The Enigma That Is Tunguska (1908)

Assuming one or more extraterrestrial civilizations with advanced, interstellar spaceflight capability exists; then they know about Planet Earth. Say ‘hi’ to those pesky UFOs. If UFOs aren’t mystery enough, there’s that enigmatic 30 June 1908 explosion of ‘something’ over the Tunguska region of Siberia. Might the two anomalies be connected? Something that came from outer space crashed into, or exploded above, the Tunguska, Siberia forest in late June of 1908, of that there is no question. Whodunit or whatdunit is the $64,000 question.

Something that came from outer space crashed into, or exploded above, the Tunguska, Siberia forest in late June of 1908, of that there is no question. It was heard up to 1,200 kilometres away; witnessed up to 700 kilometres away. The after-effects, from air pressure waves, ground shockwaves to unusual bright skies at night (quasi-auroras in the sky) viewed throughout Europe in the days (or nights) that followed are well documented. From that, and the evidence as observed from on-site scientific expeditions at ground zero (the epicentre) and the 1908 eyewitness reports, strongly suggest that something several tens of meters across exploded, and totally vaporized some 8 to 8.5 kilometres above ground level with a minimum force of 5 megatons, an accepted average force of between 12.5 to 15 megatons, at the other extreme perhaps up to 30 megatons (1000 times the force unleashed on Hiroshima). 

Because of the political turmoil’s Russia and the world were experiencing (WW I; the Russian Revolution), but mainly because the affected region was just about inaccessible due to the harsh climate, distance from civilization and wilderness terrain, it was many years before an actual scientific investigation was launched and travelled into the region to investigate into what actually happened – what impacted this vast forested region of Siberia where (fortunately) there were few inhabitants and witnesses. The main and initial scientific investigator was a Russian scientist, Leonid Kulik. His first expedition in 1921 didn’t actually reach ground zero; but later expeditions of his in 1927 (the first to reach the epicentre), with follow-ups in 1928 and 1929 and finally in 1939 got the scientific ball rolling. Of course everyone expected that eye-witnesses would be irrelevant because the object was obviously a natural celestial object, a meteor or a small comet, and there would be a crater. Samples of the extraterrestrial object would be collected, analysed back in civilization, fragments put on display in museums – mystery solved. That’s what everyone expected, but at times Mother Nature can be a real bitch!

Well, to make a long story shorter, initial and subsequent on-site teams of researchers (there were further Russian expeditions in 1958 and 1961 with the first post Cold War international teams hitting the ground in 1989 and 1991) found no crater; no chunks of extraterrestrial debris. Whatever ‘hit’ the Tunguska region of Siberia in June 1908 didn’t really apparently impact, but exploded high up in the atmosphere, a resulting blast wave flattening the trees in a radial pattern out from ground zero, ultimately covering an area associated with a large city. Even that wouldn’t have been all that anomalous were it not for some witnesses who claimed that the object as it descended, changed direction. You wouldn’t have expected that from a natural object. And thus was born the idea that the object wasn’t natural, but artificial, probably, well certainly, since terrestrial technology had no equivalents, extraterrestrial – an alien spaceship.

Seeing as how there’s evidence that UFOs, or ‘flying discs’ as they were called in the late 1940’, could run into difficulty and crash, as in Roswell (July 1947) for example, well that lent additional credibility that in 1908, a ‘flying disc’ also ran into technical difficulty, but exploded, probably a nuclear-type explosion,  relative to actually crash-landing.

Well, whatever it was, it was vaporized to the extent that there wasn’t enough solid residue left behind to establish once and for all that the object actually was. And so other exotic, though natural, theories were spawned to account for the overall Tunguska event anomalies.

So, some scientists have suggested that what hit Tunguska was a mini Black Hole that just kept right on keeping on and passed through the entire Earth, exiting out the opposite side (commonly postulated to be the North Atlantic). There are good theoretical reasons to suspect that mini Black Holes exist in space – ‘theoretical’ needs to be stressed however.

Even more far out, it was a tiny piece of antimatter. Antimatter, when impacting Earth’s atmosphere composed of normal matter, well its ka-boom time as there will be an annihilation of equal parts of our atmospheric matter and whatever the amount of antimatter was – gram for gram; ounce for ounce. When matter meets antimatter, stuff is turned into pure energy, and thus no solid residue left behind at the ‘crime’ scene.   

