Crop Circles

[J Riff]

Life is dirt cheap, like muck, everywhere, I've been informed, on good authority. On every planet where it can possibly get a foothold, boom single-cells, then poof, spiders etc. Can't not happen, in fact.
Water? Ants in the desert? Don't need water, except for soft, grublike lifeforms and babies.

Back to cropart. What about the farmers who report these things forming in under a minute? Nutbars? Nutbar farmers trashing their own property to get in the newspaper for no financial gain? OK.
What about evidence of a heat-stamp effect? Is there a scientific explanation for that?
Mercy. Who is telling these lies if not the military/monkey/Govt. forces.
Stop listening to them. They will have to be destroyed before this issue can be dealt with properly, sadly.
Really. An army, with soft inferior types on top sending others to do their dirty work? Kind of an inferior ancient system, no? It still is.
Maybe if a big crop circle appeared, ten miles long, that said
Listen to J Riff!
Then you could wait for some military goons to tell you if you should believe it or not.

 

[skeptical]

To Riff

Life on Earth is ubiquitous, certainly. But life has had nearly 4 billion years to adapt to all the extreme conditions. That is quite different to saying that life can form elsewhere in extreme conditions. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe not. We will not know until we can sample other worlds.

Evidence of a heat stamp effect?
Please present such evidence. Make sure the source is a good one, like a scientific peer reviewed journal, and not some person who might be a nutcase, who reports without evidence.

So far, I have seen no evidence of crop circles that could not have been done by clever, computer savvy students.

 

[Dave]

So far, I have seen no evidence of crop circles that could not have been done by clever, computer savvy students.

Or Chronicles members following a practise down on the beach.

 

[J Riff]

Have you visited the sites worldwide with your chemistry set?

Here's what we should do.... figure out the next cropart site, hide, and wait. When the spoiled little brats appear with the wires, planks, tractor and lights, grab 'em and hold for ransom. Daddy has gotta have a LOT o' dough, no ordinary kid could possibly have the time, or be spoiled rotten enough, to do something like crop circles. These are rich kids with far too much time on their hands, or drug-ravaged loons.
And where's the buzz if it stays secret? Who do they brag to - each other? Sheesiz that is pathetic.
It's not adding up that immature kids do all this damage without getting caught, sorry. They've never been caught, and there are HOW many crop circles?
Genius, spoiled, rich, master criminal kids, uncatchable for years! - making massive structures in the night for no discernible reason. Ordinary working farmers are, of course, nutbars and not to be believed.
See, I'm trying hard to come around to the sound, scientific explanation, (spoiled kids worldwide) but it just doesn't add up yet.
Show me some evidence of this gang of genius kids, please. There's plenty of cropart evidence online that shows heat effect, depleted soil etc. - but no evidence of kids doing it. Please provide such before you suggest such a wild, improbable theory. ( *

 

[HareBrain]

Here's what we should do.... figure out the next cropart site, hide, and wait. When the spoiled little brats appear with the wires, planks, tractor and lights, grab 'em and hold for ransom. Daddy has gotta have a LOT o' dough, no ordinary kid could possibly have the time, or be spoiled rotten enough, to do something like crop circles. These are rich kids with far too much time on their hands, or drug-ravaged loons.

OK, but if they're drug-ravaged loons, you can look after them while we await the ransom.

There's plenty of cropart evidence online that shows heat effect, depleted soil etc. - but no evidence of kids doing it. Please provide such before you suggest such a wild, improbable theory. ( *

I've read about some of the heat-effect stuff before, and if true, it would certainly argue against the student theory (unless their robot overheated). But does it actually, actually stand up to sceptical examination? (Don't ask me, I'm too lazy to find out.)

 

[skeptical]

Riff

The evidence is of the soundest as I told you before. They owned up and demonstrated how they did it, by doing it in front of cameras. Sheesh! How much evidence does it take, for Finagle's Sake!

And they do not have to be spoiled rich kids. I well remember my own university days, and the enormous spirit of mischief that flowed through our veins. University students will do almost anything for amusement.

