Crop Circles Becoming More Frequent

Human pranksters are responsible for most crop circles in the world, but as with UFO phenomena, a certain number defy any logical explanation. One thing for certain, they're becoming more frequent, with at least one made every day somewhere in the world.

According to LiveScience.com:

Crop-circle enthusiasts have come up with many theories about what creates the patterns, ranging from the plausible to the patently absurd. One explanation in vogue in the early 1980s was that the circles were accidentally produced by the especially vigorous sexual activity of mating hedgehogs. As the patterns became more complex that idea was abandoned, but some of the theories that replaced it were equally outlandish. Some people have suggested that the circles are somehow created by incredibly localized and precise wind patterns, or by scientifically undetectable Earth energy fields and meridians called ley lines. 

 . . . While there are countless theories, the only known, proven causes of crop circles are humans. Many people believe that crop circles have been reported for centuries (for example mistakenly suggesting that a 1678 woodcut of a folkloric legend about Satan harvesting wheat is evidence of a crop circle); but in fact the first ones appeared only in the 1970s. Their origin remained a mystery until September 1991, when two men confessed that they had created the patterns for decades as a prank to make people think UFOs had landed. They never claimed to have made all the circles — many were copycat pranks done by others — but their hoax launched the crop-circle phenomenon. Most crop-circle researchers admit that hoaxers craft the vast majority of crop circles. But, they claim, there's a remaining tiny percentage that they can't explain.

The LiveScience.com article explores the attributes common to most crop circles and what are some of the suspected causes.

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Writer Ponders Wiltshire's Crop Circles

Crop circle discovered in August in Wiltshire.

Here are excerpts from an interesting article appearing recently in the London Telegraph, written by Clive Aslet, a skeptic. The article describes his reactions to some of the new scientific findings.

. . . The archaeological features of this part of Britain are unique: only in southern England do you find white horses etched into hillsides, and there is no equivalent elsewhere to mysterious Silbury Hill. Crop circles are found in other parts of the globe, but not many. The 55 that have been spotted so far this year in Britain – mostly in Wessex – are more than half the total number observed throughout the world.

. . . Soil samples from beneath the circles that have been sent off for analysis in the States have apparently revealed traces of silica, suggesting exposure to intense heat – yet for so short a time that the crop does not burn up. Nevertheless, the wheat itself appears to be changed. Plant grain from a crop circle and it will grow taller and stronger than control samples, she insists, as though genetically modified.

It is widely believed in the crop-circle community that the shapes appear fully made, in a flash of light that illuminates the whole valley. “We don’t know where the energy comes from,” says Blake.

. . . Crop circles first appeared – or, as Blake would have it, were first noticed – in the Eighties. After a decade of speculation, during which it seemed that no human agency could be responsible for these miraculous designs, two men in their sixties stepped forward. Doug Bower and Dave Chorley claimed responsibility for a spectacular hoax, perpetrated not with sophisticated or extraterrestrial technology, but homespun equipment such as a plank and a length of rope. A baseball cap with a circle of wire attached to the visor provided a sight that could be aligned with an object on the horizon to keep the design steady. Case closed.

Well, not quite: certainly not to a community supported and reinforced by the internet and dedicated to finding alternative explanations. “We know that there are fakes,” says the study group’s bubbly administrator, Clare Oatley. “But as somebody said: ‘Just because a faker can copy a van Gogh, doesn’t mean that van Gogh didn’t exist.”’

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