Even more far out there’s been speculations that the Tunguska Event was caused by a concentration of methane (natural) gas released naturally into the atmosphere which exploded; an extraterrestrial laser beam attack or scientific test on a relatively uninhabited region; giant ball lightning; even a terrestrial death ray or early nuclear experiment that went very wrong. Those make the alien spaceship / UFO blowing up theories seem mundane and commonplace. 

The disturbing bit about the Tunguska Event was that if the explosion / impact had happened slightly earlier or later, it could just as easily have exploded / impacted over a far more densely inhabited region. Hitting the ocean might have generated a tsunami, and we know the sort of havoc they can cause. More frightening, if it had happened, right out of the proverbial blue, no warning at all, in say 1958 instead of 1908, what would Russia’s immediate reaction have been? Maybe an assumption that there had been a nuclear strike, the first of many pre-emptive or unprovoked nuclear strikes on Russian soil. Their reaction, and response, could easily have been, in that Cold War, high tension era, shoot back now and ask questions later – assuming a later after all out nuclear war.

Back to 1908, maybe the Tunguska Event was a comet, or meteor, or a mini black hole, or a bit of anti-matter. Experts remain uncertain and undecided to this very day. Or, maybe it was a spaceship – obviously not of terrestrial origin. Lots of authors have written tomes advocating that explanation (and others even more exotic as we’ve seen). And in fact, although scoffed at by the experts, I’m not quite ready to write off the spaceship theory quite yet. If Roswell, why not Tunguska? However, I’d be being unrealistic if I didn’t admit that theory is a long shot. At the least, it’s still a marvelous scientific mystery. 

Further readings on the Tunguska Incident:

Atkins, Thomas & Baxter, John; The Fire Came By: The Riddle of the Great Siberian Explosion; Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York; 1976: 

Furneaux, Rupert; The Tungus Event: The Great Siberian Catastrophe of 1908; Panther Books, Frogmore, St Albans, Herts; 1977:

Rubtsov, Vladimir; The Tunguska Mystery; Springer, New York; 2009:

Stoneley, Jack; Tunguska: Cauldron of Hell; Star Book, London; 1977:

Verma, Surendra; The Tunguska Fireball: Solving One of the Great Mysteries of the 20^th Century; Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd., Crows Nest, NSW; 2005:

My Top Biological Anomalies: A List

You may live comfortably in your everyday un-anomalous world, but rest assured, that un-anomalous world is in itself an anomaly in a quite anomalous universe, all brought to you by Mother Nature.

CRYPTOZOOLOGY: How can reports of a Bigfoot or a Loch Ness Monster continue for decades, even centuries without physical verification? It’s as if these creatures were but phantoms. It’s easy to visualize such creatures, but far harder to explain how a rather largish lake monster can elude absolute and final detection, required to convince even the most skeptical of skeptics, in a confined lake seemingly indefinitely. Or, if a species is highly territorial, that’s the same as being geographically confined. All these observers can’t be totally mistaken. There is an absolute consistency in the observations, be it whatever’s in Loch Ness or Bigfoot or other unknown creatures. Observations have, in many cases, as noted above, been reported over many centuries, as for example Bigfoot by Native Americans prior to the arrival of Europeans.

However, the central fly in the ointment (an anomaly) is that you cannot ever have just one of these unknown creatures. Creatures, like all biological organisms will die. Therefore, to be sighted over lengthy time frames, these creatures need to breed. To maintain a population’s survival over long time periods requires an entire breeding population, not just two individuals. That in turn ups the ante that sightings, evidence and proof positive should be far greater than they are, especially when these unknown animals are confined to a relatively small space, like a Loch Ness. But there is a slight problem with a small but breeding population of critters – inbreeding. It’s the genetic dangers of inbreeding that’s ultimately behind taboos against incest.

DRAGONS: The anomaly here is that if dragons and dragon-lore was the product of just one culture at say one particular point in time, the concept could be easily dismissed. But when they appear in every culture, from ancient times even up through the 1700’s when they were still part of natural history, then one needs to pay closer attention. That’s all the more so since dragons were taken very seriously indeed. In China they were the emissaries between the gods and the emperor, and woe beholds any of lesser rank that wore a dragon image on their person. Dragons and dragon-lore form a major part of what passes for science-fantasy today. There’s probably no child over the age of five who can’t wax lyrical and tell you all about dragon-lore. The best guess scenario is that while dragons may be considered mythical today; they certainly were not, not too awfully that many generations ago. If that’s the case, if dragons were really real once upon a time, then the anomaly is – no fossils. 

