# Latest Crop Circles and Glyphs, Evidence of Alien Contact?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [August 28, 2001, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578 "2001-08-28T19:09:48Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Tedster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tedster)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/1 "2001-08-28T19:09:48Z")
I know the Straight Dope Message Board has the combined wisdom of thousands of years of pocket-protected gray-matter, so I read with interest on the latest English Crop circles like the one here:
[http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2001/MilkHill2/milkhill2001a.html](http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2001/MilkHill2/milkhill2001a.html)
While I consider myself a skeptic, some of them are interesting, if a bit mystifying. First, why would aliens presume to contact us via horking up a wheat field? Are there not better ways to communicate with earthlings?
I’ve heard that Crop Circles are built by hoaxters. What do ye think? Evidence of aliens, or evidence of goofballs with too much time on their hands?
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### Author:  [@Syzygy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syzygy)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/2 "2001-08-28T19:35:24Z")
It’s all fake. It was exposed on national TV in the US. They showed the procedure and a time-lapse video of the entire thing being made. And it was very precise and mystifying, just like all the other supposed messages from the heavens. Aliens, indeed.
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### Author:  [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/3 "2001-08-28T19:39:07Z")
#1: A huge bunch of the original batch of crop circles _were_ made by a couple of guys who later confessed to the hoax. No crop circle done since features any technique the original guys couldn’t duplicate. I’ll try to dig up refs.
#2: I agree, the idea is dumb. The aliens can travel faster than light, evade radar and other detection, can smoosh wheat/corn plants in complicated shapes, but don’t know how to say anything coherent?
#3: The pro-Crop Circles types call themselves “Cerealogists” (cereal…geddit?) That alone is worthy of mocking.
Fenris
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### Author:  [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/4 "2001-08-28T19:46:13Z")
Cerealogists?! Really?
Yep, it’s just a bunch of guys who think it will be fun to go out in a cornfield and design neat patterns and fool everybody. They are neat patterns, don’t you think? Wouldn’t it be fun to draw one?
Last night I heard a woman claim that the patterns are more advanced than Euclidean geometry, which has no provisions for such geometry. Uh-huh. Well, that’s certainly a meaningful statement. So is the one where she says that some form of energy was involved.
She also claimed that the patterns were global. The only ones I’ve heard of have been in the US and Europe–have there been any in Africa? Thailand? Places that don’t get tabloids that show pictures of exactly how to make a crop circle with nothing more than your feet and a big stick?
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### Author:  [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/5 "2001-08-28T20:29:45Z")
Read what [The Skeptic’s Dictionary](http://www.skepdic.com/cropcirc.html) has to say.
Although the term’s origins _do_ seem to come from the association of circles to crops like wheat & corn (used for cereals), I believe it is usually spelled **cereologist**. Lends a slight respectability, eh?
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### Author:  [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/6 "2001-08-28T20:37:24Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by genie \*
> **Last night I heard a woman claim that the patterns are more advanced than Euclidean geometry, which has no provisions for such geometry.**
Really? I wanna see this. Can you find her statement, or give me anything I could use to search for it?
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### Author:  [@TheThill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheThill)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/7 "2001-08-28T20:39:11Z")
Funny that these things never happen to you or people you know well. Or that all sightings of “alien” UFO’s happen in (mostly English-speaking) industrialized countries.
It looks like the “aliens” are looking for audiences with more spending money. Must be so that they can sell more of their “alien” t-shirts, dolls, etc.
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### Author:  [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/8 "2001-08-28T20:44:59Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by genie \*
> Last night I heard a woman claim that the patterns are more advanced than Euclidean geometry, which has no provisions for such geometry. Uh-huh. Well, that’s certainly a meaningful statement.
Only if she is a mathematician.
> [@](#):
>
> So is the one where she says that some form of energy was involved.
What _kind_ of energy? I’ll bet it was provided by ruddy farmer-types, not green alien-types. :rolleyes:
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### Author:  [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/9 "2001-08-28T21:27:27Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Only if she is a mathematician.
And likely not even then.
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### Author:  [@JustPlainBryan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustPlainBryan)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/10 "2001-08-28T21:35:47Z")
I think that the guys who create these crop circles are amazing artists. It’s really too bad that this artwork is always overshadowed by “alien” theories. Some of the patterns I’ve seen are just incredible! There was one crop design I saw that was a perfect representation of a fractal pattern (it was a three-legged spiral of crop circles).
What I want to know is why anyone would not take credit for creating these crop circles (it may have started out with those two old guys who fessed up a while back but I don’t think they have the stamina today to do the patterns I’ve seen) and why they would rather let people speculate about their origins.
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### Author:  [@Maci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maci)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/11 "2001-08-28T22:37:42Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by ultrafilter \*
> \*\*
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > \*Originally posted by genie \*
> > **Last night I heard a woman claim that the patterns are more advanced than Euclidean geometry, which has no provisions for such geometry.**
>
> Really? I wanna see this. Can you find her statement, or give me anything I could use to search for it? \*\*
The woman was on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’. I was watching in a bar and when she made the above statement I about blew my beer through my nose.
