Crop Circle Theories

Plasma Vortex

Various researches were conducted in this phenomenon and a number of observations have also been made over the years that finally seem to indicate that there are particular characteristics that "genuine" (or non-mandmade) formations appear to exhibit.

Research has been conducted over a ten year period with samples and thorough laboratory testing carried out by the biophysicist Dr. Levengood, Nancy Talbott, and John Burks -- the BLT Research Team, and a small army of volunteers worldwide. Their findings include from samples taken within the crop formations in contrast to the control samples taken from outside the circles.

Levengood studied biophysics at the University of Michigan in the late 1960s and holds several patents on his inventions to increase seed growth and vigor. He has studied biochemical and biophysical changes in crop formation seeds and plants for over a decade.

He has found out that the plants from more than 95% of the sampled events revealed either single or multiple anomalous and readily apparent structural alterations at the macroscopic level. In general, these consisted of significant enlargements of the cell walls, expulsion cavities in the nodes of the plant stalks, significantly extended node lengths, and changes to the soil composition (ie. vastly higher level of magnetite concentration) Significant changes in seed germination and development were also found. Affected plants also have characteristics suggesting the involvement of transient high temperatures. Not one of these clearly anomalous plant alterations had been mentioned – much less explained – by the proponents of the croppies theory, nor can they be accounted for by the supposed methods employed to create crop formations through claims made by the circle makers.

Levengood thinks what is creating the crop circle is a complex energy system that he describes as a "spinning plasma vortex" of ions with microwave frequencies that rapidly heat water in plants, causing them to collapse to the ground with stems not cracked or broken. Further, the microwave frequencies can heat up water in the plant's growth nodes which burst out, creating small holes that have often been found in extraordinary crop patterns. Those complex energies can also affect the seeds.

The affected plants have components which suggest the involvement of rapid air movement, ionization, electric fields and transient high temperatures combined with an oxidizing atmosphere. One naturally occurring and organized force incorporating each of these features is an ion plasma vortex, one very high energy example being a lightning discharge.

Atmospheric-associated plasma formations may plausibly originate in regions where there are clear indications of energy exchange between the ionosphere (60-100 km) and electrical storms in the upper atmosphere (Franz et al. 1990). Currently under consideration are ion plasma vortices which form in unstable regions and act as heat and angular momentum transporters. In fluid dynamics, gases, including air, are considered as having liquid properties (Prandtl and Tietjens 1957). In such a scheme the descent of a vortex through a liquid produces unstable secondary products which form complex, symmetrical patterns such as circles, rings, triangles, double lines and ovals with tubes or 'paths' extending from them (Levenoood 1958). In its descent to the crop surface the shaping of these features of vortex instability would be guided by variations in the Earth's magnetic field (Rossi and Jastrow 1961). At the crop surface the heat, ionization, associated electric fields and angular momentum would be transferred to the living plants. Taken as a whole, ionized air plasmas are electrically neutral, although internally, charge separation takes place and they can have high concentrations of positive ions and free electrons (Lehnert 1961), which in contact with plant tissue might produce transient heating and account for a number of the plant transformations.

The croppies

In 1991 two retired lanscape painters Englishmen, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, proclaimed they were responsible for all the crop circles in England since 1978, starting as a joke to make people think UFOs were landing.

They demonstrated their technique for the cameras with a 1.2-metre board attached to a rope they hung around their necks. One held one end of a string in the centre to determine the radius while the other held the other end and stomped down the plants with the board. Newspapers and TV stations around the world trumpeted the solution to the crop circle mystery.

Since Doug and Dave's "retirement" in 1991, another generation of hoaxers has appeared. The only group to go public calls itself the Circlemakers (http://www.circlemakers.com). They have not taken credit for any one formation in particular, except a few commercial exhibitions (Mitsubishi, Weetabix) and a couple of television programs (History Channel, …), saying that revealing which circles they've created would ruin the mystery and appreciation for what they call their "land art." To date, they have not responded to numerous challenges to reproduce any of the complex formations in front of witnesses.

John Lundberg leader of the Circlemakers, considers their practice an art. Lundberg estimates that there are three or four dedicated crop circle art groups operating in the United Kingdom today, and numerous other small groups that make one or two circles a year more or less as a lark.
Two phenomena appear to be pushing the evolving art.

To combat a widely promulgated theory that the circles were the result of wind vortices—essentially mini-whirlwinds—crop artists felt compelled to produce ever more elaborate designs, some with straight lines to show that the circles were not a natural phenomenon, said Lundberg. The other impetus is true of all art forms: Artists influence one another, and designs evolve in response to what has been done before.

The crop circle season extends from roughly April to harvesting in September, although the best time to make a circle is in mid to late June. When still immature, wheat rises back toward the sun, making a circle look brushed rather than flattened, said Lundberg.

While the relationship between crop artists and cereologists is uneasy, the relationship between artists and farmers is mutually beneficial. Farmers provide the canvas, the artists bring in the tourists. The circles are a major tourist attraction, spawning bus tours, daily helicopter tours, T-shirts, books, and other trinkets. The circles draw people who believe the formations have a unique energy. They visit the formations as a sort of spiritual Mecca, to meditate, pray, dance, and commune with worldly spirits. Farmers frequently charge a small fee or have a donation box for people who want to enter the circles. In 1996 a circle appeared near Stonehenge and the farmer set up a booth and charged a fee, collecting 30,000 pounds (U.S. $47,000) in four weeks. The value of the crop had it been harvested was probably about 150 pounds ($235).

How to make crop circle?

Anybody can make a crop circle with simple tools. The only tools you need are rope, boards or metal pipes and a willing crew. Here is a common way of making crop circles.

1 A stake is hammered into the field at the center of the area where the circle will be created.

2 A rope is tied to the stake and stretched to the edge of the circle.

3 A crew member at the end of the rope makes a perimeter by walking in a circle around the stake.

4 Boards or heavy pipes are then dragged over the crop to flatten plants within the space.

5 Outside the new circle, rings can be made by leaving sections of the crop undamaged.

The Electro-magnetic field theory

According to Dr Colin Andrews, who has studied crop circles for 17 years, about 20% are caused by eddie currents in the earth's magnetic field - a mysterious shift in the electro-magnetic field creates a current that flattens the crops in its path.

That could probably explain the numerous reports of electronic equipment failing in crop circles and compasses spinning out of control in and over the crop circles (even when flying over in aircraft).

The UFO theory

Crop circle formation is similar to alleged UFO landing site reports where a circular swirling pattern is formed in grass, the grass remains unharmed, and is in inaccessible locations for vehicles.

Channelers and ufologists pretend that crop circles are not symbols intended as a 'message to man.' These deliberately created pictographs are signposts, or reference marks produced by aliens moving in space and time (back and forth/in and out), who are monitoring the course of event trajectories. The pictographs serve primarily as reference markings and for 'event line' orientation and are deliberately embedded in a short-lived, perishable medium so that man's attention would not be attracted to specific locations.

Production of the circles occurs via two primary mechanisms:

• Macroscale: external area effects; heat and overpressure
• Microscale: internal plant stem effects; pressure changes and cellular damage.

Ultrasonics are produced as gasses escape the plant stem. The concominent drop in turgor pressure within the stem causes the plant to bend over. there is a gentle 'swish swish' sound as this effect is induced, en masse.