The hidden assumption is of course that they were biological. What if instead they were technological? That in turn of course must of necessity translate into extraterrestrial technology, probably a vehicle and/or weapon of sorts (breathing out fire, anyone?). That might be reinforced by the dragon’s kissing cousin, the Garuda, the divine birdman of Indian myth, which served as the mount, the personal aerial ‘chariot’ of the Hindu god Vishnu. 

CROP CIRCLES: There’s no disputing, no matter how much the pseudoscience skeptic you are, that crop circles do exist. There are numerous pissed-off farmers whose fields have been vandalized; multi-thousands of after-the-fact eyewitness accounts and an equal number of films and photographs, as well as on-site and laboratory analysis of the phenomena. Observation here is at the 100% certainty level. Finding logical and rational theoretical explanations are however way more challenging than a ‘take two aspirin and call me in the morning’ type of remedy or diagnosis. In fact, no matter what theory is advanced, natural, human or alien, there are massive flaws to be had with each.

No natural phenomena can create a myriad of massive geometrically complex perfect constructions using agricultural crops as the medium. The challenge for a human, or even a team of humans, to create the same in total darkness in just a few hours (this is a summertime event – long days; short nights), without mistakes, without leaving their traces (footprints, tire tracks, litter, etc) without ever getting caught, tried and convicted for trespass and vandalism, is beyond the theoretical pale for even the most ardent of sceptics and sceptical explanations, though human hoaxes are the fallback position, albeit without real evidence. As for ET, why they would travel vast distances to, at least in part, dabble in agricultural graffiti, defies our understanding. If crop circles are an attempt by aliens to communicate with humans, well, there’s been a failure to communicate. Theory here is at the near 100% uncertainty level. There’s a long road to hoe yet to reconcile observation and theory.

CATTLE MUTILATIONS: There’s no disputing the bona-fides of this gruesome reality. It has been observed – after-the-fact – photographed, documented, and investigated by all manner of officialdom, as well as unofficial private investigators. And though oft referred to as ‘cattle’ mutilations, all manner of wildlife and other domestic livestock have been targeted too, the first reported case being a horse. Like the crop circle phenomena, there are three possible explanations: natural, human or alien.

If natural, why has this phenomenon only become an issue since the 1960’s? Predator-prey relationships, scavengers, etc. have existed and been observed ever since humans have inhabited the continents. There should be no anomaly here if animal mutilations are just the normal continuation of Mother Nature in tooth and claw. But there is an anomaly. If predators or scavengers, why are there no footprints, and especially if predators, why no signs of a struggle? How can predators account for precision removal of just certain body parts with razor sharp incisions? Since there’s no blood associated with the mutilated carcasses, did predators drink up their entire victim’s blood like an animal version of Dracula?

If humans or cultists are responsible, why hasn’t anyone claimed responsibility? Why hasn’t anyone been caught, tried, convicted, fined and/or imprisoned for trespass, animal cruelty, destruction of private property, etc.? Why no signs of human activity like tire tracks and footprints and litter (say a cigarette butt or beer can or two). Again, why no signs of a struggle?

Some have suggested this is the work of government, or government departments, taking samples to monitor for various bovine nasties, like diseases, or other types of contamination that could endanger human health if these livestock were consumed.  Really! There are vastly easier ways of legally gathering up tissue samples than sneaking around in the dead of night and killing/mutilating animals for a few body parts.

So of course it has to be extraterrestrials! How can aliens mutilate cattle (and other livestock and wildlife), decade after decade, without ever being seen? Why would aliens be interested in wildlife and livestock in the first damned place, or at least some of their highly selected body parts?  

Crop Circles: The Julia Set Near Stonehenge: July 1996

While crop circles have been reported from around the world, in the main they tend to be associated with the English countryside in the warmer months when crops are high and agricultural graffiti artists can strut their stuff. Just who these ‘artists’ are hasn’t been proven in any sort of scientific (or legal) court, but just like we all know ‘the butler did it’, well it’s obvious the whodunit here is from the same species as the butler. We have to believe that, because if the butler didn’t do it, we got a major mystery on our collective hands that most of us would rather not acknowledge. Here’s part of the reason the butler didn’t do it.

