Yeah, but why bother in the 1940s when the fields the circles appeared in weren’t en route to any pub? And why continue for 3 decades without any publicity whatsoever? Yes, there were fakes, but those were in the 70s. I doubt that the blokes who owned up to circle-making were old enough to drink when my father-in-law first got them.

So, if it wasn’t those two blokes…….the only other possibility is Aliens then ?

Hmm, so it sounds like there are two possibilities:

Option 1:
•Intelligent extraterrestrials must exist.
•These intelligent extraterrestrials must have the ability and the desire to visit Earth in spaceships capable of traveling millions of miles across space and sustaining their occupants for years in order to make the trip.
•These intelligent extraterrestrials must have a reason for wanting to come to Earth for the purpose of pressing weird designs in to fields of grain.
•The process of creating crop circles must be done without the possibility of these extraterrestrials being witnessed in the act of doing it.

Or Option 2:
•Some human beings must have the desire to play a prank.
•Some human beings must have access to a board, a piece of string, and a baseball cap.
•Some human beings must have some knowledge of geometry.

Yeah, but why bother in the 1940s when the fields the circles appeared in weren’t en route to any pub?

Well,

a) based on a sample anecdote of “one”, it’s entirely possible that your FIL is either mistaken or lying,

b) it seems unlikely that the fields aren’t between someone’s house and a pub somewhere, and

c) the presence of the pub, or the field being on a pub route, whilst almost certainly inspirational, is not mandatory.

“Hey Doug, what say we go and play a joke on the farmer after this pint?”

“Nah Dave, it’s just not possible. After all, we’d have to go slightly out of our way.”

Aliens, clearly.

Yeah, but why bother in the 1940s when the fields the circles appeared in weren’t en route to any pub?

Just for the record, beer consumption peaked around 1874, at which time it provided around 30% of the exchequers revenue. Second only to cotton, and employed over 1.5 million people in the uk directly and indirectly.

The production of beer during the Second World War was a serious business treated with surprisingly high importance by the UK government.

Some of the results of “alternative” brewing techniques however, where quite unpleasant but still quite effective.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/22/george-osborne-beer-cultural-value

Attitudes changed by the second world war. With bombers attacking the home front, beer and pubs were an essential morale booster. Beer was never rationed, and Churchill personally mandated that every fighting man at the front must receive eight pints a week.

😀

Much as my father-in-law & I disliked each other, I believed him about this. The drunken idiot theory wouldn’t produce so consistent a phenomenon. Farmers tend not to be mistaken about damage to crops, especially as the breeds available in the 40s to 60s were harder to recover after they’d been laid flat.

However, knowing the location I can think of two other potential explanations for his circles that don’t involve faking: downdraft winds / willy-willies , as the fields in question were close to the edge of Salisbury Plain; or the results of military trials, as the farm is not far from a number of testing ranges and 20 barren miles from Boscombe Down.

You underestimate the idiotic determination of a drunk man on a mission.

crazy-legs – Member
Which would therefore suggest that the most logical answer is that it was made by people FROM the observatory…

Let me rephrase that as you didn’t understand it the first time…

The Apaches radar will find anything bigger than a badger.
The Apaches passed over on a night calibration run, two hrs later they passed over again and the circles showed up on radar.
ZERO livings things for miles around big enough to be seen, no sensors triggered internally at the observatory, bearing in mind the whole place is wired out to 2 miles in a combination of security and sensory devices 😉
The Chilbolton dish is one of the only ones worldwide than can look below the horizon and is sometimes used to look at individual raindrops and their effect on transmissions so it doesn’t miss anything!
There are photos there going back to the 30’s of stuff that has appeared in the surrounding fields always over a matter of hours.

So it was aliens then ?

Uh huh, http://oldcropcircles.weebly.com/uk-1940-41-earl-shilton.html

The circle was discovered by a farmer friend

I bet it was 😀

SETI didn’t think it likely

Edit piem’ “What the fox ?” 🙂

There are written descriptions of crop formations, usually attributed to Old Nick, back in the 18th Century, they were usually just simple circles; explanation seems to point to some sort of electrical or plasma phenomena.
But who knows, really.
I’ve got a rather nice circlemakers.com tee shirt, with a CAD-type drawing of one of the more complicated designs on.

