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CROP WATCH 2002

TWO NEW MAJOR MEDIA ARTICLES ON THE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR CROP CIRCLES

Two new substantial mainstream articles on the work of the BLT Research Team outlining the latest scientific evidence for a real phenomenon, from The Sunday Times in the UK and the Providence Journal in the USA. Featured are key soil studies from the 1999 Edmonton, Alberta seven circle barley formation. Text copies below.

THE CROP BUSTERS

The Sunday Times Magazine

September 15, 2002

Julie Cohen and Stuart Conway

For years, crop circles have been taken as seriously as UFOs and fairies. Now, not only have the weird patterns arrived in Hollywood, but scientists are trying to solve the mystery. And the answer may lie in the soil. As the helicopter landed on the roof of New York's Rockefeller Plaza, two uniformed security guards ran out, speaking into their microphone headsets, and rushed Nancy Talbott inside. She was ushered into a suite where a sumptuous buffet was laid out. Aides made a respectful retreat as the philanthropist Laurance S Rockefeller arrived. Talbott, the president of BLT Research Team Inc, an organisation formed to investigate physical changes in plants at crop circles, had been invited to lunch to discuss an exciting proposal.

Hollywood has just given British audiences its version of what causes crop circles, in the movie Signs, with Mel Gibson playing a farming preacher who discovers a formation in his field. But Talbott had information on the real phenomenon. Preliminary research suggested the circles were made by an unknown energy.

The puzzle began six years ago for Diane Conrad, a geologist who analysed soil samples from a circle near her home in Logan, Utah. To her surprise, they displayed a characteristic generally found in sedimentary rock, caused by the pressure of tons of rock heated by the Earth's core over considerable time. Yet these samples were surface soil from within the crop circle; outside the circle, the soil showed none of these inexplicable traits. 'I couldn't understand the results,' Conrad explains. 'The soil seems to have been subjected to an intense heat of 500 to 1,500 degrees Celsius, and yet the plants were not incinerated. They were not even singed.' What kind of energy could produce heat of that intensity, yet not burn the plants to a crisp? Conrad was unable to initiate an in-depth evaluation at the time, but she passed the information on to Talbott, who has dedicated the past 10 years to co-ordinating scientific research into the circles. Research of soil samples required expensive techniques, so her mission was to persuade Rockefeller to fund it.

More than 10,000 circles have been reported around the world to date. Formations have appeared in tree tops, ice and sand as well as crops. Nobody knows how many are genuine anomalies and how many are man-made, and scientific investigation has been very limited. But Conrad's work raised questions that Talbott believed mainstream science could not ignore. After a convivial lunch, Talbott handed Rockefeller her proposal. A few weeks later, a cheque for a 'substantial amount' arrived in the post.

Field teams in the Netherlands, the United States and Canada collected soil samples. A seven-circle formation reported in September 1999 in Edmonton, Alberta, was chosen for detailed analysis. A farmer and his wife reported seeing unexplained lights above the field about a week before the circles were discovered.

Nearly 90 soil samples, as well as controls taken from outside the circles, were sent to Dr Sampath Iyengar, a mineralogist in San Diego, California. Clay minerals in the samples were analysed using a technique called x-ray powder diffraction (XRD). X-rays are beamed into the sample at various angles, and the way they deflect provides information about how the atoms are arranged, and the kind of mineral it is.

Imagine a marble represents an atom in the mineral being examined. If you throw a handful of them on the ground, they will form a random pattern. If instead you line them up in rows, that would indicate an 'increase in crystallinity'; something has made them ordered, an as-yet-unexplained energy. This is what had happened to the surface soil from inside the crop circle.

Nothing like this had ever been seen in surface soil. 'This would normally only be found in geologic sediments exposed to low temperatures and pressures over millions of years,' says Iyengar. 'In the laboratory, temperatures in the range of 600 to 800C are usually required to achieve such crystal growth. There is no way we could explain these results. It's some kind of energy, an unknown force, that's causing this.' Talbott, excited by the results, needed the report peer-reviewed by an authority. She decided to start at the top and went to Hanover, New Hampshire, where she banged on the door of Dr Robert C Reynolds Jr of Dartmouth College. A winner of the Roebling medal for lifelong achievement in mineralogy, Reynolds is an expert in x- ray diffraction. He asked for samples to be sent to his laboratory, and performed his own experiments. The results were the same.

In a letter to Talbott, he said: '... I am convinced that the sample preparation methods and the x-ray analytical procedures used were consistent with sound, standard methods of analysis. But this brings up the question of the meaning of their results.