Apart from a few deluded New Age hippy types, everyone just knows that crop circles are human made hoaxes. That’s despite all the obvious logistical problems in creating perfect, yet massive geometric patterns in near total darkness. That’s despite the fact that hardly anyone has ever been caught in the act. That’s despite the fact that sometimes the overnight weather was wet with rain (this is England after all). Still, what else could they be? But even one exception breaks the ‘everyone knows it’s a hoax’ rule. Consider the 1996 Julia Set.

Most crop circles are discovered in the morning by farmers or farm hands that are up early and out and about to start their day’s work in the field(s), though some discoveries are by motorists, passers-by, sometimes pilots. Still, the discoveries tend to be made sooner in the day rather than later in the day. 900 foot crop circle formations are rather hard to miss, even from the ground, and some are way bigger than that.

Translated, that suggests that this agricultural graffiti was constructed and produced overnight, under cover of darkness, the obvious implication being human hoaxers operating in the dark thus avoiding detection.

Despite the fact there are massive problems with that theory – it’s like trying to make then assemble a one thousand piece jigsaw puzzle using just starlight and complete it perfectly in a few hours; no flashlights allowed giving your position away. What isn’t reported to the police isn’t of concern to the hoaxer(s). Still, you’d have to have a few screws loose, tramping around in a muddy field in the dark of night, carting around all sorts of equipment, planks and rollers and ropes for hours on end, just to produce something for which you can’t ever receive public recognition for – least you get paid a visit by the police for trespassing and willful criminal damage.

Let’s accept the universally accepted basic logic anyway. Crop circles are human hoaxes. But could a hoaxer(s) do a crop circle pattern or formation in broad daylight, of a size demanding many hours of labour, with eyewitnesses around, and escape detection?  Or could a massive crop circle avoid being seen in broad daylight in a heavily trafficked area? I suggest that’s highly unlikely on both counts.

It’s late afternoon on a sunny English summer Sunday – July 7^th 1996 to be exact. The location, a farmer’s (identity known) field within a stone’s throw of a major tourist attraction – Stonehenge (you may have heard of it). A major highway, the A303 separates the field from the Stonehenge site - Lots of motorists passing by. Security guards are present at Stonehenge 24/7 as tourists aren’t allowed anymore to wander within the standing stones. Stonehenge is strictly a look from the outside and don’t touch attraction now.

There’s usually a lot of aerial traffic too – lots of private planes operating out of nearby Thruxton Airport, often giving tourists an aerial view of Stonehenge. Now one such pilot (identity known) with one passenger taking off out of Exeter, passing over Stonehenge late that Sunday afternoon, while glancing downwards, sees nothing out of the ordinary. That same pilot, on the return flight, again passing over Stonehenge just 45 minutes later, sees a massive centipede-like geometric pattern (a Julia Set fractal pattern) comprising 149* individual circles (ranging from 50 feet to 14 inches in diameter) spanning 915 feet in length tip-to-tail and 500 feet in width in the farmer’s field, well within the view of passing motorists and the Stonehenge security guards (and tourists). 

Needless to say, prior to the pilot’s return flight and his subsequent sighting, nobody (tourists, motorists, farm hands, security guards) saw a thing. That suggests that, in broad daylight, the entire Julia Set complex was constructed in actually less than 45 minutes. That’s unaltered by a few motorists, over a decade later, who have claimed to have seen at that time and place a strange mist. Whether they did or didn’t isn’t relevant to the basic facts that human hoaxers aren’t in the running as culprits in this specific crop circle episode.

But if they (hoaxers) are, in the running, how did the hoaxers do it? One person (identity known) has claimed that he along with two other people created the Julia Set complex in under three hours early that Sunday morning while it was still dark. One notes by the way that security guards are present at Stonehenge around the clock, so clearly the hoaxers, if they really existed, didn’t use any lighting. That further suggests that this massive formation went unnoticed and unseen in broad daylight for nearly 12 hours within sight of the top tourist attraction in England and a major motorway! Check out the photographs on the WWW and tell me how they done it! Could you and any two of your friends produce that complex geometric formation in darkness in less than three hours? It’s yet another case of someone claiming to be a bank robber for the publicity because that’s easier than actually being a bank robber which results in not only getting publicity but a prison sentence as well. The other alternative is that this person has so flown his anti-crop circle flag up the flagpole and publicly saluted it that he can’t back down now, no matter what!