Some craft halt in the vicinity of the circles for what appears to be communications checks. On occasion, craft temporarily stop and conduct exploratory probing/testing in the vicinity of the circles.

It must be added that circles have given rise historically to various beliefs connected with the supernatural. for instance, the circles inspired the idea of the 'elves' green rings. The Nazca lines and, most noteworthy, Navajo sand paintings, were ideas born of attempts to copy the 'marks of the Gods', so as to evoke a visitation or response.

The Whirlwind theory


The official government explanation is that whirlwinds, created by heat thermals, are the true cause of the crop circle anomaly. But whirlwinds or Mini-tornadoes are not static, they travel around and it is very unlikely that they would create such intricate and symmetrical patterns.

Natural Music

Hawkins observed that the circle patterns embodied geometric theorems that expressed specific relationships among the areas of the various circles, triangles, and other shapes. These patterns displayed "exact numerical relationships" (i.e., diatonic ratios) similar to those found in a scale of musical notes. For example, if a circle within a formation is 90 degrees and another is 80 degrees, the ratio is 9/8 which is the same ratio between the notes C and D, C being the eighth note of the diatonic scale and D being the ninth. These are the same ratios that are found in popular music, or in playing the white notes on the piano.

According to Stephen J. Smith, a paranormal investigator and amateur composer, these ratios are not the result of chance "because the numbers have to be very precise in order to be a diatonic ratio. This is why music sounds like music instead of noise, because it is built on precise ratios."

To derive music from the crop circles, Smith used a fractal music-generating computer program. He entered photographs of the formations into the computer, which ëreadí the photographs and generated music from the photos, using the crop circle scales to play it back.

Curiously, not all crop circles embody diatonic rations in their formations. Hence, some do not have musical qualities. Possibly, Smith says, the real circles have diatonic ratios, and the faked ones do not. Further, diatonic ratios may be only a part of the overall geometry of the formations.

All about Crop Circle

In the seventies mysterious circles appeared in various crops in England. They immediately caught the public's attention. As these circles appeared year after year, got more sophisticated and spread to ever more areas a broad range of people got interested in studying and explaining this phenomenon. They range from scientists of various disciplines to New Age and UFO enthusiasts.

Trying to explain the mystery of the crop circles several theories were presented. In the eighties Dr. Terrence Meaden attempted to explain the spiral patterns occurring in crop circles as the result of atmospheric phenomena present, for instance, in the vortex of a dust devil or tornado. Had Dr. Meaden ever seen a dust devil or a tornado he would have thought otherwise.

In Phoenix, Arizona, the evening news regularly brings pictures of dust devils dancing over the desert floor. I intentionally say dancing because they are not moving in a straight line. Dust devils are pockets of circular movements within the general wind direction. This wind has gusts impacting on the dust devil moving it forth and back sideways and changing its shape. - A dust devil does not produce perfectly round circles and it does not put things flat on the ground. It picks up sand, which becomes the body of the dust devil.

A tornado is the most destructive force of winds on the Earth. It picks up everything in its way: houses, people, cows, cars, trees, etc. A tornado doesn't put anything flat on the ground. It rips everything out of the ground and carries it away. The same holds true for another kind of whirlwind, hurricanes. If something cannot be carried away it is smashed or stripped; for instance, trees are stripped of their leaves.

If an atmospheric force were responsible for crop circle formation the stalks would be pulled out of the ground. If the stalks remained in the round they would be stripped of leaves and grains and broken in between the nodes. Such force would leave behind a mess, not nicely aligned intact stalks. Furthermore, all these atmospheric forces have a lateral movement, which is very forceful and will result in a path of destruction not in an orderly circle.

Another approach comes from the proponents of the so-called Gaia hypothesis. Crop circles frequently appear near ley-lines or places where ancient structures are found such as Stonehenge, Avebury, Salisbury etc. These cites are thought to have spiritual significance and, therefore, people believe these circles could be the expression of the collective Earth soul expressing its disgust with the present situation on the planet and indicating that all forms of consciousness should be realigned in a new direction.

I am at a loss to accept that the Earth has a collective consciousness that would and could express itself in crop circles. There is an explanation why such circles show up near ancient sites and at ley-lines but it has nothing to do with an earth collective consciousness and a re-alignment of whatever kind. I'll deal with this later in the article.

If science cannot explain something usually it is declared a hoax. This opinion got a boost when two retired men came forward in the early nineties and claimed they had made the crop circles. Remarkably, this claim appeared simultaneously on CNN and a number of top international newspapers like the Wallstreet Journal, The New York Times, and European papers like the eminent French publication "Le Figaro".

The above scenario seems quite suspicious. It is practically impossible to appear on CNN or on any other main stream publication with a topic as far out as crop circles. That this happened in a timely coordinated fashion indicates that someone with a lot of clout was behind this action. Probably the crop circles had stirred up enough interest and enough credibility that the public began to take them seriously, which translated into a world- wide security problem. Probably several governments got together and decided that anything in connection with them had to be discredited. - The plan worked. After this sensational "confession" interest in crop circles was non-existent in scientific circles and the topic was dead for all main stream media.

It is interesting to note that no group of any importance made a serious attempt to verify the old men's claims or to counter them. Sure, they could have made a number of circles but there were so many in so many locations that two old men with strings and a board could not have made all of them. Furthermore, this method leaves chafing and other mechanical marks on the stalks and the stalks would be bent in a characteristic way, which would show clearly a difference to other sites where a different method was used. It would have been easy to investigate and to find out how many of the sites really show the characteristics of manual creation of the crop circles.

Having dealt with the above theories it remains to assess the peculiar characteristics common to crop circles:
Crop circles have evolved over time. While initially they were just that, circles, straight lines were added as a next step. Intricate patterns with several circles and straight lines followed and as of lately complicated patterns with sometimes sophisticated formations integrating mathematical formulas within the circles have shown up. There are pictograms with signs sacred to various peoples the world over. It seems impossible to create such formations in a single night by hand. In fact, many of the recent crop images look like computer created art.

The bases of a crop image are bent stalks in various kinds of crops. They appear mostly in barley and wheat but can also be found in canola and grass, even on sand and snow. They have been reported from all over the world. Frequently they show up on ley-lines or near ancient sites.

The stalks can be bent in any direction in the same image. Sometimes they have several layers with the stalks bent in different directions. In the UK bent stalks have been noticed that look like woven in a pattern. The bending itself is done at the nodes. This is very peculiar as the nodes give plants their strength. They normally bend between the nodes.

Nodes keep a plant upright because they gather water and the water's pressure in the nodes makes the stalk rigid. In crop images plants bend because the nodes were dehydrated. There is a hole in the node, which looks like an outlet for water vapor that formed after intense heating. Most remarkably, the nodes are bent selectively. They can be bent at the lowest knuckle or at any other one higher up the stalk. Nodes in different parts of a crop image can be bent at different heights in different directions within the same formation. Also, as the crop continues to grow an image can take on a different appearance.

Often the crop images are set inside a field away from tramlines with no visible access. They also show up in fenced off restricted military areas. Plants in the affected areas look dehydrated and cells are enlarged. Soil samples tested by Colin Andrews yielded up to 100 % higher than normal EM measurements in the centers of the formations tested. There are reports that in the years following the appearance of the crop circle the affected areas had an increase in crop yield of up to 40%.

