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What's the deal with crop circles? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and Jerry, which makes this
0:17
Speaker 1: whole thing Stuff you Should Know the podcast. That's right.
0:21
Speaker 1: Let's good man. I got on my snow shoes and
0:24
Speaker 1: I'm walking in a wheat field making geometric patterns. Hey,
0:28
Speaker 1: run into snow shoes. Well, it's sort of a large snowshoe.
0:32
Speaker 1: I could see that though. Yeah, that would definitely work longer. Yeah, right,
0:36
Speaker 1: but it's easier. You can do something else with your
0:39
Speaker 1: hands while you're using this. That's a good point. So, uh,
0:42
Speaker 1: did you ever have the Led Zeppelin box set from
0:48
Speaker 1: my college roommate did? Yeah, so you're familiar with the
0:50
Speaker 1: crop circles and the suggestion that by Led Zeppelin that
0:55
Speaker 1: it was their zeppelin that was responsible for all of them?
0:58
Speaker 1: Was that what that was? Yeah? And pick up on
1:00
Speaker 1: that because on the cover of the box that there's
1:02
Speaker 1: like this awesome, very real life crop circle formation and
1:07
Speaker 1: then the shadow of the zeppelin floating over it. Oh,
1:09
Speaker 1: I don't think I noticed the shadow ever. Okay, yeah,
1:13
Speaker 1: that was the whole thing, like said, Led Zeppelin took
1:15
Speaker 1: responsibility for those right, and by the way, we got
1:18
Speaker 1: a lot of responses on how they got the name
1:20
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin, So thank you to the hundreds of people
1:24
Speaker 1: where the e where the A went. They didn't want
1:27
Speaker 1: people to think it was lead Zeppelin makes total sense, right,
1:31
Speaker 1: the Zeppelin in front the lead Zeppelin. Anyway, it turns
1:35
Speaker 1: out that it's complete fabrication that the led Zeppelin Zeppelin
1:38
Speaker 1: was responsible for crop circles. But that's one of the
1:42
Speaker 1: few suggestions that have been made for what makes crop circles.
1:49
Speaker 1: This is really strange topic, frankly, because it's been out
1:53
Speaker 1: for about a quarter of a century how crop circles
1:58
Speaker 1: are made, who make them? And yet there's still a
2:01
Speaker 1: lot of people called seriologists after series The Goddess of
2:06
Speaker 1: Agriculture Um, who are like, no, this this those people,
2:12
Speaker 1: that's the that's the whole catch. It's a hoax. They're
2:15
Speaker 1: responsible for like of crop circles, which leaves on accounted for. Yeah,
2:20
Speaker 1: I don't even call it a hoax. I just call
2:22
Speaker 1: it art. Well, yeah, so I saw somewhere at one
2:25
Speaker 1: point somebody say it's the most scientific, most science based
2:29
Speaker 1: art there is because the stuff that crop circles are
2:33
Speaker 1: made of a lot of them is some really impressive
2:38
Speaker 1: Euclidean geometry. Yeah, some smart people are behind these, uh
2:43
Speaker 1: what I like to call art. They're not just a
2:46
Speaker 1: bunch of dummies walking around on a cornfield. No, but
2:49
Speaker 1: they are people, Yes they are, and we've kind of
2:52
Speaker 1: spoiled it. So if you wanted to find out who
2:55
Speaker 1: makes crop circles it's art, you can turn the episode off.
2:58
Speaker 1: But if you do, you're gonna miss out on some
3:00
Speaker 1: kind of some cool interesting stuff if you ask me. Yeah,
3:03
Speaker 1: And what I think is weird is that despite the
3:05
Speaker 1: fact that it is definitely not aliens and all the
3:08
Speaker 1: stuff that people propose, we'll get into all that is
3:12
Speaker 1: that even when the people came out and said, no,
3:14
Speaker 1: we've been making crop circles for years, some people like, no,
3:16
Speaker 1: no, no no, they're being paid to say that there's aliens.
3:20
Speaker 1: In fact, that's something that you run up against with
3:22
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories. Those just admitting that you're responsible just suggest
3:29
Speaker 1: that you you're Yeah, somebody's put you up to admitting it.
3:32
Speaker 1: You're it's disinformation, basically, and that's what a lot of
3:35
Speaker 1: people have said. A lot of people say it's m
3:38
Speaker 1: I five. And the reason they say it's m I
3:40
Speaker 1: five is because if you start tracing the history of
3:43
Speaker 1: crop circles, they originated basically the hoax did um in England,
3:50
Speaker 1: specifically in a couple of counties in England. Yeah, I
3:53
Speaker 1: mean not only originated, but I think um of all
3:57
Speaker 1: crop circles have exist did in southern England, even though
4:02
Speaker 1: they're they're you know, they've had something like Japan and
4:04
Speaker 1: the United States, some other parts of Europe, but yeah,
4:07
Speaker 1: ninety percent over in southern England. They clearly are inspired
4:11
Speaker 1: in that area to undertake the process of circle art
4:15
Speaker 1: exactly for one reason or another. Who knows, well, I
4:19
Speaker 1: can tell you how it started out. So there crop circles.
4:24
Speaker 1: If you're a seriologist, you will point to the sixteenth century,
4:29
Speaker 1: maybe when somebody's like, the first what could be described
4:33
Speaker 1: as a crop circle is accounted for. Um. I couldn't
4:37
Speaker 1: find anything to back that up, but apparently in the
4:40
Speaker 1: sixteenth century that's where the first description came from. I
4:44
Speaker 1: did find in the seventeenth century in the s there's
4:47
Speaker 1: a wood cut of something called the mowing Devil, and
4:51
Speaker 1: it's a it's a devil and he's clearly making a
4:54
Speaker 1: crop circle. But there's a pretty good explanation for the
4:57
Speaker 1: whole thing. Well, yeah, he I don't under dan how
5:00
Speaker 1: this became some sort of weird pseudo proof that they
5:04
Speaker 1: had crop circles back then, because if you look at
5:06
Speaker 1: the wood cut, it is satan with a scythe and
5:10
Speaker 1: he is clearly cutting down corner or something some wheat
5:15
Speaker 1: harvest but cutting, Yeah, he's not. It's not that's a distinction.