I could tell you of some of the jokes we carried out. Like phoning the local radio station with an eyewitness account of an iceberg in the harbour. And another time, of a Russian military submarine. Of tarring and feathering (actually kapok and syrup) a fellow student when he got engaged, and padlocking him in half naked state to a lamp stand in the main city centre.

I bet lots of contributors to this forum have got great stories of their own.

 

[Anthony G Williams]

Riff

The evidence is of the soundest as I told you before. They owned up and demonstrated how they did it, by doing it in front of cameras. Sheesh! How much evidence does it take, for Finagle's Sake!.

Exactly. Crop circles caused a lot of debate in the 1980s (I was interested in the phenomenon at the time and recall reading books and watching TV programmes about it) but when people began to confess to doing them and providing demonstrations of how they did it, that effectively killed it as a mystery.

Less than a year ago some of those responsible were commissioned to make a crop circle for a TV programme, and they did a convincing job. See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/clips/p00b8tch/qi_the_qi_crop_circle/

The probability of life developing in other solar systems can't yet be assessed - there isn't enough data. I have posted a couple of pieces about this on my blog; first this one: http://sciencefictionfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/05/where-is-everybody-fifty-solutions-to.html

and the next: http://sciencefictionfantasy.blogspot.com/2011/06/alien-civilisations-less-likely.html

 

[mosaix]

Exactly. Crop circles caused a lot of debate in the 1980s (I was interested in the phenomenon at the time and recall reading books and watching TV programmes about it) but when people began to confess to doing them and providing demonstrations of how they did it, that effectively killed it as a mystery.

Less than a year ago some of those responsible were commissioned to make a crop circle for a TV programme, and they did a convincing job. See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/clips/p00b8tch/qi_the_qi_crop_circle/

The probability of life developing in other solar systems can't yet be assessed - there isn't enough data. I have posted a couple of pieces about this on my blog; first this one: http://sciencefictionfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/05/where-is-everybody-fifty-solutions-to.html

and the next: http://sciencefictionfantasy.blogspot.com/2011/06/alien-civilisations-less-likely.html

Great line from the QI program: "Is it real or is it man-made?"

 

[RJM Corbet]

Yes, thanks for that video, Anthony.

Googling around, I'm getting odds of DNA originating by chance in the region:

1 x 10 to the 40 000 zeros (Fred Hoyle)

That is a very big number. There are biologists working who believe that RNA (a less complicated code) might also work, for life -- that there was a primordial struggle of millions of different sub-life systems competing and interacting with one another, and that DNA came out on top. However the one essential common factor of all life on earth is DNA.

Even viruses, which mainstream biology says do not fit into the definition of 'life', contain DNA.

 

[Anthony G Williams]

Yes, thanks for that video, Anthony.

Googling around, I'm getting odds of DNA originating by chance in the region:

1 x 10 to the 40 000 zeros (Fred Hoyle)

Fred Hoyle was brilliant in some ways but not in others. He was the major proponent of the "steady state" rather than "Big Bang" theories of the universe and held onto this belief in the face of mounting contrary evidence long after the Big Bang theory had been generally accepted.

The figure you quote is meaningless. It is impossible to calculate what the chances of DNA formation are, since we don't know how it happened. One thing we can be sure of, though: whatever the odds, it did happen here!

 

[mosaix]

RJM, regarding your odds re DNA - interesting. But, as with all biology it all developed from something else, something else that may have existed in just the kind of numbers that you are talking about (especially at the microscopic level). It only takes one of these to accidentaly develop some kind of advantage over its neighbour and so on and so on. I doubt DNA would have 'originated' in its present form in a single step, but would have been a progression of developmemnts.

What's the odds of someone inventing, in one step, the PC as we know it today? Very, very small. But starting with large machines with paper tape and cards over 60 years ago they've developed with mag tape, discs, integrated cicuits and operating systems to what we have today. Much the same could be said for cars and aeroplanes.

