LESLIE KEAN: ORIGIN OF CROP CIRCLES BAFFLES SCIENTISTS
09/16/2002
SAN FRANCISCO
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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."
"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,sized somewhere between an egg and a football."
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.
Leslie Kean is an investigative reporter and producer with
Pacifica Radio based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She can be
reached at
[email protected]