Dodge County Man Sees Crop Circles Form

[Ivan Seeking]

""The holes appeared and there it was but you couldn't see what made it, but I seen it right when it happened," farm owner Arthur Rantala said."

http://www.themilwaukeechannel.com/news/2342726/detail.html

 

[zoobyshoe]

What can I say? I guess it's the
definitive proof everyone's been
waiting for.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I'll bet you can see his proof for $5 a head also.

 

[zoobyshoe]

As long as that includes a free
autographed picture of him poin-
ting at the formation, who can
complain.

Build it and they will come.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by zoobyshoe
As long as that includes a free
autographed picture of him poin-
ting at the formation, who can
complain.

Build it and they will come.

There is one strange coincidence here...unless this guy has been reading a particular book called "UFOS ARE REAL HERES THE PROOF”. There is a guy in Florida that I have written off named Ed Walters. He has many pictures of alleged UFOs in what was a UFO hotspot- Gulf Breeze Florida. This is the confusing part. I don't believe him; but the UFO activity in the area was seen by hundreds if not thousands of people. It seems that there were UFOs, but also that he was lying. I actually think this happens in conjuction with any unexplained phenomena. If there are lights in the sky there is money to be made.

The point is this: One of his claims that lost me completely was one of a little "black dot" that knocked on his window to alert him to a UFO flying by...it seems that ET likes his camera.

Here we find another strange reference to three little "black holes". I guess he must have read Walter's book. However, I have run across other strange coincidences like this that seem to really mean something. So, even though I would bet $99.5/$100 on fraud here, I am still keeping a half a buck on the side just in case. Maybe ET uses little black dots instead of carrier pigeons.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I think you may have read the
story too fast. He doesn't say
"little" black holes. My imp-
ression is of holes the same dia-
ameter as the final product.

These are hoaxes. I think there
may be some genuine circular
formations made from time to
time by some freak electro-
static/electromagnetic, geo-
petro energy release but they
are almost certainly only roughly
circular and a lot more ragged.

I know what your saying, though,
about the gulf breeze guy. I
usually leave the door open a
crack even to the most absurd
sounding stories.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by zoobyshoe
I think you may have read the
story too fast. He doesn't say
"little" black holes. My imp-
ression is of holes the same dia-
ameter as the final product.

You're right. I read "like" as "little"...

These are hoaxes. I think there
may be some genuine circular
formations made from time to
time by some freak electro-
static/electromagnetic, geo-
petro energy release but they
are almost certainly only roughly
circular and a lot more ragged.

I know what your saying, though,
about the gulf breeze guy. I
usually leave the door open a
crack even to the most absurd
sounding stories.

Yes. Ed Walters comes off to me like a used car salesman. In fact someone now claims to have found a device used to hoax a photo in the attic of his old home. Then his little black dot knocking on the window...gees! I'm desensitized to this stuff but that's even beyond my tolerance. The darn thing is that again, given the premise, how can we even hope to know how to judge such things? Things that are done now would have seemed equally strange only 100 years ago. This is the most bothersome aspect of researching this stuff. You really can't judge the "evidence" by how much it makes sense. In fact, if ET is here, I doubt that much about his technology would make sense. Of course, it is possible also that "there is nothing new under the suns".

Also, I have long made the same argument about crop circles. Some simple ones are real; the rest are fakes. Something else may have just undermined this opinion on my part...we will see what comes of it. [?] I chase down a lot of garbage for every good story.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Aw, I can't hold this in any longer. I think the authentic ones
are the work of elves and fairies.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by zoobyshoe
Aw, I can't hold this in any longer. I think the authentic ones
are the work of elves and fairies.

shows how much you know...its gobblins! Some of them look just like drunken college students...but don't be fooled.

 

[zoobyshoe]

"Nope" said the farmer, "Jes
look at the way them stalks is
bent over. Now you think a bunch
a goblins could have done that? Elves
an' Fairies. I seen 'em myself,
out here dancin' round and round.
You think a no-nonsence man like
me can't tell the diffrence? I
ain't had a drink goin' on two
hour now so what I'm saying is
the sober truth."

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by zoobyshoe
"Nope" said the farmer, "Jes
look at the way them stalks is
bent over. Now you think a bunch
a goblins could have done that? Elves
an' Fairies. I seen 'em myself,
out here dancin' round and round.
You think a no-nonsence man like
me can't tell the diffrence? I
ain't had a drink goin' on two
hour now so what I'm saying is
the sober truth."

I had a guy come to me with a faked crop circle. He was just chomping at the bit to get me out there with my meters and probes. I just told him that I didn’t think it was necessary. This guy was a classic con. Note that he was also one of the original Biosphere Engineers.