 

[RJM Corbet]

Yes, but mosaix, computers and aeroplanes are a result of evolution. And yet, there's probably more chance of a computer just happening by chance, than of life originating by chance. That's what the biologists say.

Life is something completely strange and unique. It's viable. It propagates itself, and contradicts the natural principle of entropy. Life is, in fact, anti-entropic, whatever 'life' is. However, it did happen here -- against all odds.

But what's the chance of it happening everywhere?

We seem to agree? In principle?

Anthony: I'm not standing in the 'steady state universe' camp, but Fred Hoyle hasn't been proved wrong, merely sidelined by the model. There's still gravity to account for. Dark-matter/energy is really just a big question mark to make the equations balance. Again, I may be out on a limb?

 

[Anthony G Williams]

Life is something completely strange and unique. It's viable. It propagates itself, and contradicts the natural principle of entropy. Life is, in fact, anti-entropic, whatever 'life' is. However, it did happen here -- against all odds.

But what's the chance of it happening everywhere?

We simply don't know whether it's strange or unique. It might be, or it might be extremely common - we have no data on which to base a judgment, since a sample of one is of no use in making statistical calculations.

All we can say is this: the fact that life here on Earth has spread to every conceivable ecological niche (including some which are extremely hostile to most forms of life) suggests strongly that once it gets a chance to start, there's no stopping it.

 

[Starbeast]

Life on Earth is ubiquitous, certainly. But life has had nearly 4 billion years to adapt to all the extreme conditions. That is quite different to saying that life can form elsewhere in extreme conditions. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe not. We will not know until we can sample other worlds.

That indeed would take a very long time and be exceedingly costly to send rockets with robots, and even then for the data to be sent back would take time to return from deep space. It still takes a lot of time for our efforts in examining Mars and our Moon, and costly to keep the space station going, even when many countries are funding the program.

It's been over forty years since we were able to make it to the Moon, build space stations and send probes out into space, our technology is still making some advances, but slowly. At the rate the space programs are going, it could take possibly two hundred years more before we can help humankind to survive.

All we can say is this: the fact that life here on Earth has spread to every conceivable ecological niche (including some which are extremely hostile to most forms of life) suggests strongly that once it gets a chance to start, there's no stopping it.

Uncaring governments and companies have ravaged a great deal of our planet within a short time, changing eco systems, causing extinct of planets and animals (some animals were of course hunted to extinction). Testing nuclear weapons, dumping toxic waste, filling our foods with chemicals, overfishing etc. etc. etc.

Heck, there are places in the U.S. that are so toxic that nothing can live there and no one can go there, entire towns are completely uninhabitable.

Efforts for a cleaner environment are finally beginning, but we still have a long way to go. Efforts are being made to save the last two fresh water lakes of the Great Lakes, Canada and the U.S. are dividing the rights to the lakes.

It's scary how close humans are to ecological disaster, the balance of life is a fine line. If all the water on Earth goes bad...we die.

Life is something completely strange and unique. It's viable. It propagates itself, and contradicts the natural principle of entropy. Life is, in fact, anti-entropic, whatever 'life' is. However, it did happen here -- against all odds.

But what's the chance of it happening everywhere?

For humans to push their efforts into space programs is great, but it takes a great amount of time. If we don't push our efforts into saving this precious planet we live on, we may not make it into a bright and shiney future. The search for answers in space will be only a waste of time, and it wouldn't matter if there are other intelligent beings out there or useful resources light years from our reach.

Oh yeah, crop circles, they look cool, but farmers don't like them.

 

[Metryq]

If they printed it, it must be true

I remember this event. One of the locals who owns horses chased them out of the barn so they'd be safe before the lava arrived. No drunken students were involved.

