Crop Circle experiment...

[g99]

This is a assignment i got from one of my professors last week. I turned the paper in today. /phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif

Assignment:

"Is it possible to design a controlled protocol for evaluation of crop circles? You are testing the hypothesis that humans cannot produce them."


And a clip from my answer directly pertaining to this.

"A site where a significant number of circles appear at a regular basis will be chosen. This area will be blocked off to all foot and vehicular traffic to control for some visitor coming in and making a hoax themselves. Hidden video monitors will be stationed to cover the entire test area. Time stamps will be recorded on all monitors and also each monitor will be fitted to work at night and during the day. The test period will be one month to increase the chances of getting a hit. Samples of crop material taken at regular intervals in the study area will be a control to test for changes in the crop material itself. These changes will test for the changes reported by Levengood in his paper on the effects shown on plants within crop circles. The weather and wind conditions will be recorded during the entire experiment to rule out wind vortexes (or other weather phenomena) causing the phenomena.
After the experiment is done, and if a crop circle appeared, samples will be taken of the crop material. The crop material will be taken from within the circle and outside the circle. Then it will be compared to the control test subjects and see if there are any differences. Then the video will be reviewed to see what physically caused the circle.
This same experiment will simultaneously go on in 4 other fields of similar composition (same plant type) and geography to minimize errors.
This experiment can only test that it was not made by human means. If no crop circle appears, it does not rule out that the circles are being made by extra-terrestrials or some strange weather effect. If the circles reappear directly after the experiment it will be highly suspicious of hoaxing, but extra-terrestrial origin for the circles cannot be ruled out. The only way that this experiment, or any reasonable experiment can succeed in proving a non-human origin is if a circle forms in the test area and either the cameras or the weather data picks up the thing responsible for it. "

And my bibliography (or works cited your choice.)

"Levengood WC “Anatomical anomalies in crop formation plants”. Physiologia Plantarum 92: 356-363. 1994.

Nickell J, Fisher JF “The crop-circle phenomenon: An investigative report.” Skeptical Inquirer 16. 1992.

Thomas, Andy. “THE CROP CIRCLE PHENOMENON - A BEGINNERS GUIDE”. Swirled News http://www.swirlednews.com/crop.asp. 2001.
"

Tell me your ideas and what you guys and gals think.

How can i improve my experiment?

Can you design a better one?

This is all speculation, no actual experiment involved.

_________________
"I am not conceited, i'm perfect"
"It takes Thousands to fight a battle for a mile, Millions to hold an election for a nation, but it only takes One to change the world." by Dan Sandler 2002

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: g99 on 2002-11-25 18:48 ]</font>

[Silas]

On 2002-11-25 18:47, g99 wrote:
This is a assignment i got from one of my professors last week. I turned the paper in today. /phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif

Assignment:

"Is it possible to design a controlled protocol for evaluation of crop circles? You are testing the hypothesis that humans cannot produce them."

Um... Why not simply produce one? That falsifies the hypothesis, and is a lot easier than the protocol you describe.

Silas

[g99]

The topic is a little confusing. Here i will change it to fit what i want better: How do you make a experiment to proove that aliens did do it and not humans?


-------------
Silas
That does not proove that aliens produced them. Yes, you can proove that humans can do them.
All of the crop circles can be easily made by anyone with a compass and some geometry. This has been discussed before in other threads. But i am asking the opposite. How do you prove scientifically that it was not humans? Far fethced and it is VERY, VERY unlikely that it is not humans, but how would you test for it?

P.S. Today we saw a video of this big Crop circle guru. I think his name was Andrews or something like that. Well he and this guy named King said that they believe that the crop circles are actually signs from a future invading alien race.

According to them (this was in 1995 that they made this statement [in maddison square gardes of all places!!]) that in 1998 and ending in 2013 aliens will begin to colonize the planet and he and his collegue have been talking to them and are told to prepare us for their coming. When he mentioned that everyone in my class broke into non stop laugther.

He then went onto telling us that these same aliens have been coming every few thousand years (planet X again!!!) and planting new species and people down on the earth. You see according to them they created all life on earth and the crop circles are them talking to us in code. Boy there are some nuts out there.

_________________
"I am not conceited, i'm perfect"
"It takes Thousands to fight a battle for a mile, Millions to hold an election for a nation, but it only takes One to change the world." by Dan Sandler 2002

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: g99 on 2002-11-25 19:58 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: g99 on 2002-11-25 20:00 ]</font>

[xriso]

The hypothesis is basically "Humans cannot produce crop circles", if I've read correctly.

To invalidate such a statement, contradict it by producing a crop circle.

[hewhocaves]

If you have the place covered with surveilence, why are you cordoning it off? It stands to reason that the less you mess with the site, the better. You know, not doctoring the results and all that.

BTW, the Discovery's 'Science Channel' is doing an episode on CC right now.

[g99]

On 2002-11-25 23:04, hewhocaves wrote:
If you have the place covered with surveilence, why are you cordoning it off? It stands to reason that the less you mess with the site, the better. You know, not doctoring the results and all that.

makes sense...


BTW, the Discovery's 'Science Channel' is doing an episode on CC right now.




Dang i wish i got that channel!!

[hewhocaves]

it's okay... they're done.. they did a fairly good job. They've also hit stonehenge and another fave of mine.. the Nazca lines. I like to think of them as meditative rock gardens. /phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif You know, on holy days you go out and walk your favorite (or your clan) lines. Bigger, more important clans, bigger drawings. And theres no need for the greys to get involved.

[g99]

i love the Nazca lines. I did a 20 page paper for one of my archaeology classes on them, cool stuff. My favorite things are all of the crackpot theories explaining them (well other than the obvious). Landing strips for spaceplanes, markings for underground waterways, and others.

[Argos]

I don't know why all the fuzz about crop circles. The makers of the original crop circles (two british rednecks) have confessed in details the whole thing, years ago. There's no mistery about them anymore.

There is nothing as boring as crop circles.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Argos on 2002-11-26 08:01 ]</font>

[informant]

xriso wrote:


The hypothesis is basically "Humans cannot produce crop circles", if I've read correctly.

To invalidate such a statement, contradict it by producing a crop circle.

I don't know much about crop circles, but I believe that it has already been established that some of them are indeed made by human pranksters. This is an uninteresting hypothesis to test.
I think it would be more interesting to test the hypothesis that "At least some crop circles are not man-made." If I'm not mistaken, this is the idea that keeps the crop circle crowd going.

This hypothesis is easy to prove - just film the aliens (or atmospherical phenomena) in the act. To disprove it, however, is next to impossible. You just can't keep an eye on every corn field in the world, every waking hour of the day.
On the other hand, I'm sure that one of the arguments that people use when they're confronted with the fact that CC can and have been fabricated by humans is "Yes, the simpler crop circles can be faked, but surely one as elaborate as this one (show picture) couldn't have been faked".

What you would have to do would be to list a number of characteristics in a CC that would make people claim that it couldn't have been man-made - and then attempt to make a CC with those characteristics to disprove the claim.

[g99]

In one of the articles i cited (Nickell J, Fisher JF “The crop-circle phenomenon: An investigative report.” Skeptical Inquirer 16. 1992. )
They actually did a experiment where they took two of the leading Crop circle believers Pat Delgado, (what do you call them? Circlers?) and had them say if certain crop circle was real or not. They contacted those two guys who made a bunch of the ones in England and had them make one complex circle based on plans by one of the writers.

The circler then said that there is no way that humans could of made it and listed off certain points that make it impossible for humans to of made the circle. The author then took extreme pleasure in showing Delgado the video of them making the cirlce. /phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif hehehe