Over 14,000 tourists visited the Julia Set formation before the farmer had to do what farmers do and harvest what was left of his crop; there are lots of photographs available in post 1996 crop circle books and on the Internet that verify the proximity of the Julia Set to Stonehenge with the A303 Motorway bisecting. It’s easy to plug in something like “Julia Set” plus “Stonehenge” into Google’s search engines, like Google Web and Google Images and judge for yourself the bona fides.

Now I don’t know how the Julia Set near Stonehenge in July of 1996 was created; or what intelligence created it. I am (along with those New Age hippy types and other open minded people) convinced the intelligence wasn’t human. I’ll just leave it at that.

*Some sources originally gave the set as containing 151 individual circles, not 149, but 149 is the correct number.

The Ongoing Enigma of the Crop Circles: Part Two

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 Human Connection:  That human beings are the culprits behind the crop (or corn) circle phenomena is taken almost as given by most people. Humans are the most logical and most accepted explanation, especially by hardnosed sceptics of all things weird, strange and the downright paranormal. But, there are several problems with such a blanket explanation that crop circles are terrestrial hoaxes perpetrated by people with too much time on their hands.

Question one: assuming crop circles are hoaxes, what is it about the British mind set that prompts them to commit these ‘works of art’? That’s never been explained. Nearly all crop circles are British crop circles. Although there are isolated cases from other countries, crop circle formations are 99 & 44/100% reside in merry old England – no arguments there. Maybe crop circle hoaxers might be reluctant to do their thing in the USA where farmers shoot first and ask questions later, but why not France, Canada, Australia and a host of other nations with major agricultural (crop) industries?

Question two, again assuming hoaxes, can the sum total of crop circle formations be explained by artistic human intelligence, keeping in mind the restraints of sheer numbers of circles; the period of limited darkness in which to operate (high summer in England); the fact that it is dark; the possibility of being caught (you don’t want to use floodlights or flashlights); not to mention the ever additional time required for the ever increasing complexity of these crop circle formations?

That all crop circles are human hoaxes is ridiculous. Have you ever read of someone being caught in the act, apprehended, and prosecuted for trespassing and destroying personal property (these crops are valuable commodities to their owners)? [Actually, a few have been caught, but so few relative to the thousands of circles created that for all intents and purposes, if all are hoaxes, then the vast, vast majority are getting away with their vandalism.]

It’s clear from some media coverage and internet sites that lots of people, even organisations, claim responsibility for crop circles, even to the point of giving demonstrations (in daylight of course) how its done. Case solved? Hardly!

These circles have been appearing on a regular basis for decades now. So what’s the point of continuing to produce them, at considerable time and trouble, having ‘proved’ your ability, or proven your point, that you can do it. All the more so as especially seeing as how in the process you are trespassing as well as vandalising another person’s property. People or organisations admitting to creating crop circles are publicly admitting that they have performed criminal activity.

From what I’ve seen on YouTube or documentary interviews, farmers really are pissed off over this issue. This costs them money in terms of lost crop yields, not to mention having to put up with hoards of sightseers, the press and investigators. Affected farmers would dearly like for nothing better than to toss these jokers behind bars and throw away the key! But you have got to catch them first – and few have – so that’s one of the flies in this ointment. 

So, why haven’t all these guilty claimants been arrested, charged, tried, fined, forced to pay restitution or do community service, even jail time for damages, and thus put an end to their activities? Maybe because, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, these claimants are no more guilty or responsible than the little old lady from Pasadena or the man in the moon.

Sorry to burst this bubble but if you openly admit to criminal activity, you get slapped down by the hard hand of the law, and then some. Question for all those who seriously believe that crop circles are a version of terrestrial graffiti – has any claimant ever been seriously dealt with by relevant legal authorities? Damned if I can find evidence of it!