There is residual radiation in the circles, which can have adverse effects. Measurements have detected an emission of energy at the 5KHz frequency up to several days after the crop circles were formed. This frequency lies within the audible range and some hear a "trilling sound". Many people show physical reactions after visiting crop circles. The symptoms are nausea, headaches, dizziness, tingling sensations and various pains. These symptoms are consistent with health problems from radiation. Mobile phones, cameras, watches and especially electronic equipment brought in to check the circles have failed and compasses on airplanes flying overhead have been reported spinning out of control.

People watching crop circles being formed noticed a reddish glow at ground level. The bending of the vegetation was done in a few minutes. Nobody saw anyone doing the bending or any kind of device or craft hovering above the site. Jaques F. Vallee, a renowned researcher of UFO's and other phenomena many years ago gave a lecture at Oxford University where he met a young man whose hobby was to fly gliders over the English countryside. One sunny afternoon this young man encountered something that looked like a metallic cylinder hanging motionless in the air and showing a reflection of his glider. The young man circled the object several times. As there was no action he left.

A reddish glow and the formation of a pictogram within a few minutes as well as the symptoms displayed by the nodes of the bent stalks are consistent with microwave or similar radiation. Such radiation raises the temperature in the nodes targeted. When the water in the nodes vaporizes steam is created, which expands and busts the node open. With the water pressure inside the node gone and a hole in the node the plant loses its support and bends over.

Even more amazing than this very sophisticated method for forming crop circles is the fact that nodes can be individually targeted. The direction of the bends as well as the height of the nodes affected can change within the same pictogram, which can yield very sophisticated formations. This is irrefutable evidence that the images in crop circles are formed by some kind of a controlling device like a computer, which issues commands for another device that emits radiation impacting on the plants. - Spheres of about 1 foot in diameter hovering over areas where crop circles were forming have been repeatedly observed. - Many designs look like computer created graphics. In fact, some designs are so complex and spiked with mathematical information that only a computer could have created them. Other designs depict sacred symbols from many different peoples all over the world.

There is evidence that the crop circle producers react to comments and attempts to dismiss the crop circle phenomenon by promptly producing circles, which invalidate objections. This raises the question: how do they get to know about that? The only way to really know what's going on without being there is to telepathically retrieve this information from people talking about this subject. This adds another dimension to the concern about these activities because it implies that the producers of crop circles know exactly what goes on in the minds of people dealing with this phenomenon. They will always be a step ahead of possible opponents.

Crop circles were found on fenced off military grounds and some believe that this proves that the military is conducting tests with secret radiation weapons aimed at destroying enemy crops. - Development of new weapons is always conducted in secrecy. There is nothing secret about the crop circles. Moreover, crop circles can be found all over the world. Why and how would the British military go to all these places and trespass on foreign private property to test a secret weapon? This is as absurd as assuming that two old men with a string and a board could penetrate fenced off tightly guarded military installations to make crop circles.

Crop circles on fenced off guarded military grounds must be done by someone the military neither detects nor can keep out of its protected area. Even if such an intruder only produces pictograms this must be reason of major concerns for the military. What if this intruder decides to do something a lot more sinister and unfriendly than producing crop circles? The military for sure is aware of the implications of crop circles popping up in restricted areas.

Another concern for governments all over the world where crop circles have shown up must be the fact that somebody has the technical means to produce very sophisticated pictograms all over the world and nobody knows who it is and what the purpose of these pictograms is. There are signs that the British government is conducting a Dis-information campaign and has taken measures to disrupt the work of the crop circle producers but it is not working. As these pictograms establish spiritual patterns the only way to invalidate their meaning would be to blow them apart with a helicopter hovering overhead or a wind machine. To make matters worse the film industry addressed this topic in a recent movie and the general public has become aware of the situation. Rightfully, safety concerns will be raised if this issue cannot be resolved.

Crop circles initially appeared in the English countryside in the seventies and gradually spread over most of the world. Having excluded hoaxters, Earth consciousness and secret military activities several conclusions can be drawn. Whoever produces crop circles puts a lot of time and effort in this activity. Whoever is doing this has responded to clumsy attempts of hoaxters and scientific investigators to produce crop circles with ever more sophisticated designs that cannot be duplicated within the time frame such circles appear, which is in a single night. Whoever is behind the crop circles phenomenon has a plan and is determined to implement this plan.

We must assume that the crop circle producers possess the means to document their presence all over the world and to do whatever they please without being detected or hampered in their activities. This presupposes unlimited mobility and a degree of technical sophistication that surpasses the capabilities of anybody even of the governments whose countries are leaders in scientific progress. Furthermore, neither does it make sense that a government engages in this type of activity nor could it be kept secret because the phenomenon is so wide spread. So, who is really producing the crop circles and why?

Crop circles are not the first to be spread very far over the planet. There is a precedent and it goes back thousands of years to the time when megaliths were erected on this planet's surface. The parallels between the two phenomena need to be explained in order to link them credibly.

Approximately 5500 years ago aliens who called themselves the gods invaded this planet. Their temporary presence on this planet is well-documented in religions, temples and related structures the world over. Irrefutable proof that they existed is etched in the stones of Ica. These stones show human like people performing surgical operations we know of and are able to perform only lately like heart and other organ transplants. Some stones show brain surgery and brain transplants. At that time humans for sure were not able to perform such advanced medical surgeries and brain transplants humans still can't do. Therefore, the people shown on the stones are gods. These stones also show dinosaurs and humans interacting with them.

While the stones of Ica cannot be carbon dated clay figurines found at Acambaro in Mexico, which also show dinosaurs and humans interacting, can. The dates range from 4500 to 1100 BC. Greek legends tell of a devastating flood only one god and his wife survived. That's why they call it Deukalion's flood. This event occurred about 1500 BC and at that time several other major catastrophes wreaked havoc in the Mediterranean and many other places on the planet. After that date there were no gods and no dinosaurs. Even the vegetation changed dramatically. Paradise, the parallel world, was lost. The present world with all its shortcomings was firmly established.

Before the big change megaliths were the preferred building method. The gods were able to handle stone slabs up to a thousand tons as shown in the Trilithon at Baalbek in Lebanon, at various sites in Peru and in many other places. Therefore, it makes sense to assume that the gods were the ones who erected megalithic structures in many areas of this planet. Aside from pyramids and temples there are structures like Stonehenge and Carnac as well as more than 50,000 simple megalithic locations all over the world especially in England and France. It required a major effort over an extended period of time to establish a megalithic landscape. So, what was the motivation? Is there a relation between the megaliths, which were erected in a time span of about thousand years before the big change, and the ensuing dramatic change?

The answer to this important question can be found in the way gods conducted their business. Religion - spirituality - was most important to them. A major endeavor like placing megaliths over much of the planet for sure had spiritual purposes. The gods erected pyramids and spiritually connected them to the heavens to add more weight to their spiritual claims, for instance, the Pyramids of the Sun and of the Moon in Mexico.

The most remarkable structure serving a spiritual purpose was and still is the Great Pyramid at Giza. It is the centerpiece not only of the pyramids on the plateau but of all the pyramids found in Egypt. The Pyramids of Giza are aligned exactly like the stars in Orion's belt. Also, the position of the pyramids of Giza correlates to the meridian axis of the Nile like the stars of Orion's belt correlate to the meridian axis of the Milky Way thus integrating the Milky Way into the spiritual equation of the Egyptian gods. The sheer weight of these pyramids and the spiritual weight of the cosmic objects they represent gave greatest weight to the spiritual claims of the Egyptian gods and, thus, dominance over the claims of the other gods. - A

The structures at Stonehenge started out about 2900 BC, several hundred years earlier than the pyramids of the Giza plateau. When these pyramids were built around 2500 BC Stonehenge was transformed from a wooden structure to a megalithic structure. Stones from 4 to 50 tons were hauled over great distances in successive phases and by 1600 BC Stonehenge had reached its final appearance. There were no changes after this date.

