Where's the evidence all crop circles are man made?

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Matrix Rising

 

Do all "genuine" crop circles have all of these characteristics? If so please provide the evidence. If not, how can they be considered "genuine"?

Do none of the man made crop circles have any of these characteristics? If so please provide the evidence. If not, how can they be considered man made?


[edit on 11/25/2009 by Phage]

If you really want to know then do the research.

There's a lot of data here. Three peer reviewed articles and books and articles.

These things were also covered by the Discovery channel in 2002 and the M.I.T. students.

So if you are really seeking the truth here's some info:

www.bltresearch.com...

It has also been shown that node elongation occurs in these formations in standing plants inside crop formations. These standing plants haven't been flattened.

If you just want to debate without studying the material, then that's fine too.

reply to post by Matrix Rising

So now you're back to placing weight on peer reviewed work. Ok.

I've looked at some of Levengood's data. I'm not impressed. I have no credentials but then neither does Levengood so I suppose I could be considered a peer. But his papers have been critiqued by others who do have credentials. I'm sure you've seen that.

As has been pointed out, there are various biological causes for lengthening. Because someone says that those causes are "easily ruled out" does not make it so (without at least some explanation). Since Levengood's paper involved experimental results, it would be customary that the results would be confirmed by other researchers. Has this been done. Have his results been verified and repeated? And then there is the question about whether the experiments should have been conducted under double blind protocols (they were not). And there's that circular logic problem. It's real because it has the characteristics we know make it real. See, there's always a problem with bias when a researcher decides what criteria to use or not use. Independent verification helps find problems with the research (as Grassi did with Hasselhoff).

[edit on 11/25/2009 by Phage]

Originally posted by Matrix Rising
So if you are really seeking the truth here's some info:

www.bltresearch.com...

Actually you may think I've been arguing that all crop circles are manmade but I don't think they are.

And in one of the sources you linked to, there is a comment that alludes to my belief:

Dispersion Of Energies In Worldwide Crop Formations
Author: W. C. Levengood and Nancy P. Talbott

"many crop formations with very irregular outlines have been attributed to wind damage"

It is this attribution I agree with based on my personal observations of dust devils in action in the midwest US.

Here is a photograph of a dust devil:

why-i-ride.blogspot.com...
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b1c29d802f9f.jpg[/atsimg]

Dust devil (between Ritzville and Sprague)

I've seen these things form out of nowhere, spin air in a circular motion for a while, sometimes in just one spot, and then vanish. Could such a circular air motion flatten crops? Well, if it's powerful enough it could. Most dust devils I've seen are probably not powerful enough to permanently flatten crops. But some might be powerful enough.

Then we've got the big brothers of dust devils where the wind can be a little more powerful, and they can do some strange things and skip around and touch down in spots you might not expect, as suggested in this photo:

photo.net...
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/885b25b15441.jpg[/atsimg]

I would speculate that the amount of energy required to keep that "rope" intact over such a long and winding distance may also be sufficient energy to cause some permanent wind damage to the crops.

Furthermore, as suggested in Levengood's paper, the wind damage crop circles could have "irregular outlines" which may look like this:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/e4806d8dcc50.jpg[/atsimg]

So I don't disagree with everything in Levengood's paper, I in fact agree with that statement in his paper specifically that some crop circles with irregular outlines may be the result of wind damage (from dust devils or something more powerful). But I think most of the crop circle science is bad science.

The peer review paper Phage posted shows just how bad "crop circle science" can be, and it's pretty bad.

This thread has demonstrated the ball of light theory "facts" do not hold up under peer review.

[edit on 25-11-2009 by Arbitrageur]

reply to post by Arbitrageur


First off, I see you disagree with Phage and this is my point and Hasselhoff's point.

Phage said:

Proving that a single circle is not man made is really the crux of the matter. The claim that Hasselhoff's "peer reviewed" paper somehow shows this makes no sense. Hasselhoff himself does not claim it in the paper.

Well, more than a single crop circle has been shown to not be man made. This is my point and I'm glad you agree with me.

Is it the cause of a weather, a plasma vortex, a plasm life form or an advanced civilization, these things can be debated but my initial point that all crop circles are not man made is a true statement based on the evidence.

Now we need to talk about Hasselhof's study and the study Phage posted.

The study Phage posted is sloppy and I picked it apart in 30 minutes.

I know why it was allowed, because the subject matter is crop circles.

These guys didn't refute the claim of Hasselhoff or Levengood that these crop circles show characteristics that are different from man made crop circles.

They tried to go after BOL and they failed.

They took raw data, created their own control number and that's just silly.

I could take raw data and look at it in 10 different ways and then publish the best results that I could fudge together. This is just nonsense but because the subject matter is crop circles this garbage made it through.

The BOL can't be used with the raw data because man made crop circles and Levengood crop circles share different characteristics.

So it makes no sense to take raw data that doesn't correspond to the Levengood circle and do a BOL number. What makes it worse is that they created their own control value from the raw data.

Hasselhoff's paper still standswhen you look at the characteristics of man made crop circles vs. Levengood crop circles.

I wouldn't be surprised if the people who wrote this paper wouldn't admit that they shouldn't have took raw data and made it up. They did this to say Hasselhoff took data and did the same thing.

This is not the case. Hasselhoff just matched the symmetrical heat distribution of the crop circle and that told him the height of the point source. If it didn't match the symmetrical heat distribution, we wouldn't be discussing it now.