5:20
Speaker 1: Crop circles aren't cut. They're like, you know, it's a
5:22
Speaker 1: corn stock that has laid down but not damaged supposedly, right,
5:26
Speaker 1: they yield the pressure without breaking. So this is this
5:29
Speaker 1: is just complete who to me? And there's even more
5:32
Speaker 1: so the there's an explanation on the wood cut itself.
5:36
Speaker 1: Well it's a story. Yeah, And basically a um a
5:40
Speaker 1: man uh balked at the price that he was quoted
5:45
Speaker 1: by a laborer to harvest his grain. And the man said,
5:48
Speaker 1: I would rather have the devil harvest my grain than you.
5:51
Speaker 1: And so when he woke up the next morning, he
5:53
Speaker 1: was quite surprised to find that the devil was harvesting
5:56
Speaker 1: his screen and he probably went to hell for it.
5:58
Speaker 1: But that was the whole story behind the mowing devil.
6:02
Speaker 1: If you're a seriologist, this is the first evidence of
6:04
Speaker 1: crop circles, which kind of says a lot if you
6:07
Speaker 1: ask me. But um, something that does kind of pop
6:11
Speaker 1: up that's a little a little less easily explained, came
6:14
Speaker 1: along in eighty in the issue of In an issue
6:17
Speaker 1: of Nature, there was an Englishman named John rand Capron
6:22
Speaker 1: or cape Run and he was from Surrey, and he
6:25
Speaker 1: said that he found a field of wheat that appeared
6:27
Speaker 1: to have been knocked about as if by wind. And
6:32
Speaker 1: they say there's a crop circle. Yeah, maybe it's possible.
6:38
Speaker 1: He said that it's to him, he thought it was
6:40
Speaker 1: cyclonic wind action. And again we'll get into other explanations later,
6:45
Speaker 1: but one of them is that they are the result
6:47
Speaker 1: of like a tornadoes or cyclones. Yeah. But what what
6:50
Speaker 1: he didn't say was that it was like a perfect
6:52
Speaker 1: circle and the circonference was you know, I mean, it
6:56
Speaker 1: could have just been a windy spot where some stuff
6:59
Speaker 1: was knocked down, right, you know, right the yeah, exactly.
7:02
Speaker 1: He didn't say it was in the shape of an
7:04
Speaker 1: Egyptian arc or anything like that, right, or an alien
7:07
Speaker 1: smoking pot. That's a real one. That's um, so that
7:15
Speaker 1: those are like the earliest evidence of crop circles. And
7:18
Speaker 1: then in the sixties the first modern idea of a
7:21
Speaker 1: crop circle came about in um Australia and there was
7:26
Speaker 1: supposedly a depression in a bunch of grass, a circular depression, UM,
7:31
Speaker 1: and it had been associated with the UFO sighting, and
7:35
Speaker 1: you know, it made the rounds of the media and
7:37
Speaker 1: even then a lot of people said it was probably
7:40
Speaker 1: a tornado or a cyclone or something like that. Um.
7:44
Speaker 1: But there was a dude who happened to be in
7:48
Speaker 1: Australia at the time when it was being reported on.
7:51
Speaker 1: It was, you know, a big hubbub and everything, and um.
7:55
Speaker 1: His name was Dave Circle, Dave crops Are, No, I'm sorry,
8:02
Speaker 1: his buddy's his name is Dave Doug Bauer and Doug Bauer.
8:06
Speaker 1: When he got back from Australia, he was hanging out
8:08
Speaker 1: with a friend of his one night in drunk there.
8:12
Speaker 1: They'll just come out and admitute they were drunk at
8:14
Speaker 1: the pub and he told his buddy about that and
8:16
Speaker 1: they said, wouldn't that be hilarious if we went out
8:19
Speaker 1: and made our own crop circle? And Dave said, I
8:23
Speaker 1: think that would be really hilarious so much so let's
8:26
Speaker 1: go do it. So they figured out how to do it,
8:28
Speaker 1: and they made the first crop circle in like the
8:31
Speaker 1: first crop circle, the first hoax crop circle what you
8:34
Speaker 1: call art was made in and Um, what's funny about
8:39
Speaker 1: the whole thing is they made these things for years,
8:42
Speaker 1: hundreds of them, yes, but say the first couple dozen
8:47
Speaker 1: maybe nobody noticed because they made him on flat fields.
8:51
Speaker 1: And then they finally figured out, why what if we
8:54
Speaker 1: made one on like a field that was on an incline.
8:57
Speaker 1: They made that one, and all of a sudden, the
9:00
Speaker 1: whole crop circle paranormal phenomenon took off like a rocket. Yeah,
9:05
Speaker 1: and people uh caught on obviously and started making their
9:08
Speaker 1: own crop circles all over England. Um, and all kinds
9:12
Speaker 1: of cool designs. Um. By the nineteen nineties it was
9:15
Speaker 1: a genuine tourist attraction. Even farmers were saying, come to
9:19
Speaker 1: my farm and pay me some shillings and come look
9:23
Speaker 1: at my cool crop circle. Well apparently they were charging
9:26
Speaker 1: to offset the damage under their crops by so many
9:28
Speaker 1: people flocking to these farms. Yeah, I saw where it could.
