Monthly Gathering—October 2004
Crop Circles Other Worldly Messages, Natural Phenomenon or Fakes?
Crops circles are geometric patterns, some very intricate, appearing usually in wheat fields. Most, if not all, of them are probably due to pranksters, such as Doug Bower and David Chorley, who, in 1991, admitted to hoaxing approximately 250 circles. There is also a segment of the population that believes at least some of the circles are messages from extraterrestrial lifeforms, using ancient Sumerian symbols or symbolic representations of alien DNA.
When scientists have entered the debate, most have avoided the thesis that aliens have been carving out messages in the semolina. But they have often stretched their imaginations to come up with theories of vortexes, ball lightning, plasma and other non-occult, natural forces, such as wind, heat or animals.
Join us on Saturday, October 16 for some possible answers to the crop circle puzzle. But if you think this will be an evening only of tales of little green men or the supernatural, think again. Our guest speaker, Dr William C. Levengood, is the head of Pinelandia Biophysics Laboratory and a former faculty member at the University of Michigan’s Institute of Science and Technology. His papers on a variety of subjects have been published in dozens of scientific journals, including the prestigious Science and Nature. Levengood will share with us the results of his in-depth scientific examinations of literally hundreds of crop circles, focusing on those selected for their “super anomalous” aspects. Levengood has developed theories to explain crop circle formations, and the resulting physical and biochemical alterations to the plants involved, that attribute them to natural mechanisms, most notably “ion plasma vortices.”
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