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(Semi-serious Question) Other than people, what causes crop circles?


Pingonaut

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I think this thread will be locked soon.

That being said:

I have a friend that believes that crop circles are really aliens seeking contact. I have to explain to him several fine, nuanced points:

1) Crop circles started out really simple and then gradually became more complicated. This strongly suggests that the humans did them: if they were made by some sort of alien life-form, they would have always been quite complex, with little change over time.

2) Crop circles look really very different from one another, from place to place. If aliens were coming dozens of light-years to see us, you would think that their message would be displayed uniformly around the globe, and that there would be little to no variation in crop circles. Instead, the aliens seem to be sending mixed messages... :P

3) Crop circles are almost invariably "done" at night. You would think that if aliens wanted to contact humanity, they would likely create their crop circles when humans were active and more likely to see or hear that something was happening in their fields.

4) Crop circles are just too artsy. All of the messages that humanity deliberately sends into the cosmos are extremely technical, giving details such as the Earth's position in the Solar System, a symbol of a hydrogen atom, DNA nucleotides, and other items that could potentially be relatable to aliens. Making circles in a field lacks this sort of planned foresight. There are virtually no 'crop circles' that give the same sort of information as, say, the Arecibo message.

5) At this point, many crop circles are Photoshopped. It's not that difficult to do, and there's no real penalty for making these sorts of images. (The people who believe in crop circles will actually defend these images to their dying breath.)

6) Why would aliens go to all that trouble, anyway? Flying trillions of miles through space and back to effectively just prank a farmer with meaningless circles would be a miserable waste of time, energy, and effort.

7) Crop circles are never found in national parks or other areas where destroying large amounts of native vegetation is considered a crime and could be heavily prosecuted. There are several grasslands national parks that are expansive and would be a pretty good "canvas" for aliens, yet they remain undisturbed.

I could go on all day about this, but I won't waste my breath. Crop circles are man-made, end of story.

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IMO people are the cause of *all* crop circles.

If extraterrestrials are observing us and wish to communicate, they'll do so in a way that they know we'll understand.

Best,

-Slashy

Exactly.

For a minute let's assume crop circles are created by extraterrestrials. For them to physically come here, or create circles through some kind of projection they have to be at least as intelligent as we are. If you try to get a message through to someone how long would it take you to realize they don't understand you? Would you try a different form of communication or would you keep speaking a language they don't understand?

I remember a documentary from some years ago. A camera crew went into a field at night with a few notorious circle makers to film their prank. The next day the same camera crew was present observing and interviewing a variety of experts analysing the creation. According to the experts this circle had several distinguishing features that were without a doubt impossible to be created by man. It therefore had to be alien or supernatural. When confronted with the creation video shot the previous night they called the video a hoax.

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Complex one are made by people. They were started by like two guys doing a joke and then soon after it became a popular prank.

There are natural phenomena that creates way less precise circles. Fairy rings.

fairyRing5.jpg

They're fungal in origin. The rims sprout reproductive thingies we call mushrooms so you sometimes get a circle of mushrooms.

a2-wild-art-0711-art-gdvnnu08-1wildart-fairyring-eja-jpg.jpg

Old superstition: omg fairies!

New superstition: omg aliens!

Before and now, it was always load of BS.

There are other phenomena, too, but the precise artsy things - people make them using ropes, sticks and feet.

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Pretty sure there are professional crop circle makers around that can be hired to make crop circles just because people like one sometimes. These people make them for companies seeking a promotional stunts or something similar. Though they do get a lot of hate from people who believe in alien-made crop circles.

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Crop circles are all made by men, some times by the same farmer, some others by "artist" intruders.

The only real circles that are not men-made are the fairy circles in afrika, of course this does not count as crops.

circulos2.jpg

fairy-circles-1%25255B6%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800

image.jpg

http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/Fairy%20circles.png

There still some doubts about the explanation about why this happens.

Some said that are termites which eat some plants, this provide a water reservoir for them, which is also used by plants on side. Without these water reservoir would not be enoght water for nobody.

The second explanation it depends on complex math algorithms that explain how these circles may be created just by plants-water relations.

Edited by AngelLestat
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Aliens wouldn't likely use a circular shaped craft. Although, geometry IS probably a good way to communicate between species...

It's bored farmers looking for attention. For the most part, at least...

I would image that non-stupid aliens would use triangular/pyramid shaped craft if they have hover tech. Why be slow in all directions if you can be fast in one and turn?

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One with a six-seven digit budget could probably build a more or less autonomous robot that generates a random pattern and then imprints into the crop. But that would ultimately count as "caused by people" anyway.

Extraterrestrials, as the question tries to lead us ? No, unless they have the same motivation as human pranksters, and no interest in actual communication. But then, occam's razor.

Extraterrestrials with psychology that causes them to consider "paint geometric shapes over the first suitable big surface" as their first choice of communication ? Maybe, but by finding suitable crop fields and waiting with painting until no witness is around they would demonstrate they got a lot of knowledge about humans. Enough knowledge to realize that human psychology is different and this is not the best way to communicate with us. And someone building interstellar spaceships is bound to be smart enough to figure out.

Alien psychology might be weird, however has some logic, for one an technical civilization require accurate communication with an decent bandwidth.