9:31
Speaker 1: It didn't damage the crops. I just don't see how
9:33
Speaker 1: that's possible the actual crop circle itself. Yeah, yeah, I
9:38
Speaker 1: think it can damage it. But the I mean, the
9:40
Speaker 1: hallmark of it is that the grain is bent but
9:43
Speaker 1: not broken. So as long as it's not broken, there's
9:45
Speaker 1: still a pretty good chance it could continue growing or
9:48
Speaker 1: try to grow back upright or something. But yeah, I'm
9:50
Speaker 1: sure there's tons of broken grain in a crop circle. Yeah,
9:54
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess we should talk about the design. Say,
9:56
Speaker 1: most of the times are circular, but not always. They're
9:59
Speaker 1: all sorts of different shapes now, but they started out
10:02
Speaker 1: as circular um either singles or doubles or triples or quadruples,
10:06
Speaker 1: and sometimes they're connected, sometimes they're not. Um. They are
10:11
Speaker 1: usually bent in one way for a while, so either
10:15
Speaker 1: laying down clockwise or counterclockwise, or if they get super crafty,
10:19
Speaker 1: they can be clockwise for ten feet and then counterclockwise.
10:24
Speaker 1: And from the sky you see these different kind of
10:27
Speaker 1: swirly patterns, like a layered swirly pattern. It's very impressive. Yeah,
10:31
Speaker 1: and and again this started really kind of to take
10:34
Speaker 1: off in the eighties and throughout the nineties. UM and
10:38
Speaker 1: as they became more and more popular and more and
10:41
Speaker 1: more widespread in the media and um among people who
10:45
Speaker 1: watched the X Files and again that the nineties were
10:49
Speaker 1: a deeply paranoid decade because of the impending millennial millennium.
10:56
Speaker 1: Um So, I think that kind of really helped the
11:00
Speaker 1: popularity of crop circles explode because there are a lot
11:03
Speaker 1: of people are like, these are signs from aliens. Are
11:05
Speaker 1: either alien landing, like alien spacecraft landing and leaving these
11:09
Speaker 1: impressions trading right, or else they're leaving. They're leaving science
11:14
Speaker 1: for us. There's even a movie called Science, a terrible,
11:16
Speaker 1: terrible movie um starring Mel Gibson about this very thing.
11:21
Speaker 1: Um So, there's a lot of people who bought into
11:23
Speaker 1: it like that. And as as the awareness of crop
11:26
Speaker 1: circles grew, so did the complexity of them to where
11:30
Speaker 1: you did have people who were sitting down and coming
11:32
Speaker 1: up with like really incredible math and then going out
11:36
Speaker 1: and doing it in a crop circle form. Yeah, and
11:39
Speaker 1: some people uh use that like it's it's this one
11:44
Speaker 1: is exactly four times larger than the one below it
11:47
Speaker 1: and as evidence that it's something extraordinary and not just
11:51
Speaker 1: people who are good at figuring out design and geometry
11:55
Speaker 1: and math. There's there's specifically, a man who kind of
11:58
Speaker 1: um uh I guess provided a stumbling block to the
12:03
Speaker 1: debunking of UM crop circles. His name is Gerald S. Hawkins,
12:08
Speaker 1: and he is a retired astronomer who became a crop
12:13
Speaker 1: circle enthusiast, and he used his math skills to analyze
12:18
Speaker 1: crop circles and basically said, I've discovered a new kind
12:23
Speaker 1: of Euclidean geometry in crop circles, which implies that there
12:31
Speaker 1: was some non human agency creating crop circles, something advanced,
12:35
Speaker 1: beyond the scope of human understanding. Because if this incredibly
12:39
Speaker 1: brilliant mathematician could learn something from the something new, and
12:44
Speaker 1: that implied that something extraterrestrial was behind him while his
12:47
Speaker 1: findings have been UM challenge time and time again. So
12:52
Speaker 1: he believed that he believed it was I thought, he
12:54
Speaker 1: said he was debunking. No, no, he he confounded debunking.
12:58
Speaker 1: He created this bunk he did bunk um. And the
13:02
Speaker 1: thing is like the language he's using, the math he's
13:05
Speaker 1: using is real math. So the average person can't come
13:08
Speaker 1: in and look at this and be like this is
13:09
Speaker 1: wrong for this and this reason and this reason, um,
13:12
Speaker 1: and then his I think the real giveaway though, is
13:15
Speaker 1: his work is not discussed at all, and what appears
13:19
Speaker 1: to be normal um academic math forums, it's just it
13:25
Speaker 1: doesn't exist. It doesn't like, it doesn't get any recognition.
13:28
Speaker 1: Even though he publish his initial findings in like a
13:30
Speaker 1: respected math journal, it hasn't. If this guy had discovered
13:34
Speaker 1: a new kind of Euclidean geometry, it would be revolutionary. Yeah,
13:40
Speaker 1: and it's just not discussed. So I think that in
13:42
Speaker 1: and of itself is a pretty good example of how
13:46
Speaker 1: seriologists butt up against skeptics. And and the whole thing
13:49
Speaker 1: is continued. Somebody will present a body of evidence and
13:52
Speaker 1: then nobody is either capable or willing to just go
13:56
Speaker 1: to the trouble of debunking it. Yeah, and these things
13:59
Speaker 1: like this article is I don't know if I can
14:01
Speaker 1: recommend people read this one. It's it seems like it
14:04
Speaker 1: was written by a believer. Yeah, it was pretty bad. Um.