During the time when Stonehenge was turned into a megalithic structure megaliths were erected all over England, France and over most of the planet. Remarkably, most of the megaliths were located on ley-lines or at the crossings of such lines where frequently religious structures or ancient ruins of temples can be found. This is a clear indication that the megaliths served spiritual purposes because the ley-lines are the expression of the energies of the quantum vacuum also called spiritual energies, which spread in a grid-like pattern all over the planet. This is the best way to establish spiritually valid patterns and mechanisms.

All megalithic sites correspond to stars or star systems. The Ordnance maps of ancient Scotland, Britain and Ireland show that the megaliths are map projections of the northern and southern hemispheres of the sky and their stars and star systems. The megaliths not only have markings telling which star or star system they represent, in sites representing a star cluster the stones vary in size and weight in proportion to the stars of the star system and are placed at distances reflecting the distances between the stars. Also, the color of the stones reflects the color of the stars they represent. Big red stones, for instance, represent Red giants. - Megaliths not only represent the heavens, they also were used for geodetic and surveying purposes all over the planet. To this day megaliths exist that mark county borders in England.

The megalithic scenery provides very interesting information:

• The people who erected the megalithic sites were able to move stones that weighed dozens of tones and knew how to fashion them to their needs.
• They were experts in astronomy.
• They were experts in geodesics and surveying.
• They could travel all over the planet because this was the only way to map the northern and southern sky and to erect more than 50,000 megaliths.
• They were able to make a determined and sustained effort over many years.
• They were able to coordinate this immense project on a planet wide basis.
• Humans of early times definitely were not able to get this work done.
• The only ones who qualify as producers of the megaliths are the gods of antiquity. Judging from the way they conducted themselves in those remote times it would be a terrible disaster for mankind if the gods succeeded to come back and to live on this planet.

Megaliths like the pyramids in Egypt were part of the effort to establish the spiritual basis for a change of worlds. When the big change came something went terribly wrong for the gods because they are not around any more. The ones on the surface of the planet died. Only the ones in space ships at the time of the change survived. After the change they went into a time dilation flight and, therefore, they are still alive. Lately, they appeared again - we know their space ships as UFOs.

There are several parallels between megaliths and crop circles:
they can be found over most of the planet. Stonehenge was the center of the megalithic scenery. That's where the first crop circles appeared. That's also the area where the most sophisticated patterns are found. The megaliths were part of a huge endeavor to program spiritual energies in preparation for the coming change of worlds. Obviously, the crop pictograms serve the same purpose.

Assuming that the crop circles serve the same purpose as the megaliths the connection between the ley-lines, megaliths, ancient sites and the crop circles becomes obvious. Much of the ancient network of megaliths is still around. The crop circles may be a brand new effort to program the spiritual energies of this planet or they mend megaliths based spiritual situations that weathering and human actions destroyed over time. They are part of a determined, coordinated and sustained effort all over the planet. Their appearance shows a degree of technical sophistication that clearly reflects the same plan and methods as used when the megaliths were erected. - The gods are back and they are programming a change of worlds again.

Weight is the one major difference between crop circles and megaliths and there is a simple explanation for this. In the world before there were several clans of gods hostile to one another. Each clan wanted to make sure that its own spiritual claims carried the most weight. In this world there are no gods at all. Only one clan of gods is around trying to establish the spiritual patterns that enable it to invade this planet again and its members live in space ships. Therefore, the tools for programming need not to be heavy. Crop circles are adequate.

When the previous change of worlds came a thousand years of preparation failed to ensure the survival of the gods who had prepared this change. Another kind of gods was at work and made sure that this is a world for humans only and we know who these gods were.

The Edda is the Saga of the Scandinavian people telling of fights between two kinds of gods, the good ones and the evil ones. The evil gods called the Aesir fought the good gods called the Vanir. The Edda predicted the end of the evil gods and the re-appearance of the good gods after the cataclysm, which will accompany the imminent change of worlds. The Edda also says that the evil gods feared the good gods - with valid reasons.

While the former change of worlds brought the end of the evil Aesir gods in physical form the coming change will bring the total annihilation of these gods because the coming world has been announced by Jesus of Nazareth as a world of love and peace. This means that this will be a positive world. Nothing evil or negative can enter this world.

The megaliths could not ensure the victory of their creators. Neither will the spiritual programming done with crop circles ensure the victory of their makers who will disappear just like crop circles do when the crop is cut and the fields are plowed over.

Crop Circle - Introduction

Crop Circles - formations, usually found in grain crops, where the crop has been mysteriously found laid flat, in patterns, that did not exist in daylight the previous day. Although thought by many to be a phenomena of the 20th Century, crop circles and formations have been around for a very long time, and records even date back well before the invention of the camera.

The most well known positive depiction of a crop circle is found in a woodcut made in 1678 with the title 'Strange News out of Hartford-shire’.
It depicts a devil-like creature cutting out a pattern in a crop with a scythe.
The woodcut has text, which told of a greedy farmer, who, having refused to pay a mower a reasonable rate for reaping his oats, swore that he would rather have the Devil do the work. The very following morning, the farmer awoke to find his crop had been harvested, but done so in such an amazing manner, with rounded circles of incredible exactness that no human could have done the same within the period and darkness of one night. The farmer was so afraid that he could not enter the field to collect his harvest.

It is suggested by some cryptologists and others that crop circles are depicted in prehistoric stone and wall carvings, such as in the spiral patterns carved in a stone at Newgrange in Ireland. For those that hold the view that crop circles are created by extra-terrestrials in spacecraft, some would say that reasonable recorded proof of this is depicted in some ancient Egyptian pictures. The recorded incidence of crop circles in more modern times seems to have started in the early 20th century, with a gradual increase in numbers through to a marked incr4ease in the 1960’s, leading to a quite dramatic upturn in the 1990’s. At least 190 formations were discovered and documented in 1999, perhaps an omen for what is to come in the new millennium. There are many who are under the impression that crop circles are only indigenous to the U.K. Sure, they are more prevalent here than elsewhere in the world, but there are countless examples of them appearing all over the world - in the USA from 1920, in Europe from the mid 20th century and in Africa, Canada, Australia, Central & Southern America, Russia in 1970, and Japan in the late 70’s. Many visitors to the U.K. are amazed to discover that crop circles actually appear in their own country. What odds, that formations in the 21st century will be found on the surface of the Moon and Mars, and beyond?

Doppelganger - the Evil twin

A doppelganger is the ghostly or in some cases, a physical double of a living person. The word doppelganger is a loanword from German, written there (as any noun) with an initial capital letter Doppelgänger, composed from doppel, meaning "double", and gänger, as "walker". In English, the word is conventionally not capitalized, and it is also common to drop the German diacritic umlaut on the letter "a" and write "doppelganger", although the correct spelling without umlaut would be "doppelgaenger".