'Temperatures of 600 to 800 degrees Celsius are required in the laboratory for such growth and these conditions would have incinerated any plant material present. In short, I believe that our present knowledge provides no explanation...' For the crop- circle world, the involvement of such a distinguished expert in the subject is a great victory. It is the first time a scientist of his standing has taken an interest in the phenomenon. Where does the intense heat come from? Some witnesses claim to have seen small balls of light and heard trilling noises in the fields just before a circle has appeared, but whether this is related has yet to be proven. 'It is possible we are observing the effects of a new or as yet unrecognised energy source,' says Talbott in the BLT report.

One of the biggest contributions to the scientific study of crop circles has come from the Michigan biophysicist W C Levengood, who began investigating plants taken from circles in 1990. The most curious anomalies he has studied are pinhead-sized holes in plant nodes, the fibrous 'knuckle-like' protuberances found along the stem. He calls these holes 'expulsion cavities'. Levengood believes moisture inside the stems is heated rapidly and turns to steam, in some places stretching the plant fibre, and in others blowing a hole in the stem. 'It seems to be a powerful microwave energy that is causing this; it heats from the inside out. The interesting thing is, these holes occur in a matter of microseconds.'

The youngest, and most elastic, tissue in the plant stems is at the top, and it is here that he has consistently observed elongated nodes - stretched sometimes to double their normal length. Lower down, where the tissue is more fibrous and less elastic, expulsion cavities are regularly seen. These effects have never been found in control samples. Levengood also found changes to the seeds and germination capability of plants within the circles. When circles occur in mature plants with fully formed seeds, the seeds often grow up to five times faster than control seeds, and the seedlings can tolerate lack of water and light for a considerable time without apparent harm.

While investigating the crop-circle seeds at his Pinelandia Biophysical Laboratory in Grass Lake, Michigan, Levengood discovered a way of using a process he calls molecular impulse response (MIR). 'When I exposed the seeds to the MIR energy, I got the same effect as in the crop formation. We can produce seeds that grow a lot faster.' Along with his colleague John Burke, he patented the formula in 1998. Is the agricultural industry interested? 'Oh yes. We hope the grain will be ready next year. There are several companies doing big field trials at the moment.'

This summer, field researchers found expulsion cavities inside a formation resembling a celtic knot in Avebury Trusloe, Wiltshire. The formation, reported on June 2 in a barley field, was examined by the former government scientist Rodney Ashby, who began investigating crop circles six years ago. 'The stretched nodes and expulsion cavities in this formation are very interesting,' he says. 'This occurred only on the stems that were flattened to create the formation.

I always look for the most logical explanation, but in cases like this there just doesn't seem to be one.'

From the edge of the field in the waist-high barley, it is impossible to see the downed crop. The only extraordinary features seem to be the ancient Adam and Eve stones in the next field. Scholars believe they marked the beginning of an avenue of stones leading to the stone circle around Avebury. A few hundred yards inside the field, the crop suddenly flattens in swirling patterns.

Daniel Lobb, a field researcher, picks up a handful of barley stalks. Sure enough, there are tiny holes and stretched nodes that are double the length of the plants outside the circle.

Next morning at the Silent Circle, a cafe in Cherhill, the hub of crop-circle information, 15 people are watching a video of the latest circle. A map on the wall covered with pins is quickly updated with the position of the most recent formation. The cafe walls are covered with aerial photographs of the 70 circles reported so far in the UK this year, and posters by the former architect and professor of design Michael Glickman, who draws the geometry of the formations.

'Let's go,' cries Glickman. It's like a call to the hunt, and everyone piles into their cars. In the lead is Glickman, followed by the Croatian documentary maker Nikola Duper, then three Italian women, a Dutch couple who have come to Wiltshire for the past 10 years to see the circles, and us. The convoy snakes along narrow roads past thatched cottages in tiny villages. Everyone is waving and chatting excitedly on their mobiles about what the shape could be. As we pull up by the field, we see people on stepladders holding cameras attached to long poles, trying to get an aerial shot. A helicopter circles overhead and the 'croppies', as they are known, pull out cameras and notebooks.

Next day, when the aerial pictures are put up in the cafe, there is concern that it may be man-made. 'We're under attack,' says Glickman as he sips his coffee dejectedly. 'It's a waste of researchers' time and money to be polluting the fields with these second-rate man-made circles when there's a real phenomenon needing more studies.'

Interest in the circles has intensified this year. Signs opened in the US on August 2 and took more than $60m in its first three days, sending it straight to No 1 at the US box office. The British drama A Place to Stay, set in the crop circles of Wiltshire, also looks set to pique public interest.

Freddy Silva, the British author of the recent book Secrets in the Fields, which sold 10,000 copies in the US in its first week, is looking over a formation at the Gallops, near Beckhampton, an impressive shape with 76 radiating spokes. A deer leaps to the centre and stays for a few moments before running out. 'Whatever Hollywood comes up with about the theories behind the crop circles, it will never be as intriguing and mysterious as the real thing,' says Silva.

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 lkean@ix.netcom.net

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