14:06
Speaker 1: But one thing has struck me as odd in this
14:09
Speaker 1: article at least, is um these things are usually like
14:12
Speaker 1: they're big, you know, they're several hundred feet right, maybe
14:16
Speaker 1: a hundred feet it says, sometimes they range from several inches. Yeah,
14:20
Speaker 1: I don't understand that. That's that's called like stepping on
14:23
Speaker 1: a piece of wheat, Like, how can a crop circle
14:26
Speaker 1: be several inches across? There was some stuff in here
14:28
Speaker 1: that I couldn't find any support for anywhere else. Like,
14:33
Speaker 1: here's the sentence for you under the title who makes
14:37
Speaker 1: crop circles? The first sentence is the answer of who
14:41
Speaker 1: or what is creating these crop formations is not an
14:43
Speaker 1: easy one to answer. It is. Actually, it's absolutely easy
14:47
Speaker 1: to answer. There's another sentence to um even with crop
14:51
Speaker 1: circle makers claiming responsibility for hundreds of designs, hoaxes can't
14:55
Speaker 1: account for all the thousands of crop circles created. Yeah again,
14:59
Speaker 1: how becas this can account for every single one of
15:02
Speaker 1: the crop circles ever created? Yeah, I was really disappointed
15:06
Speaker 1: with this. I put in for an article update. Oh yeah, good.
15:10
Speaker 1: All right, so we'll talk about a little more about
15:12
Speaker 1: where these are located and what kind of fields are
15:14
Speaker 1: used after this break. All right, So you mentioned a
15:23
Speaker 1: couple of counties in England, Hampshire and Wiltshire or where
15:27
Speaker 1: most of these are, which kind of makes sense if
15:29
Speaker 1: people are saying he may have built some crop circles.
15:32
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, how do you do that? Right? Here's how
15:35
Speaker 1: you do it. Oh cool, I'll go do one right.
15:37
Speaker 1: You know, it's localized for the most part. And the
15:40
Speaker 1: reason it's localized there is that's where Dave and Doug
15:42
Speaker 1: lived exactly. That's where they live where the crop circles started.
15:47
Speaker 1: So yes, they were, um, they were concentrated there. The
15:52
Speaker 1: other thing, though, unfortunately, is that's where stonehenges. Yeah. So
15:58
Speaker 1: a lot of people are like, sure David Doug lived there,
16:01
Speaker 1: Who cares? They were put up to it saying that
16:04
Speaker 1: they did it by m I five. The real story
16:06
Speaker 1: is that Stonehenge is right there. Yeah. All kinds of
16:11
Speaker 1: fields can be used, um for this art. Corn oat, barley, tobacco, weeds. Um.
16:18
Speaker 1: I like the corn ones. I think that that makes
16:20
Speaker 1: a nice canvas. I don't know that I've seen a
16:22
Speaker 1: corn one. Yeah, yeah, I like the corn ones. Well,
16:25
Speaker 1: I think they were corn and that signs right. I
16:28
Speaker 1: surrounded by corn. I tried to make myself go to sleep.
16:32
Speaker 1: I wouldn't allow my hip for campus to form memories
16:34
Speaker 1: of that movie. Uh. So, I guess we should cover
16:38
Speaker 1: some of the theories because we covered like a big
16:40
Speaker 1: foot and other things that aren't real to um. So,
16:44
Speaker 1: So here's what seriologists believe UM. We mentioned that it's
16:49
Speaker 1: an alien calling card. Perhaps a lot of eyewitness reports
16:52
Speaker 1: supposedly say oh I saw some I heard some strange noises,
16:56
Speaker 1: it saw some weird lights. There's a fair famous video
17:00
Speaker 1: called the Oliver's Castle video where you see these strange
17:04
Speaker 1: lights above the field and you actually see the crop
17:08
Speaker 1: circle on video form. It's a field and then it
17:11
Speaker 1: just depresses into a crop circle. Have you seen this?
17:14
Speaker 1: Oh yes, it's on YouTube. But that guy who made
17:17
Speaker 1: that video came out and said, here's how I did that.
17:21
Speaker 1: It's uh, these computer programs and it's paint and um,
17:26
Speaker 1: it's all fake. But some people say no, no, no, no no, no,
17:29
Speaker 1: that guy was paid off to say that, or m
17:32
Speaker 1: I five kidnapped his family. But it's I mean, it's
17:35
Speaker 1: very cool looking. But that is the you know. One
17:38
Speaker 1: of the points that UM rational people point to is like,
17:41
Speaker 1: if these things are being made, why isn't there a
17:44
Speaker 1: single image anywhere of it happening? Right, Because cameras are
17:49
Speaker 1: ubiquitous video cameras. People look for this stuff. They camp
17:53
Speaker 1: out in fields trying to get those images. Well, yeah,
17:55
Speaker 1: there was a very famous UM operation by a group
17:58
Speaker 1: of seriologists who can thout out of field um for
18:02
Speaker 1: several like a week or two I believe, back in
18:05
Speaker 1: the eighties or nineties, and apparently not only did no
18:10
Speaker 1: crop circles form during the time they were camped out
18:16
Speaker 1: in that area, none didn't all of England during that
18:19
Speaker 1: time that they were. They publicized that they were camping up,
18:22
Speaker 1: and then right when the operation ended, a crop circle
18:25
Speaker 1: popped up, like I think a couple of football fields
18:27
Speaker 1: away from where they've been campus and what was his name?
18:31
Speaker 1: They were like, all right, they're gone. Another one is
18:35
Speaker 1: that um A lot of people say that, uh, there's
18:38
Speaker 1: this um this plasma that can form ionized wind basically, yeah,
18:44
Speaker 1: the plasma vortex theory, and and that it forms a cyclone.
18:48
Speaker 1: It's cyclonic, which means that it moves clockwise I believe,
18:53
Speaker 1: or counterclockwise, one of the two, their cyclonic and anti cyclonic.
