The Ongoing Enigma of the Crop Circles: Part Three

When it comes to the British crop circle phenomena, no explanation put forth makes any logical sense. The best of all the implausible explanations is the extraterrestrial intelligence one, but only on a scale of two out of ten because the rest don’t even rate that highly. 

I’ll start this off with a controversial statement. I thing the crop circle (or corn circle as it is sometimes referred to) phenomena is currently the greatest terrestrial scientific puzzle going – full stop.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

The Alien or Extraterrestrial Connection:  For better or worse, crop circles have been associated with UFOs to a greater or lesser extent depending on whom you consult. However, one immediate objection would be that a solid UFO, landing in a field, couldn’t produce these sorts of complex patterns – that would have to be one hell of a weird UFO ‘car’ body underbelly!

Assuming now not human, but extraterrestrial intelligence (the UFO connection – if any), what is the motive? Sceptics have pointed out, rightly so, that it is ludicrous in the extreme to suggest that extraterrestrials come here, from there (wherever there is) just to do geometrical graffiti using agricultural crops as their canvas! It’s probably equally ludicrous to suggest that UFOs are alien tourist buses, the extraterrestrials on a holiday tourist tour, and England has been set aside as the area for extraterrestrial artists on tour to practice their art!

Still, perhaps these pictograms are an attempt at communication – extraterrestrial intelligence to terrestrial intelligence.

SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) scientists have always maintained we could decipher any deliberately sent alien message, optical and/or radio, because we shared in common at least an understanding of fundamental mathematics and nature (the laws, principles and relationships of physics). Now crop circles, pictograms if you like, are certainly mathematical in structure – geometry if nothing else. But what can they mean?

A traditional (radio/optical) SETI equivalent of mathematical pictograms could be sending a series or radio (or optical) pulses representing prime numbers. Another starting point could be a series of pulses - a ‘dit, dot, dot, dit, dash, dash, dash, dit, dit’, or [1 + 1 = 2].

So, perhaps these pictograms are an introductory ways and means of establishing a communicative relationship, starting off with some geometry. That might be a more effective way of doing things. If you were an alien, how would you try to establish first contact and communication? I mean for starters, you could just send radio and/or optical signals (traditional SETI strategy noted above) and hope we were looking at the exact right time and in the exact right direction and (for radio) at the exact right frequency. The odds for a successful contact are not that crash hot, IMHO.  

You could leave an artefact on the Moon (as in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey), but the Moon has a lot of real estate and there’s no guarantee any artefact(s) would be found.

You could land on the White House lawn with a ‘take me to your leader’ (sort of as in The Day the Earth Stood Still films) and get shot for your troubles!

You could buzz all and sundry in your UFOs, and abduct us, but that’s gotten nowhere, at least to the best of my knowledge. In any event, such UFO events are too transitory. You need not only a close to terra firma presence, but a longer lasting (relatively speaking) record of your existence. Crop circles fill the bill nicely. No danger of being overlooked; no danger to yourself. Of course the logician in me says that this is one hell of a weird way of trying to establish communication, but I’m no expert on alien psychology or alien logic – and neither is anyone else. It’s not a ways and means predicted by SETI scientists, but it is a ways and means.

However, all up, using crop circles as a means to establish communications just doesn’t seem to be that entirely logical, vis-à-vis landing on the White House lawn. Aliens I assume wouldn’t go to all the effort of coming here just to draw us pretty pictures in crop fields – unless of course maybe these are alien college students doing their mischievous pranks.

Assuming aliens, but not alien pranksters or trick or treaters out cruising our solar neighbourhood, then what - or now what?

Speaking of those damn UFOs, do crop circles and UFOs share any traits that might firm up the presence of an alien intelligence(s)? Yes indeed.

Both became well known common phenomena within a relatively narrow time frame window relative to our overall history – that window being the latter half of the 20^th Century. While we do have isolated examples of both before that era, it was roughly 1950+ that saw the two phenomena bloom, UFOs first, then the crop circles – which makes sense.

Both are ever ongoing phenomena.

Both have evolved in complexity over time. The geometric patters of crop circles have grown ever more intricate; in fact, something relatively new in the on-going evolution of complexity of crop ‘circles’ is the development of actual images pressed into the crops instead of purely geometrical symbols – images like faces, etc. But what’s really interesting is that some of these images only really stand out under low light angles like occur in the early morning or late afternoon. That’s getting more than just a tad sophisticated. Complexity evolution regarding UFOs started off with them as mainly lights in the sky, hence close encounters (of the first, second and third kind); finally abductions.

