- Since the recent release of the movie
'Signs,' crop circles have been thrust into the limelight. Such major
publications as Scientific American and U.S. News and World Report have
echoed the common belief that all crop circles are made by stealthy
humans flattening plants with boards. This assumption would be fair
enough if we had no information suggesting otherwise. However,
intriguing data published in peer-reviewed scientific journals clearly
establishes that some of these geometric designs, found in dozens of
countries, are not made by "pranks with planks." In fact, a study about
to be published by a team of scientists and funded by Laurance
Rockefeller concludes "it is possible that we are observing the effects
of a new or as yet undiscovered energy source."
- In the early 1990s, biophysicist William
C. Levengood, of the Pinelandia Biophysical Laboratory, in Michigan,
examined plants and soils from 250 crop formations, randomly selected
from seven countries. Samples and controls were provided by the
Massachusetts-based BLT Research Team, directed by Nancy Talbott.
Levengood, who has published over 50 papers in scientific journals,
documented numerous changes in the plants from the formations. Most
dramatic were grossly elongated plant nodes (the "knuckles" along the
stem) and "expulsion cavities" -- holes literally blown open at the
nodes -- caused by the heating of internal moisture from exposure to
intense bursts of radiation. The steam inside the stems escaped by
either stretching the nodes or, in less elastic tissue, exploding out
like a potato bursting open in a microwave oven.
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- Seeds taken from the plants and
germinated in the lab showed significant alterations in growth, as
compared with controls. Effects varied from an inability to develop
seeds to a massive increase in growth rate -- depending on the species,
the age of the plants when the circle was created and the intensity of
the energy system involved. These anomalies were also found in tufts of
standing plants inside crop circles -- clearly not a result of
mechanical flattening -- and in patches of randomly downed crops found
near the geometric designs. These facts suggested some kind of natural,
but unknown, force at work. Published in Physiologia Plantarum (1994),
the international journal of the European Societies of Plant Physiology,
Levengood's data showed that "plants from crop circles display
anatomical alterations which cannot be explained by assuming the
formations are hoaxes." He defined a "genuine" formation as one
"produced by external energy forces independent of human influence."
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- A strange brown "glaze" covering
plants within a British formation was the subject of Levengood and John
A. Burke's 1995 paper in the Journal of Scientific Exploration. The
material was a pure iron that had been embedded in the plants while the
iron was still molten. Tiny iron spheres were also found in the soil. In
1999, British investigator Ronald Ashby examined the glaze through
optical and scanning electron microscopes. He determined that intense
heat had been involved -- iron melts at about 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit
-- administered in millisecond bursts. "After exhaustive inquiry, there
is no mundane explanation for the glaze" he concluded. In another paper
for Physiologia Plantarum (1999), Levengood and Talbott suggested that
the energy causing crop circles could be an atmospheric plasma vortex --
multiple interacting electrified air masses that emit microwaves as they
spiral around the earth's magnetic-field lines. Some formations,
however, contain cubes and straight lines.
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- Astrophysicist Bernard Haisch, of
the California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics, says that such
"highly organized, intelligent patterns are not something that could be
created by a force of nature." But Haisch points out that since not all
formations are tested, it is unknown how many are genuine. Nor is it
likely that such complex designs could evolve so quickly in nature.
"Natural phenomena make mountain ranges and form continents -- they
don't learn geometry in ten years," says Haisch, who is the science
editor for the Astrophysical Journal. In 1999, philanthropist Laurance
Rockefeller made possible the most definitive -- and most revealing --
study to date. The BLT Research Team collected hundreds of plant and
soil samples from a seven-circle barley formation in Edmonton, Canada.
The plants had both elongated nodes and expulsion cavities, and the
soils contained the peculiar iron spheres, indicating a genuine
formation. The controls showed none of these changes.
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- Mineralogist Sampath Iyengar, of the
Technology of Materials Laboratory, in California, examined specific
heat-sensitive clay minerals in these soils, using X-ray diffraction and
a scanning electron microscope. He discovered an increase in the degree
of crystallinity (the ordering of atoms) in the circle minerals, which
statistician Ravi Raghavan determined was statistically significant at
the 95 percent level of confidence. "I was shocked," says Iyengar, a
30-year specialist in clay mineralogy. "These changes are normally found
in sediments buried for thousands and thousands of years under rocks,
affected by heat and pressure, and not in surface soils." Also
astounding was the direct correlation between the node-length increases
in the plants and the increased crystallization in the soil minerals --
indicating a common energy source for both effects. Yet the scientists
could not explain how this would be possible. The temperature required
to alter soil crystallinity would be between 1,500 and 1,800 degrees F.
This would destroy the plants.
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- Understanding the possible
ramifications of these findings, Talbott sought the expertise of an
emeritus professor of geology and mineralogy at Dartmouth College,
Robert C. Reynolds Jr., who is former president of the Clay Minerals
Society. He is regarded by his colleagues as the "best-known expert in
the world" on X-ray diffraction analysis of clay minerals. Reynolds
determined that the BLT Team's data had been "obtained by competent
personnel, using current equipment." The intense heat required for the
observed changes in crystallinity "would have incinerated any plant
material present," he confirms in a statement for the Rockefeller
report. "In short, I believe that our present knowledge provides no
explanation." Meteorologist James W. Deardorff, professor emeritus at
the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State
University, and previously a senior scientist at the National Center for
Atmospheric Research, states in a 2001 Physiologia Plantarum commentary
that the variety, complexity and artistry of crop circles "represent the
work of intelligence," and not a plasma vortex. "That is why the hoax
hypothesis has been popularly advocated," he says. However, he points
out, the anomalous properties in plant stems thoroughly documented by
Levengood and Talbott could not possibly have been implemented by
hoaxers. Deardorff describes one 1986 British formation in which upper
and lower layers of crop were intricately swirled and bent perpendicular
to each other, in a fashion that "defies any explanation."
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- "People don't want to face up to
this, and scientists have to deal with the ridicule factor," he said in
a recent interview. Adding to the puzzle, professional filmmakers have
documented bizarre daytime "balls of light" at crop-circle sites. Light
phenomena were observed by multiple witnesses at the site of the
Canadian circle so meticulously examined under the Rockefeller grant.
Eltjo Hasselhoff, a Dutch experimental physicist, has taken on the study
of what he describes as "bright, fluorescent flying light objects, about
the size of a baseball. "Scientists face real and serious questions in
confronting this mystery. Could this be secret laser technology beamed
down from satellites? Is it a natural phenomenon? Is there a
consciousness or intelligence directing an energy form yet unknown to
us? "To look at the evidence and go away unconvinced is one thing," says
astrophysicist Haisch. "To not look at the evidence and be convinced
against it .. is another. That is not science." It's not good
journalism, either.
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- Thanks to Nancy Talbot and investigative
reporter Leslie Kean lkean@ix.netcom.net
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