18:57
Speaker 1: Whichever way that they said, the the cyclone rotates the
19:02
Speaker 1: the Dollig and Dave started doing crop circles that rotated
19:05
Speaker 1: the other way. And when they were like, yeah, there's
19:07
Speaker 1: anti cyclones, people started making square ones. So every time
19:12
Speaker 1: like there's been a real um tug of war playfulness
19:16
Speaker 1: between people popping up in the media experts on crop
19:20
Speaker 1: circles saying something and the people making the crop circles
19:24
Speaker 1: um doing the opposite of what those people just said
19:28
Speaker 1: to prove them wrong with their crop circles. Right after that, Yeah,
19:31
Speaker 1: I think the English have a like with banks, you know.
19:34
Speaker 1: I think there's a undercurrent in England of like cheeky
19:39
Speaker 1: mess with the establishment, sort of ya subverse of art
19:43
Speaker 1: and hoaxes and pranks, and it seems like I admire
19:46
Speaker 1: anything that's kind of neat. Another theory is that down
19:50
Speaker 1: drafts from like a helicopter and airplane a small airplane
19:53
Speaker 1: might push it down into these perfectly shaped geometric patterns.
19:57
Speaker 1: But they've tried to recreate that, and of course that's
20:00
Speaker 1: not possible. No, it's not possible. Again, there's the the
20:04
Speaker 1: cyclone theory. Um. This was another thing in this article
20:08
Speaker 1: that got me. Probably the most scientific theory says that
20:11
Speaker 1: crop circles are created by small currents of swirling, ring
20:14
Speaker 1: wind called vortices. That's not the most scientific theory. The
20:17
Speaker 1: most scientific theories that humans are making the crop circles. Like,
20:21
Speaker 1: what is going on with this article? It's just whacky.
20:24
Speaker 1: To me, But that is a theory. That's a theory
20:27
Speaker 1: that some people put out. They say, Um, when the
20:30
Speaker 1: when that crop circle in the sixties in Australia was created,
20:34
Speaker 1: a lot of people said, oh, it's a cyclone. They
20:37
Speaker 1: call it a willy nilly. That was my Australian accent
20:41
Speaker 1: to know, they call it a willie willie. Yeah. Um,
20:46
Speaker 1: and that was something that they said that it was
20:49
Speaker 1: possible it was that. They also said it could be
20:51
Speaker 1: a lot of things. Probably wasn't a UFO, but that
20:54
Speaker 1: wind theory has been around for a very long time. Uh.
20:57
Speaker 1: And a guy named Dr Terence Meaden who's um the
21:00
Speaker 1: Tornado and Storm Research Organization in England. Yeah, he says that, Um,
21:06
Speaker 1: there's this thing called the plasma vortex theory. He says
21:10
Speaker 1: that dust particles get caught in charged air spinning and
21:15
Speaker 1: not only can they make crop circles, this this dust
21:19
Speaker 1: can glow and that accounts for the light scene. There's
21:23
Speaker 1: the UFO. He's using pseudoscience to debunk even further pseudoscience. Yeah,
21:32
Speaker 1: I'm surprised it doesn't say Doctor Terrence Meeting, formerly of
21:35
Speaker 1: the Tornado and Storm Research Electromagnetic radiation is another theory. UM.
21:42
Speaker 1: Supposedly there have been strong magnetic fields measured inside crop circles,
21:47
Speaker 1: and people that go to visit them report feeling tingling
21:51
Speaker 1: sensations all over their body. UM. I think this is
21:55
Speaker 1: explained as easy as if you get someone that believes
21:58
Speaker 1: in a elector a magnetic radiation of a crop circle
22:01
Speaker 1: and stick them in the middle of one, they're gonna
22:03
Speaker 1: feel a tinkling sensation. That was another thing though, that
22:07
Speaker 1: I ran into. I couldn't find any um evidence to
22:10
Speaker 1: back that statement up, Like, who's finding electromagnetic radiation in
22:16
Speaker 1: these these fields and is it being are they Are
22:19
Speaker 1: they reproducible the findings? UM. There was another crop circle
22:24
Speaker 1: called the Julius set It's a fractal it's pretty cool.
22:27
Speaker 1: It's amazing from what I could find, it's the largest ever.
22:30
Speaker 1: It was like, UM, three hundred meters nine hundred feet
22:33
Speaker 1: in diameter. That's enormous, and it's four hundred and nine circles. UM.
22:39
Speaker 1: Just basically look up the Julius set. UM. It's very awesome.
22:44
Speaker 1: But it was right next to Stonehenge. Like, there's plenty
22:47
Speaker 1: of images of this crop circle with Stonehenge in the background,
22:51
Speaker 1: and apparently a lot of women who went to visit
22:55
Speaker 1: it um found that their menstrual cycles sync up, and
22:59
Speaker 1: then some women who had already been through menopaud started
23:02
Speaker 1: menstruating again. Both are things that can happen, can they
23:06
Speaker 1: without you know, aliens taking part? Did that happen? Though? Like?
23:11
Speaker 1: Who who documented this? This is the thing Like people
23:14
Speaker 1: are just saying stuff and there's you can say whatever
23:16
Speaker 1: you want and it doesn't it doesn't count necessarily at
23:20
Speaker 1: least not if you're trying to explain something. Yeah, I
23:23
Speaker 1: think both of those things can happen. Like I'm a
23:25
Speaker 1: forty and you know, like I think there are limits
23:27
Speaker 1: to science, and there's stuff that exists beyond sciences capabilities
23:31
Speaker 1: to explain things right now that there are things that
23:34
Speaker 1: will understand more clearly that appear to be superstitious. Now,
23:38
Speaker 1: crop circles to me or not one of them? They
23:41
Speaker 1: they they're just not that's because it's art right. Uh.