The term has, in the vernacular, come to refer to any double or look-alike of a person, most commonly in reference to a so-called evil twin, or to bilocation. Alternatively, the word is used to describe a phenomenon where you catch your own image out of the corner of your eye. In some traditions, seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death. A doppelgänger seen by friends or relatives of a person may sometimes bring bad luck, or indicate an approaching illness or health problem.

The doppelgängers of folklore cast no shadow, and have no reflection in a mirror or in water. They are supposed to provide advice to the person they shadow, but this advice can be misleading or malicious. They can also, in rare instances, plant ideas in their victim's mind or appear before friends and relatives, causing confusion. In many cases once someone has viewed his own doppelgänger he is doomed to be haunted by images of his ghostly counter-part. Other folklore says that when a person's dopplegänger is seen, the person him/herself will die shortly. It is considered unlucky to try to communicate with such a doppleganger.

Famous Reports of the Doppelganger Phenomenon

• Emilie Sagée was a schoolteacher in the nineteenth century whose doppelgänger's public appearances were recorded by Robert Dale Owen after being reported to him by Julie von Güldenstubbe.
• Guy de Maupassant recorded his own doppelgänger experiences in his story Lui ( The light continent). It is sometimes claimed that Percy Bysshe Shelley, English atheist and poet, met his doppelgänger foreboding his own death. However, Shelley met this "doppelgänger" in a dream, not in real life.
• John Donne, the English metaphysical poet, apparently met his wife's doppelgänger in Paris, foreboding the death of his yet unborn daughter.
• Abraham Lincoln told his wife that he saw two faces of himself in a mirror soon after being elected president, one deathly pale. His wife believed this to mean he would be elected to a second term but would not survive (Sandburg, 195).
• Rosalyn Greene claims that the doppelgänger phenomenon, via bilocation, is responsible for reports of werewolves and other shapeshifters.
• Richard Rossi, the maverick minister and Hollywood filmmaker, allegedly told police a man who resembled him attacked his wife. According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, he allegedly speculated the mysterious incident was a Satanic counterattack because of his work as an exorcist. Rossi stood trial for the assault, resulting in a hung jury, partially because both Rossi's wife and an eyewitness named John Fair confirmed the story.
• Gustav Weler was a double of Adolf Hitler

Doppelgängers appear in a variety of science fiction and fantasy works, in which they are a type of shapeshifter that mimics a particular person or species for some typically nefarious reason.
A temporal doppelgänger is any version of oneself one may meet during time travel. It is an exact likeness of one at a specific time in one's history (or future). Meetings with oneself may occur when one version of oneself travels backwards through the timestream and encounters a younger version of oneself, or when two or more of the same person from different timestreams travel to the same moment in their futures.

Does Earth have a doppelganger?

Earth may have a twin orbiting one of our nearest stellar neighbors, a new study suggests. University of California, Santa Cruz graduate student Javiera Guedes used computer simulations of planet formation to show that terrestrial planets likely formed around one of the stars in the Alpha Centauri star system, our closest stellar neighbors. Guedes' model showed planets forming around the star Alpha Centauri B (its sister star, Proxima Centauri, is actually our nearest neighbor) in what is called the "habitable zone," or the region around a star where liquid water can exist on a planet's surface.

The model also showed that if such planets do in fact exist, we should be able to see them with a dedicated telescope. "If they exist, we can observe them," Guedes said. Astronomers have for some time pinned the Alpha Centauri system as one that was likely to form planets, said study co-author Gregory Laughlin, a UCSC professor. "I think that there's been a good line of evidence over the past decade or so," Laughlin said. Several factors mark the system, particularly Alpha Centauri B as friendly to planet formation. The metallicity of Alpha Centauri B (or how much of its matter is made up of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium) is higher than our Sun's, so there would be plenty of heavier-mass material for planets to form from. Also, because the planet is a triple star system, the processes that form large Jupiter-mass gas giants, which account for most of the extrasolar planets found so far, would be suppressed. So it would be more likely for the system to produce terrestrial planets. Laughlin also noted that a number of factors make Alpha Centauri B a good candidate for astronomers to actually detect an Earth-sized terrestrial planet. The Doppler detection method, which has revealed the majority of the 228 known extrasolar planets, measures shifts in the light from a star to detect the tiny wobble induced by the gravitational tug of an orbiting planet. Because Alpha Centauri B is so bright and nearby, detecting a small terrestrial planet's miniscule wobble would be that much easier. Also, its position high in the sky of the Southern Hemisphere means it is observable for most of the year, just as the Big Dipper is observable for most of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. According to Laughlin, five years of observations using a dedicated telescope would be needed to detect an Earth-like planet around Alpha Centauri B. If astronomers do dedicate substantial resources to detecting an Earth-like planet, this is the star to focus on, he added. "We're advocating that there's a strong possibility a planet could be there," he said. Other stars are thought to harbor Earth-like planets, and solar systems like ours are starting to be found. Astromoners announced last month the discovery of a solar system with striking similarities to ours. If such a planet is found, spacecraft, such as the proposed Terrestrial Planet Finder, could be launched to find out more information about the world, such as whether or not it had water on its surface, Laughlin said.

Once-habitable lake found on Mars Study co-author Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University is leading an observational program to intensively monitor Alpha Centauri A and B using the 1.5-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The researchers hope to detect real planets similar to the ones that emerged in the computer simulations. "I think the planets are there, and it's worth a try to have a look," Laughlin said.

Kraken - the giant squid

Kraken ( kra’ ken, IPA: /ˈkrɑːkɛn/) are legendary sea monsters of gargantuan size, said to have dwelt off the coasts of Norway and Iceland. The sheer size and fearsome appearance attributed to the beasts have made them common ocean-dwelling monsters in various fictional works (see Kraken in popular culture). The legend may actually have originated from sightings of real giant squid that are estimated to grow to 13 metres (46 feet) in length, including the tentacles. These creatures normally live at great depths, but have been sighted at the surface and reportedly have "attacked" small ships.

Kraken is the definite article form of krake, a Scandinavian word designating an unhealthy animal, or something twisted.[1] In modern German, Krake (plural and declined singular: Kraken) means octopus, but can also refer to the legendary Kraken (Terrell, 1999).

Although the name kraken never appears in the Norse sagas, there are similar sea monsters, the hafgufa and lyngbakr, both described in Örvar-Odds saga and the Norwegian text from c. 1250, Konungs skuggsjá.[2] Carolus Linnaeus included kraken as cephalopods with the scientific name Microcosmus in the first edition of his Systema Naturae (1735), a taxonomic classification of living organisms, but excluded the animal in later editions. Kraken were also extensively described by Erik Pontoppidan, bishop of Bergen, in his "Natural History of Norway" (Copenhagen, 1752–3).

Early accounts, including Pontoppidan's, describe the kraken as an animal "the size of a floating island" whose real danger for sailors was not the creature itself, but the whirlpool it created after quickly descending back into the ocean. However, Pontoppidan also described the destructive potential of the giant beast: "It is said that if it grabbed the largest warship, it could manage to pull it down to the bottom of the ocean" (Sjögren, 1980). Kraken were always distinct from sea serpents, also common in Scandinavian lore (Jörmungandr for instance). A representative early description is given by the Swede Jacob Wallenberg in his book Min son på galejan ("My son on the galley") from 1781:

… Kraken, also called the Crab-fish, which [according to the pilots of Norway] is not that huge, for heads and tails counted, he is no larger than our Öland is wide [i.e. less than 16 km] ... He stays at the sea floor, constantly surrounded by innumerable small fishes, who serve as his food and are fed by him in return: for his meal, if I remember correctly what E. Pontoppidan writes, lasts no longer than three months, and another three are then needed to digest it. His excrements nurture in the following an army of lesser fish, and for this reason, fishermen plumb after his resting place ... Gradually, Kraken ascends to the surface, and when he is at ten to twelve fathoms, the boats had better move out of his vicinity, as he will shortly thereafter burst up, like a floating island, spurting water from his dreadful nostrils and making ring waves around him, which can reach many miles. Could one doubt that this is the Leviathan of Job?

