noises, or sensations similar to those associated with strong fields
|
|
of static electricity.
|
|
|
|
Tests with instruments have sometimes confirmed that electric
|
|
phenomena are involved. The growing number of circles may be
|
|
partly explicable by changes in agricultural practice, but it is
|
|
impossible to account for the eerily systematic patterns of recent
|
|
examples. Fancy and superstition have ranged exuberantly in
|
|
proposing explanations for the phenomenon.
|
|
|
|
Claims that the cause involves flying saucers, fungal infections,
|
|
ley-lines, giant hailstones, rutting stags or mass-movements of
|
|
hedgehogs have been suggested, and gleefully perpetuated by those
|
|
who thrive on mystification.
|
|
|
|
This year, the bouillabaisse of red herrings has been enriched by a
|
|
suggestion that the signs are a warning of ecological disaster
|
|
written in 3,000-year-old Sumerian script although it has not been
|
|
explained why an entity which has not yet discovered the ABC should
|
|
be supposed to have any up to date information about other events on
|
|
earth.
|
|
|
|
The mystifiers are less happy with the evidence of the small number
|
|
of witnesses, including some impeccably sober citizens, who have
|
|
actually observed the formation of circles. Their testimony
|
|
threatens to spoil the fun. One of them is Melvyn Bell, a Wiltshire
|
|
|
|
Page 2
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
labourer, who saw a circle in 1983, long before the story was taken
|
|
up by the tabloids. ``It didn't seem a matter of great interest to
|
|
me at the time,'' he says. ``I was riding on the old Ridgeway near
|
|
Lavington at about eight in the evening one day in August. About a
|
|
quarter of a mile away I saw a small cloud of dust above a cornfield
|
|
it looked like one of those spinning clouds of debris you sometimes
|
|
see outside a supermarket. I was looking down the hill towards it,
|
|
higher up than the top of the cloud. It was all over in a few
|
|
seconds. It laid out a circle about ten yards wide in the corn. I
|
|
heard no buzzing noises.''
|
|
|
|
Of all explanations, the whirlwind solution is the one that
|
|
commentators drawn to occult answers dislike most. Mr. Andrews
|
|
mentions it briefly and dismissively in his own book, Circular
|
|
Evidence, written jointly with Pat Delgado and published last year.
|
|
|
|
Supernaturalists have suggested that Mr Bell's evidence should be
|
|
discounted because he is an employee of Dr. Terence Meaden, an
|
|
academic specialising in research into atmospheric processes, whose
|
|
book The Circles Effect and Its Mysteries, also published last year
|
|
(there must be a supernatural explanation behind this exponential
|
|
growth in the number of books on the subject).
|
|
|
|
Dr. Meaden is the first writer to put forward a theory which
|
|
explains most of the characteristics of the circles on a basis of
|
|
current scientific knowledge. In the process, he goes far to
|
|
providing a rational explanation for many of the UFO reports which
|
|
have puzzled researchers for decades. Drawing partly on the
|
|
extensive records gathered by Mr Andrews and his colleagues, he
|
|
shows that circles tend to appear in very specific conditions of
|
|
weather and topography.
|
|
|
|
``I would say there is no mystery about the basic process,'' he
|
|
says. ``The primary thing is a vortex formed on the lee side of a
|
|
hill in very still atmospheric conditions. If a mass of air near the
|
|
ground becomes electrically charged, as it can be by friction where
|
|
a dry crop and dust have been stirred by the wind all day, very
|
|
complex processes might develop, and produce the buzzing and glowing
|
|
that have been described.''
|
|
|
|
In their familiar form, whirlwinds happen only in daylight, when
|
|
warm air creates upcurrents which spin as they rise. But where a
|
|
layer of cool air lies above a warm layer, parts of the upper layer
|
|
can fall away, and as they sink, spiral formations like smoke-rings
|
|
may form. These spinning masses, some larger than others, some
|
|
hitting the ground quite hard, and others scarcely brushing it,
|
|
might well be the most credible explanation for many of the detailed
|
|
characteristics of the circles, including the delicate concentric
|
|
forms sometimes seen.
|
|
|
|
It is more difficult to understand how they could produce treble and
|
|
quintuple patterns of rings, and harder still to see how they could
|
|
lead to the complex angular spurs and key-patterns photographed this
|
|
year. ``Imagine a round clock falling to the ground,'' Dr Meaden
|
|
says. ``If it falls gently, it may leave a plain round impression
|
|
behind. If it falls so hard that it smashes, then parts of the
|
|
mechanism might shoot out this way or that. Further vortices inside
|
|
the main vortex might fly out as it disintegrates. I think many of
|
|
these patterns are genuine, and offer clues to the internal
|
|
|
|
Page 3
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
structure of these objects.'' But not even Dr Meaden can offer a
|
|
clear explanation for the apparent tendency of the patterns to grow
|
|
more complex year by year. If that trend continues, a degree of
|
|
mystery will continue to cling to the circles, and it may not be
|
|
long before it seems worthwhile for us to brush up on our Sumerian.