But, as you may or may not know, some crop circles come with exposure to radiation - exploded cells in the stalks - and with elevated radiation levels; as compared to the background levels and control samples. Also, some circles have a layered structure that defies at least simple smashing techniques. A group of physics grads were challenged to reproduce these results. They were not completely successful. Also, their methods required luxuries that no hoaxers would enjoy...like a generator for their microwave transducer. So, at least we know that Jim-bob and Jethro didn’t hoax these types of circles.

 

[jb]

shat, i live right by there... (i think, I've lived here for 12 years and i still haven't figured out where dodge county was)

i bet it's fake, i never saw any ufo's flying out that way.

 

[Dal]

Does anyone know any link to a website with a large archive or collections of crop circles images?

 

[Dal]

Oh! By the way isn’t it possible to create a crop circle from a satellite if equipped with the right kind of technology? Surely today’s technology can pinpoint very accurately and create precise image from a satellite acting as a weapon. I mean it doesn't have to be an alien to do it. It could very well be the military testing their weapons' precision without harmful ammunitions.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Dal
Does anyone know any link to a website with a large archive or collections of crop circles images?

You may want to check out Linda's site:
http://www.earthfiles.com

Linda Moulton Howe is an investigative journalist who investigates these and other related issues. Although not a scientist, she tries very hard to use science and scientists in her work. I spoke with Linda only last week and she seems very serious and very dedicated to the truth. I tried throwing her some curve balls that may serve to discredit some of her work. She was completely supportive and willing to cooperate...in fact, she seemed quite excited. I think she cares more about the truth than for any particular explanation for mysteries such as crop circles. In this field one can ask little more. This is not to say that I always agree with her.

She is also very nice.

Just use her search engine for "crop circles".

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by Dal
Oh! By the way isn’t it possible to create a crop circle from a satellite if equipped with the right kind of technology? Surely today’s technology can pinpoint very accurately and create precise image from a satellite acting as a weapon. I mean it doesn't have to be an alien to do it. It could very well be the military testing their weapons' precision without harmful ammunitions.

I know of no way that this could be done. What's more, why? Why wouldn't the gov just pay hoaxers if this was their intention?

 

[Dal]

Originally posted by Ivan Seeking
I know of no way that this could be done. What's more, why? Why wouldn't the gov just pay hoaxers if this was their intention?

I'm not sure but I think with the right kind of radiation emitted from the satellite can create such pattern (like laser equipped satellite can shoot anyone on surface precisely). If so then their intention is only to test the technology. Not making crop circles to entertain. Anyway I’m just saying the possibility but the point is that with our technology, one of our own satellites can do it.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Ivan,

Having been upset and bewildered
by reports of these apparent UFO
landing sites only to find that
a good healthy number of them
were made by two guys with a rope and a board, has left me upset
and bewildered by those people
who examined some of these hoaxed
circles "scientifically" and
declared them to have unhoaxble
features.
How did they get fooled? The
answer that comes to mind when
I speculate about this is that
good scientists often lack com-
mon sence. If I wanted to see
if the unusual layered pattern
were humanly reproducable I
wouldn't ask physics students
to try it. I would collect a
group of people expert in basket
weaving.
Similar, more "common sence" tests could be devised for the
rest of the phenomena. At this
point I'm looking at the whole
thing from the standpoint that
crop circles are best understood
by studying human nature before
studying the circles themselves.
-Zoob

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by zoobyshoe
Ivan,

Having been upset and bewildered
by reports of these apparent UFO
landing sites only to find that
a good healthy number of them
were made by two guys with a rope and a board, has left me upset
and bewildered by those people
who examined some of these hoaxed
circles "scientifically" and
declared them to have unhoaxble
features.
How did they get fooled? The
answer that comes to mind when
I speculate about this is that
good scientists often lack com-
mon sence. If I wanted to see
if the unusual layered pattern
were humanly reproducable I
wouldn't ask physics students
to try it. I would collect a
group of people expert in basket
weaving.
Similar, more "common sence" tests could be devised for the
rest of the phenomena. At this
point I'm looking at the whole
thing from the standpoint that
crop circles are best understood
by studying human nature before
studying the circles themselves.
-Zoob

But we know for a fact that they're not all fakes. The subject is over 60 years old. Also, Billy-Bob still needs to produce large quatities of radiation. It was the radiation that landed the challenge with the physics crowd. Also, the layering only rules out the techniques demonstrated by hoaxers. I really didn't mean this as evidence otherwise. But the confessed hoaxers cannot reproduce this effect.