The Eruption of Mt. Milton (1980)
The Channel 7 news in Boston ended with a special bulletin announcing that a 635-foot hill in Milton, Massachusetts, known as the Great Blue Hill, had erupted, and that lava and ash were raining down on nearby homes. Footage was shown of lava pouring down a hillside. The announcer explained that the eruption had been triggered by a geological chain reaction set off by the recent eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington. An audio tape was played in which President Carter and the Governor of Massachusetts were heard declaring the eruption to be a “serious situation.“ At the end of the segment, the repoter held up a sign that read “April Fool.“ However, by that time local authorities had already been flooded with frantic phone calls from Milton residents. One man, believing that his house would soon be engulfed by lava, had carried his sick wife outside in order to escape. The Milton police continued to receive worried phone calls well into the night. Channel 7 was so embarrassed by the panicked reaction that they apologized for the confusion later that night, and the executive producer responsible for the prank was fired.

 

[Starbeast]

If they make a movie too real, people will scream

At the end of the segment, the repoter held up a sign that read “April Fool.“ However, by that time local authorities had already been flooded with frantic phone calls from Milton residents. One man, believing that his house would soon be engulfed by lava, had carried his sick wife outside in order to escape. The Milton police continued to receive worried phone calls well into the night. Channel 7 was so embarrassed by the panicked reaction that they apologized for the confusion later that night, and the executive producer responsible for the prank was fired.

Oh man, I haven't been aware of that one. Now THAT was the dumbest prank I've heard of. Thanks Metryq.

Have you seen the made for cable movie with John De Lancie playing a news reporter who was covering an alien invasion. I can't remember the name of movie which came out on cable in the 1980's, I tried to find it on Youtube. It was really good, the film was looked convincing and of course the aliens were defeatng us easily, I liked that movie more than ID4, it seemed like H.G.Wells "War of the Worlds".

Anyway, my brother and I were thrilled watching it, and when it ended we thought nothing more about it, other than how cool it was.

But what I didn't know was that other people who were channel surfing cable came across that movie and thought it was real. And just like the effect Orsen Wells had on people in 1938, happened again! People were leaving town or hiding in their basements with guns and others were commiting suicide!

I spoke to a friend about the cable movie a decade later and he told me that at the time, he was taking a nap and his mother woke him up to tell him Earth is being invaded by aliens. I was stunned.

People do panic easy.

Jeepers, now I want to see that cable movie again. I'll see if I can locate a trailer of it and post it in the movie section of this site.

 

[Pyan]

If this thread doesn't go back on topic, it will be closed.

First and only warning, gentlemen...

 

[Starbeast]

If this thread doesn't go back on topic, it will be closed.

First and only warning, gentlemen...

Oh yeah, crop circles, they look cool, but farmers don't like them.

Crop circles are a double edged sword, they look more striking and beautiful as time goes by. But, with the tremendous and increasing amount of hoaxers they've lost their value as something unworldly to behold. Because IF aliens were trying to tell us something important....I feel that the message has been lost.

 

[J Riff]

Well then, let's see a documentary on how they could be made by people.
It wouldn't be easy, it would have to be automated to some degree.
Stakes driven in the ground, wires of many different lengths, and planks attached at different heights, then.... the planks dragged, all at once, and whoosh, a nice pattern.
Gather up all the miles of wire.... maybe retractable like a vacuum cleaner? .... load the boards onto the tractor, and sneak on out.
Unless someone can think of a better way>?
A helicopter? A giant rubber stamp suspended from a helicopter.
Trained grasshoppers. Trained cows!...
Should have a contest with large cash prize. Choose an intricate crop circle, and see if anyone can duplicate it by any means, using any and all methods, as long as it's done in the dark. )

 

[Starbeast]

Well then, let's see a documentary on how they could be made by people. It wouldn't be easy, it would have to be automated to some degree.

True, I've seen some good ones made by people that have spent over five hours creating magnificant crop art. BUT, I am aware that black helicopters have been spotted by some of the questionable agroglyphs.

You're right J Riff, the really complicated ones would take too long to make by people, plus there is still the evidence of extreme heat being used that affects the plants themselves, in some cases, even mutation.

And the heat and mutation have been noticed in trees where people have reported strange aircraft flying low, or something that has fallen from the sky that damaged wooded areas.