According to Pontoppidan, Norwegian fishermen often took the risk of trying to fish over kraken, since the catch was so good. If a fisherman had an unusually good catch, they used to say to each other, "You must have fished on Kraken." Pontoppidan also claimed that the monster was sometimes mistaken for an island, and that some maps that included islands that were only sometimes visible were actually indicating kraken. Pontoppidan also proposed that a young specimen of the monster once died and was washed ashore at Alstahaug (Bengt Sjögren, 1980).

Since the late 18th century, kraken have been depicted in a number of ways, primarily as large octopus-like creatures, and it has often been alleged that Pontoppidan's kraken might have been based on sailors' observations of the giant squid. In the earliest descriptions, however, the creatures were more crab- like than octopus-like, and generally possessed traits that are associated with large whales rather than with giant squid. Some traits of kraken resemble undersea volcanic activity occurring in the Iceland region, including bubbles of water; sudden, dangerous currents; and appearance of new islets.

In 1802, the French malacologist Pierre Dénys de Montfort recognized the existence of two kinds of giant octopus in Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particulière des Mollusques, an encyclopedic description of mollusks. Montfort claimed that the first type, the kraken octopus, had been described by Norwegian sailors and American whalers, as well as ancient writers such as Pliny the Elder. The much larger second type, the colossal octopus (depicted in the above image), was reported to have attacked a sailing vessel from Saint-Malo, off the coast of Angola.

Montfort later dared more sensational claims. He proposed that ten British warships that had mysteriously disappeared one night in 1782 must have been attacked and sunk by giant octopuses. Unfortunately for Montfort, the British knew what had happened to the ships, resulting in a disgraceful revelation for Montfort. Pierre Dénys de Montfort's career never recovered and he died starving and poor in Paris around 1820 (Sjögren, 1980). In defence of Pierre Dénys de Montfort, it should be noted that many of his sources for the "kraken octopus" probably described the very real giant squid, proven to exist in 1857.

In 1830, possibly aware of Pierre Dénys de Montfort's work, Alfred Tennyson published his popular poem "The Kraken" (essentially an irregular sonnet), which disseminated Kraken in English forever fixed with its superfluous the. The poem in its last three lines, also bears similarities to the legend of Leviathan, a sea monster, who shall rise to the surface at the end of days.

Tennyson's description apparently influenced Jules Verne's imagined lair of the famous giant squid in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea from 1870. Verne also makes numerous references to Kraken, and Bishop Pontoppidan in the novel.

Later developments of the Kraken image may be traced at Kraken in popular culture.

From ancient times, sailors have reported seeing a huge sea monster with many tentacles, called the kraken. Sailors knew about the octupus and squid, real ocean animals that had tentacles. However, the kraken was considered to be a different species because it was much, much bigger. Sometimes it was thought to be a giant octopus, sometimes it was thought to be a giant squid. Much of the time, it was simply a big sea monster called the kraken.

During the early part of the scientific era, the kraken was considered just as likely to exist as sea serpents. In other words, it was laughed at. Serious scientists steered clear of the kraken question, refusing to study it even when presented with beached kraken carcasses. Then there came a time when everything changed. Several kraken carcasses were beached within a short time of each other, and there was such an uproar that the reluctant scientists were forced to pay attention.

The kraken was declared a real species. It was named the giant squid. The giant squid remains one of the most elusive large animals in the world. For many years, scientists tried to observe the giant squid in its habitat, but failed. Many people claimed to have seen giant squids, but they were mostly fishermen and sailors, the same people who are not believed when they report sea serpents. Every live sighting was unconfirmed and in each case the witness was not a scientist. Scientists spent millions of dollars on expeditions, but could not obtain video footage of a live squid. Everything that was known about giant squids was based on dead bodies. All expeditions into deep water in search of the natural habitat of giant squids had proved fruitless. The giant squid still had much in common with mythical creatures and true cryptids, even though the scientific community no longer had any doubt that giant squids exist.

In September of 2004, that finally changed. Japanese scientists attracted a giant squid with a baited line, and automatic cameras took more than 500 photographs of the giant squid before it ripped itself free, leaving an 18-foot length of tentacle still attached to the bait.

There is still doubt about just how big giant squids get. Both eyewitness sightings and sucker scars on sperm whales seem to indicate that there are squids much bigger than any dead body we currently have. Most scientists refuse to believe that squids that huge could exist. Is there more than one species of giant squid out there, with one of them being really, really huge? Are the giant squids that have been netted near the surface or that have washed up on beaches the smaller ones?

Skepticism towards the idea of truly huge squids has weakened recently. Now, scientists think that the Antarctic species of squid called Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni actually grows much bigger than the giant squid. They don't have proof of this yet, as the only complete specimens of Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni have been juveniles, but the size of these babies suggests that really big adults are out there. In recognition of this, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni has recently been given the common name of "colossal squid."

Ogopogo - the other lake monster

There are a number of similarities between Lake Okanagan in British Columbia and Scotland's Loch Ness. They are both long and narrow and lie at about the same latitude. And they are each famous for their resident monsters.

The best-known Canadian lake Monster, Ogopogo, actually made its media debut long before the Loch Ness Monster. In 1926, seven years before Nessie's came to the public's attention, Roy W. Brown, editor of the Vancouver Sun, wrote, " Too many reputable people have seen [the monster] to ignore the seriousness of actual facts." While there are serious questions about whether there are non-retroactive Nessie sightings before 1930, but there are archival records of Ogopogo's existence going back to 1872 and sightings have been reported regularly up to the present.

The creature is most often described as being one to two feet in diameter with a length of 15 to 20 feet. The head has been described variously as being horse or goat-like. One oft-mentioned characteristic of the monster is its resemblance to a log.

Cryptozoologist Roy P. Mackal believes that there is a "small population of aquatic fish-eating animals residing in Lake Okanagan." Mackal initially assumed that the type of animal in Lake Okanagan was the same creature that he believed is in Loch Ness, but after a careful examination of the available data, he determined that the creature must be a form of primitive whale, Basilosaurus cetoides. "The general appearance of Basilosaurus tallies almost exactly with the loglike descriptions of the [Ogopogos]. Mackal spells out a detailed case for Ogopogo being a primitive whale in his book Searching for Hidden Animals.

Monster Island

There are good size Indian reserves in the Okanagan Valley. The Indians believe that small, barren Rattlesnake Island is the home of the Okanagan Lake Monster. Indians called the Okanagan Lake Monster N'ha-a-tik, and there are pictographs that some feel depict the monster near the headwaters of Powers Creek. Other native references to the Okanagan Lake Monster include the Chinook wicked one and "great-beast-on-the-lake." In addition to the Salish N'ha-a-tik (or Na-ha-ha-itk), snake-in-the-lake was sometimes used.