Edit: Also, I never claimed these as UFO landing sites. I know some people think this, but for me there are many more worldly explanations that could account for this mystery; eg some kind of ionic phenomenon. I have long considered that wheat fields may make pretty good electrostatic generators. With all of those little hairs on the wheat head combined with wind and natural vortices, perhaps free charges are pumped from the ground into the enviroment. I have never calculated whether or not these charges could accelerate enough to produce microwaves, but it seems worthy of review. I have been meaning to do this.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Ivan:

I know very little about radiat-
ion. (I assume you're talking
about nuclear radiation.) Nor
do I know much about radiation
detectors. Under these circumstances the first thing I
would do is a full blown Columbo
on the person operating the
detector. Make sure he's not like
one of those guys who joins the
fire departement so he can help
put out the fires he starts in
his spare time capacity as an arsonist.
Then I would Columbo Billy-Bob.
Did Billy-Bob recently recieve
shipment of an extrordinarily
large number of smoke detectors?
Did Billy-Bob used to go out to
the desert and rock hunt? Is
there a large amount of radiation
detectable on the head of Billy-
Bobs roofing hammer?
As far as the pattern goes I
think you would be astonished
at what an interested basket
weaver could come up with.
And, just because it is in Billy-
Bob's wheat field doesn't mean
I would have to account for him
having the wits to perpetrate a
sophisticated hoax. Who knows
what David Copperfield does for
giggles when he's bored?
-Zooby

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by zoobyshoe
Ivan:

I know very little about radiat-
ion. (I assume you're talking
about nuclear radiation.) Nor
do I know much about radiation
detectors. Under these circumstances the first thing I
would do is a full blown Columbo
on the person operating the
detector. Make sure he's not like
one of those guys who joins the
fire departement so he can help
put out the fires he starts in
his spare time capacity as an arsonist.
Then I would Columbo Billy-Bob.
Did Billy-Bob recently recieve
shipment of an extrordinarily
large number of smoke detectors?
Did Billy-Bob used to go out to
the desert and rock hunt? Is
there a large amount of radiation
detectable on the head of Billy-
Bobs roofing hammer?
As far as the pattern goes I
think you would be astonished
at what an interested basket
weaver could come up with.
And, just because it is in Billy-
Bob's wheat field doesn't mean
I would have to account for him
having the wits to perpetrate a
sophisticated hoax. Who knows
what David Copperfield does for
giggles when he's bored?
-Zooby

I agree with everything that you have said. A well planned hoax by a skilled and clever person could be quite difficult to discredit. and of course, we can never underestimate the creativeness that comes with dedicated basket weavers.

However, the key point for me is this: Some of them are real. Meteoroligists have know this for 60 years.

I really don't care how the faked ones were hoaxed. I care about the explanations for the real ones. This is why I don't care about human nature. Unfortunately, this nature of ours does present an obstacle to the truth in this case. For this reason we are [I am] stuck with Billy-Bob, basket weavers, and their natures.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Ivan,
I like your thinking about the
wheat field's potential as an
electrotatic generator, but I
don't see this happening at night
because of dew. As far as free charges being pumped from the
ground, this too, is a good idea
but you would have to account for
why this only happens in crops.
You'd think it would be discovered
anywhere vegetation is growing
wild. I think hoaxers are attrac-
ted to the crops because it makes
for a very neat and visible end
product.

-Zooby

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by zoobyshoe
Ivan,
I like your thinking about the
wheat field's potential as an
electrotatic generator, but I
don't see this happening at night
because of dew. As far as free charges being pumped from the
ground, this too, is a good idea
but you would have to account for
why this only happens in crops.
You'd think it would be discovered
anywhere vegetation is growing
wild. I think hoaxers are attrac-
ted to the crops because it makes
for a very neat and visible end
product.

-Zooby

Well, many of these things happen in the summer- or course since we need to have wheat growing. But actually there are winter crops and rare winter crop circles. If we can ignore perturbations in the examples that can be found, likely attributing these to hoaxes, and then we are usually talking about dry weather and highly resistive materials. I am sure that dry wheat ohms out pretty high. Next, any sharp point acts as a good charge emitter. The sharp radius makes the charges "think" they are farther apart than in fact - this is the pedestrian explanation anyway. This allows positive or negative charges to accumulate around points. Also, plants move charges around as a natural function of uptake, intake, photosynthesis, and exhaust [evapotranspiration and leaching back into the soil].