I couldn’t tell if O’Reilly himself was mocking her or taking her seriously.
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### Author:  [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/12 "2001-08-28T22:50:43Z")
Yep, that’s where I saw her. I couldn’t tell about O’Reilly either–he didn’t seem to be very well prepared.
You can look for the story here, but I don’t know if you’ll find it. [http://www.foxnews.com/oreilly/](http://www.foxnews.com/oreilly/)
Today I found [www.circlemakers.org/](http://www.circlemakers.org/), which has instructions (odd ones) for doing the circles.
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### Author:  [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/13 "2001-08-28T22:59:38Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Last night I heard a woman claim that the patterns are more advanced than Euclidean geometry, which has no provisions for such geometry
So what are we talkin’ here? Riemannian crop circle manifolds? Gaussian hyperbolic crop figures? Crop circles in Hilbert space?
:rolleyes:
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### Author:  [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/14 "2001-08-28T23:00:12Z")
I did some searching and found a few pages dealing with the geometric properties of crop circles. They seem to make a big deal about the ratios of the areas of various figures. [Here](http://www.lovely.clara.net/hawkins.html) is a typical page.
While there might be some geometric complexity to the figures, it’s certainly nothing beyond Euclidean geometry.
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### Author:  [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2001, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/15 "2001-08-28T23:57:38Z")
Heh. Ultrafilter’s link also has the Lovely Clara’s [Home Page](http://www.lovely.clara.net/homepg.html), which has this remarkable statement:
> [@](#):
>
> As crop circles proliferate across the globe, conclusive scientific evidence continues to be silenced.
Mm-hmm.
And–I found a website called the [Geometry Junkyard](http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/junkyard/all.html), which gives a link to a [Science.org](http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arch/10_12_96/note1.htm) article that talks (seriously) about Hawkins’ “Euclidean theorems”.
And maybe this is where the “non-Euclidean geometry is found in crop circles!” factoid came from.
> [@](#):
>
> Curiously, Hawkins could find no reference to such a theorem in the works of Euclid or in any other book that he consulted.
IANA mathematician, so don’t hurt me. 😃
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2001, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/16 "2001-08-29T01:06:25Z")
Musicat wrote:
> [@](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > \*Originally posted by genie \*
> > So is the one where she says that some form of energy was involved.
>
> What _kind_ of energy?
In Carl Sagan’s _The Demon-Haunted World_, he mentions at least one crop circle where cereologists claimed to have detected **orgone energy**. Neither Sagan, nor apparently the cereologists, gave any details as to how said orgone energy was detected.
I doubt they used Reich’s orgone field meter ([http://www.netcom.com/~rogermw/Reich/orgone\_field\_meter.html](http://www.netcom.com/~rogermw/Reich/orgone_field_meter.html)), though, because such a device produces several thousand Volts and is probably kinda dangerous to have around. More likely, they looked through an [orgonoscope](http://www.netcom.com/~rogermw/Reich/orgonoscope.html) and convinced themselves they were seeing little blue lights.
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### Author:  [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2001, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/17 "2001-08-29T01:11:01Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Maci \*
> \*\*The woman was on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’. I was watching in a bar and when she made the above statement I about blew my beer through my nose.
>
> I couldn’t tell if O’Reilly himself was mocking her or taking her seriously. \*\*
I saw that interview and sent O’Reilly an e-mail:
> [@](#):
>
> O’Reilly, the two guys who created the first crop circles have already explained how they did it. One man holds one end of a board of lumber. The other man holds the other end and walks around him. That’s all there is to it. Shame on you for presenting crop circles as if they were still a mystery.
Not only was my e-mail not used tonight, none of the responses O’Reilly presented were reasonable. My guess is that O’Reilly or Fox News thinks that the issue will generate viewer interest, but that it’s unimportant, so there’s no need for accuracy. ☹
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2001, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/18 "2001-08-29T01:11:43Z")
(Side note: Just because something called an “orgone field meter exists,” and uses several thousand Volts, does not in any way shape or form validate the existence of orgone energy. [Wilhelm Reich](http://www.netcom.com/~rogermw/Reich) was a crackpot.)
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### Author:  [@Tedster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tedster)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2001, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/19 "2001-08-29T01:23:07Z")
I listen to him sometimes when I want to get a laugh. He had one fellow on there who sounded fairly reasonable about crop circles, till he started a seamless segue into “Energy Vortices” which supposedly explains why Great Britain has all, or most, of the crop circles.
Thanks for the information!
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### Author:  [@London\_Calling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/London_Calling)
#### Post date: [August 29, 2001, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578/20 "2001-08-29T01:25:58Z")
I agree this years ‘crop’ are particularly artistic. What’s interesting to some here is that the aliens were much delayed this summer. It would seem they also paid heed to the restrictions on access to the countryside that followed in the wake of the Foot and Mouth crisis.
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-crop-circles-and-glyphs-evidence-of-alien-contact/78578.md?page=2)