Crop Circles

[Dave]

Can I just point out that there have been a number of huge assumptions made in this thread that need further scrutiny:

1. All Students are drunken (some might be teetotal.)
2. Students can get out of bed at sunrise (or even before Noon.)
3. Students can do real physical work in fields (with or without wooden planks.)

Also could I point out that when I was at University students painted a Zebra Crossing on the M1 and nobody noticed!
(though the M1 was a bit quieter then.)

[J Riff]

Heh, hee good points Dave.
When, exactly, did crop circles begin? Probably back around the time of '1st contact' with aliens who have arrived here, recently.
Recently. These are the ones rumored to make crop circles, if not a gang of sober students (impossible!).
There are no ancient records of crop circles, not a one. There are hundreds of sightings of the silver saucer, dating back to ancient times.
A decent UFO documentary is 'Out of the Blue.'
It may well be that there has been 1st contact AND second contact, and we now await the influx of many others.
Another weird book you may wish to peruse, is 'The Case for the UFO' - M. Jessup. It has handwritten annotations, supposedly from two disparate individuals, who seem to know everything about huge ancient UFO wars etc. etc.
Extreme, but a good read because the author asks all the right questions, and compiles a lot of unusual events which may not even have been traditionally connected to UFOs.
Of course, one can never lose sight of the fact that human beings started trying to build flying saucers quite some time ago. But if we are to believe ancient historical records, there's always been something else up there.

[JunkMonkey]

I would be much more impressed by crop circles if they didn't have at least one set of easy access tractor tracks running through them.

[J Riff]

Do they? I've never really studied any crop circles, but some are mighty impressive. Still, if humans can't catch inebriated students illegally defacing private property, what chance have they at will-o-th-wisp UFOs?

[skeptical]

I think you would find that the students making crop circles are stone cold sober throughout the action.

At the end of the post-crop circle party - that is another matter!

[RJM Corbet]

Originally Posted by skeptical

I think you would find that the students making crop circles are stone cold sober throughout the action.

At the end of the post-crop circle party - that is another matter!

Yes, it's true that

1) Crop-circles have become more and more complex over the years
2) They almost all occur in England
3) There are always tractor tracks
4) The few 'snow-circles' on You Tube are very crude
5) Graffiti artists, for instance, also come up with amazingly complicated, well planned and impressively large creations overnight and no-one suggests extra-terrestrial technology
6) There are obviously some very clever and creative people out there

[J Riff]

Too clever, too creative, too much time on their hands.
Why do this? Are only English students doing this?
Where would students get a tractor? Why not a car?
Why not look at satellite imaging to catch the guilty transgressors?
They are moving a tractor around the country or renting a different one each time?
So many questions.

[JunkMonkey]

What tractor? Why do they need a tractor?

[RJM Corbet]

Originally Posted by JunkMonkey

What tractor? Why do they need a tractor?

No, it's just the access the area without leaving tracks in the barley, or whatever -- that's the problem with making snow-circles you see? Read mosaix' and harebrain's earlier posts ...

[Metryq]

Originally Posted by J Riff

Why not look at satellite imaging to catch the guilty transgressors?

Someone has been watching Enemy of the State, I see. Although data storage and analysis is becoming easier as computers become more sophisticated, I seriously doubt that high resolution scans of everything are made 24/7. Assuming such continuous scans are made, maybe we could also catch every single person who was speeding or running a stop sign. </sarc>

I'm surprised no one has blamed crop circles on global warming. It's the root cause for everything else.

[HareBrain]

Originally Posted by Metryq

I'm surprised no one has blamed crop circles on global warming.

I blame crop circles for global warming.

[JunkMonkey]

Originally Posted by RJM Corbet

No, it's just the access the area without leaving tracks in the barley, or whatever -- that's the problem with making snow-circles you see? Read mosaix' and harebrain's earlier posts ...

Yeah - I had got it. I was questioning why J Riff had the idea that crop circle makers went around in tractors. (Or rented them.)

[RJM Corbet]

Off topic: the channels on Mars:

1)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_T6_...yer_detailpage

2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-qrn...yer_detailpage

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by RJM Corbet

but it would be nice to know 'we're not alone'.

Now there we can agree, RJM.

Originally Posted by HareBrain

No one responded to my earlier robot idea. I can't find many hits on Google relating robots and crop circles either. But wouldn't it actually be fairly easy for some robotics researchers to set off a crawling machine to flatten wheat in a programmed pattern?

Great idea. I know that there are programmable vacuum cleaners and I believe that there are programmable lawn mowers. Not beyond the wit of man to adapt such devices with a roller...

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by RJM Corbet

Off topic: the channels on Mars:

1)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_T6_...yer_detailpage

2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-qrn...yer_detailpage

Not sure what they are implying there, RJM. So something quite small looks a little like something very large. That doesn't mean they were created by the same processes.

When NASA publish similar photos of, say, liquid flows on Titan and Earth, they are of the same scale and so we can make assumptions about similar process being involved.