23:45
Speaker 1: In the there was a biophysicist named Dr William Levin
23:48
Speaker 1: Good who um discovered that crop circles were damaged, uh
23:53
Speaker 1: and as if they had been heated by a microwave
23:56
Speaker 1: oven Um. So he says, I think they're being heated
24:00
Speaker 1: from the inside by some kind of microwave energy. And uh,
24:04
Speaker 1: there's a god named Richard Taylor from the University of Oregon,
24:08
Speaker 1: a professor of physics, who said, Yeah, you can build
24:13
Speaker 1: something called a magnetron using uh stuff from like a
24:16
Speaker 1: household cooker and its well bolt battery, and you can
24:19
Speaker 1: essentially use this to create crop circles and shoot microwaves. So, yeah,
24:24
Speaker 1: that might be possible that they have been heated by microwaves,
24:26
Speaker 1: because that is another way that you can make a
24:28
Speaker 1: crop circle. Um. He says that these crops usually have
24:33
Speaker 1: joints in the stocks like a corn stock does, and
24:36
Speaker 1: if you heat it up, it expands. Yeah, and it's
24:39
Speaker 1: gonna fall over. Um, that would be funny. And there's
24:42
Speaker 1: a bunch of platform and it popped. But um, he says,
24:46
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is how they do it, but
24:48
Speaker 1: using GPS coordinates and a computer and a design program,
24:53
Speaker 1: you can actually use one of these magnetrons to do this,
24:57
Speaker 1: and that is something that possibly could happen. Again, the
25:02
Speaker 1: clearest theory is that humans are doing it. And we'll
25:06
Speaker 1: talk more about evidence that seriologists point to and evidence
25:11
Speaker 1: that skeptics point to and then how you make an
25:14
Speaker 1: actual crop circle. Right after this, so Chuck, there's a
25:27
Speaker 1: couple of pieces of evidence of seiologists point to they're
25:30
Speaker 1: very rarely, if ever, footprints found around a crop circle
25:35
Speaker 1: explain that they're walking between the planted crops. Yeah. If
25:40
Speaker 1: you look at any picture of a crop circle, any
25:43
Speaker 1: picture of any crop circle ever made, you're going to
25:46
Speaker 1: see um little lines that go all along the field.
25:51
Speaker 1: Those are left by the tractor, the tractor tracks, and
25:54
Speaker 1: crops are planted in rows exactly so you can just
25:57
Speaker 1: move in and about them. And you know why they're
25:59
Speaker 1: planted in rows, so you can move in and about
26:02
Speaker 1: them without stepping on the crops um. And like we
26:06
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, Dave Chorley and Doug Bauer came out in
26:09
Speaker 1: n and said, Hey, we did this BBC. Come along,
26:15
Speaker 1: let's film a little documentary and I'm gonna show you
26:19
Speaker 1: how to do a rope and plank uh crop circle.
26:23
Speaker 1: And apparently one of the guys had racked up a
26:27
Speaker 1: bunch of mileage on his car. I don't know if
26:31
Speaker 1: it's true or not, but it makes for a good story.
26:32
Speaker 1: And his wife was got on to him and it
26:35
Speaker 1: was like, Hey, what's going on here, are you cheating
26:36
Speaker 1: on me? And that's why he came out and said,
26:38
Speaker 1: now I haven't been cheating on you. This is why
26:41
Speaker 1: there's all this extra mileage, and I'm gonna go public
26:44
Speaker 1: with it. So well, they were good. They were the
26:46
Speaker 1: only three people in the world who knew about that
26:48
Speaker 1: for a while. Apparently they went public because the government
26:53
Speaker 1: like people had bought into this lock stock and barrel
26:56
Speaker 1: like there was it was just UFOs possibly that we're
26:59
Speaker 1: doing this, like like smart people were talking about this.
27:02
Speaker 1: The media was covering it, like are these UFOs? And
27:05
Speaker 1: these guys are just sitting back laughing. And apparently the
27:08
Speaker 1: Queen had a book on our summer reading list that
27:11
Speaker 1: was released by her pressed people that um included like
27:15
Speaker 1: some crop circle experts like UFO analysis of the crop
27:20
Speaker 1: circles around the world. What was going on? So the
27:22
Speaker 1: queen was even meaning this and these two guys and
27:25
Speaker 1: the guy's wife are just sitting back laughing, having the
27:28
Speaker 1: time of their lives. Uh. And then apparently the British
27:31
Speaker 1: government was about to conduct an investigation and these guys
27:35
Speaker 1: were like, we don't need to let taxpayers waste their
27:39
Speaker 1: money on this, so let's go forward, and they came
27:41
Speaker 1: forward in like September, and apparently within days they were
27:47
Speaker 1: on Good Morning America showing the world how to do
27:50
Speaker 1: this stuff. And then a lot of people started doing
27:52
Speaker 1: it after that because they're like, this is kind of
27:54
Speaker 1: fun and I'm an artist as well. Uh, And here's
27:57
Speaker 1: how you do it. Well, there's some front ways you
28:01
Speaker 1: can get a magnetron, apparently, but the most conventional way is,
28:06
Speaker 1: like I said, the rope and plank um. So you're
28:09
Speaker 1: gonna choose a spot, You're gonna choose a field. You're
28:11
Speaker 1: gonna create your little design. This could be a circle,
28:14
Speaker 1: it could be the Mental Brought set or the Julia set. Yeah,
28:17
Speaker 1: whatever it is, you want to put it down on paper, Yeah,
28:20
Speaker 1: because you know it is math and you have to
28:22
Speaker 1: work it out and you have to have a pretty
28:24
Speaker 1: good eye for or brain for design. I guess two,
28:28
Speaker 1: draw something on a page and make it hundreds of
28:30
Speaker 1: feet across. It's like these are talented people. You're gonna
28:33
Speaker 1: get to your field and you basically, uh, you basically
28:37
Speaker 1: act as a human compass, not like a math compass
28:41
Speaker 1: that you used to draw a circle, not a compass
28:43
Speaker 1: to show you which way north is. And you're gonna
28:45
Speaker 1: put one person in the middle, and that's gonna be
28:48
Speaker 1: he's essentially the little point. And then you use rope
28:53
Speaker 1: and you're gonna mark off your four uh opposite uh
28:57
Speaker 1: marks as the circle. And you're gonna give the guy
29:01
Speaker 1: in the center a rope, give someone on the outside
29:04
Speaker 1: a rope, and they're just gonna walk in a big
29:05
Speaker 1: circle as he holds that rope. And then that's gonna
29:08
Speaker 1: make essentially a near perfect circle. In theory, it forms
29:12
Speaker 1: the diameter of the circle. Yeah, if you're taking your time,
29:15
Speaker 1: then you're gonna have a pretty good looking circle. Right.