It doesn’t wash; it doesn’t make any sense, even if on the surface it’s the most likely logical explanation, so by Occam’s (Ockham’s) Razor I should accept this explanation, but I don’t. One reason is that there is a rather long history of people confessing to crimes they didn’t and couldn’t possibly have committed. Why? I’m no psychologist, but I rather expect to liven up they very dull little lives – it’s their moment in the sun; their face on TV; their name in the newspaper.

And while some people have admitted to being the perpetrators of hoaxing crop circles (publicity seekers?) perhaps it’s the people who keep quiet who are the real culprits! But a somewhat similar argument applies. Again, why haven’t these new age graffiti (so-called) artists been caught in the act? To the best of my knowledge very few individuals have ever been caught in the act, far less arrested, tried, fined and/or imprisoned. By ‘few’ I mean the numbers caught are very few relative to the multi-hundreds to thousands of reported crop circle incidents. Their graffiti activities are in relatively densely populated areas – we’re not talking Antarctica, the Sahara Desert, or national wilderness parks here folks; local people, especially crop farmers would be on the alert, maybe even  holding stakeouts in areas of high crop circle activity. Yet we have thousands of these circles appearing on an ever on-going basis. Few are ever caught in the act. Thus, I conclude that while of course there are some hoaxes, probably the simpler and smaller of these circle patterns, that’s it – a relative few.

I mean think of the obstacles hoaxers face. They (I’m assuming a team here) have to create a highly geometrically complex pattern, usually extending over a fairly wide area (often hundreds of square metres), in the darkness, without ever being caught. Pull the other one!

Another puzzling feature, if all crop circles are made by human hoaxers, is the absence of mistakes. The lines are straight; the angles perfect; the circles circular and in general to the eye, the overall imagery and geometry looks spot on. And in many cases it is quite complex imagery and geometry, all made during the short summer British nights, presumably by individuals or small groups, while in a rush to avoid detection, using flashlights (if that). Where are the human mistakes? Once crops are crumpled by mistake, you can’t un-crumple them again – there’s no crop circle whiteout or correction fluid. Any mistake, say a right angle that was actually 88 degrees or 92 degrees would immediately be seized upon by the sceptics as proof – ah ha, it must be humans because there’s human error. Another thing I haven’t read about, but should have, is where are the human footprints or tire marks or any other evidence of human activity at crop circle sites like a dropped bit of litter or something accidentally left behind in the rush. I mean these are the things one looks for – clues and evidence at a crime scene. Where is the crime scene evidence that implicates humans?

Now to my way of thinking, two things seem crystal clear here. There’s intelligence behind the crop circle phenomena; equally clear (to me anyway) it’s not by any stretch of the imagination a 100% human intelligence – the hoaxes – criminal activity - referred to above.

The Terrestrial Intelligence but Non-Human Connection: If the intelligence behind crop circles is not even close to being 100% human intelligence in the main, then it must be a non-human intelligence, though not of necessity extraterrestrial intelligence. So, what about a non-human intelligence? While we share this planet with other relatively intelligent species – dolphins, parrots, apes, the octopus – I find it unlikely in the extreme that crop circles can be blamed, or credited, to any of them.

Since I know of no other native intelligences on Planet Earth, I’m somewhat reluctantly forced to now go for an extraterrestrial intelligence, without any evidence other than process of elimination. However, there’s some logic behind that assumption, otherwise I wouldn’t entertain it.

To be continued…

The Ongoing Enigma of the Crop Circles: Part One

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.

I admit from square one that I haven’t the foggiest idea what they actually are, or represent, but I at least think I know what they’re not.

I’m sure the phrase ‘crop circles’ need little introduction. I can’t imagine too many people being ignorant of the general phenomena – there’s lots of books, media coverage, internet sites, TV specials, feature films, even calendars which have, and continue to cover the subject.

In general, by way of a probably unnecessary introduction, crop circles are geometric patterns, pictograms that are often generally circular but not always, that appear mysteriously in crop fields, usually overnight, perpetrated by person or persons, or by a non-person or non-persons, unknown. While these ‘circles’ have appeared in many countries they tend to be associated by the public mainly with England. They have been especially common over the past three or four decades, though some earlier reports are on record.

There’s no denying the picturesqueness of them, and often, in fact in more recent times, their geometric complexity.