|
|
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
1990 SOURCE: The Times DATE: 25 July 1991
|
|
|
|
Crop Circles; Letter From Mr Ralph Noyes
|
|
|
|
Sir,
|
|
I read with interest your report on the reappearance of crop
|
|
circles (July 16). Hoaxing is undoubtedly taking place in some
|
|
cases. We in the Centre for Crop Circle Studies are cooperating
|
|
closely with the Wiltshire police in the hope of eliminating this
|
|
nuisance, which is not only troublesome to farmers but muddies the
|
|
scientific record.
|
|
|
|
The event in the field near Alton Barnes which occurred on July
|
|
1-2 (there has since been a second formation in the same field) was
|
|
seen within hours by members of CCCS. It will by now have lost
|
|
much of its delicate texturing as a result of sight-seeing by
|
|
members of the public. But in its pristine state it showed the
|
|
hallmarks of a genuine occurrence, particularly in the complex
|
|
layering of the grain where the main shaft of the formation crosses
|
|
the central elements of a ring and circle. We do not believe it
|
|
could have been a hoax. Mr. and Mrs. Carson, who farm the land, have
|
|
our full support in repudiating the suggestion of trickery.
|
|
Yours faithfully, RALPH NOYES
|
|
(Honorary Secretary, Centre for Crop Circle Studies),
|
|
9 Oakley Street, SW3. July 16.
|
|
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
1991 SOURCE: The Times DATE: 12 June 1991
|
|
|
|
Tokyo scientist rustles up corn circle
|
|
Yoshi-Hiko Ohtsuki By Nick Nuttall, Technology Correspondent
|
|
|
|
A JAPANESE scientist who has been enthralled by the annual
|
|
appearance of crop circles in Britain has created the phenomenon in
|
|
his laboratory. The shapes, identical to those which started to re-
|
|
appear last week, were made without the assistance of UFOs, farmers'
|
|
lads, rutting deer, frenzied hedgehogs or any of the other exotic
|
|
theories which have sprung up around the phenomenon.
|
|
|
|
Yoshi-Hiko Ohtsuki used a machine which he developed to produce ball
|
|
lightning. The professor of physics at Waseda university, Tokyo,
|
|
has thus helped to confirm theories proposed last year by Terence
|
|
Meaden, former associate professor of physics at Dalhousie
|
|
university in Halifax, Canada, and founder of the Tornado Storm
|
|
Research Organisation at Oxford polytechnic.
|
|
|
|
Dr. Meaden suggested, to gales of derision by lovers of more
|
|
outlandish explanations, that the topography and climate of such
|
|
counties as Wiltshire and Hampshire triggered the formation of mini-
|
|
whirlwinds. As they broke down over fields, he suggested, a
|
|
doughnut-shaped eddy within the column swept downwards, swirling the
|
|
crop.
|
|
|
|
Page 4
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dr. Meaden said yesterday that Professor Ohtsuki, who first visited
|
|
Britain two years ago to examine the phenomenon, had told him in a
|
|
letter that he fired mini-whirlwinds over plates of fine aluminium
|
|
powder in his ball-lightning machine to replicate the swirls.
|
|
|
|
The findings have been lent further weight by another Japanese
|
|
scientist, Tokio Kikuchi of Kochi university, who has developed a
|
|
mathematical model based on Dr Meaden's theory which has been shot
|
|
on video. It also creates more complex shapes, similiar to those
|
|
that have appeared in recent years.
|
|
|
|
Supporters of more exotic theories had said that a scientific basis
|
|
for corn circles is defied by these complicated configurations. Dr.
|
|
Meaden believes that the final answer to the circles' complexities
|
|
might be found in the appearance of sun spots which lead to
|
|
electromagnetic changes in the Earth's atmosphere and crust.
|
|
|
|
If so, the number of complicated corn circles may fall over the
|
|
coming years. Solar activity is believed to be on the point of
|
|
declining from a 200 - year peak. (c) Times Newspapers Ltd.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
1991 SOURCE: The Times DATE: 10 September 1991
|
|
|
|
LONDON'S most famous occult bookshop, Waktins, is having no truck
|
|
with the Southampton hoaxsters who confessed to newspapers yesterday
|
|
that they were responsible for the mystery of the corn circles.
|
|
|
|
``The newspapers are full of lies,'' said an angry spokesman for the
|
|
shop, which specialises in books on magic, astrology and psychic
|
|
phenomena. The enigma remains, insists the shop. So, too, will its
|
|
window display, erected last week, of books on crop circles,
|
|
explaining the phenomenon by reference to aliens from outer space,
|
|
energy currents and other causes far more plausible than two men
|
|
with a ball of string, an old baseball cap and 4 ft wooden plinths.
|
|
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd. 1991
|
|
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
If you have comments or other information relating to such topics
|
|
as this paper covers, please upload to KeelyNet or send to the
|
|
Vangard Sciences address as listed on the first page.
|
|
Thank you for your consideration, interest and support.
|
|
|
|
Jerry W. Decker.........Ron Barker...........Chuck Henderson
|
|
Vangard Sciences/KeelyNet
|
|
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
If we can be of service, you may contact
|
|
Jerry at (214) 324-8741 or Ron at (214) 242-9346
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Page 5
|
|
|
|
|