[edit on 25-11-2009 by Matrix Rising]

If a man goes into a field and makes a circle...it's a genuine circle.

If an Alien (if one exists) goes into that same field and makes a circle next to the first...it's a genuine circle.

If a gust of wind happens to make a circle as well then it's still a genuine circle.

Someone goes into the field and conducts very scientific tests and concludes the middle one couldn't be made by anything other than an alien. The alien must now be proven to exist.

At the time of testing it was noted that tractor wheel lines ran through all three formations.

Originally posted by Matrix Rising
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

First off, I see you disagree with Phage and this is my point and Hasselhoff's point.

Phage said:

Proving that a single circle is not man made is really the crux of the matter. The claim that Hasselhoff's "peer reviewed" paper somehow shows this makes no sense. Hasselhoff himself does not claim it in the paper.

Well, more than a single crop circle has been shown to not be man made. This is my point and I'm glad you agree with me.

Is it the cause of a weather, a plasma vortex, a plasm life form or an advanced civilization, these things can be debated but my initial point that all crop circles are not man made is a true statement based on the evidence.

Actually I agree with Phage that Hasselhoff's paper didn't prove any crop circles aren't manmade, and his BOL theory which he tried to prove has more holes in the proof than Swiss cheese.

Hasselhoff didn't even try to prove the wind damage, he just made comments like this one:

www.bltresearch.com...

In fact it is important to note that both of the Maryland, 'super node expansion' formations were discovered less than 24 h after severe winds and thunderstorms passed through the area. These, and findings from other similar formations, led the authors to conjecture that weather with severe convective turbulence (energy component No. 4 in Table 1) breaks up the crop formation plasmas into smaller, but more energetic, convective cells of irregular outline.

At least he admits it's "conjecture". I disagree completely with Hasselhoff' that there is even plasma involved in crop circle formation, especially if it's wind damage, then the cause is wind, not plasma. The photo I posted shows what looks like two possible touchdown points of either a dust devil or small tornado and both are known to be capable of "skipping" their touchdown points like that.

==============

Originally posted by BlueGlow
Someone goes into the field and conducts very scientific tests and concludes the middle one couldn't be made by anything other than an alien. The alien must now be proven to exist.

First of all even if the tests were scientifically valid, they wouldn't prove anything about aliens.

But more importantly, the tests weren't scientifically valid as they failed peer review so they don't prove anything.

[edit on 30-11-2009 by Arbitrageur]

reply to post by Arbitrageur


The test didn't fail peer review.

Where do you guys come up with this nonsense?

The test was valid.

The paper Phage showed did nothing but take raw data and come up with their own control value.

How is this valid?

Levengod crop circles and man made crop circles are different. You cannot take raw data from man made crop circles, come up with your own control value and say that your doing anything but playing with raw data to best fit your preconceived notions.

They used a control value which was the average of all the outside samples in the raw data. So basically they took raw data and played with the numbers.

The paper is sound and there's clear and convincing evidence that all crop circles are not man made.

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 1990?s, 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, a non- profit organization promoting scientific research of crop circles, directed by Nancy Talbott.

Levengood, who has published over 50 papers in scientific journals, documented numerous changes in the plants from most of 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.

These anomalies were also found in tufts of standing plants inside crop circles - a result clearly not caused by 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.

They also looked at Plasma as a possible source for these formations.

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 which emit microwaves as they spiral around the earth's magnetic field- lines.

Lightening is an example of a high energy plasma. The paper proposed that a lower energy plasma could be creating crop circles, leaving a two dimensional record of a three dimensional system. These vortex systems are governed by a host of boundary conditions? (such as microwave frequencies, local turbulence, electric and magnetic fields). Any slight change in just one of the boundary factors would alter the structural make-up of the plasma system, accounting for the variation in crop circle design.

Some formations, however, contain cubes and straight lines. Astrophysicist Dr. Bernard Haisch of the Bay Area 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 have been genuine.

www.unknowncountry.com...

If there was more funding available, they could do more extensive test and also test more crop circles and seperate those that are genuine from those that are man made.

The BOL model is on solid ground as one explanation for these genuine crop circles.

Originally posted by Matrix Rising
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

The test didn't fail peer review.

The paper Phage showed did nothing but take raw data and come up with their own control value.

How is this valid?

The relevant facts have been explained to you already about the data Hasselhoff chose to include or omit for unstated reasons (but perhaps not unknown reasons since his choices seem to skew the data toward supporting a particular conclusion), incorrect analysis of the data, etc.

The fact that you fail to understand how the peer review process works, and your refusal to accept the facts presented in the peer review, shows that this thread has reached a practical conclusion (as far as I'm concerned).

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Nope,

The fact is the paper you quoted took raw numbers and came up with it's own control value.

All they did was play with the raw data.

The reason this raw data wasn't included is because man made crop circles and Levengood crop circles don't share the same characteristics.

So it makes no sense to include data from a man made crop circle that's not found in a Levengood crop circle. That's like comparing apples and oranges.

You even admit that there's a difference between man made crop circles and "genuine" crop circles. So why does it make any sense to include this data in the study?

For instance, in the Levengood circles you have elongated nodes in the standing plants. You don't see this in man made circles. So you are going to have data points that are not shared by man made crop circles and "genuine" crop circles.

What the study did was take this raw data, play with the numbers and pseudoskeptics bought it hook, line and sinker.

I wonder if these balls of light that people see causing the crop circes could be 'ball lightning', it would be interesting to see if anyone could connect why this phenomenon seem to happen near corn fields.