29:17
Speaker 1: And then after that you start just moving inward from
29:20
Speaker 1: the outside in just stomping the the uh the grain down, yeah,
29:25
Speaker 1: with your big snowshoe like things, and there you have
29:29
Speaker 1: a crop circle. Yeah. And you can, like I said,
29:31
Speaker 1: you do one for three ft going this way, and hey,
29:33
Speaker 1: I'm gonna jump around and turn the other way and
29:36
Speaker 1: lay the corn or wheat down that way. It appears
29:39
Speaker 1: that Steiny the Weirdos of the world. How does that happen? Yeah?
29:43
Speaker 1: And the whole key apparently is planning it out ahead
29:47
Speaker 1: of time and then just translating what's on paper into
29:50
Speaker 1: real life. You know, basically all it takes is a
29:53
Speaker 1: little bit of multiplication, some ropes, poles, and a couple
29:56
Speaker 1: of boards and you can make a pretty awesome crops
30:00
Speaker 1: goal if you know what you're doing. Yeah, you could
30:01
Speaker 1: also use a gardener lawn roller UM or the traditional
30:05
Speaker 1: rope stop stalker, right, and there you have it. There's
30:09
Speaker 1: a group called circle Makers dot org and they were
30:14
Speaker 1: very much inspired by uh Doug and Dave. I think
30:17
Speaker 1: Doug and Dave kind of became honorary circle makers. But
30:20
Speaker 1: these guys, um, they their their website still up, it's
30:26
Speaker 1: not nearly as active as it was like five ten
30:29
Speaker 1: years ago, but they were getting paid by companies around
30:32
Speaker 1: the world to make crop circles. Um Like they they
30:36
Speaker 1: made a Nike crop circle. They made um like a
30:40
Speaker 1: Swedish Furniture stores crop circle. Not did they make the
30:44
Speaker 1: Swish they made a foot a footprint like a huge
30:48
Speaker 1: footprint UM and Uh. They just did tons of them
30:52
Speaker 1: and got paid apparently like hundreds of thousands of dollars
30:55
Speaker 1: for each one they did for them. So these guys
30:57
Speaker 1: spent the early two thousands making bank running on doing
31:00
Speaker 1: crop circles. At the same time, they're they're teaching people
31:04
Speaker 1: how to do it, and simultaneously seriologists are still investigating
31:10
Speaker 1: this and so they they the seriologists came up with
31:14
Speaker 1: they're also called croppies, we should say crop ease, came
31:16
Speaker 1: up with some steps you need to take when you're
31:19
Speaker 1: investigating a crop circle. Are we gonna go over these? Sure? Uh?
31:26
Speaker 1: They talked to eyewitnesses, say did you see her hear
31:28
Speaker 1: anything weird because there's a crop circle, And they'll say, yeah, actually,
31:32
Speaker 1: come to think of it, I did hear something weird?
31:35
Speaker 1: Am I gonna be on the news right? Um? They
31:39
Speaker 1: check out the weather patterns um in the area of
31:43
Speaker 1: the previous night because that's it always happens overnight, which, um,
31:48
Speaker 1: the enthusiasts will say, you know this is they're doing
31:52
Speaker 1: it under under nightfall too not be caught as aliens,
31:57
Speaker 1: and they're sending secret messages and rational thing people say no,
32:01
Speaker 1: they're artists. Are doing it under nightfall to not get
32:05
Speaker 1: caught same way and keep the hoax going exactly. Uh
32:09
Speaker 1: what else do you do? Uh? Supposedly they will bring
32:13
Speaker 1: out machines to actually measure soil and use like X
32:18
Speaker 1: ray diffraction analysis and electromatic electromagnetic energy readings. They're analyzing
32:25
Speaker 1: all of this information and I don't I don't know
32:29
Speaker 1: what they come up was I like I clearly they've
32:32
Speaker 1: been forced to say, yes, some of these are hoaxes,
32:34
Speaker 1: like the alien smoking pot right, cannot be explained by seriologists. Um.
32:41
Speaker 1: There was a very there was a famous one that said, UM,
32:44
Speaker 1: we are not alone, spelled out all in one word basically,
32:48
Speaker 1: but in all caps, we are not alone. And a
32:51
Speaker 1: lot of skeptics say, shouldn't it be you were not alone?
32:54
Speaker 1: If these are messages from aliens? And do they just
32:58
Speaker 1: happen to speak English? So UM, there's a lot of
33:04
Speaker 1: a lot of points that skeptics point are the ones
33:06
Speaker 1: that do go to the trouble of debunking these um.
33:09
Speaker 1: And there was a guy named Joe Nicol and uh
33:12
Speaker 1: he writes for UM, the Committee for Scientific Investigation si
33:18
Speaker 1: C s I UM and they he basically came up
33:22
Speaker 1: with four good points that debunk crop circles. One is
33:27
Speaker 1: that there was an escalation in frequency as they became
33:30
Speaker 1: more and more popular, which is kind of a weird thing. Uh.