They would know radio and space around earth has a lot of radio signals.

Simplest way would be to initiate communication by radio, secondary would be direct contact but it would it be nice to know the language first.

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Simplest way would be to initiate communication by radio, secondary would be direct contact but it would it be nice to know the language first.

Two civilizations may comunicate and learn a common language (or decode their language) using math, science knowledge and logic.

Is explained in Carl Sagan Book´s "Contact"

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this image that I remember seeing a while ago, http://i.imgur.com/Vx30g.png

Aliens could begin to communicate using that sort of thing.

The 3/4/5 right-angled triangle, Pi, and all that, to begin to understand how to communicate with Terrans via maths.

And then once mathematical communication is achieved, that's the key to deciphering radio signals, including television.

And that's where the real problems begin. What with all the alien invasion movies from the 1950's, satellite TV ....ography, sportball and so on. Explaining all that would keep the aliens anthropologists busy for quite a while.

An interesting image, but what if the aliens don't know about Pythagoras' Theorem, or even basic numbers? If they're thousands, if not millions of years advanced from humans, maybe they have no need to know about these things? Ask a modern human to start a fire from sticks or to catch a wild animal and they'll go cold & hungry. But that'd be child's play to a human 10,000 years ago.

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A seemingly valid concern, but not one I'd share.

For one thing, we humans have used numbers (even if not Arabic numerals) in every single one of our civilizations for all of human history - and more so in our technology than anywhere else. More likely I'd imagine Pythagoras's Theorem being taught at earlier ages as the culture becomes more scientific (as has happened here) even possibly to the point where it is implanted into infants' brains before birth (or whatever applies to these aliens). And while not every human today can hunt or make fires, every human today knows instinctively that fresher water comes from a river than a swamp, that you should taste an unfamiliar food before shoving your face in it, to avoid things with pointy teeth, etc.

For another, if we were to go to a life-bearing exoplanet and think we're prepared to encounter primitive alien societies, we'd be smart to come prepared with some basic knowledge like elementary math. Likewise we can have a bit of faith that a wise extraterrestrial visitor would brush up on their "ancient primitive science" before dropping by. And an unwise visitor would probably accidentally step on Earth and end all life without even knowing it, so it's not like we'll accomplish anything by worrying anyway ;P

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An interesting image, but what if the aliens don't know about Pythagoras' Theorem, or even basic numbers? If they're thousands, if not millions of years advanced from humans, maybe they have no need to know about these things? Ask a modern human to start a fire from sticks or to catch a wild animal and they'll go cold & hungry. But that'd be child's play to a human 10,000 years ago.

The Pythagorean Theorem came about thousands of years ago. But it's STILL useful and will remain useful until we go beyond physical bodies or die off as a species. It's basic geometry. It can be used in architecture, in hypothetical communication scenarios, and many other things.

They would likely know laws of geometry and of the universe. And communicating laws of geometry would be ideal to make contact. It's relatively simple.

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It's possible they're a real phenomena.

I remember years ago watching a documentary about them where the investigators said the majority were fake because the crops had just been flattened down, but every now and again they'd come across a "real" one in which the nodes at the base of the corn had somehow exploded. Google has lots of pictures of these exploded nodes, and as far as I'm aware there hasn't been a conclusive explanation what's causing it.

This video supposedly shows them being formed. It could be fake, but I remember seeing this years ago, before CGI effects were available to hoaxers. If it is real it looks like a meteorological phenomena such as ball lightning, rather than them being the footprint of flying saucers.

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It's possible they're a real phenomena.

I remember years ago watching a documentary about them where the investigators said the majority were fake because the crops had just been flattened down, but every now and again they'd come across a "real" one in which the nodes at the base of the corn had somehow exploded. Google has lots of pictures of these exploded nodes, and as far as I'm aware there hasn't been a conclusive explanation what's causing it.

This video supposedly shows them being formed. It could be fake, but I remember seeing this years ago, before CGI effects were available to hoaxers. If it is real it looks like a meteorological phenomena such as ball lightning, rather than them being the footprint of flying saucers.

Here's the author of the video explaining how he faked the video above. See 1m 45s onwards.

Edited by pxi
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I remember reading in some book (unrelated to crop circles for the most part, it was about weather and stuff) that showed a picture of grass that had supposedly been flattened in a circular pattern by the brief touchdown of a small tornado. I don't remember what the book was or whether or not it was remotely legit, but that's another non-conspiratorial idea about how some circles may form. I guess.

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Here's the author of the video explaining how he faked the video above. See 1m 45s onwards.

Cool. Thanks!

There is that old mowing devil thing which believers claim was evidence from ye olde times, but I guess if there is a real phenomena anyone actually trying to investigate it would be so overwhelmed by hoaxes they'd never get anywhere.

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It could be fake, but I remember seeing this years ago, before CGI effects were available to hoaxers. If it is real it looks like a meteorological phenomena such as ball lightning, rather than them being the footprint of flying saucers.

I'm not sure where does that idea come from, but those are very simple effects and you could do it even way before this thing was filmed. It was obvious from the day 1 that it's computer generated imagery.

Sadly, it only points to the human stupidity that to this very day nutters ferociously defend their crazy ideas despite actual evidence that proves this, as all of the rest, were pranks and hoaxes.

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