The early inhabitants of the area saw the monster as a malevolent entity. Indians claimed that Monster Island's rocky beaches were sometimes covered with the parts of animals that they had attacked and ravaged. When crossing the lake during bad weather, the Indians always carried a small animal that they would toss overboard in the middle of the lake to appease the monster, according to material in the files of the Kelowna Archives.

Primrose Upton, in The History of Okanagan Mission, noted that no Indians would fish near Squally Point. When Europeans settled in the area, they too feared the aquatic monster and supposedly continued the custom of offering an animal to appease Ogopogo. According to Ogopogo expert Arlene Gaal, armed settlers patrolled the shoreline in case of attack by the monster.

In 1914 a group of Nicola Valley and Westbank Indians discovered the decomposing body of an unidentified creature across from Rattlesnake Island. Five-six feet long and estimated to weigh 400 pounds, it was blue-grey. It had a tail and flippers, and an amateur naturalist in the area felt that it was a manatee. No one knew how such a creature could have gotten into the lake, and Lake monster expert Peter Costello has hypothesized that the carcass was "actually an Ogopogo, as the details of this mammal with flippers and a broad tail and dark color are all that we would expect. But the carcass was mangled so much that the long neck was already gone."

Ogopogo footprints have also been found. Some have been irregularly shaped, others cup-like, some were like dinosaur tracks with three toes, and still others had a pad foot and eight toes! As Dr. Mackal has written, "The trouble with footprints is that anyone can fake them easily. Further, to assume that they were made by Naitaka is pure conjecture and supposition--certainly possible but without even a circumstantial link" to the few cases of Ogopogo land sightings that have been reported.

Music for a Monster

The name Ogopogo might suggest to some that it is an Indian word, but all evidence points to a modern origin. According to Mary Moon, author of Ogopogo: the Okanagan Mystery (1977), in 1924 a local named Bill Brimblecomb sang a song parodying a popular British music-hall tune at a Rotary Club luncheon in Vernon, a city in the northern Okanagan Valley. H.F. Beattie adapted the lyrics, which included the following:

I'm looking for the Ogopogo,
His mother was a mutton,
His father was a whale.
I'm going to put a little bit of salt on his tail.

Robert Columbo, in his book Mysterious Canada, notes that the Pogo Stick was a popular craze since its introduction in 1921 and this may have contributed to the name.

According to Arlene Gaal, author of Ogopogo: The True Story of the Okanagan Lake Million Dollar Monster, a Vancouver Province reporter named Ronald Kenvyn later parodied a popular British ditty and composed a song that included the following stanza:

His mother was an earwig;
His father was a whale;
A little bit of head And hardly any tail-
And Ogopogo was his name.

Thanks to these songs, the name Ogopogo stuck and the Indian name has been forgotten by all but monster buffs.

A History of Strong Sightings

While Ogopogo has never attained the fame of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, the creature of lake Okanagan has regularly caused quite a stir in the international press. Monster hunters from all over the world have been drawn to the area for research purposes, and many of the sightings have been as strong or stronger than those at Loch Ness. Multiple witness sightings of Ogopogo, so rare with many other controversial phenomena, have occurred on many occasions.

On September 16, 1926, Ogopogo was watched by some 30 cars of people along an Okanagan Mission beach. Not many monsters have been seen at one time by so many people. The Ogopogo sightings of 1925/26 deserve some in-depth study.

Consider the appearance of Ogopogo on July 2, 1947, when a number of boaters saw the monster simultaneously. One of the witnesses, a Mr. Kray, described the animal as having "a long sinuous body, 30 feet in length, consisting of about five undulations, apparently separated from each other by about a two-foot space, in which that part of the undulations would have been underwater...There appeared to be a forked tail, of which only one-half came above the water. From time to time the whole thing submerged and came up again."

On July 17, 1959, Mr. and Mrs. R. H. Miller and Mr. and Mrs. Pat Marten saw a tremendous creature with a snake-like head and a blunt nose swimming some 250 feet behind their motor boat on British Columbia's Okanagan Lake. The group watched the unknown animal for over three minutes, after which it submerged.

Recent Interest

More recently, in the summer of 1989, hunting guide Ernie Giroux and his wife were standing on the banks of Okanagan Lake when a bizarre animal emerged from the otherwise placid waters. "It was about 15 feet long and swam real gracefully and fast," Giroux told the press. The Girouxs claim to have see an animal with a round head "like a football;" at one point several feet of the creature's neck and body came up out of the water. The Girouxs saw the monster at the same spot where, in July 1989, British Columbian car salesman Ken Chaplin took a video of a what he described as a snake-like creature about 15 feet long and dark green in color. This columnist has viewed the Chaplin video and feels that it was probably a beaver.

"I've seen a lot of animals swimming in the wild and what we saw that night was definitely not a beaver," Ernie Giroux states emphatically.

Giroux is in good company. There have over 200 sightings by credible people including a priest, a sea captain, a surgeon, police officers, and so forth. The fact that the percipients are generally people of good repute is often mentioned in reports of sightings. Photos of Ogopogo are numerous and include the 1964 Parmenter photo; the 1976 Fletcher photo; the 1978, 1979 and 1981 Gaal photos, the 1981 Wachlin photo, the 1984 Svensson photograph.

There have now been half a dozen films and videos taken of an animate object in Lake Okanagan, but none of them are conclusive.

What would solve the Ogopogo enigma? Only the discovery of an actual beast or the carcass of one would admit these creatures into mainstream science. If Ogopogo exists, it is clearly an elusive creature. Ogopogo hunters have failed to come up with that piece of unimpeachable evidence that will prove to the world that the aquatic monster exists. Until that evidence is found, Canada's premiere lake monster will remain a classic mystery.

Nessie - the Loch Ness mystery

Since the Loch Ness monster story has been around for more than 1500 years, if there is a monster it is not likely that it is the same monster seen by St. Columba. Or, are we to believe that not only is Nessie very big, she is very old as well, a veritable Methuselah among beasts? In short, there must be more than one monster. I'll leave it to the zoologists to calculate how many monsters are necessary to maintain the species over the years. One report I read claimed that a minimum population of ten creatures would be needed to sustain the population. The same report claims that Loch Ness is incapable of sustaining a predator weighing more than about 300 kg (about 660 pounds) [The Naturalist, winter 1993/94, reported in The Daily Telegraph]. Adrian Shine once said the monster could be a Baltic sturgeon, a primitive fish with a snout and spines (actually ridges of horn-like skin) which can grow up to nine feet long and weigh in at around 450 pounds (actually they can grow much longer and weigh much more than 450 lbs.). This may sound like just another fish story to some, but there is scientific evidence that Nessie is, at best, a big fish in a big lake, or a big wake in a big lake. Shine, who has been studying the Loch Ness story for some twenty-five years, now thinks that what people see when they think they see the "monster" is actually an underwater wave. A similar view has been presented by Luigi Piccardi, an Italian geologist "who is convinced that seismic rumblings far below the famous Scottish lake cause the roiling waves, deep groans and explosive blasts that have for centuries led people to believe that a giant beast lurks below the loch's murky surface ("Mystery unlocked? A scientist says he's solved a monster controversy -- the 'beast' in Loch Ness is merely an illusion created by earthquakes," San Francisco Chronicle, June 27, 2001 by Chuck Squatriglia)."