Hammyuk,

All this information you have about the security arrangements at Chilbolton, is it from a source that believes the crop circles were done by aliens by any chance ?

Nope – it comes from being there that evening and seeing the shit storm that was occurring from Middle Wallop when the Army Air Corp shit themselves first hand!

Crop formation, Avebury by CountZero1, on Flickr

ZERO livings things for miles around big enough to be seen, no sensors triggered internally at the observatory, bearing in mind the whole place is wired out to 2 miles in a combination of security and sensory devices

OK, I’ll bite.
Why on earth would you do that? Chilbolton is predominantly weather related and (from my limited knowledge of atmospheric chemistry – I was more an organic synthesis kind of chemist…) atmospheric stuff tends to happen well, upwards. In the atmosphere. So you point your radar, lidar and microwave stuff upwards.

Why would you need to detect a badger moving along in the grass 2 miles away? You’d have sensors tripping all the time, alarms going off and it generally being a total pain in the arse.

One was a 6 figure mathematical equation that took their own computers almost three days to calculate

What’s a six figure equation? Do you mean sixth degree polynomial? And do you mean solve rather than calculate?

You do realise of course that the answer could have been calculated elsewhere in 3 days and then written onto the crops.

Bearing in mind their radar covers anything bigger than a badger for close on 8 miles in every direction…….

Now I’m only a Physics graduate and not a weapons expert but I’m sceptical of this!

ZERO livings things for miles around big enough to be seen

Apart from the village of 1000 people within a kilometre. Obviously.

Do they have a pub there?

Cougar – Moderator

Do they have a pub there? Ugh.
We get it. Aliens and UFOs can’t exist, nevermind make crop circles, because you don’t think so. We get it.

No, you don’t.

Given the vastness of space the chances of alien life existing is, statistically, pretty high.

The odds of little green men turning up one day in rural England in the early 90s, drawing geometrical shapes in fields when no-one’s looking, and then sodding off again without actually making anything that we’d recognise as “contact,” is comparatively low. Especially when, you know, we actually do know how crop circles are made.

Because let’s think about this for a second. Let’s say for the sake of argument that aliens are visiting us, secretly. This is an advanced civilisation capable of travelling a very, very long way, so can either travel really fast or have very long lives and a lot of patience. Or, I guess, some sort of suspended animation. Let’s say they’re also advanced enough to find us, some pimple of a planet in 3D space in an otherwise unremarkable solar system.

So why on Earth would a civilisation far in advance of our own come all this way just to flatten grass? Have they mistaken the planet’s dominant life form? Are they harbouring a pathological hatred of crops? Are they really gluten intolerant? It makes no sense, none, zero, even if you suspend disbelief long enough to assume that the explanation is remotely possible, let alone the most likely explanation.

I could, just, accept that these are from the result of an alien craft landing. That’s how the alien theory came about, IIRC. But that would necessitate that they’re all the same pattern, all the same size; if they’re not then we’re looking at dozens of different craft, hundreds, all landing once never to return. On one rainy little island out of the entire planet. Quite where they all hide during the day, I’m not sure.

So no. It’s not likely to be aliens. Unless they’ve travelled billions of light years solely to screw with us. Not because aliens don’t exist, but because as should be patently obvious to anyone who thinks about it for longer than five seconds, they’ve almost certainly got better things to do.

I’ve never been responsible for any crop circles, certainly not in a field near Wethersfield air base in the mid 90s that was quite some distance from the pub.

😀

The splash in the puddle on the way home from the pub tonight was circular. Does that mean I am alien?

Cougar +1. Would be a shame though if Voyager survives a crash landing on a planet containing intelligent life only for a couple of aliens to proclaim they cobbled it together when they got home from the pub! What a sad end that would be for the poor craft.

But that would necessitate that they’re all the same pattern, all the same size; if they’re not then we’re looking at dozens of different craft, hundreds, all landing once never to return.

To be fair Cougar, if I landed in this weather I’d probably piss off straight away and never come back.

Cougar – Moderator

No, you don’t.Oh yes I do.
Yay for keeping the panto season alive!

Given the vastness of space the chances of alien life existing is, statistically, pretty high.

Sure.