33:35
Speaker 1: They the geographic distribution of him was again concentrated primarily
33:39
Speaker 1: in this region of England, even though you'd find him elsewhere, Brazil, Japan,
33:44
Speaker 1: all over. Uh. You can also explain that by the
33:46
Speaker 1: fact that people were inspired by other crop circles. Um.
33:51
Speaker 1: There was an increase in complexity, which exactly um. And
33:57
Speaker 1: then there was the like they called the shy this factor,
34:00
Speaker 1: which was they were only done at night, knowing had
34:03
Speaker 1: ever seen a crop circle formed. That One guy's YouTube
34:06
Speaker 1: thing UM not outstanding well, which was fake exactly unless
34:12
Speaker 1: he was paid off to say it was fake exactly,
34:15
Speaker 1: And it's pretty tough to disprove that. Yeah. I think,
34:18
Speaker 1: like I said, I think if people, um just look
34:21
Speaker 1: at this as really cool public displays of art, because
34:25
Speaker 1: they're amazing. It's really neat looking what people are able
34:27
Speaker 1: to accomplish with their hands and feet. They they somebody
34:33
Speaker 1: redid the Nasca hummingbird, you know, the Nasca lines. Um,
34:37
Speaker 1: they did like kind of a more stylized version of that. Again,
34:41
Speaker 1: the pot smoking alien. Somebody else just did a straight
34:44
Speaker 1: up pot leaf. Um. Someone did the mothman, the West
34:48
Speaker 1: Virginia moth Man, the shroud of Turin. Nice. Yeah, like
34:53
Speaker 1: people got really good at this, um. And And like
34:57
Speaker 1: you said, I mean, if you look at it as art,
35:00
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty easy to appreciate it. I bet a
35:02
Speaker 1: fun conversation to over here at an English pub is
35:05
Speaker 1: a crop circle brainstorming session on what kind of uh,
35:11
Speaker 1: what kind of circle they can make next? I bet
35:13
Speaker 1: that's a lot of fun to listen to. And you know,
35:17
Speaker 1: a rural county in England and a pub. I'd love
35:20
Speaker 1: to be in on one of those. We'll go to Wiltshire.
35:23
Speaker 1: Yeah maybe I will. Ah, you got anything else? I
35:26
Speaker 1: got nothing else? So that's crop circles. The mystery continues.
35:31
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about crop circles, you
35:33
Speaker 1: can type that word into how stuff works in the
35:36
Speaker 1: search bar, or don't, and then it'll bring up this weird,
35:39
Speaker 1: weird article. Yeah. Uh, And since I said search bars,
35:42
Speaker 1: time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this uh
35:47
Speaker 1: Chilean camouflage. Hey, guys and Jerry. I was writing to
35:52
Speaker 1: make a comment on something Chuck said and the last
35:54
Speaker 1: listener mail animal camouflage. At one point, Chuck read that
35:57
Speaker 1: the listener suffered for mental illnesses that we're practically ignored
36:02
Speaker 1: by her parents, who happened to be doctors, then commenting
36:05
Speaker 1: that that was quite a shocker. Oh yeah, that's right,
36:09
Speaker 1: I remember that. Yeah, this girl had had I believe,
36:12
Speaker 1: doctor and psych psychologist psychologist parents who kind of just
36:16
Speaker 1: ignored her mental issues, which I thought was weird. He said,
36:19
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's just the country where I live, Chile,
36:22
Speaker 1: but we have a saying for that in Casa they
36:26
Speaker 1: herrero coucio depato. Jerry, do you know what that means?
36:32
Speaker 1: She says no. That literally translates into in the black
36:36
Speaker 1: Smiths Home stick Knives. It alludes to what happens when
36:40
Speaker 1: an expert on something tends to neglect his field of
36:43
Speaker 1: expertise once he gets home. Yeah, it's like here, we
36:46
Speaker 1: say the cobbler's children have no shoes. Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, interesting.
36:51
Speaker 1: I bet every country has their own. Say it makes
36:52
Speaker 1: more sense than the knives thing. Yeah, I'm not sure
36:56
Speaker 1: what that means, but I'm not Chilean. The doctor thinks
36:59
Speaker 1: that his sick childless is flying. The electrician that has
37:01
Speaker 1: a mess of cables on appliances, an accountant that can't
37:05
Speaker 1: control her own expenses, a chef that orders fast food, etcetera.
37:10
Speaker 1: Maybe they're just tired of doing that same thing over
37:12
Speaker 1: and over again. They just want to stop and rest
37:14
Speaker 1: when they get home. Or maybe they're just jerks. Who knows,
37:17
Speaker 1: but apparently it happens often enough that the situation got
37:20
Speaker 1: its own saying around these parts more than one stay classy,
37:23
Speaker 1: best switches, Uh Matt, Thanks Matt, And Matt was super
37:27
Speaker 1: excited that this was gonna get on. Listen to me
37:29
Speaker 1: now because he's been a listener from the get go.
37:31
Speaker 1: He says, all right, Matt, way to hang in there.
37:34
Speaker 1: All you had to do is right in. You're hard
37:37
Speaker 1: to get on at some point, and cassa de herrero,
37:40
Speaker 1: cuci de polo. I'm gonna get that tattooed about my
37:45
Speaker 1: waits line in the Blacksmith's Home stick Knives. I don't
37:48
Speaker 1: get that one, all right. Thank you for confounding us, Matt.
37:52
Speaker 1: That's good stuff. If you want to try to confound us,
37:55
Speaker 1: you can do so via Twitter at s Y s
37:57
Speaker 1: K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com,
38:00
Speaker 1: slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an
38:02
Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com,
38:05
Speaker 1: and as always, join us at our home on the web,
38:08
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
38:16
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics is it, how stuff works?
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