The Naturalist reported on extensive studies of the lake's ecology that indicate that the lake is capable of supporting no more than 30 metric tons of fish. (The food chain of the lake is driven by bacteria, which break down vegetation, rather than algae like most lakes.) Estimating that a group of predators would weigh no more than 10 percent of the total weight of the fish available for them to consume, researchers arrived at the 300-kg (660-lb.) statistic. It strikes me as extremely odd that with all the sophisticated technology, the submarines, and the thousands of voyeurs that after all these years we still don't have a single specimen. We don't have a carcass; we don't even have a bone to examine. With at least ten of these huge monsters swimming around in the lake at any given time, you'd think that there would be at least one unambiguous sighting by now. You would think so, that is, unless you want to keep the hoax/myth/legend alive. I can't deny that there are good economic reasons for keeping the Loch Ness monster myth alive. It's good for tourism. And there are all those "scientific" investigations to be paid for with government funds and private donations: full employment for cryptozoologists. Then, of course, there is all that film sold to photographers in search of The Big One. But tourism grew out of the myth, not the other way around. This story would be told with or without multi-media centers and gift shops full of Nessie mementos.

Besides the photo which Mr. Boyd and others have exposed as a fake, there are many other photos of Nessie to consider. Not all photos of Nessie are fakes. Some are genuine photos of the lake. These photos are always very gray and grainy, taken of murky waters with lots of shadows and outlines. There is no question that in some of these there does appear to be a form which could be taken for a sea serpent. The form could also be taken for a log, a shadow on a wave, a wave itself, driftwood, or flotsam. Anyone who has traveled around Loch Ness will not be disappointed in the variety of forms which one will see when looking out upon the waters. The lake is very long, and on the day I was there it was very turbulent, even though the day was a rather pleasant one as far as Scottish summer days go. Obviously, since I was there for only one day, I had not come to Loch Ness to do any serious research into the monster. I'll confess that I didn't even bother to stop in Drumnadrochit to take in the Loch Ness Monster Exhibit, which, according to Fodor's guide book to Scotland, "presents the facts and the fakes."

I was on vacation, traveling with my wife, daughter, future son-in-law, and a dear friend. We headed down the B862, which affords intermittent views of the lake from the east side. It was a pleasant drive among moors and conifer spikes, but nothing spectacular in a land of glorious spectacles. The drive northward on the west bank along the A82 takes you right along the lake in many places and past the famous Urquhart castle, a "favorite monster-watching spot" (Fodor's).

Urquhart is on the tourist bus trail and gets more than its share of visitors. I had wanted to stop there and take advantage of its excellent location for monster watching but I couldn't get into the parking lot. I drove north past the castle, looking for a place to turn around, and after many miles finally found one. I drove south, past the castle again, as the parking lot guard waved me on by the castle: the lot was still full. I drove for miles looking for a place to turn around again, finally found one, and made a third pass with the same result. Was it a sign from Nessie? We had to do most of our viewing of Loch Ness from the road. While we didn't see any monsters that day, I still have a vivid memory of one of Scotland's longest (24 miles) and deepest lakes (750, 800, or 900 ft. in places, depending on which source you pick). I have no doubt that anyone who stared across those murky, wavy, shadowy waters would see many things that could be Nessie. I don't doubt that many, if not most, of the thousands of witnesses who testify to having seen Nessie are honest, decent folk who have interpreted their perceptions according to their wishes. They have come to the lakeside and they have been blessed with a visitation! They are truly special and their lives are now marked forever as unique. Best of all: they have a story to tell for the rest of their lives. In many ways they are like the young lady who declared that the highlight of her life was when she saw music icon Michael Jackson being whisked through a department store: "it was like seeing a UFO," she declared! I'll bet she'll be telling the story of her Michael Jackson sighting for years to come. Who knows to what epic proportions the young lady's tale might grow? Perhaps it will grow as big as Loch Ness itself, like the legend of Nessie.

Eyewitness

The Loch Ness Monster, like Bigfoot and alien abduction, is now considered a myth unworthy of scientific investigation. But before that myth was debunked, MIT's Harold "Doc" Edgerton, SM '27, ScD '31, gamely joined the Nessie quest. In the last two decades of his life, the Institute Professor found time to lend his legendary expertise in strobe photography and sonar to the search for the creature said to lurk in the Scottish loch.

It started in 1972 with a telegram from Edgerton's friend Robert Rines '42, the president of the Academy of Applied Science in Boston. Rines had gone to Scotland in search of Nessie and was staying at the ­Drumnadrochit Hotel, whose slogan was "Where the monster plays in the bay, so they say." Rines thought he had a chance of docu­menting the monster using sonar and underwater photography. "Hitting pay dirt on fixed mode sonar and light attracting near underwater cameras," he telegraphed Edgerton. "Can you possibly pass through Drumnadrochit enroute to Greece to help?"

Edgerton initially declined, but that summer, Rines took an intriguing set of photographs at Loch Ness. Enhanced by computer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California to emphasize edges and contrast, the photographs seemed to show the flipper of a large aquatic animal.

This 1975 Loch Ness photograph by Charles W. Wyckoff '41 was enhanced by computer at the Jet Propulsion Lab to better define object outlines.

Photo credit: JPL-enhanced photo courtesy of Robert Rines '42

Within two years, Edgerton signed on to help develop and provide equipment that could aid the search for creatures hidden in the depths of Loch Ness's murky, ­yellow-brown waters. "How could anyone ... not rise to the technical problems that are before the researcher in this field?" ­Edgerton wrote Rines. "I personally am tremendously interested in the apparent attraction of the animals in the Loch by our cameras and lights."

With Edgerton's equipment, Rines took additional, tantalizing pictures that led to a moment in the limelight and articles in Technology Review and National Geographic. But follow-up trips in the late 1970s failed to confirm the monster's existence.

Undaunted, Edgerton tinkered with his equipment to improve its performance in the low-visibility conditions of the loch. With Ian Morrison, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, he investigated a World War II Wellington bomber found during the Nessie search, and he pushed Morrison to publish articles on the loch's history.

By the mid-1980s, the ­intellectual tide was turning against the Nessie quest. Discover and the Skeptical Inquirer published scathing critiques of the flipper photographs and accompanying sonar data. Before long, the Loch Ness Monster became the academic equivalent of box office poison. Morrison had trouble publishing legitimate historical research on stone circles found at the bottom of the loch, and he wrote to Edgerton of a postgraduate doing geological work in the area: "Since the candidate wishes to retain academic respectability there is of course not the slightest mention of strange beasties."

In that letter, Morrison revealed his true feelings about the monster. "You may recall that whilst I will admit to getting a crick in my neck while diving (through a gut-level compulsion to keep checking that nothing was indeed sneaking up behind me, through those gloomy doom-laden depths ...), the cerebral scientist in me protests that it is very difficult to see how you could get a big beast into the Loch."

Edgerton treated Rines's Loch Ness obsession with gentle open-mindedness. Rines was still planning trips to search for the monster even after a high-profile 1987 investigation showed that some of his most exciting images were probably pictures of a strangely shaped log. Making no mention of that, Edgerton wrote to him that fall to ask why no results had been published from Rines's last trip and sent sketches of a new "streak camera" for detecting moving objects. Kindness to a friend and the chance to conquer equipment challenges held more value to him than the chance of finding a monster.

"Many factors point to no 'Nessie,'" Edgerton wrote Morrison in 1986. "Regardless, there is no harm in looking, especially with sonar since there may be things to discover."