There’s no doubt that crop circles exist – that’s undisputed. Crop circles are an ever on-going phenomenon, the pictograms growing in complexity year by year. So there’s an evolutionary pattern that needs explaining. And at least crop circles have the decency to sit still and not vanish without trace like UFOs, the Yeti and the lone mysterious interstellar ‘wow’ signal so suggestive, yet so illusive of proving the existence of, extraterrestrial intelligence!

So what the hell are crop circles? Are they a new form of human graffiti? Are they messages from extraterrestrials? Are they a cry for help from our own Mother Earth or Mother Nature? Are they a now and again mysterious, but ultimately natural, even if chaotic feature of Mother Nature – say weather or biological phenomena? Are they in fact none of the above?

A few data points to start with if you please.

Firstly, it’s now clearly an ongoing phenomenon, not a one or two year fad that college kids revel in doing (like goldfish swallowing or VW cramming) before something new grabs their attention for fun and games and mischief. Now I’ve likened crop circle ‘art’ to graffiti ‘art’, and of course graffiti is an ongoing fad, but there’s a vast world of difference between some spray paint on an alleyway brick wall that harms no one and crop circles which robs farmers of income – at least IMHO.

Secondly, let’s look at geographic distribution. Crop circles have appeared in many countries – that alone rules out just your lone rogue hoaxer or two. However, they do tend to be identified more with countries that have English as a native language, and in particular, by a relatively massive lot, the United Kingdom; Great Britain; England. This may be an artificial artefact as most of the relevant literature is in English. I mean there may be lots of crop circle activity in Asia, but Asian languages aren’t represented in the media in proportion to population. Still, I’d wager that there is a real concentration in select geographical areas (i.e. – England), and that too needs explaining.

Thirdly, crop circles tend to be concentrated in areas of reasonable population density, though that could also be an artificial artefact.  If they happened in Antarctica or the Sahara Desert there would be relatively few witnesses and reports and evidence. As well, any evidence would tend to be erased or eroded fairly quickly. Still, I’ll take it as a given that crop circles do tend to be concentrated in more humanly populated areas.  

And now for the non-explanations!

The Natural Phenomena Connection: Crop circles don’t look natural. They most certainly do look like artificial creations, the creations of intelligence. However, before pursuing that chain of thought, one, in all fairness, needs to consider a non-intelligent (natural) explanation.

Mother Nature is not widely known for producing complex structured geometric patterns in non-living materials – snowflakes and crystals aside. Nature tends to be more chaotic. Patterns – symmetry is another valid term - are usually one way, and a fairly foolproof way at that, of distinguishing something natural from something artificial – which is why the ‘canals of Mars’ or the ‘face on Mars’ attracted so much speculation. Now clouds, for example, can take on all sorts of weird shapes or a pattern if you like. Every now and a rare again you’ll see a pattern or a shape in a cloud which reminds you of something else – that’s just random probability. 99.9% of the time, when you look at a cloud, all you can identify or think of is ‘cloud’. But that other 0.1% of the time – well, it’s just a freak of nature.

Freaks of nature, very rare natural phenomena, certainly can and have happened, no more so than with all things meteorological, like clouds – weather phenomena. There’s documented cases of paper straws being driven into hardwood trees via the force of tornado winds. Ball lightning is another case in point. So, a freak of nature, weather-related in all probability, may account for some of the relatively simpler flattened crop circles.

In the beginning of the modern crop circle phenomena, the pictograms were fairly simple circular patterns in various crops. It was thought that perhaps swirling storm winds, whirlwinds, mild tornados, or other sorts of wind vortices might be responsible, though few newly created circles were created under those sorts of weather conditions – and why only at night? Say a whirlwind as cause for the effect. But, I defy anyone to examine the more complex geometrical (and often fractal) patterns and tell me how Mother Nature, meteorologically or otherwise, did it! Since crop circles exhibit patterns or symmetry, then that argues against them being natural or nature-made phenomena. Life forms certainly exhibit patterns or symmetry, but whatever crop circles are, they themselves aren’t alive, so again, we rule out a natural explanation.

Today, no thinking person in their right mind could look at these highly complex geometric patterns (not all are circles anymore) and think that Mother Nature could have produced them. If crop circles are natural, it nearly has to be weather related and no kind of weather can produce complex geometric patterns in crops. So, crop circles really have to be the product of intelligence; there’s no way Mother Nature can be held accountable for these complex geometric pictogram formations – that’s now undisputable. Scratch Mother Nature.

To be continued…