And both exhibit intelligence behind them – at least in part. Crop circles nearly always exhibit intelligence behind their manufacture; UFOs to a lesser extent, except of course for the unsolved cases, which are the smoking guns we’re really interested in.

Both are global in scope, yet both have geographic areas where there appear to be flaps or concentrations – of longer duration for crop circles; shorter for UFOs. These flaps or concentrations occur in time frames as well as in locations. 

There might be one other association with UFOs, albeit not the sort of UFOs one tends to associate with extraterrestrial intelligence. In this case the UFOs are more akin to ball lightning or the World War Two ‘foo-fighters’. So, an apparently associated if somewhat rarer phenomena are motion pictures that shows a small ball or balls of light executing a smooth trajectory over or near crop circles. From what I’ve viewed, maybe its birds, but I didn’t see any flapping activity or maybe paper or toy balloons blowing in the wind – though the pathways seemed too smooth to cater for random wind movement or wind gusts, and even bird flight is somewhat erratic. What could give the illusion of small balls of light relatively close to ground level? That is, we’re not talking Venus or high altitude weather balloons or clouds or flares or searchlights or aircraft lights, etc.

So, overall I’m forced reluctantly into an extraterrestrial intelligence explanation. Crop circles just might be an alien’s way of showing their intelligence and desire to communicate in a friendly, non-threatening manner. In a sense, we’ve done the same – recall the pictograms we attached to the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft, and the Voyager 1 and 2 probes, all of which are heading out there into the depths of interstellar space to one day, maybe, be found by extraterrestrials.

If crop circles are alien pictograms, maybe said extraterrestrial intelligence think us pretty thick for not having figured out their message(s) – well, maybe relative to them, we are thick as a brick. However, if aliens are behind these pictograms, then in one sense I think they are thick as a brick! I fail to understand, if this is an attempt at a mathematically oriented communication, why not just put a ‘crop’ circle, with fractal design, on the Moon, visible through any reasonable telescope? That alone would settle the human vs. alien intelligence debate!

When all is said and done, I have to use the Sherlock Holmes oft quoted saying that “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. Still, I find the extraterrestrial intelligence possibility unsatisfactory, but probably the least impossible of all the impossibilities.

The ‘Maybe It’s Some Other Explanation’ Connection:

New Age gurus suggest that crop circles are Mother Nature’s way of telling us that we’re responsible for doing nasty things to her. Or maybe Planet Earth has mysterious energy forces that somehow manifest themselves as pictograms in the English countryside. Now I’m not (yet) into nebulous natural energy grids and ley lines and mysticism and New Age cosmic forces and extreme forms of Gaia Theory as explanations of crop circles. But, then seeing as how ‘dark energy’ unexpectedly popped out of the astronomical woodwork! Still I’m not ready to gamble on those metaphysical ideas quite yet, if for no other reason than concepts like ley lines and undefined ‘cosmic forces’ and related ilk are hardly an intelligence or life force, and thusly ruled out. Intelligence has to rule here. 

So, maybe crop circles are a smoking gun that we do live in a simulated Universe and on a simulated planet. All other ‘rational’ explanations are equally, if not more so, ridiculous. If extraterrestrials, their motive isn’t at all obvious. If human in origin, crop circle graffiti should be way more widespread like ordinary back alley brick wall graffiti is, not to mention that a lot higher percentage of crop circle culprits or ‘artists’ should have been caught, tried, convicted, and fined for vandalism, destruction of private property and just plain trespassing. 

On the other hand, they certainly aren’t the landing marks of UFOs. Nor are whirlwinds a be-all-and-end-all explanation. And again, I really don’t want to try to come to terms with any mystical solutions – earth energies, Gaia, whatever. There is clearly an intelligence at work here, and I’m damned if I know what it is. If I had to vote for the most puzzling scientific mystery of our times, this would be it. However, I’m reasonably convinced it has probably nothing to do with UFOs or ETI and therefore has little relevance here, but that’s still the least plausible of all the other impossible explanations. I sure wish I knew what was going on!

Ultimately, the pictures tell the story, and that story tells you that crop circles just can not exist – but they do. How you resolve that paradox is, well, your problem. One division is to decide whether crop circles are information or communication. They certainly are information, in the way a painting is information, but are they communication? If so, and if human, then the message is ‘ha-ha, fooled you!’ If not human – ah, therein lies the rub.

Anyway, we can speculate until the crops are harvested to little end. Perhaps it might be better to conclude instead that the jury is still well and truly out despite the above mentioned Sherlock Holmes observation that “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. 

In summary, I’m convinced some, many, even most crop circle cases are genuine – what I cannot suss out, rather only speculate on, is the who (or whose intelligence), the why and the how.