Wednesday, April 06, 2005

UFO Expert Bob Trotta Excited by Recent Crop Circle Activity in North Devon





"Mr Trotta himself was not quite as optimistic about his team's ability to solve the mystery: 'crop circles have been around for ever. We have reports of them in academic texts from the 1700's and they have appeared in at least twenty nine countries around the world. We are not sure what makes them although many of us believe it to be a form of light energy. However, one thing is for sure, since the 1990's the circles have developed in complexity to the point that where once we were seeing simple circles, we are now seeing crop glyphs mimicking computer fractals and elements expressing fourth dimensional processes in quantum physics. In layman terms that means we are seeing some really complicated patterns that are almost certainly beyond the capabilities of even the most accomplished hoaxer'."

I'm not so sure. We see man-made designs made to be viewed from above all the time. I think the notion that intricate cereological artwork is "almost certainly beyond the capabilities" of hoaxers has been exaggerated. Even Colin Andrews, an intelligent student of the crop circle phenomenon, has ceded that the vast majority of circles are industrious hoaxes -- to the considerable outrage of the crop circle community.

Personally, I think the most interesting crop glyphs are those that appear within a few minutes. Sanrio recently solicited a relatively simple crop design. The result, bearing the likeness of "Hello Kitty," took sixteen hours to complete. This casts the specter of anomaly over "instant" crop circles -- especially those with fiendishly complex alignments and precise mathematical content.

Of course, you can dispense with the whole question by maintaining that all circle researchers are, to some degree, "in on it," even if their duplicity is simply the stark desire to believe there's a nonhuman agency at work.

At one point, I'd mostly written crop circles off. I still think the gross majority of the controversy is willfully perpetuated by true believers. My lingering concern is that we might be doomed to lose an authentic signal among the noise.

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