Of course, with plants being in the ground, one tends to expect a surplus of negative charges. But we could get isolated pockets of + charge depending on the topology and soil content, moisture etc. So I guess a surplus of positive charge is also possible. Also, there may be a preference for this within the plant - to move positive charges from the soil to the head, as a random example.

So, we potentially have a source of charge, charge carriers, charge emitters, dry conditions, and a surplus of free dust and pollen to carry away the charge. This sounds to me like a great electrostatic generator system. I have seen grass fields so heavy with suspended pollens that it floats like dark smoke or a swarm of locust over the field.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Yes, and in addition the behaviour
of electrostatically charged
objects is not well understood
after a certain level of simpli-
city is passed.
Tesla designed an electromagnet-
generator which worked by rotating
a charged metal segmented disc
rather than a magnetic field.
The result was not strong enough
to practically replace the magnetic fields used in generators
but reading about it brought my
attention to the fact it is even
possible. So what would this
effect contribute in your field
of waving charged wheat? Could
make things very interesting.

-Zoob

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by zoobyshoe
Yes, and in addition the behaviour
of electrostatically charged
objects is not well understood
after a certain level of simpli-
city is passed.
Tesla designed an electromagnet-
generator which worked by rotating
a charged metal segmented disc
rather than a magnetic field.
The result was not strong enough
to practically replace the magnetic fields used in generators
but reading about it brought my
attention to the fact it is even
possible. So what would this
effect contribute in your field
of waving charged wheat? Could
make things very interesting.

-Zoob

Something just occurred to me for the first time. If we can have a charging system, then instead of just floating away, perhaps we really create a local separation of charge that then discharges in one big event! I had never thought of discharging the system. Maybe this is what makes the circle? Of course this is a shot in the dark, but it seems worth considering.

Edit: this could explain the lights often reported, and the microwave radiation.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The sudden discharge idea would
knock the wheat down but the like-
lyhood of it being evenly shaped
and circular is remote.

The other thing you'd have to
account for is what it discharges
to.

Perhaps there are large "bubbles"
of charged air that float around
without anyone having realized it
yet. I can't imagine what would
keep them contained. Some kind
of temperature difference?

Hey. Something just occurred to me
for the first time:
"I have seen grass fields so
heavy with suspended pollens that
it floats like dark smoke..."

Or little black dots?

Zooby :-)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by zoobyshoe
The sudden discharge idea would
knock the wheat down but the like-
lyhood of it being evenly shaped
and circular is remote.

The other thing you'd have to
account for is what it discharges
to. B]

I am working under the assumption that we are only talking about simple circles here - really more like donuts in many cases. If any complex designs are genuine then my theory is in big trouble of course. But I can make some arguments for simple donuts. As for seeking discharge, it would want to discharge back to its source - the ground. I am thinking of graineries for example, where the grain running down chutes can create potentials of hundreds of thousands, and I think even millions of volts. If a highly charged region of this cloud began to discharge back to ground, once an ionized path is established, perhaps a cascade event follows. I know this is just wild guessing but just for the sake of concepts, it seems promising. Of course, complicated designs are a huge problem.

Perhaps there are large "bubbles"
of charged air that float around
without anyone having realized it
yet. I can't imagine what would
keep them contained. Some kind
of temperature difference?

and we may really be talking about dust and pollen which is a little easier to contain. Let's see...I will shoot for something here... How about the warming of land at night. Could the warmer air rising from the ground carry the pollen up, only to then cool and seek some equilibrium? If the air around is otherwise still, perhaps this could actually just hover and accumulate more and more charge until some critical level is reached. This makes me think of a thunderstorm made of pollen and dust rather than water vapor.

Hey. Something just occurred to me
for the first time:
"I have seen grass fields so
heavy with suspended pollens that
it floats like dark smoke..."

Or little black dots?

Zooby :-)

You're killing me here...

 

[zoobyshoe]

Ivan,

In truth I have only "heard tell" of the simpler circles and
the doughtnuts you brought up
are completely new to me. The exiting, geometrically complex,
and artistic formations are the ones that get all the good press.
Can you link me to pics of the
simpler ones that intrigue you?

Do you have "Handbook of Unusual
Natural Phenomena" by William R.
Corliss ? It doesn't pertain
directly to the crop circles but
it brings attention to the fact
that the forces science has no
problem recognising as fact can
sometimes create inexlicable
effects.

The reason I mention this parti-
cular book it that he avoids the
mystical and paranormal and limits
his subject matter to unusual
manifestations that can probably
be explained, but which haven't
yet been. It seems to be right up
your alley.

I like the way you speculate about
electrostatic phenomena. There's
alot of potential there.(pun intended)
-zoob