The odds of little green men [false assumption no.1] turning up [false assumption no.2] one day in rural England in the early 90s [false assumption no.3], drawing geometrical shapes in fields when no-one’s looking [hmm, will let this one slide, but you’re wrong], and then sodding off again without actually making anything that we’d recognise [will address below] as “contact,” is comparatively low. Especially when, you know, we actually do know how crop circles are made [false assumption no.4].

Woah woah woah.
1. Approximately over 80 different species of ETs (or EBEs – extraterrestrial biological entities – as called in military circles) have been recorded as visiting earth. And that’s if it’s ETs doing it. Could be intraterrestrials i.e. entities from within the earth.
2. Some of these ETs are known to live among us. So they might not have to travel far.
3. Crop circles have been recorded long before that.
4. Yes. A few by pranksters, MI5 hoaxsters and drunkards, the rest are likely ET.

The ‘message’ in the crop circle may work on a level above your mind’s conscious thought. They may not even be for you humans at all, they could be a message to other rival ETs. Not everything is about you.

Because let’s think about this for a second. Let’s say for the sake of argument that aliens are visiting us, secretly[5]. This is an advanced civilisation capable of travelling a very, very long way, so can either travel really fast or have very long lives and a lot of patience. Or, I guess, some sort of suspended animation. Let’s say they’re also advanced enough to find us, some pimple of a planet in 3D space in an otherwise unremarkable solar system [6].

5. It’s not a secret. The human race was created by ETs intervening by use of genetic engineering on early hominids.
6. You’re just assuming you know everything there ever will be to know about physics, astrophysics and quantum mechanics. Seeing as there could be civilisations millions of years older than ours, you clearly don’t know as much as them.

So-called rational, logical people like yourself just assume they know everything and are happy to slam the door on the possibility there could be more than you’re aware of. Amazing!

With your logic, the Nazca lines were drawn by drunk ancient Peruvians as a prank to baffle STW readers 😆

^^^^
This reply wins the Internet for today……

DrP

Probably not on STW, but in the real world Im sure you will find someone

Build it, and they will come….

Bloody hell!!!!!!!

David Icke is on the forum!!!!
What bike to you ride and what tyres for the reptillan illuminate?

Oh, and just one ickle request from me. Can you link to your sources please?

With your logic, the Nazca lines were drawn by drunk ancient Peruvians as a prank to baffle STW readers

Nah, they’d have been drawn by people with a tape measure and a firm belief in a sky wizard living in the sky.

You can see the Nazca lines from local hill tops. Additionally, the drawings (scrawling) are actually pretty crap. I’d expect anything capable of interstellar travel to be better

They may also have been drunk.

Ahem

The pods can be ground into flour or used to produce beer.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-nazca2-2009nov02,0,2088132.story#ixzz2pK0AIjLU

Oh, and just one ickle request from me. Can you link to your sources please?

http://www.davidicke.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?s=c0ed630ae463f7610d665227b52c87b8&f=19

HTH 😀

Crop circles? Work of aliens?

That’s balls! All the extra-terrestrials are too busy posting on here.

With your logic, the Nazca lines were drawn by drunk ancient Peruvians as a prank to baffle STW readers

OK, so Nazca is the alien landing zone. And then they have to schlep half way round the world to a field in Hampshire to draw a circle in the grass?

Is that not like the intergalactic equivalent of a Ryanair flight, dropping you off in an entirely different city?

Don’t even know where to start with citizensmiths craziness.

So much batshitmental stuff to go at and so little time

Turn the internet off mate, seriously, it’s not doing you any good at all.

Of course, a more plausible explanation for alien involvement is that there is a lack of ‘drunk flying’ laws in interstellar space. And they’re all just stopping off for a waz behind a tree and decide to screw with the talking monkeys for cheeky giggles.

http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Teaser

Cougar – you forgot the explanation given to us by the oracle [Adams].

So, it checks out!

….and why do aliens only visit just prior to corn / wheat harvest?

piedi di formaggio – Member
….and why do aliens only visit just prior to corn / wheat harvest?

Probing season.

Probing season.

They seem to “probe” mainly in the MidWest USA

The UK is Mainly for crop circles.

And flying really fast is done mainly near Military Test Facilities (oddly enough)

Ever heard of anyone getting probed in a really fast flying UFO that stopped briefly to make a crop circle ??

Thought not 😉

They are very particular about keeping their hobbies separate it seems.